Indian Camp

The sotry's plot is cate in the form of a journey,in and out of an indian camp:divided into three parts.The first part is about Nick,his father and Uncle George sent out to an Indian camp because a woman there has trouble in childbirth.Nick is curious eager to explore the world.The second part is about what happens there:Nick's father is doing a caesarian operation and the husband is killing himself with a razor.This is the climax of the story;for just at that moment Nick sees the violence of both birth and death.In the third part,Nick and his father return by the same route,yet with a different Nick.The highly symbolic and suggestivedialogue between father and son tells us that Nick has been through the initiation of his journey and grown up.
The two main characters in the story are Nick and his father.Nick is a round character in the story,he develops from an innocent boy to a mature man through the journey.He is very curous about life and death at the beginning of the story,which shows his naivety.He is also very sympathetic with those who suffer,including the Indian woman who endure great pain in the labor sa well as her husband in excessive mental torment.As to Nick's father,he is a flat character in the story.As a doctor,he should be loving and caring,yet he has an apathy towards his patient.He is a man dominated by reason and rationality instead of by sympathy and sensibility.He even tries to educate his son through hard facts of the world while Nick learns it through his own tender feelings.
The irony of the story lies in two incidents.The irony occurs when the baby is born,the father dies of the unbearable spiritual agony.As a father-to-be,he should be the person who rejoices greatly,however,he is not as strong-minded as a man would be.He chooses to die so as to escape the spiritual torture he suffers during the operation.The secone irony lies in the contrast of a nature's seeming benevolence of lovely lake and sky and man's pain and suffering in a