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Nick Adams
Nick’s father is a doctor who travels to an “Indian camp” to help deliver a baby. He brings his son Nick along on the trip, hoping to teach him lessons about life and work. He’s a decisively masculine figure, and reacts to his world with self-assurance, stoicism, and grit—and not a small amount of male chauvinism. Regarding the pained screams of the woman in childbirth, Nick’s father says that he doesn’t hear them “because they are not important.” Ultimately, Nick’s father’s emotionally distant behavior both supports and undermines his goals; it helps him successfully perform a complex operation in an intense situation, but prevents him from empathizing other people, leading him to treat the Indian woman and her husband without care and to put Nick through a traumatic situation, exposing him at a young age not only to the gruesome realities of a complicated birth, but to the even more gruesome realities of death and suicide.
Nick’s Father Quotes in Indian Camp
The Indian Camp quotes below are all either spoken by Nick’s Father or refer to Nick’s Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Indian Camp Quotes
Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty.
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Prior to this passage, Nick’s father only told Nick that they are going to the Indian camp to help a sick Indian woman. In this passage, however, it is clear that the woman is going through a difficult labor, and that Nick’s father is there to help deliver the baby. The fact that the men in the camp can’t bear the screams, but women have been helping the Indian woman for two days, undercuts the picture of masculinity as powerful and dominant that exists in the rest of the story. Here, it is the women who are strong enough to Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidun
“Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what happening when she screams.”
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When Nick tells his father that he believes he knows what’s going on—that the Indian woman is going to have a baby—his father corrects him with this clinical, unemotional description of birth. Nick’s father offers an interpretation of birth that makes it seem like a simple physical process, consequently removing the mother’s desires from the process, or any other emotional aspect of birth. According to Nick’s father, it’s the muscles that do the work, not the woman, which is an attitude that gestures to his misogyny. Here, Nick’s father demonstrates a stereotypical brand of masculinity by trying to teach his Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor
“Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” asked Nick.
“No. I haven’t any anesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.”
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This exchange exposes the negative outcomes of Nick’s father’s stoic, masculine posture. On one hand, Nick’s father can’t let the Indian woman’s screams bother him too much as a doctor. His goal is to deliver the baby and must remain calm and focused in order to achieve his task—a lesson he tries to teach Nick. However, this disposition mitigates his empathy for the mother’s clearly unbearable pain. This callousness, perhaps aimed at treating the mother more effectively, also demonstrates a deep disrespect for her wellbeing. It also provokes the reader to wonder if Nick’s father’s disregard for her pain is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Ape
“Those must boil,” he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father’s hand scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.
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This scene demonstrates one of the symbolic functions of water in the story. In several occasions, water acts to separate Nick Adams and his father from the native people in the shantytown. At first, it’s a lake that physically separates the Adamses from the camp. Here, boiled water separates Nick Father’s medicinal standards of cleanliness required in birthing from the native cultural standards underway before his intervention. In washing his hands and tools, Nick’s Father seeks to impose order on a situation on a chaotic situation that he inherited. Importantly, Nick observes that his father washes carefully and thoroughly, suggesting Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequun
“Now,” his father said, “there’s some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I’m going to sew the incision I made.”
Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.
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In this passage, Nick’s refusal to watch the operation any longer signals a turning point in his initiation journey. Nick’s father brings him on this medical trip ostensibly to expose him to a chaotic adult situation and demonstrate how one can overcome such a situation through hard work and focus. When Nick refuses to watch the end of the surgery, he is actively retreating from brutal realities. However, it’s not the brutality of the scene that causes Nick to look away, it’s that his curiosity is gone—a phenomenon associated with adulthood. In this sense, his father’s attempt to initiate him Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam co
He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.
“That’s one for the medical journal, George,” he said. “Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.”
Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.
“Oh, you’re a great man, all right,” he said.
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This exchange between Nick’s father and Uncle George illustrates their insensitive view of the operation. First, the passage reveals that the tools Nick’s father operated with weren’t standard medical equipment, making the procedure more gruesome in retrospect. Also, the observation that the two men banter like players after a football game exposes that they saw the operation as a sort of game where Nick’s Father could demonstrate his skills and his masculinity. Their sporty jocularity, combined with the revelation that the surgery was even more gruesome than the reader might have thought, further demonstrates that their masculine posture has made Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita del
“Ought to have a look at the proud father. They’re usually the worst suffers in these little affairs,” the doctor said. “I must say he took it all pretty quietly.”[…]
The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.
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Nick’s father’s statement takes on a tragically ironic twist in this passage when he finds that the father has killed himself. At first, it seems another example of his inability to empathize with female pain—suggesting that the father would suffer worse than someone who had just undergone a surgery without anesthetic. However, the father’s death confirms his seemingly ridiculous idea. Hemingway leaves the father’s motivation to kill himself up to speculation. Perhaps he was the only one who truly empathized with his wife’s pain, so much so that it led him to take his own life, or maybe it was Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore.
“Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”
[…]
“Is dying hard, Daddy?”
“No, I think it’s pretty easy Nick. It all depends.”
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After witnessing the gruesome events in the shanty, Nick asks his father a series of questions to try to understand what happened. Nick’s father’s curt, emotionally distant responses confirm the particular lesson he’s trying to teach Nick. Nick asks existentially hefty questions about life and death that would, for many people, require equally complicated responses. Instead, Nick’s father suggests that one shouldn’t bother to understand big questions, but rather should work to shield oneself from emotional vulnerability. For instance, he says that The Father killed himself because he couldn’t stand things. He brought his guard down. Nick’s Father shows him Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaec
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills […] In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
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This final passage makes it clear that Nick received messy, ineffective initiation into adulthood. Nick’s father had the opportunity to introduce Nick to this scene of gruesome birth and death and help Nick to build an empathetic understanding of the harsh realities of life, in turn building a healthy, adult perspective. Instead, the whole experience seems to have insulated Nick further from the adult world. Here, the tone of the story turns brighter as the narrator observes the natural beauty surrounding the characters. Nick sits back in the boat, in his father’s care, believing that he will never die. This Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam vol
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Nick’s Father Character Timeline in Indian Camp
The timeline below shows where the character Nick’s Father appears in Indian Camp. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Indian Camp
Nick Adams, Nick’s father , and Uncle George arrive at the shore of a lake where “two Indians” are...
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Nick’s father orders water to be boiled. He turns to Nick and explains that the Indian woman...
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The older women signal that the water has boiled. Nick’s father pours half of the water into a basin, using it to scrub his hands with...
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Later, Nick’s father begins a Caesarian section to deliver the baby. Uncle George and three Native American men...
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...the surgery, Nick holds the basin of water for his father. After a long procedure, Nick’s father successfully delivers a baby boy. However, Nick is unable to watch the surgery, despite the...
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...are closed, she’s pale, and doesn’t know if the baby is alive or not. Meanwhile, Nick’s father is triumphant after the successful delivery. He informs the mother that he will be back...
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Nick’s father remarks that they should check the father because “they’re usually the worst sufferers in these...
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Now outside the shanty, Nick’s father apologizes to his son for taking him on the trip. Nick, trying to reflect on...
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As Nick’s father rows his son back across the lake, away from the camp, the narrator notices beautiful...
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