Hemingway’s writing style is minimalist and direct. While the first draft of “Indian Camp” was 29 pages long, he intentionally edited it down to seven pages. The following passage—which covers the entirety of the Indian woman’s emergency surgery—demonstrates the simplicity of Hemingway’s writing style:
Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, “Damn squaw bitch!” and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time. His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.
Hemingway’s prose here is quite minimalist, meaning he describes what is happening in simple, unadorned language: “three Indian men held the woman still,” “she bit Uncle George on the arm,” “Nick held the basin for his father,” etc. All of these phrases are structured around a subject, verb, and object, almost the way a child would narrate a scene. In this way, Hemingway’s style reflects young Nick’s experience—he is a child, after all, witnessing something for which he doesn’t yet have language.
The odd pacing here is also an intentional stylistic choice. Nick’s father performs a complicated surgery, and yet the only sentence that captures the delivery process itself is, “It all took a long time.” Nick is holding the basin before the surgery begins and then—suddenly—the baby is there and Nick's father is slapping it to make it breathe. It’s likely that Hemingway paced the scene in this way because he felt that narrating the surgery would take away from the central themes and intentions of the story—he is not attempting to describe a challenging childbirth but to capture the effects of it on the various characters in the story.
