At the story’s opening, Nick, his father, and uncle meet up with two Indian men who row them across a lake to an Indian camp. Hemingway captures their experience moving across the water using imagery:
The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.
The imagery here engages several different senses at once. Readers can hear the oarlocks making their tell-tale squeaking, feel the effects of the “quick choppy strokes” as well as the cold, and see the mist surrounding them.
This imagery serves to bring readers more fully into the scene, helping them to understand that this is the start of an important (and somewhat unnerving) journey for young Nick. That the narrator notes the way the Indians rowed communicates that Nick is not used to their rowing style, implying that this is an unusual experience for him, likely the first time he has taken this trip to the nearby Indian camp. In this way, the imagery also helps to prepare readers for the cross-cultural experience to come. It is likely that Hemingway was also intentionally drawing a connection here between European colonizers coming to America and these three white men arriving in Native territory by boat.
When Nick, his father, and uncle all enter the shanty where the Indian woman is in labor, the narrator uses imagery to capture the scene, as seen in the following passage:
Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days […] She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.
Here Hemingway encourages readers to move more closely into the scene by including details that engage their different senses. Readers can hear the woman’s pained screams, smell the “very bad” aroma (likely due to the childbirth process, the father’s pipe, and the father's wound), and see the “very big” pregnant woman under a quilt with her head turned to the side (presumably in pain).
As a minimalist writer, Hemingway keeps his imagery simple. For example, he doesn’t specify what the “very bad” smell is like. That said, this is one of the few moments in the story when he offers sensory details and, as such, is worth exploring. It is likely that Hemingway includes more imagery in this scene to communicate the realities of a challenging childbirth. Nick is not learning about birth by going to a hospital and witnessing a routine delivery, but is entering a scene where a woman has already been laboring for two days straight in less-than-ideal conditions.
