THE AMBASSADORS - SELECTED STUDIES - Vol. 4, Issue 1 (Jan 2001)

Hemingway during W W II

The Narrative Technique: Ernest Hemingway's Indian Camp

By Hala El-Banna

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961), a magnificent American writer of his era, a reporter, a war correspondent, and a poet as well! He was awarded a Bronze Star, a Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his famous The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Hemingway was a lover of danger. He was a man of adventure, violence and interaction, great enthusiasm, compassion and love. A mixture which added a lot to the dimensions of his character and reflected on his works. Hemingway's life experience moulded the man that he had become.

INDIAN CAMP (1924) is considered Hemingway's one very short story amongst a number of his earlier short ones. It is a reflection of reality. It absorbs the reader as he/she associates with realities of life, birth and death. The narrator participates in the story partially, he is covert, as the reader is unaware of the narrating subject as he/she is consumed in character and action. The reader is drawn to believe almost everything the narrator tells the result of which is a reliable narrator.

The main objective of this paper will focus on the various aspects of narration: point of view, style, voice, mode, narratee and variations of distance in an attempt to shed light on the master, Hemingway. The means whereby he tailors his story with a highlight on dialogic language, polyphony (one of Mikhail Bakhtin's adopted techniques, introduced first by Otto Ludwig) which is made vivid as he introduces a plurality of discourses in society. He brings together the Americans, the Indians, the young and the old, the educated and the uneducated, the doctor, the son, the uncle, the housewife and the husband.

The narrator's relationship to the narrative and the story, the narrator's existence in the story, together with the focalization of the narrative through the narrator are points of major importance to where narrative situation is involved.

The narrator is distinguished from the implied author and from the real author, by being personified. Among the important elements that distinguish between narrators: level of personification and narrative level, where the narrator belongs to the same reality as the characters.

Both the extradiegetic narrator and narratee are a reflection of both narrator and receiver, or voice and ear. Just as the extradiegetic narrator merges totally with the "implied author," "implied narrator," or as Genette would rather call "rarely real author," the extradiegetic narratee merges totally with the "implied reader" who may or may not identify with him. Contrary to the intradiegetic narratee where the real reader can in no case identify with him.

"Narrative discourse," as Gerard Genette states in Narrative Discourse (1993), bears on the narrative and the narrating, not on the story, the diegesis (154). Therefore, the emphasis is on the form, not the content.

In his manner of narration, Hemingway was spontaneous in producing his art due to his spontaneity, an element that makes his rhetoric so pleasurable to read. He succeeds in making his reader "join in the dance" as Wayne Booth states in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). The reader identifies himself/herself with not only the writer but also with other characters at times. The narrator uses commentarial discourse, he speaks through his creations with complete privilege, "Omniscience" knowing almost everything that needs to be known, shifting from one character to another with an access to their thoughts and feelings. This is made clear in the use of dialogue between the son and the father and that of the father and the uncle. Hemingway's tact in handling this device with complete care makes him a skillful author. He narrates his dialogue accompanied by the description of setting. He provides the sense and setting regarding the showing and the telling of the story. In Hemingway's INDIAN CAMP (1924), the narrative is focused on a character not through him (external focalization).

Being in labour and the steps involved in such a procedure is the event around which Hemingway chooses to bring his characters together. The doctor who happens to be Nick's father and Uncle George are the Americans who are called for succour at an Indian Camp.

The reader is introduced from the very beginning to a magnificent setting; the background of the lake, the rowboats, and the Indians who came to row for them set a beautiful sense for events later to unfold.

It is through the son Nick, that the narrator chooses to reveal some important information to the reader:

The reader could build up some expectations about the reasons why the Indians came to row the boats and Nick's father is understood to help in that matter. The reader can figure out that Nick's father might be a doctor. Hemingway is leaving ample space for his readers to make use of their imagination. It is for the reader to put one plus one and reach two. The kind of information Hemingway offers is far from that offered on a silver spoon.

Uncle George offers the Indians who rowed the boat a treat that is much appreciated by Indians. "Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars." (147) This is a well-known token of appreciation. The reader again is exposed to a typical atmosphere of an Indian camp.

The narrative mode of INDIAN CAMP (1924) is objective on the perceptual level, for the doctor tells what he does and describes what he perceives. The narrative stance is a homodiegetic narrating in external focalization with intradiegetic perspective, yet outside that of the characters.

Hemingway in his characterization of the son, Nick, succeeds in revealing the spirit of youth by his use of "I know." At once the father, the voice of experience, denies the son's statement and tries to gain the reader's attention and complete concentration on a matter of major importance by his use of the imperative "listen."

On hearing the woman scream, Nick could not help but ask his father to give her something to terminate such pain and suffering, but the father's response came as follows:

Here the repetition is of immense value for the father is trying to emphasize that other things are of prior importance such as, to help the woman give birth and save her. This is much more important than to concentrate on a trivial issue like her screaming.

