Hemingway’s Role of Death and Suicide In “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a woman who needs to give birth to an infant. With difficulties, the infant is born, but the father could not handle the pressure, a fact which leads to the Indian father taking his own life. Ultimately, the suicide of the Indian father in Hemingway’s short story “Indian Camp” compels the reader to examine what made the Indian father get so depressed that he commits suicide and how it affected Nick’s life. First, the father is conveying feelings that shows that the Indian father is pressured about the situation his wife is in because she is having difficulty with labor and birth. For example, what Nick and his father say, “No, I haven’t any anesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important” (68). This is the first sign of distress in “Indian Camp,” when Nick’s father feels like he cannot help in any way, then the father shows signs of depression. With that being said, there is also another saying by Nick’s father stating, “There’s
Readers can see how this affects Nick when the doctor says, “Take Nick out to the shanty, George,” (69) this is when we first see Nick begin to see just what happened to the Indian husband. The doctor did not want Nick to see the dead body and the gruesomeness of the situation. Afterwards, Nick questions his dad, for example, Nick ask, “Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies” (69)[,] this directly shows how Nick is bothered by the suicide of the Indian father. Readers know when Nick is asking all these kind of questions that he is concerned about the way he could die one day. In summary, the after effects of the Indian husband’s suicide leaves Nick with questions about the rest of his life that cannot be answered until Nick is to
Finally, Nick’s inability to involve himself emotional with anyone is also a problem. He is more of a bystander than a participant. He fears of being close to anyone, and mostly just gets along with everything. That is a problem. He needs to find someone to listen to, instead of him always being the listener. This emotional distance, which he has, is not a healthy thing for him and can cause him to end being a loner.
A woman was left there by a man who was now England’s Director, and she got pregnant with his baby, John, who had a tormented childhood from the Indian children for his race and his mother who still lived with the civilized idea of casual sex, which the Indians did not.
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His mother, Grace Hall, was a trained opera singer and later on, a music teacher. His father, Clarence Hemingway, was a doctor and an avid naturalist ("Ernest Hemingway: An Inventory”). Just after graduating high school, at the age of eighteen, Hemingway enlisted in the army to fight in World War I ("The Big Read"). After being severely wounded in the war, he moved to Paris in 1921, and devoted himself to writing fiction (Baker). It is said that, “No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway” (Putnam). Hemingway’s book A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929, and was based off of the events that happened to him in the war and what happened in his love life. Fredrick Henry, the protagonist, is an American ambulance driver fighting for the allies during World War I. He is introduced to a nurse named Catherine, who he later on falls in love with. Henry was hit by a trench mortar shell and was very badly injured. He is then sent to Milan, where Catherine later on comes to help nurse him to health. The two fall in love and Henry no longer is involved with the war, so they try and have a child, but both Catherine and the child die during labor, and Henry is left alone. Psychoanalytical approach views the psychological motivations of characters, which refer to the dynamics of personality development and behavior based on the unconscious motivations of a person ("Psychoanalytic Theory”). Hemingway’s writing was greatly impacted by his real life tragedies, which consist of witnessing the gruesomeness of war and his discovery and loss of love, this helps exhibi...
A Soldier’s Home is a short story written by Earnest Hemingway and published in 1925. One of the most compelling features of the work is its brevity and omission. Lamb notes “The short story’s lack of space leads to prose that relies heavily on suggestiveness and implication, allowing the reader a greater role in bringing the narrative to life. (Lamb 2016). As a former journalist, Hemingway learned to write in concise style that put the maximum information into every word, to the point of omitting information that could be inferred or discovered. According to Earnest Hemingway:
Another example of the life/death relationship that seems to be exemplified in the first four pieces of Hemingway's novel is the conflicts that arise during Indian Camp. Rather than Nick expressing the sole fact that he believes he is not going to die, I believe that, because of his father, he misunderstood the concept of dying. I believe that the passage that stated, "he felt quite sure that he would never die" was essentially a reaction to the pregnant woman's husband's suicide. Because that was the topic that arose during the story, I believe that Nick interpreted the situation that "death" was equal to "suicide" and, in believing that he would never commit suicide, ultimately believes that he will, thus, never die. I also believe that there is significance in the way in which Nick's father spoke to him while performing the C-section on the woman. He said something along the lines of "you can watch this or not" meaning that, even I Nick didn't watch his father perform the surgery, it was still taking place and, thus, just a part or fact of life.
