The mood of “Indian Camp” is simultaneously tense and relaxed. This contradictory mood results from the fact that the story centers on an Indian woman experiencing immense pain and trauma, while the white doctor who comes to help her (Nick’s father) dispassionately views it as a learning opportunity for his son.
These two moods come across in moments like the following, when Nick’s father has arrived at the woman’s shanty and pauses to explain to Nick what is happening:
“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 is happening when she screams.”
“I see,” Nick said.
Just then the woman cried out.
“Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” asked Nick.
“No. I haven’t any anæsthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.”
This passage captures how the two moods exist simultaneously—the Indian woman is screaming so loudly that Nick desperately asks, “Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” while, in the same moment, Nick’s father is calmly explaining how childbirth works and telling Nick that the screams “are not important.”
It is likely that, in layering moods like this, Hemingway is critiquing Nick’s father’s response. As a more open-hearted child, Nick knows that something is not right here and risks upsetting his father by asking him to help the suffering woman. That his father continues to act as if nothing is wrong demonstrates how his performance of assured masculinity can lead to harm.
