The Main Contents of Hemingway's Indian Camp

Hello, friend of fenglei 6996. The Indian camp you mentioned in your question is the masterpiece of Hemingway's early short stories. If I remember correctly, the English original name of this short story should be Indian Camp.

The following is the information about the Indian battalion:

Indian Camp is the most important of Hemingway's early short stories, with exquisite skills and thrilling plot, which touches the theme that runs through all his later works, that is, "death". He once said in the monograph "Death in the Afternoon" describing bullfighting, "All the stories have been told for a long time and ended in death." In Indian Camp, death is presented from the perspective of a child, which adds mystery to death besides fear. The baby's name is Nick? Adams. Nick Hemingway wrote twenty-four stories, from a child until he grew into a young man. Later, when Hemingway himself became a famous writer, he left Nick.

Nick, like Hemingway, has a father who is a doctor. He can make house calls at night in the country at any time. Hemingway had the experience of visiting with his father when he was a child, and the story of Indian camp was exactly what Nick saw when he visited with his father. Some people think that Nick's prototype is Hemingway himself. But more people don't seem to agree, because Nick is sensitive and fragile, while Hemingway is rebellious and tenacious. Later, in Paris, he tried to tell Miss Stein that when he was a child, he was mixed up with men and prepared to kill people. (4) However, it is very rash to judge the complete difference between Hemingway and Nick. Looking back on Hemingway's childhood, family and parents' marriage, we will be slightly surprised to find that his real self is indeed Nick: sensitive, fragile, insecure and eager to be proved. Hemingway's mother is an able piano teacher. Her income alone is enough to support the whole family. Maybe she is conceited and arbitrary. Out of some strange desire for control, she dressed Hemingway and his sister as twins, sometimes brothers and sometimes sisters. Two photos show that Hemingway, dressed in women's clothes and sitting in his mother's arms, is extremely embarrassed and frightened. 5] The strength of the mother made the father feel great pressure, and everyone was depressed. Hemingway had a bad relationship with his mother all his life. 1928 After his father committed suicide by swallowing a gun, Hemingway accused his mother of forcing his father to death. When Hemingway was a little older, he immediately devoted himself to getting rid of his mother's influence and proved one thing with his whole life: he was a real man. His preference for physical exercise and violence seems to revolve around this evidence. When someone suspected that his chest hair was glued on, Hemingway's response was to take a half-naked photo soaked in the bathtub and publish it in newspapers and magazines, showing that his chest hair was real. Many years ago, I saw an interview with a foreign writer about his mother. I was surprised to find that almost everyone has a distant or nervous relationship with his mother and can't feel that kind of abundant maternal love. An old writer is over seventy years old, but he still feels like an orphan. On the contrary, all the articles about mothers written by China writers I have read are full of affection and gratitude. I haven't figured it out yet. Is this opposition because of cultural differences or because foreign writers are more frank? However, there is no doubt that all artists have had the same cradle, and that is the loneliness of childhood.

In several biographies of Hemingway I have read, there is no evidence that his relationship with his father is close. But his father's influence was decisive: his father helped him close to death. Hemingway was able to observe death in his father's clinic and during his visit with his father. At the same time, with his sensitivity, he will find that his father's attitude towards death is completely different. My father is a doctor, and he feels numb and dull to the pain and destruction of his body, that is to say, the abnormal event of death is also daily and normal for him. However, Hemingway is still young, and life and death are thrilling events in the world. Just like the tender tongue touching Chili for the first time, the burning feeling will never be forgotten. He always writes about death with a mysterious and stern attitude. However, when he risked his life in war and hunting many times, his attitude towards death seemed to relax. Finally, like his father, he ended his life with a shotgun. Maybe at this time, extremes are normal. No writer has experienced so many deaths and written so many deaths like him. When death comes, it is just another repetition of touching death. He used to use a pen, but this time he used a gun. Mrs Hemingway recalled the two shots that shot off her husband's head, saying it was like two drawers were closed at the same time. Close the drawer every day.

Hemingway's short stories are concise and solid. "India Camp" only describes Nick's experience in one night, and the content is more tightly compressed, and it is more than 3,300 words translated into Chinese. In my personal experience, it is easy to do this, but it is difficult to write well. I have a short story "General Li", which is also about Li Guang's overnight experience. But overnight, Li Guang's personal memory expanded at the same time. As a result, his life was written, with more than 16 thousand words, almost a novella. It seems that Wang Anyi said the popular short stories in China. Short stories are all "jokes" deliberately managed, not real novels. I agree with this statement. I feel like Europe, too? Henry's short story with an amazing ending is too clever to stand repeated reading. And Hemingway's short stories, every subtle reading, there will be new discoveries.

