Ernest Hemingway Essay

Did you know that Ernest Hemingway survived through anthrax, malaria, pneumonia, skin cancer, hepatitis, diabetes, two plane crashes (on consecutive days), a ruptured kidney, a ruptured spleen, a ruptured liver, a crushed vertebrae, and a fractured skull throughout his life time? In Hemingway’s short story “Indian Camp”, Dr. Adams is summoned to help an American Indian woman who has been in painful labor for two days. The doctor takes his young son, Nick, and his brother, George, to the American Indian camp on the other side of a northern Michigan lake. There, the doctor performs impromptu, improvised cesarean with a fishing knife, catgut, and no anesthetic to deliver the baby. Afterward, he discovers that the woman's husband, who was in the

After finishing the C section on the Indian Woman and witnessing the dead corpse of the dead Indian Husband who committed suicide, Nick and his father row back home all the while Nick is asking questions about the events that took place earlier. “In the early morning on the lake setting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die”(95). Similarly in Strong’s critical essay she writes that Hemingway’s short stories “Have been read as tales of variation, focusing heavily on the final scenes”(Strong 1). This demonstrates Nick’s coming of age because the final scene in “Indian Camp” depicts Nick’s curiosity with death thereby instigating his maturity. What made Nick Adams a child was his ignorance about life, death, and about certain situations that occur in “Indian Camp” however what makes Nick an adult is his calmness and maturity about the situations he endures. After the lecture Dr. Adams received from his wife, he went outside and told his son that his mother needed him. “Your mother wants you to come and see her… I want to go with you… I know where there’s black squirrels, Daddy”(103). Similarly in Nolan’s article about Hemingway’s short stories he writes, “Putting Nick’s book in his pocket and following his son on into the woods where Nick knows they can find squirrels”("Essay by Charles J. Nolan Jr, The