After reading Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp,” I was left with a feeling of discontent and a bit of disgust initially. The death of the husband in the story seems to be taken lightly by onlookers, and the focus of the birth is placed not on the actual birth of the child but rather the procedure that is carried out by the doctor as Nick looks on. Nevertheless, the way the story is presented intrigued me and kept my interest in the scene that unfolded. After looking deeper I found that I really enjoyed the techniques that Hemingway put to use in order to show conflicting images of people within the story The experience of Nick as he plays “intern” for his father is unique and expresses quite a different view of the situation as a whole.
Something that I felt was an underlying factor in “Indian Camp” was the role reversal between the Indian squaw and her husband. While the squaw has to endure the pain of child birth without anesthetic and suffer through the pain, her husband is the one who decides that the atmosphere is too much to bear as he takes his own life with a razor. The husband portrays the stereotypically feminine reactions in the short story and the doctor comments on how the fathers are often “the worst sufferers in these little affairs” before they find that the man is dead. I also saw this emphasis in Nick’s conversation with his father after they have left the shanty. Nick’s father tells Nick that “not very many” men kill themselves but women “hardly ever” do, implying that although either death is seldom, men are more likely than women to commit suicide rather than stick through the ordeal and portray classically masculine qualities. The way the death is treated by Nick’s father is what brought on my feeling of early distaste towards the end of the story because there is no real closure in the Indian man’s death; the doctor just moves on as if it is no more than a routine side effect of birth.
I thought it was unexpected and somewhat odd that Hemingway reflected so much on Nick’s father’s experience of the birth as a triumph in his role of doctor rather than playing off of the mother’s role in the birth of the child. Nick’s father tells him that the woman’s “screams are not important” because they don’t play a role in his birthing of the child. After the doctor has finished performing the surgery, he even brags to Uncle George that “doing a Caesarian with a jackknife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders” is something to be proud of. I was impressed by the way that Hemingway turned a feminine act into a masculine triumph in this short story and the way he contrasted the doctor’s strength with the weakness of the Indian father.
The role reversal you identified is interesting. I think that this only ads to the role reversal in the next story, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.” By comparing the emasculation of the Native American man and the Doctor, Hemingway almost sets them on equal playing fields. The stories really do compliment one another in multiple ways.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the husband's reaction to the squaw's childbirth was a role reversal. Conversely, I thought it was a hyperbolized telling of what happens to women and children during childbirth. Men, especially men unprepared to have children, are commonly not there in a child's life (albeit because they run away, because they are heavily working to provide for the child, or because they are carried off into war). I thought the suicide was an overly dramatic way to capture this sentiment of father figures choosing paths away from their families.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Clay. I don't see the husband's suicide as a role reversal. The father could not or did not want to be subject to the responsibilities that come with raising a child. Also, I think that there was a realization by the father that he could not give the child a better life than what he was living.
ReplyDeleteWhile I had not previously considered the suicide of the father to be demonstrating a role reversal, I think that is defintely a plausible explanation. When I read the story, I too was struck by Nick's father's comment about the difficulties that childbirth presents for the father, and in light of that quote in particular I think your analysis is accurate. It seemed to me that the man killed himself in response to the difficulty his wife was having in childbirth, and that he probably assumed she would not survive either. In combination with the doctor's celebration of a successful surgery, this definitely shifts the focus of this childbirth from the woman to the man.
ReplyDeleteWhile both arguments make sense, it is more interesting for me to view the father's suicide as a role reversal while reading the story. One can argue that the typical role of the father in caring and providing for the family implies that the father is the strong, tough, and unwavering parent. On the other side, the mother is generally thought of as the sentimental, submissive parent. In the story, the father's suicide stands in stark contrast to his role as caregiver, while the mother's anesthetic-free childbirth and subsequent single parenting conforms to the strong nature most consider prevalent in fathers.
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