Cvetkovi

Student: Stefan Cvetkovi

Proza Ernesta Hemingveja
Prof. dr Vladislava Gordi-Petkovi
Jun, 2015

LIFE CYCLES, BIRTH AND DEATH IN

AN ALPINE IDYLL AND INDIAN CAMP

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INTRODUCTION

Every mans life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he
died that distinguish one man from another.
(from A.E. Hotchners "Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir")

Writer John OHara, in his 1950 review of Across the River and Into the Trees (published
in New York Times), went so far to proclaim that Hemingway was the most important writer in
the English language since the death of Shakespeare, which evoked a burst of harsh criticism.
Conflicts in critical opinions are inevitable especially when dealing with Hemingways works as
it is known that the reader must dig deep, or rather submerge oneself deep under the surface of
his bare and seemingly simple writing style in order to grasp and understand it. As a man who
travelled extensively and participated in wars and violent conflicts, he witnessed a myriad of
events and wrote prolifically, trying to answer questions which have been tormenting mankind
for quite a long time - questions about life, existence and death because people have always
tried to discover themselves and the world around them. The focus will be put on two short
stories: Indian Camp, which records the beginning of a young boys symbolical journey through
existence after facing scenes of birth and death (Forrest 2), and An Alpine Idyll, which deals
with peoples inability to cope with death and accept it as being a natural and, without question,
an inevitable part of life. Both stories follow people who stepped out of modern civilization into
a secluded environment, gaining direct experiences and indirect ones through the narration of
other characters, concerning the cycle of life and their incapability of facing death as a
phenomenon inseparable from it.

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INDIAN CAMP

Indian Camp follows a young and inexperienced boy, Nick Adams, his father and uncle,
going to an Indian camp to help a young Indian woman who is in labor. Nicks father, the doctor,
is taking the boy with him so Nick would be richer for a beautiful experience of witnessing a
childbirth. They start off on boats, in the dark, leaving the civilization, which is their home, and
head to the camp, a more primitive place standing for a darker and irrational side of life unlike
the light and rationality they are leaving behind them (a conflict of, in Friedrich Nietzsches
terms, Apollonian and Dionysian nature; a dichotomous concept of human nature, where Apollo
stands for reason and logical thinking, while Dionysus represents emotions and instinct). On the
other hand, the camp is also a place more natural than the modern world, a world bereft of its
modern disguise, revealing hence the nakedness of human truth (Forrest 3). The boy doesnt
know where they are going and what he sees in front of them is just a misty river surface,
symbolizing his life inexperience.
They reach the camp and find the Indian woman in labor, screaming of pain. The entire
scene, depicting a young woman giving birth to her child, symbolizes life. It reminds one on the
world of human origins, the mysterious world of an individuals conception and the separation
from the comfort zone of a mothers womb. The surrounding is natural, primitive and
instinctive. The boys father is his teacher and he explains him that the screaming and pain are
necessary, and that it is not something that he should be afraid of, meaning that birth is, though
painful and in this case violent, something natural and beautiful,. The baby wants to be born and
she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening
when she screams (Fenton, 1995: 42). Nevertheless, Nick couldnt watch the labor and he
experienced shock and fear from witnessing such violent birth. Hemingway doesnt go into much
detail in describing the delivery of the baby, but rather has the reader feeling as he or she is
standing in the corner of the room, monitoring the whole situation. The birth process is not
naturally carried out, but performed by Caesarian cut without anesthetics and with a jackknife,
teaching Nick valuable lessons that pain in life is often unavoidable, but endurable. Nicks father,
being a doctor, puts himself in the control of the situation and feels proud of himself after sewing
the woman up. That's one for the medical journal, George. (Fenton, 1995: 43)

