Ernest Hemingway's Indian Camp

842 Words2 Pages

Ernest Hemingway Indian Camp

From a fishing trip the local doctor is summoned to an Indian village

to assist a woman in labour. With him are his young son and an older

male relative. Although all women helped the pregnant Indian woman,

the men "moved off up the road". They want not to hear her screaming.

The men are fed up with it. Maybe it is also an Indian ritual that

only women are allowed to see the woman being in labour. The Indians

are not interest in the childbirth. Hemingway brought a metaphor in:

"dark". It shows that all is very hard and not allowed to see, that

there are secrets maybe. So you see that the Indian men distance up

from the pregnant woman making such big noise. They want silence and

that everything is over now. In opposite to it the doctor, Nick's

father, says:" But her screams are not important. I don't hear them

because they are not important." It depend on his job. Probably he

hears everyday such screams and it is nothing new to him, it is only

the noise concerning the birth. So he does not care about it. Nick

asks his father:" Oh, Daddy cannot you give her something to make her

stop screaming?" Of course, the screams are no good and I think, Nick

also cares about her and want that she has no much pain. But he

understands what his father says and try to ignore it. Nick is a

little boy who does not no how the pain of a labour is, so it is

understandable.

The physician assesses the situation in the closed, pungent hut and

determines that his only option is section-with a pen knife and

fishing leader as his instruments, and no anaesthesia for the Indian

woman. It is the most primitive way of operation, you see. But the

Indian woman has to grateful to have such big help by the ...

... middle of paper ...

...e. When he

saw the "throat" that "had been cut from ear to ear" he wants that

Nick is going out, but he saw everything. The father was of course

proud to have a baby with his wife, he loved, but the pain and the

shame to know that he could not help was definitely to much for him.

It is hard to judge about it, if it was okay to bring Nick with to the

Indians. Of course it was a special event in his life. First he saw

how life is born and how fast life is over. So he asked also "Is dying

hard, Daddy?" The reader notice that the boy is thinking about it and

want to get a satisfying answer. In this time being in the hut he saw

a lot and I think that Nick needs time to digest it and realize it as

well. The father thought that it was mistake, but maybe for the future

is was not wrong to see the circle of life. And "he felt quite sure

that he would never die".

Open Document