Reaching of Maturity

In the short story, “Indian Camp,” by Ernest Hemingway, the point of the story revolves around the birth, the successful operation, and the suicide. However, I think that the main point of it was the steps toward reaching of maturity. In the story, Nick’s father is called to an Indian camp to treat a lady who has been having trouble giving birth for the past two days. On his travel, he takes Nick and Uncle George along with him. When they arrived at the Indian camp, Nick’s father delivers the baby safely. However, then everyone sees the woman’s husband—he has committed suicide because he couldn’t take his wife’s screaming. Nick’s father tells Uncle George to take Nick out of the hut. On the way back, Nick is curious and asks a lot of questions about the childbirth and the suicide, however, his father didn’t have answers for. While assisting his father, Nick lost his innocence as the events of birth and death unfolds before his eyes.   

As the story begins, Nick is still a boy—naïve and needing the protection and comfort of his father. This is evident as they get in the rowboats: “Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him” (page 292). The conversation that follows also shows Nick as child and his father as the authority figure: “‘Where are we going, Dad?’ Nick asked. ‘Over to the Indian Camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.’ `Oh,’ said Nick” (page 292). They arrive at the camp and find the woman inside who was has been having trouble giving birth. During this part, this is the first scene where we see the child pulling away from the parent. “‘This woman is going to have a baby, Nick,’ he said. ‘I know’ said Nick. ‘You don’t know,’ said his father (page 293). Seeing his father being the doctor was a turning point between father and son as Nick rebels against his father’s attitude and behavior to the Indian woman.

Nick assists his father in the operation by holding a basin of water (page 293). When Nick’s father delivers the baby, he orders Nick to look at it, but Nick disobeys and looks elsewhere “so as not to see what his father was doing (page 294).” His father continues his narrative of the operation asking his son several times to watch as he closes the incision. Afterwards, When Nick’s father checks on the Indian husband, he reveals the man’s dead (page 294). The Indian husband killed himself during the delivery. His father orders Uncle George to take Nick out of the shanty so he won’t see, but this time Nick defies his father and looks. Father and son return to the shore and the rowboat, and the father apologizes to the son for bringing him along.

At this point, the father no longer has all the answers. Nick takes over the conversation by asking his father several pointed and probing questions that he wasn’t able to find answers for. When Nick wants to know if dying is hard, he provides an answer that Nick later rejects: “No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.” Father and son climb back into the rowboat. This time Nick sits in the stern away from his father. He has removed himself both physically and emotionally. Dragging his hand in the tepid lake water, Nick defies his father for the last time in the story by boldly believing that he will never die.

Through witnessing birth and death, there’s been a lost and a gain—a lost in innocence, but a gain in maturity. What’s been lost can never be gain back, but instead, build on from it and continue with life.