Strengths:
- I looked up and made more eye contact instead of using my paper as a crutch.
- I relaxed and consciously spoke more slowly
- I smiled
Aspects to Work on:
- Dr. Trouard often reminds us to cover the best possible reading/interpretation during our lead; while the class enjoyed it, could there have been a reading of the story that could have tied the story into the rest of Hemingway's works better?
- I believe I said "um" a few times. This should be avoided next time.
If I teach this in the future, I think that I will pair "Indian Camp" with Interchapter I, since they seem to complement each other in terms of childbirth and downplayed violence. Furthermore, I have come to realize that planning and executing lessons takes more work than it looks from the student perspective. I am sure I will get the "hang of it" when I actually teach on a regular basis, just as I developed the necessary skills to teach a ninth grade classroom in the past. I look forward to the experience of teaching college students (and I very much hope to receive a GTA position next year teaching either literature or composition to undergraduate students).
On a different note, I have begun to include some background information about the author that relates to the story. I think that this is very effective, because the information about Fitzgerald--his home life growing up in addition to his careful word choices--made me love The Great Gatsby even more. Little facts, like the fact that Hemingway witnessed a birth under primitive conditions before, really captivate me, and I hope they captivate other students as well.
Below are the notes from my lead on "Indian Camp":
Hemingway’s “Indian Camp”: Othering Native Americans and Women
Objective of Discussion:
Students will explore the short story and—through the analysis of symbolism, character’s actions, and scrutiny of word choice—they will be able to build a clearer picture of Hemingway’s characterization and which character(s) hold power. [feminist and cultural approaches]
Background
· While Hemingway has witnessed a birth (not a cesarean section) under “primitive conditions” before, he did not try to help the woman. Adair suggests that the story was actually loosely based on Hemingway’s post-injury experience in WWI in which he heard many wounded people screaming and saw so much suffering that it “caused him to think of suicide” (94).
· Hemingway deleted the beginning of his original story, decreasing its length by a third. It was later published under the title “Three Shots” (Johnson 101).
· Common approaches to “Indian Camp” include feminist readings, cultural readings (focused on the inequality between the white men and the Native Americans), Freudian analyses (in which the leg injury and throat cutting are related to castration), and numerous analyses of the Native American father’s suicide.
In-Class Assignment about “Othering”
Free-write for 5 minutes. Choose one of the quotes on the board and explain how it applies to “Indian Camp.” Support your response with at least 2 quotes from the story supplemented by page numbers.
The board will display the following two quotes from Simone de Beauvior:
· “ . . . through her passivity [a woman] bestows peace and harmony—but if she declines this role, she is seen forthwith as a praying mantis, an ogress. In any case she appears as the privileged Other, through whom the subject fulfills himself: one of the measures of man, his counterbalance, his salvation, his adventure, his happiness” (de Beauvior 676).
· “The Other is particularly defined according to the particular manner in which the One chooses to set himself up” (676).
POSSIBLE RESPONSES MAY CONSIDER GENDER OR RACE:
I may let a few students share, but the point of the exercise was mainly to get the students thinking about the idea of “Othering” and power relations, so we will not spend more than a few minutes reporting ideas from this exercise.
· Gender: such as the woman being held down during childbirth by men (her comfort is not of their concern), the men laughing at her pain when she bites Uncle George, Nick’s father claiming that women’s screams do not matter, Nick’s father treating it like a football game (seeing her painful childbirth as a benefit to him), most men tried to get away from her screams (as if she were an ogress for reacting to pain), husband’s literal position above his wife, perhaps the husband’s suicide indicates that his wife is unable to fulfill him, etc.
· Race: such as the act of crossing the misty river indicates an entrance into a whole new world (comparable to the underworld), the Native American territory is depicted as dark, but when Nick and his father leave, they walk towards the light.
Discussion: Woman as Other
Linda Helstern asserts, “The bite may be interpreted as the agonized, hysterical response of a wounded animal, totally instinctive, but it can also be viewed as active self-defense, showing the Indian woman to be of the braver, rather than the weaker, sex” (66).
1. If the bite represents an act of rebellion or an exercise of female agency, then what do Uncle George’s and the young Indian’s reaction indicate about how men view women in the story?
(Possible Answers: The laughter indicates that the young Indian does not take her seriously; Uncle George calls her a “Damn squaw bitch,” demeaning both her race and her gender.)
2. The female process of childbirth is sometimes described by society as natural, painful, or even beautiful. How does the father view childbirth? (Consider the following passage):
He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after the game.
