Hemingway’s Nick Adams is an interesting character to read about. The autobiographical connotations of the stories are pretty obvious, but reading some of the stories, they might as well have been stories written for all men. Looking back over my brief twenty years, I can think of a story that relates to almost every one of the Nick Adam’s stories.
Indian Camp tells the story of a time when Nick, his father, and his uncle go to help an Indian woman giving birth in a nearby camp. Nick’s father is a Doctor and is the only one who is able to keep cool under pressure and who is trained to deliver the baby. The woman was experiencing intense pain and was screaming so loud that the other men of the village left to smoke cigars where they couldn’t hear it. The only man remaining was the woman’s husband who lay on the top bunk of the infirmary because he had an axe wound from a few days earlier.
Nick’s father really steps up in this situation and begins directing people and giving everyone a role. It is clear he is a talented physician and a strong leader. He, unlike anyone else, is able to just tune out the screaming, saying it doesn’t matter; he doesn’t hear it because it doesn’t matter. Eventually he delivers the baby successfully. A new life has been brought into the world and it is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world and it just happened at the hands of his father. However, when checking on the father in the bunk above everyone, they find he has slit his throat, unable to bear his wife’s agony. Nick, who was brought along to learn a valuable lesson about life ends up experiencing death at a very young age.
On the way back, Nick’s father is very proud of what he has done and seems unaffected by the death of the man. Nick however is not so easy going. On the way back he asks his father seven questions. Only one of them had to do with birth and life. The other ones are almost all about dying. This is a story about the first time a young boy experiences death. His father is calm and cool and answers all the questions in what seems like a wise and honest way. When asked if dying is hard he says he doesn’t think so but it all depends. The story ends with Nick feeling quite sure he would never die, a strange idea for a young boy who has just had a brush with death to have.
When I was a boy, I was fortunate enough to never have to witness a death let alone a gruesome suicide first hand like Nick did. However, I remember the first time I was introduced to death. While I was probably a little more desensitized to it than Nick was, it still sparked questions in my mind. I think it is very important for children to ask these questions so they aren’t naïve and for their parents to answer them truthfully so that their children don’t grow up with ideas about important things, like death, that are irrational or wrong.
This is also a good coming of age story because Nick suddenly learned a new reality although he didn’t feel like he wanted to accept it. Everyone dies. That can be a tough realization for a young person who has known only life so far. But one’s mortality is something everyone must accept eventually.
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