Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway
STORY SUMMARY
“Indian Camp” follows a young boy, Nick Adams, who accompanies his father—a doctor—and his uncle to an Indigenous camp where a Native American woman is suffering through a difficult labor. The woman has been in pain for days and cannot deliver the baby naturally. Nick’s father performs a crude Caesarean section using a jackknife, without anesthesia, while several people hold the woman down.
During the operation, it’s discovered that the woman’s husband, who was lying silently on the top bunk, has committed suicide by slitting his throat—an act unnoticed until after the baby is born. The story ends with Nick and his father rowing away from the camp at sunrise. Nick reflects on death and reassures himself that he will never die.
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Narrative Style: The Iceberg Theory
• Hemingway’s minimalist prose and understated descriptions reflect his signature Iceberg Theory (or theory of omission): what is unsaid is just as significant as what is said.
• The story’s sparse dialogue and factual narration conceal deep emotional trauma, cultural conflict, and existential anxiety.
Themes
• Initiation and Loss of Innocence: “Indian Camp” is often read as a coming-ofage story. Nick’s exposure to birth and death in a single night marks a profound psychological shift. The experience introduces him to the complexities of life, pain, and mortality.
• Death and Existential Awareness: The husband’s suicide contrasts starkly with the birth of new life. Nick is confronted with the closeness of life and death, a duality that leads to his naive but poignant thought: “He felt quite sure that he would never die.”
• Colonialism and Cultural Distance: The story depicts a power imbalance between the white doctor and the Na-
tive American family. The woman has no voice, is physically restrained, and is operated on with no anesthesia— raising ethical and cultural questions about the nature of Western intervention.
• Masculinity and Stoicism: The father is portrayed as confident and clinical, proud of his work but seemingly insensitive to the trauma around him. His masculinity, framed as competent and rational, is thrown into relief by the unnamed husband’s quiet despair and suicide.
Symbols
• The Camp: The Indian camp represents both physical and cultural distance from Nick’s world. It is a site of suffering, difference, and confrontation with the unknown.
• The Rowboat: The journey by boat to and from the camp mirrors a journey into experience and back, but Nick returns changed. The water and the act of rowing evoke ancient myths of passage and transformation.
• The Sunrise: The rising sun at the end offers a moment of light and perhaps renewal—but it contrasts ironically with the darkness of the events Nick has witnessed.