“That’s one for the medical journal, George,” he said. “Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.”
Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.
“Oh, you’re a great man, all right,” he said. (Hemingway 69)
(Possible Answers: The father views childbirth as a sport in which he is active, almost as if the woman were the football; he views this delivery in particular in terms of himself—fame via publication in a medical journal; at one point he also mentions that her screams are not important, disregarding her feelings of pain as if she were an object.)
OTHER POINTS TO BRING UP:
· The fact that a so-called natural process could supposedly not be handled by the Native American women suggests that a man is needed to do a job typically associated with females in their culture (mid-wives).
· The roles played by women are all passive (they retrieve tools and watch; even the woman giving birth is unable to accomplish the task without help from the doctor, thus giving the doctor control over a female process), while the male roles are generally active (men hold the woman down; the doctor delivers the baby; even the husband cuts his own throat, almost as if mirroring the act of “C-section” on his throat).
· Even the word “Caesarian” connotes power and control due to its root “Caesar.”
Discussion: Native American as Other
Helstern suggests that “the need to summon the white medicine man in the most obvious sign of the decay of traditional Indian culture. Each act performed by an Indian in this story is inept or incompetent, beginning with the Indian oarsmen who row back across the lake ‘with quick choppy strokes’” (65).
Consider the following passage:
The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the midst. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the midst all the time.
“Where are we going, Dad?” Nick asked.
“Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.”
“Oh,” said Nick.
Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars. (Hemingway 67)
3. Helstern suggests that the Native Americans are portrayed as incompetent, beginning with their “quick choppy strokes.” Looking at the rest of the story, where else are they portrayed as inept?
(Possible Answers: they couldn’t deliver the baby without bringing in outside help; the husband feels so helpless that it may have led to his suicide; he brought his own soap and tools from the outside.)
4. What significance does the gift of cigars hold?
(Possible Answers: the cigars are from outside culture and could be seen as the white men imposing their culture onto the Native Americans; it could be a sign of rivalry.*)
OTHER POINTS TO BRING UP:
· The trip across the lake can be compared to a trip across the River Styx to the underworld (mist, dogs greeting them on the other side—comparable to Cerberus, the Native Americans row them across the lake, taking on the role of Charon, they experience a death once over to the other side). Joseph DeFalco points out this connection when he says, “the classical parallel is too obvious to overlook, for the two Indians function in a Charon-like fashion in transporting Nick, his father, and his uncle from their own sophisticated and civilized world of the white man into the dark and primitive world of the camp” (qtd. in Strong 19)
· The gift of the cigars was not an exchange but a gift. *According to Gayle Rubin, gift exchange can be a sign of rivalry where each side gave until the other side could not reciprocate (21).
Assignment
The father’s suicide has been a long-standing debate among scholars. Depending on how you interpret various events in the story, the characters’ actions, and the lens through which you view the story (feminist, cultural, Freudian). Read Jeffrey Meyer’s “Hemingway’s Primitivism and ‘Indian Camp’” in which he describes various interpretations of the suicide before offering his own view. Then answer the following question on the Blackboard Discussion Board (400-600 words):
Which interpretation of the father’s death do you agree with? Explain why you interpret it this way. If you disagree with all of the interpretations, you may offer your own.
Works Cited
Adair, William. “A Source for Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp.’” Studies in Short Fiction 28.1 (1991): 93-95. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Feb. 2011.
De Beauvoir, Simone. “Myths: Of Women in Five Authors.” Trans. H. M. Parshley. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd ed. Ed. David Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2007. 676-678. Print.
Helstern, Linda. “Indians, Woodcraft, and the Construction of White Masculinity: The Boyhood of Nick Adams.” The Hemingway Review 20.1 (2000): 61-78. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Indian Camp.” Transatlantic Review (1924). Rpt. in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Finca Vigia ed. New York: Scribner, 1987. 67-70. Print.
Johnston, Kenneth. “In the Beginning: Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp.’” Studies in Short Fiction 15.1 (1978): 102-04. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Feb. 2011.
Meyers, Jeffrey. “Hemingway’s Primitivism and ‘Indian Camp.’” Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal 34.2 (1988): 211-22. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 21 Feb. 2011.
Strong, Amy. “Screaming Through Silence: The Violence of Race in ‘Indian Camp’ and ‘The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.’” The Hemingway Review 16.1 (1996): 18-32. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.
*Note: If I were teaching this in conjunction with the other Nick Adams stories, I would focus on Nick’s role in the scene as well as his view of death in this story as compared with future Nick stories.
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