Nick's What In Our Time Essay

The story of Nick Adams is a long one, yet a short one at the same time, told only, directly, over the span of a few chapters. During these chapters though, Nick transforms himself from a child to a man. He goes through many challenges to make this passage of rite, and that's what In Our Time is about.

Nick’s childhood is detailed in two chapters, those chapters being Indian Camp and the Doctor and the Doctor’s wife. These two chapters begin the narrative of Nick’s relationship with others, mainly men and women. Indian Camp mostly deals with men and men relationships. Nick is only a child in this story, and the events of this one set the base for his life. He knows almost nothing, his father countless times explaining concepts of the world to him in a very

While most of the chapter shows his father and the pride of men, at the end of the chapter, when Nick is told that his mother wants to see him, Nick says, “‘I want to go with you’”(), to his father. This is the first instance of Nick explicitly picking the spend time with men than with women. His father supports this by not objecting to Nick coming with him, and from there it is implied they go hunt squirrels together

Again, as with Marjorie, this relationship seems very serious, the only thing stopping them from marrying is the lack of proper documentation. But, what differs from the relationship with Marjorie is that Lutz is the one to break it off this time, telling Nick that their relationship was “that of a boy and a girl affair”(). After this point, it seems that Nick no longer values female relationships at all, the end of the chapter saying, “A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a lop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln