Analysis of One or More of Hemingway’s Short Stories (Indian Camp)

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Summary During the early hours of the morning, before sunrise, Dr. Adams is called out to a Native American Indian encampment. He performs an impromptu caesarean section on a woman who has been in a painful breached labour for two days. Accompanying the Dr. are, his young son Nick, and his brother George, who are both present and, ostensibly, helping throughout the surgery. The Dr. improvises the procedure using a jack-knife and nine-foot, tapered gut leaders; doing so with a hint of detached pride. At some point during the ordeal, the woman’s husband, who is bed bound with an injury in the same shanty, silently commits suicide. Nick’s father, Dr. Adams, discovers the dead husband shortly after completing the procedure; with Nick viewing the whole scene. Analysis Arguably, ‘Indian Camp’ is a meditation on opposites and the respective conflicts between them. Life and death, birth and suicide, racial and cultural differences and the tension between fathers and sons feature as focal points for exploring these polarities. Light and dark permeate the story as a constant representation of the dichotomy of opposites. The story features the rite of passage or ‘initiation’ of the young Nick into the darker side of life at its centre. Conversely, the light of the new dawn is used to symbolise the new awareness, definition of self, and illumination Nick has gained from this rite of passage. The story opens with Nick, his father the Dr. and his uncle George en route to an Indian camp where his father, Dr. Adams, has been summoned to perform an impromptu, emergency caesarean section on one of the native women. Nick, his uncle and his father make the initial portion of their journey to the Indian camp by boat. One possible reading of the significance of this boat journey is to draw parallels between the original white settlers of America and, upon contact, their

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