After Nick’s father successfully delivers the Indian woman’s baby via an impromptu surgery, he feels excited and accomplished. The narrator captures the father’s animated energy using a simile, as seen in the following passage:
“I’ll be back in the morning,” the doctor said, standing up. “The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she’ll bring everything we need.”
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.
Just like “football players […] in the dressing room after a game” that they have presumably won, Nick’s father is feeling “exalted and talkative.” This simile is notable in that it centers the camaraderie between the men in the room while ignoring the woman who has just birthed the baby and experienced immense trauma. Nick’s father directs his first comments (about the nurse) to the Indian men in the room and then turns and addresses Uncle George.
Like a football player, Nick’s father sees himself as a masculine aggressor who has tackled an enormous challenge, centering himself in his imagination, feeling “exalted” rather than concerned for the new mother who the narrator has just noted was both “quiet” and “very pale.” Here, Hemingway subtly critiques Nick’s father’s accomplishment-oriented masculinity as potentially cruel to others.
