Indian Camp
The Horror of Life from Birth to DeathDuring the Modernist Movement, existentialist writers wrote about the meaninglessness of life. Existentialists believe that life is a struggle against the nothingness of the world. They believe there is no higher meaning to the existence of man, and they deny the existence of God. Ernest Hemingway portrays three different ways of coping with the meaninglessness of life in his short story "Indian Camp." The three characters that portray the three different outlooks are Nick's father, Uncle George, and the Indian father. Ernest Hemingway uses the environment in his short story "Indian Camp" to develop the thematic vision that there are different ways people can cope with the horror of life from the moment of birth and until death.In the short story, Hemmingway portrays a microcosm of life by including a baby's birth and a man's suicide in the short period of the story. The pregnant Indian woman struggles in labor for two days without any medical attention until Nick's father's arrival. Nick's father describes to Uncle George after the procedure, "Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders" (18). The description of the birth is unnatural
All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. When Nick asks his father if there is anything to give the Indian woman to make her stop screaming, his father replies, "No. The narrator says, "(Nick) felt quite sure that he would never die" (19). Hemmingway uses grotesque imagery when he says, "The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk" (18). He only recognizes the horror of the Indian camp when he tries to protect Nick from it and because of this the reader knows that the father is aware of the horror but does not let it overwhelm himself. In the end of the story, Nick tries to make sense of life by attempting to relate to nature. That is what is happening when she screams" (16). This way of coping is better than the method Uncle George represents but leads to the Indian father's death; therefore Hemmingway is not saying it is the ideal method. I don't hear them because they are not important" (16). What she is going through is called being in labor. The allegorical meaning of the birth is that the beginning of life is horrible. By including this paradox in a character who represents the ideal way of coping with life, Hemmingway suggests that there is flaw in everyone. The Indian woman bites Uncle George on the arm and he says, "Damn squaw bitch" (17). The grotesque imagery used with the "jack-knife" and fishing line as substitutes to conventional surgical equipment help create a savage environment.
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