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Ernest Hemingway pulled from his past present experiences to develop his own
thoughts concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas,
along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. One such masterpiece
written early in Hemingway's career is the short story, Indian Camp. Indian Camp
was originally published in the collection of in Our Time in 1925. A brief
summary reveals that the main character, a teenager by the name of Nick, travels
across a lake to an Indian village. While at the village Nick observes his
father, who is a doctor, deliver a baby to an Indian by caesarian section. As
the story continues, Nick's father discovers that the newborn's father has
committed suicide. Soon afterward Nick and his father engage in a discussion
about death, which brings the story to an end. With thought and perception a
reader can tell the meaning of the story. The charters of Nick and his father
resemble the relationship of Hemingway and his father. Hemingway grew up in Oak
Park, a middle class suburb, under the watchful eye of his parents, Ed and Grace
Hemingway. Ed Hemingway was a doctor who occasionally took his son along on
professional visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians during summer
vacations (Waldhorn 7). These medical trips taken by Ernest and Ed would provide
the background information needed to introduce nick and his father while on
their medical trip in Indian Camp. These trips were not the center point of
affection between Ed and Ernest, but they were part of the whole.
The two always
shared a close father-son bond that Hemingway often portrayed in his works:
Nick's close attachment to his father parallels Hemingway's relationship with
Ed. The growing boy finds in the father, in both fiction and life, not only a
teacher-guide but also a fixed refuge against the terrors of the emotional and
spiritual unknown as they are encountered. In his father Ernest had someone to
lean on (Shaw 14). In Indian Camp, nick stays in his father's arms for a sense
of security and this reinforces their close father-son relationship. When Nick
sees the terror of death, in the form of suicide, his father is right there to
comfort him. From this we are able to see how Nick has his father to, physically
and mentally, lean on, much like Hemingway did (Shaw 11). Hemingway's love for
his father was not always so positive though, and he often expressed his
feelings about his situation though his literature. When Hemmingway was young,
his father persuaded him to have his tonsils removed by a friend, Dr. Wesley
Peck. Even though it was Dr. Peck who performed the painful operation, Hemingway
always held it against his father for taking out his tonsils without an anaesthetic (Meyers 48). Hemingway saw the opportunity to portray his father in
Indian Camp as the cold-hearted man who had his tonsils yanked out without
anaesthetic. In a reply to Nick's question about giving the Indian woman
something to stop screaming, his father states, No. I haven't any anaesthetic…But
her screams are not important.
I don't hear them because they are not important.
(Tessitore 18) Hemingway lashed out at his father one more time before the story
ends. In Indian Camp, Hemingway uses the conversation between Nick and his
father, concerning the suicide of the Indian, to show his distaste for his own
father's suicide: 'Why did he kill himself, Daddy?' 'I don't know Nick.' 'He
couldn't stand things, I guess.' 'Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?' 'Not very
many, Nick…' 'Is dying hard, Daddy?' 'No, I think its pretty easy, Nick. It all
depends.' (Hemingway 19) Hemingway saw his father as a weak working man who
served his wife, Grace, unconditionally. Ed worked a full day to come home to
clean house, prepare food, and tend to the children. He had promised Grace that
if she would marry him, she would not have to do housework for as long as he
lived. Ill and depressed, Ed committed suicide in 1928. Hemingway later referred
to the situation by stating: I hated my mother as soon as I knew the score and
loved my father until he embarrassed me with his cowardice…My mother is an all
time all American bitch and she would make a pack mule shoot himself, let alone
poor bloody father. (Meyers 212) Hemingway uses Indian Camp to express his
feelings that his father was a coward. He did this by having Nick's father refer
to suicide as being pretty easy, which is comparable to a coward's way out of
life. Therefore, Hemingway uses the story to portray his father's death as
cowardly. The characters and setting of Indian Camp are undoubtedly influenced
by Hemingway's Childhood. In much of the same respect, Hemingway's second novel,
A Farewell to Arms, has influences from his adult years spent in the war. A
Farewell to Arms is a tragic love story in the midst of war. The main character,
Fredrick Henry, is an ambulance driver in World War I who is wounded in the
trenches. Henry, now a casualty, is sent to recover at an American hospital in
Milan. During his stay, henry falls in love with a nurse by the name of
Catherine Barkley. The couple then heads for Switzerland to escape the war and
have a child. The novel takes an evil twist at the end though.
Catherine dies
while she is in labor, leaving Henry alone in the world. When comparing Ernest
Hemingway and the character Frederick Henry, there are some very obvious
resemblances. After not being allowed to join the army due to bad vision in his
left eye, Hemingway joined the war effort during 1918 in Italy as an ambulance
driver. Likewise, Hemingway made sure that Henry was also an ambulance driver in
A Farewell to Arms. The most noticeable similarity is Hemingway's war wound.