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During the childbirth, the father of the newborn baby was laying in the top bunk, above
the woman. He injured his leg with an axe, so he was laying and smoking a pipe, making the
room smell badly. When the delivery was finished, Nicks father pulled back the blanket from his
head and saw that the Indian father had slit his throat from ear to ear, exposing Nick to another
experience a violent death. The apparent return to a normal life after the sewing up of the
incision, which reassuringly erases the gaping wound, is brutally annihilated by a second
irreparable incision (Forrest 6). Burton R. Pollin, in his essay Poe and Hemingway on Violence
and Death, argues that violence and death had become the trademark of Hemingways work,
having him describing and watching such deaths with eyes wide open. Exactly that is how Nick
experienced it, feeling the numbing sensation of fear, for before his father realized that his son is
present in the room - Nick had a good look on the dead Indian and the pool of blood dripping
from the top bunk. Here Hemingway introduces the moment of dramatic irony and provides the
opposite of what is expected to the reader, because at the time the baby was born and, the babys
father committed suicide. The very description of the dead father is visual and in described short
sentences, without any sensationalistic descriptions. The Indians are depicted as primitive people
and the role of the doctor, a rational man of science, contrasts them. As a rational man, he
assumes that he has control over life and death, but the suicide of the Indian father proves and
illustrates the absurdity of man, in any guise, in his attempt to control those things which are not
in his power (DeFalco 34). Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, explains in his 1878
book Human, All Too Human that life, in its core, is instinctive and that instinctive drive lies at
the heart of existence, saying that the irrationality of a thing is no argument against its
existence, rather a condition of it. On the way back, Nicks father drops the guise of a doctor
(which he had during the delivery) and has been stripped of his own protective mask, the
doctor-scientist persona, and he is forced to deal with the situation as a man with an unmasked
ego (DeFalco 33). In children we find innocence, but when confronted with such harsh life
truth, such as realizing that death is inevitable, Nick left his world of innocence and could never
go back.
Hemingway builds the narrative of this story by using dualities, forming a contrastive
view of lifes course (the beginning and the end), making the reader grasp the notion of the cycle
of life. The story begins in the dark and ends with the dawn of a new day. They get into their
boats to cross from one river bank to the other, where the river stands for the flow of life (while
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the boats are paddled by primitive Indians, or so to say, the lives of the seemingly rational men
are actually governed by their instinctive drives and urges). They leave the rational world and go
to help an Indian woman with her childbirth, but story ends in witnessing an unexpected violent
death. The sun rises and a new day begins, a scene that infuses the reader with a sense of
optimism, but the dawn also foreshadows that that very day will end, and that night will be
falling over and over again, with people being unable to affect that natural course of things.
While heading back, the boy asks his father about death, women labor and suicide, and his father
answers him briefly, trying to avoid the truth and, thus, protect his son. In one moment, Nick sees
a bass jumping and making circles in the water, feeling sure that he will never die (Fenton
1995: 44). Hemingway here depicts Nicks nonacceptance of death and his fathers inability to
deal with it.
Nick will live on to learn to accept the fact that he, too, will suffer the common doom;
but at this moment it is his childs belief of personal immortality that quiets him before the act of
violence to which he has just been exposed (Monteiro 228).

AN ALPINE IDYLL

Hemingway included An Alpine Idyll in his 1927 collection of short stories, Men Without
Women. Before that, the story was rejected by the editors of Scribners Magazine and was widely
misunderstood by the literary audience, for in the eyes of a goodly number of readers, the story
seems too bizarre to make any significant comment on human nature (Putnam 27). The story is
about two men in the Alps, coming down from the mountain after a month of spring skiing. They
notice a burial in progress and later discover the gruesome and lurid details about the woman
being buried. She died in the winter and her husband couldnt reach the valley because of the
snow, thus was unable bring her body for a proper burial. He put her body in a shed and used her
mouth to hang his lantern while working there.
In this story, birth and death are depicted on many levels, both metaphorically and
literally. An Alpine Idyll is, actually, a story of a story, which can be divided in two parts.