Ernest Hemingway pulled from his past present experiences to develop his own thoughts concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. One such masterpiece written early in Hemingway's career is the short story, "Indian Camp." "Indian Camp" was originally published in the collection of "in Our Time" in 1925. A brief summary reveals that the main character, a teenager by the name of Nick, travels across a lake to an Indian village. While at the village Nick observes his father, who is a doctor, deliver a baby to an Indian by caesarian section. As the story continues, Nick's father discovers that the newborn's father has committed suicide. Soon afterward Nick and his father engage in a discussion about death, which brings the story to an end. With thought and perception a reader can tell the meaning of the story. The charters of Nick and his father resemble the relationship of Hemingway and his father. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, a middle class suburb, under the watchful eye of his parents, Ed and Grace Hemingway. Ed Hemingway was a doctor who "occasionally took his son along on professional visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians" during summer vacations (Waldhorn 7). These medical trips taken by Ernest and Ed would provide the background information needed to introduce nick and his father while on their medical trip in "Indian Camp." These trips were not the center point of affection between Ed and Ernest, but they were part of the whole. The two always shared a close father-son bond that Hemingway often portrayed in his works: Nick's close attachment to his father parallels Hemingway's relationship with Ed. The growing boy finds in the father, in both fiction and life, not only a teacher-guide but also a fixed refuge against the terrors of the emotional and spiritual unknown as they are encountered. In his father Ernest had someone to lean on (Shaw 14). In "Indian Camp," nick stays in his father's arms for a sense of security and this reinforces their close father-son relationship. When Nick sees the terror of death, in the form of suicide, his father is right there to comfort him. From this we are able to see how Nick has his father to, physically and mentally, "lean" on, much like Hemingway did (S...
The story, A Soldiers Home, is about a man in conflict with the past and present events in his life. The young man’s name is Harold Krebs. He recently returned from World War 1 to find everything almost exactly the same as when he left. He moved back into his parents house, where he found the same car sitting in the same drive way. He also found the girls looking the same, except now they all had short hair. When he returned to his home town in Oklahoma the hysteria of the soldiers coming home was all over. The other soldiers had come home years before Krebs had so everyone was over the excitement. When he first returned home he didn’t want to talk about the war at all. Then, when he suddenly felt the urge and need to talk about it no one wanted to hear about it. When he returned all of the other soldiers had found their place in the community, but Harold needed more time to find his place. In the mean time he plays pool, “practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read, and went to bed.”(Hemingway, 186) When his mother pressures him to get out and get a girlfriend and job, he te...
The transformation from teenage years into adulthood can cause a person to realize that it is time to discover one’s position in the world. Several make this transition easily while others struggle to receive acceptance amongst their surroundings. In the short story “Soldiers Home” Harold Krebs image is in photographs that are the key to how his own life transforming from a young fraternity boy then into mature soldier in World War I. Not to mention, a third portrait happens in images printed on pages of the short story, showing the young soldier’s character unable to “accept the old norms” once returning from the war (DeFalco 90). This triggers Kreb towards isolation in dealing with his family and society, all things considering he begins exhibiting traits of being lonely, a liar to survive in the town he calls home, and uncertainty in regards to his future cause him towards be lazy.
...Nick is not yet ready for. In this way it could represent his return to civilization, which he is not yet ready for, and he therefore will continue his Edenic hiatus.
...eep my refuse away” (Pg. 177). This shows Nick’s sense of decency and friendship. He realizes that fast carousing life of the East Egg is a terrifying cover for moral emptiness from inside just like the valley of ashes. Before leaving to go back home he took care of all unfinished business. He ended his relationship with Jordan and walked away from Tom Buchanan who he only shared college experiences with. Nick needed to go back to a cleaner simpler time in life away from East Egg and the Great Gatsby. At last his greatest fear came true; he became all alone by himself. At the end he realized that he has been changed and won’t be able to go back to how he used to be. Even though his personality remains the same he is stronger from inside; not afraid of anything.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin along with other lesser known works. Stowe wrote to bring to light the wrongs in society, most notably slavery. The literary period, the historical period, the community in which she lived, her family background, her religious beliefs, and her education all influenced Stowe’s desire to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin illustrating the lives of slaves. Despite the criticism she received, she continued to support the abolitionist movement with the same conviction, her actions eventually fulfilling her true goal: freedom.
Nick experiences his first eye-opening experience in the lines on page sixteen which describe the screams of the woman. As the father tells Nick that "All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams," he is justifying the screams to Nick, and in the fathers comment that her screams are "not important" he is minimizing the importance that Nick should place on the pai...
The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered a classic. Many times classic lose some of their impact as time goes by but that is not the case with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. It can be argued that the story has more meaning and impact now then it even did when it was first published. It is a glimpse into a dark period of American history that people have no actual frame of reference to understand. Books like Stowe’s puts a name and an emotional context to what can otherwise be viewed through a detached lens of indifference.
Hemingway constantly draws parallels to his life with his characters and stories. One blatant connection is with the short story, “Indian Camp,” in which an Indian baby is born and its father dies. As Nick is Hemingway’s central persona, the story revolves around his journey across a lake to an Indian village. In this story, Nick is a teenager watching his father practice as a doctor in an Indian village near their summer home. In one particularly important moment, Hemingway portrays the father as cool and collected, which is a strong contrast to the Native American “squaw’s” husband, who commits suicide during his wife’s difficult caesarian pregnancy. In the story, which reveals Hemingway’s fascination with suicide, Nick asks his father, “Why did he kill himself, daddy?” Nick’s father responds “I don’t kno...
Strong author of the scale is the ability to literature passage are set separately from the context and the expression of all of the recipes or writing. When this happens, and integrated into the total work is a sign of true art. Ernest Hemingway, author of the lost generation, was one of the writers who have mastered the art of investment mastered to build a simple sentence with complex layers of meaning. Hemingway, who was a journalist in the early years of his career in writing and published in prose style or a short induction. He said the emotional depth and meaning conveyed minimalist text is great. And also try to develop a stream of consciousness by writers such as James Joyce and William