Relationships In Ernest Hemmingway's In Our Time

People have conflicting views on the benefits and negatives of relationships. Some individuals believe that relationships can have a positive impact on one’s life, while others believe that they are unnecessary to living a successful life. Almost everyone has unique experiences with a relationship but can alter their lives in one way or another. Ernest Hemmingway’s, In Our Time demonstrates how relationships cause damage to one’s wellbeing and those close to him or her. In “Indian Camp” Hemmingway creates a scene where Nick and his father are helping an American Indian woman bear her child. After Nick’s father finished a Caesarian that caused a great deal of pain to the woman, it was discovered that the woman’s husband’s, “throat had been

During a somewhat heated discussion between the doctor and the doctor’s wife, the doctor, “heard his wife’s voice from the darkened room” (Hemmingway 26). The archetype of darkness is associated with both ignorance and despair. In other words, his wife sat in the room of ignorance and despair, and she did not care about his thought process involving his decision making. Instead of supporting his decision to dismiss the workers, the wife questions the doctor’s temper. Contrary to the married couple in “Indian Camp,” it appears that that the Adams’ relationship is lacking element of true love. Hemmingway creates a scenario of two opposite extremes, in order to show that no matter what kind of relationship two people have, the same outcome will occur: despair. Later in the story the doctor does not support his wife’s yearning to see Nick, and when Nick asked his farther to go hunt black squirrels, he does not quarrel and responds, “Let’s go there” (Hemingway 27). The doctor placed Nick right in the middle of the feud between him and his wife. While the doctor could have told Nick that they could go hunt another time because his mother wanted to see him, he decided not to in spite. Nick was found, “sitting with his back against a tree reading” (Hemingway 27), a quality that he obtained from his mother, and told his father that he wanted