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At the very beginning we see two skiers coming down from the mountains into the valley
and immediately we are overwhelmed with an image of life awakening. It is a spring morning,
spring being the season of the year when nature starts blossoming, but the scenery that
Hemingway presents here is specific, because he doesnt actually describe any kind of
blossoming. We were both tired of the sun. You could not get away from the sun (Fenton 1995:
257). This sounds peculiar because it is not something the reader expects on a day like that. We
find out that theyve spent a long time in the mountains and couldnt ski because of the sun
which melted the snow. The sun is the dominant image in the story. Even though skiing provided
them satisfaction and made them feel the adrenaline rush and alive, they come started their
journey back to the valley feeling weary, stating that its no good doing a thing too long
(Fenton 1995: 258). On the way to the valley we see how the afresh birth of nature smashes the
ennui in the narrator, the contrast provided by his somnolent friend. The one and only idyllic
scene in the story is the narrators view through the window, when he see how green fields, the
trees and the stream and the birds in the grass are all bathed in sunshine, as well as the glasses on
their table in the inn. What gives a glimpse of contrast to this image of light and life is the burial
they see on their way to the inn. Imagine being buried on a day like this (Fenton 1995: 258). If
compared to the story Indian Camp, where we have birth in the night and death in the dawn,
Hemingway here shows, through the characters and dialogues, the numbness of spirit and a
grotesque and gruesome depiction of death on a beautiful spring day. At this point it is clear to
most readers that Hemingway is in some manner connecting the unreal burial in the May
sunshine with the unnatural spring skiing. It seems that both actions are out of seasons. The
season of death and burial is winter, not spring, and to the narrator it takes on a surreal quality as,
finally, the spring skiing had done (Putnam 30).
While in the inn, the narrator is intrigued by a peculiar situation between the innkeeper,
the sexton and the peasant (the husband of a woman that was buried). After the peasant left the
inn, the narrator hears a story about his wife, told by the sexton on the innkeepers insistence, not
knowing whether it is true or is just a tall tale. The woman died in December due heart trouble,
but the peasant couldnt bring her to the valley due to large amounts of snow. So, he put her
lifeless body in the shed, where it got frozen, and used her mouth to hang his lantern. This
deprecated the people in the valley the priest didnt want to bury her at first, and the innkeeper
is apparently disgusted, saying These peasants are beasts (Fenton 1995: 261). The innkeeper
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disapproves and criticizes the peasants act, not putting himself into his shoes and not trying to
understand the peasants situation, equating the atrocity of the situation to the peasants social
stratum, which shows that he is a man of prejudice. To them, the peasant doesnt seem to
understand the weight and gruesomeness of the situation. But the peasant, when asked whether
he loved his wife, said that he loved her fine. For both peasant ant narrator, the winter has
gone on too long. Too long alone in the cold, the peasant has made his wife into a grotesque
statue to hold his light. But coming down into the warm valley his sense of things returns to
normal, and so perhaps now for the first time she is really dead, and with her burial comes the
release of his sorrow (Putnam 31). Hemingway tries to show us that the peasant has made his
peace with death through his unawareness of having done anything unnatural. The innkeeper
tells that everybody knew she had heart problems and couldnt come to the valley for a long
time. She was his wife, he took care of her and prepared himself to her passing away at any
moment. It is Hemingways heavy use of irony (that was for many readers taken over the limits)
what made the story misunderstood. We can also see that there are certain social expectations
that the peasant didnt meet, like the innkeepers and the priests criticism, and they are equated
with prejudice and the following of harsh religious traditional rituals (which in this case showed
to be inhuman). Those who criticize him cannot accept naturally the knowledge of death, and
for them outward form has all the importance in any situation (DeFalco 216). The peasant left
the inn and went to another in called Lwen, which is a German word for lion, known as the
beast of all beasts. As the innkeeper called the peasant a beast, perhaps the peasant went to
place where he wouldnt be looked at with disgust. Lion symbolizes control and strength and
maybe the ones around him are the ones that need to grow, mature and understand that they dont
have control over life and death.
The stories seemingly do not relate to each other. But we can see a parallel between the
narrators and the peasants situation, for being in an unnatural situation for too long, for
although the month of spring skiing is certainly not aberrant, it too had become something
unnatural, see as it is refracted through the leas of the peasants story (Putnam 31). In order to
fully enjoy life, the thrills should not be prolonged or rushed.

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CONCLUSION
What we can conclude, for both Indian Camp and An Alpine Idyll, is brought down to
coming to terms with nature, being same as making peace with oneself, as humans are a part of it
and not in any way above nature. Life is celebrated and the symbols of life, birth and spiritual
awakening are present in both stories. But what can prevent people from living their lives truly
and without inhibitions (internally and externally imposed) is not grasping the rules of the
circling of life, because death, just as life is omnipresent. The stories death circumstances, a
violent suicide and a grotesque desecration of a lifeless body, are certainly peculiar and abnormal
and Hemingway thus shows us that there is no perfect time and place for death (as well as birth)
and that the circle of life spins around functioning randomly. Each living being on this planet has
its own story, while the difference between the normal and the abnormal is often but a single,
momentary step aside. (Putnam 32). Hemingway deals with these questions in many of his
stories as being influenced by existentialist philosophers, as well as many of Hemingways
expatriate colleagues. Eventually, each of us is in search for a meaning and purpose in life. But,
can we accept the inevitable death at an early age and slip into nihilistic way of thinking that we
must exist in a meaningless world until death gets us? The conflicting human nature, with
instincts and desire for life deeply embedded in our subconscious, possibly prevents us from
slipping into such mind state. Perhaps that is why Nick, unconsciously, decides to put the thought
about death aside and continue believing that he will never die; or the peasant, nevertheless
aware of the ways of nature, finds a way to stay at peace with himself, not letting his
environment to put pressure on him because of something he has no control over.
Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly
indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren
and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power - how could you live in accordance
with such indifference?
Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Chapter 1, The Prejudices of Philosophers.

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References:
1. Fenton, James. Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories. London: David Campbell
Publishers Ltd., 1995.
2. Forrest, Elonore Lain. Indian Camp A Story in Disguise. Journal of the Short Story in
English, Autumn 2007. Web. 5 June 2015. < http://jsse.revues.org/769 >.
3. Monteiro, George. The Hemingway Story. A Companion to the American Short Story. Ed.
Alfred Bendixen. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 2010. 224-241. Print.
4. Pollin, Burton R. "Poe And Hemingway On Violence And Death." English Studies 57.2
(1976): 139. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 June 2015.
5. Putnam, Ann. Dissemblings and Disclosure in Hemingways An Alpine Idyll. Hemingway
Review. Spring 1987, Vol. 6, Issue 2, p27.