Nick Adam's is an essential Hemingway hero. He is character and code of behavior is developed in the first stories of "In Our Time", the stories of Nick's youth in rural America. In the middle stories, Nick is lost in the tide of WWI. His character is contrasted with the characters of these stories. These characters are representatives of Nick. They are people much like him, thrown into the same horrid war, but reacting to the war, and dealing with the burden of living in our time, in different ways than does Nick. In the end, Nick's code saves him and he is able to make, at least a partial recovery, in "Big Two-Hearted River. Throughout this progression, Hemingway uses settings to portray the hero and his character. Characters are put to the test of pressure to which they must respond with grace to meet the Hemingway code-few do. Hemingway uses his style of understatement to capture the emptiness that afflicts many of his characters. His simple wording doesn't grovel in the emotions of horror, but merely states the facts. In much the same way, Nick must face the facts of a harsh and brutal war, and an empty society, without succumbing to his emotions.
             In "Indian Camp", Nick is first exposed to the cruelty of life. He is only a young boy, but he is faced with a gruesome experience. He refuses to watch his father perform a crude cesarean section on an Indian woman. He can't ignore what he sees in the bed above the operation. "Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"(p.19) Nick is confused and scared by the situation, but even at a young age he comprehends clearly what has happened. The setting is dark. The story is told in a mild tone of understatement. Hemingway handles these situations as the code requires. There is no room for sentimentality. The doctor holds up his lamp giving Nick a perfect view of the Indian while he tilts back his nearly severed head. Nick's fathers o...