While passing out chocolate and cigarettes to soldiers at night, Hemingway was
hit by a mortar shell. Wounded, but not dead, Hemingway picked up an nearby
casualty and began carrying him off the battlefield. He succeeded in making it
to the first aid center but was hit in the knees by machine-gun fire while on
his journey. During his recover in Milan, Hemingway recorded his firsthand
account of the action in a letter written to his parents. In it he stated: The
227 wounds I got from the trench mortar didn't hurt a bit at the time, only my
feet felt like I had rubber boots full of water on. Hot water. And my kneecap
was acting queer. (Meyers 32) Hemingway survived a terrifying attack, which
would serve as great material for A Farewell to Arms. In the novel, Henry
suffers from an identical wound by a trench mortar. Henry states that: My legs
felt warm and wet and my shoes were wet and warm inside. I knew that I was hit
and leaned over and put my hand on my knee. My knee wasn't there. My hand went
in and my kneed was down on my shin. (Hemingway 55) Hemingway recalled his war
wound and wrote of the same experience in the novel. In both the novel and real
life, it is easy to visualize the same picture of the wound, so bloody that
Hemingway's own shoes filled up with warm blood. Hemingway does not stop there
with his similarities though. He digs further into the past to create the love
that exists between characters Frederick henry and Catherine Barkley. In the
war, Hemingway was sent to Milan to recover from his injuries. During his stay
at the hospital, he fell in love with an American nurse by the name of Agnes von
Kurowsky. The two were very affectionate in their love and wrote letters to each
other when separated. Kurowsky even signed up to work nights so that she could
spend more time with Hemingway
. There was even a possibility of marriage, which
later fizzled out. When Hemingway healed, he was sent home and Kurowsky fell in
love with another, a devastating event that haunted Hemingway long after.
(McDowell 20) Kurowsky did not come out ahead though; her newfound love
dissolved only after a short while. In much the same way as Hemingway's life,
the character Henry falls in love with Catherine. After being wounded by a
trench mortar, Henry is also sent to Milan to recover from his injuries. While
at Milan, he becomes romantically involved with Catherine and the two marry.
Even though Hemingway and Kurowsky did not marry, the marriage of Henry and
Catherine is a prelude to a more devastating event. The sexual activity of the
couple leads to the pregnancy of Catherine, which convinces them to leave the
war. During childbirth, Catherine dies, thus leaving Henry all alone in the
world: In the novel, though not in actual life, the submissive Catherine . . .
is 'punished' by death in childbirth (Meyers 41). The reason for this variation
between real life and the novel is based on how Hemingway felt at the time.
Apparently to Hemingway, Kurowsky was not punished enough for her deceit toward
him. With his feelings full-blown, Hemingway produced a character that suffered
the way he felt she should suffer. From the wounds to the love affair, it is
fair to say that the book is the crystallization of the war experiences (Shaw
54). After the war, Hemingway returned to Oak Park for a brief stay at home.
Mentally and physically hurt from his war wounds and failing romance with
Kurowsky, Hemingway entered into an idle part of his life. All the returning
soldiers had great war stories; most of them embellished beyond truth. Hemingway
fell into this norm of lying about war experiences, which eventually made him
sick of disgust:
The deceptions he practices at home . . . uncomfortably remind
him of the lies he and others have been forced to tell in order to
sensationalize for home consumption the dull reality of war. (Meyers 55)
Hemingway was later able to reflect his disgust of home life when he purposely
portrayed himself as the character Krebs in Soldier's Home. Krebs, a World War I
veteran, is forced to lie about his involvement in the war just to be heard:
Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done
this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it.
A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of
the lies he had told. (Hemingway 69) Krebs, along with Hemingway, fell into a
slump after the war. While recalling his lost love of Agnes von Kurowsky,
Hemingway produced a character troubled by female companionship. Krebs wants a
woman, no doubt, but he was not about to work for it. Krebs considers
relationships too complicated and painful, something he has learned from a
previous engagement. This previous engagement was the relationship of Hemingway
and Kurowsky, a relationship that had badly hurt Hemingway. There is no way that
Krebs, nor Hemingway, is about to go through that again. Krebs continues,
without a woman, lying around at home doing little or nothing. Tensions deepen
between him and his parents and he is eventually driven out. This is
approximately the same thing that happened to Hemingway. Hemingway's sister,
Marcelline, wrote, shortly after his twenty-first birthday . . . his mother
issued an ultimatum that he find a regular job or move out (Waldhorn 9). Both
Hemingway and Krebs moved out and got jobs. Beyond a doubt, Hemingway wrote from
his past experiences. In Indian Camp, Hemingway used his own relationship with
his father to breathe life into the fictional characters of Nick and his father.
By leaving his childhood and entering the war, Hemingway recalled his own
accounts of injuries and love that made up the character Henry and Barkley in A
Farewell to Arms. And finally, with his return home after the war, Hemingway
uses Krebs in Soldier's Home to express his distaste for the home life.
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