This story about death begins in the dark night. The origin of the incident is that an Indian woman gave birth to a baby during childbirth, but she didn't give birth for two days. Nick followed his father to visit the Indian camp for this reason. They crossed the foggy lake by boat, stepped on the lawn soaked with dew and arrived at the village. Lying on the lower bunk bed, the mother was screaming. Hemingway did not directly describe her pain, only mentioned: "The elderly women in the camp came to help her and take care of her. The men ran into the street until they could no longer hear her cry, and then sat down to smoke in the dark. " This seems to be an understatement, but you can appreciate how pathetic this scream is! And her husband is lying on the upper bunk, so he can't run away, because he is a husband and because his axe cut his leg three days ago. Hemingway didn't explain why he cut it. He should be flustered. Nick's father made a judgment with the eyes of a professional doctor and decided to give her a caesarean section. Nick couldn't stand her screaming, so he asked his father to give her something to calm her down. But my father replied, "No, I don't have any anesthetic. But let her call. I can't hear you. It doesn't matter whether she calls or not. " At this time, the husband, who had been silent, turned around and leaned against the wall in the upper bunk. He must have heard what Nick's father said. Then Nick's father started the operation without anesthetic: he cut the pregnant woman's stomach with a big folding knife. The Swiss writer Duerrenmatt has a novel called Suspicion, which discloses that a Nazi military doctor performed abdominal surgery on a prisoner without injecting anesthetic, and the operation was performed by animals. The Japanese invaders also experimented with living China people and cut open their stomachs without anesthesia. These heinous acts, or out of hatred for mankind, or for despicable purposes. But in the Indian camp, Nick's father is doing his duty as a doctor according to what he thinks is normal logic. He doesn't need to torture his conscience because he can't hear the screams of the parturient. This is more absurd and cruel than the cruelty of fascism. Hemingway did not exaggerate the pain of the parturient. He was as calm as Nick's father, but he saw and said this through Nick's eyes: "Uncle George and three Indians held the mother down and wouldn't let her move. She bit Uncle George's arm ... The operation took a long time. " You can imagine how painful it is to force a pregnant woman to struggle desperately. Even four men held her down and bit one of them! The operation is finally over, Hemingway seems to casually add: The wound still needs to be stitched with a nine-foot gut. Nick's father was very proud when the baby was born, just like the players in the locker room after the football match. He patted the husband of the lying-in woman and uncovered the blanket over the Indian man's head: he had committed suicide. This is the climax of the whole novel. It can be said that the depressed night, the screaming of the parturient and the operation without anesthesia are all preparations for reaching this climax. When the climax came, Hemingway was not only as calm as ever, but also as accurate as a reporter. In fact, this is the strict restraint that all excellent writers have:

I saw the Indian lying facing the wall. He cut his throat, the blade stretched for a long time, and blood gushed out of a big beach. His body sank out of bed. His head rested on his left arm. A razor was on, face up, and fell on the blanket.

Because this novel adopts Nick's perspective, the motivation, process and thoughts of this man's suicide are omitted. Hemingway took this opportunity to give readers not only doubts, but also the bleeding corpse. Every careful reader can't help but be stimulated by both emotions and senses. His writing looks heartless, so it will hurt readers. His calmness borders on ruthlessness, so his knife seems to be cutting us.

In my opinion, a good novel should have wonderful stories, exquisite language and exquisite structure. There must also be a position, which is the concept of values and life and death. This is the starting point of the novel. To have a heart, the heart is sympathy and pity. Let the position disappear in the narrative and let the thoughts overflow between the lines. There must be senses, and this is the "body." Body makes the novel full and full. If structure is the backbone, language is the texture, and the body is flesh and blood. Only flesh and blood can make the story ambiguous and mysterious. Hemingway's successful short stories are inseparable from the theme of death, and death is never abstract. Is it the destruction of the body, the stimulation of the senses, a fatal knife, or a slow decay, just like the man who died of gangrene in Kilimanjaro's snow.

Hemingway's view of life and death has a rare lyric expression at the end of Indian Camp: On the way back, Nick asked his father, "Why did he commit suicide?" Father said, "I can't say. I guess he can't stand anything. " Nick asked again, "Is it hard to die?" Father said, "No, I think it's easy to die." Nick. It depends. "Finally, this bloody story ends in an idyllic scene:

They got on the boat and sat down. Nick was at the stern and his father was rowing. The sun is rising from the mountain. A bass jumped out of the water and drew a water circle on the river. Nick put his hand into the water and glided with the boat. It's really cold in the morning, but the water is warm.

Early in the morning, on the lake, Nick sat in the stern and his father was rowing. He was confident that he would never die.

Hemingway was about 25 years old when he published this novel, and he already had a mysterious and firm attitude towards death. He doesn't know how he will die yet, but he must be convinced that suicide is the solution to the problem. There is no doubt that Nick is the inner Hemingway, and his later ending is exactly the same as that of the silent Indian.

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