As a minimalist short story, the tone of “Indian Camp” is primarily emotionless and detached. Take the following passage, for example, which comes after the Indian woman has experienced an excruciating emergency cesarean (after two full days in labor):
[Nick’s father] bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.
This is the one moment in which the narrator notes the effects of the birth on the new mother and all they say about it is that she is “quiet,” “very pale,” and “did not know what had become of the baby or anything.” This last sentence is the most intriguing because the narrator seems to move—for the briefest of moments—into the Indian woman’s interiority, but fails to translate the immensity of her experience. The “or anything” adds a disinterested tone to the moment, as if to imply that the narrator is not going to put energy into expanding on all that this woman is struggling to make sense of in this moment.
Because the narrator is consistent throughout the story—they do not put energy into capturing anyone’s internal experience—readers know that this is not personal to the new mother. In having the narrator refuse to show any emotion in this scene (and throughout the story), readers are forced to draw their own conclusions about how they should feel.
In another example, many readers assume that Hemingway is intentionally highlighting the ways that masculinity can cause harm in this story (via Nick’s father’s sexist remarks and disrespectful treatment of the Indian woman), but others think Hemingway himself may have just been sexist and willfully reproduced it in the story. While the consistently neutral tone does leave these questions technically unanswered, the degree to which Nick’s father is sexist (and the fact that masculinity is a theme that runs through many of Hemingway’s stories) does suggest some awareness on Hemingway’s part.