The narrator's shift to the husband is a zoom to a natural reflex of a helpless husband who is unable to bear his wife's screams. Hemingway uses a mirror-view device to tell the reader uneasily learnt information, a commentary integral to the dramatic structure.

The narrator succeeds in gaining the reader's sympathy at a moment like this. The reader sympathizes with the husband who can do nothing regarding this wife's pain and suffering. The reader's imagination could jump to further hypotheses whereas as the husband might be blaming himself for his wife's pregnancy in the first place and consequently, the critical situation of her suffering that culminated in his failure in reacting under stress.

The father alongside in his attempt to save the young woman, is trying to explain more and more about the procedure applied in such cases, the special hygiene required, and so on, a device of moulding beliefs through the reinforcing rhetoric.

Notice how important it was for the father at such a critical stage to tutor his son on the basics of a fundamental issue in life. The subject was no more a taboo. It was not shameful, but rather an important piece of knowledge. The father knew that panic usually occurs as a result of total ignorance of the matter. Whereas information on the subject could help aid his son. He emphasized the matter of cleanliness and how the tools he was about to work with, to operate on the woman, were supposed to be boiled. He also knew that had he touched "the quilt" his hands could have been contaminated and infection could have been transmitted to the woman. He had to be extremely cautious and that's why he asked Uncle George to "Pull back that quilt, will you?" "I'd rather not touch it." (149)

After the operation, the doctor picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman (149). An abc procedure performed just immediately after birth, another tip of information in attempt to clarify each and every step his was taking towards accomplishing his great task the best possible way in the presence of so little to aid him. The final step in such an operation was to stitch the incision and he made it clear to his son what he was doing so as to view things rationally.

Hemingway does not mention the name of the father who happens to be the doctor, as he did with the son and uncle. A deliberate note due to its unimportance. He needed to prioritize the deed and not the name. The effort exerted by the father was what mattered. His name was not important, just as the woman's screams were not important. To save her was the issue that counted.

Hemingway succeeds on making his summary of great value and interest to his readers by conveying facts difficult to be stated through dialogue. A commentator usually tells the reader about necessary aspects of the story and provides facts in different manners; stage setting, picture, elaboration of certain action, summary of thought, description of physical events, and details difficult to reflect through a character. The narrator reveals important information through the use of direct telling commentary which is an elaboration integral to the dramatic structure, a vital device related to the authors voice.

Hemingway succeeds in creating a moment of catastrophic reality. A moment of horror of death, an unpleasant sight not only for the reader, but for the son as well. Hemingway realizes that fact and as a direct reflex used the present tense to convey a more subtle effect and states through the doctor: "Take Nick out of that shanty, George" (150). Later, a note of apology by the father was made "I'm terrible sorry I brought you along, Nickie, it was an awful mess to put you through" (150). The term of endearment 'Nickie' used by the father, acts as a softener whereby the father gets closer to the son as that moment, a technique of positive politeness that helps boost the morale of the son who has witnessed a lot for his age. The son needed to know that the father shared some of his feelings. External focalization is apparent. The narrative is focused on a character (the doctor's) not through him, and the characters of the son, the uncle, the Indians appear only to the extent that they enter into the field of perception.

The son's inquiry on such an act of suicide is one of Hemingway's own, a device used to generalize the significance of the whole work and serves to heighten the reader's experience at certain moments.

The style is typical of Hemingway, the use of very simple words, direct and to the point. The simplicity strikes the reader as it is so profound. The father-son dialogue is with all the curiosity of youth together with the father's reasoning is a means whereby he tries to find logical and acceptable answers to be digested by the young mind who "felt quite sure that he would never die" (151). This final statement helps mould the reader's judgment on a particular scale of values. It is a message for life, no matter how hard and tough things might turn out, the idea of survival shall remain worthwhile to the reader.

INDIAN CAMP (1924) is presented chronologically, one notices no flashbacks nor flash forwards. Hemingway uses everyday language, simple and to the point. He lacks the element of redundancy that according to Genette "is not present in a good writer" (27). The discourse used is vividly expressed to reveal true inner selves, human beings in flesh and blood. The senses, feelings and thoughts are amazingly revealed. His portrayal of the primitive life those Indians were living, the lack of any adequate means of hygiene, their isolation in such a remote area across the lake, all contribute to Hemingway's setting.

Among the devices used by Hemingway in INDIAN CAMP (1924): Commenting by intrusion. "Inside on a wooden bunk..." (146). Direct telling (a tiny summary between scenes). Mirror Views (includes descriptive details). "They walked up from the beach..." (146). Opening Description. "At the lake shore" (146). The reader feels so strongly towards each and every character with the use of the present tense in the dialogue by the characters as an effect to make the reader share the action in the story as if it is happening in the present time. A vivid presentation is what Hemingway offers his readers. He was aesthetically, morally, intellectually, physically and emotionally near to the characters in the story together with the reader's own norms.

Ms. Hala El-Banna is a PhD candidate in psycholinguistics at Cairo University, Egypt.

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