E.Hemingway. Indian Camp

SAMPLE OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Qualitative word — an evaluating word: not participating in any stylistic device, it still creates a definite emphatic colouring of the utterance at the expense of the additional information carried by its connotative meaning. As an example of a qualitative word we may treat the use of the word parade in the sentence below where it is employed by Theodore Dreiser in the sense “to walk insolently”.

They were annoyed by the groups of restless, seeking, eager, rather scandalous men and women who paraded the neighbourhood streets of an evening without a single thought apparently other than pleasure.

E.Hemingway. Indian Camp

Indian Camp is one of Hemingway's early short sto­ries. It was published together with thirteen others in his first collection of short stories In Our Time in 1924.

It bears all the marks of Hemingway's individual style: skilful use of detail, implication, dialogue.

Let us now learn to see the causes of its great expressive power. For our convenience all paragraphs of the text are numbered, and the analysis of each paragraph bears the same number.

1. At the lake shore there was another row boat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

1) To make his narration laconic and terse Hemingway makes a practice of "beginning from the middle", i.e., he begins a chapter (a story, a novel) so, as if something had already been said about the described events. In our text the very first line demonstrates this method: 'another boat' could appear only if 'the first' had been mentioned. Its single appearance does not exclude the necessity of having 'the first boat' mentioned but leaves this first boat in implication; thus receiving 'another boat' we take it for granted that the first one had already been spoken about.

The same concerns the definite article at the beginning of the second sentence. It could appear in this position also only if the same two Indians had at least once been re­ferred to before. This direct reference in the text is absent, but we very naturally take it into consideration, for all our previous experience has taught us this simple rule: if the subject group is supplied with the definite article, it is not the first time it is mentioned in the narration.

So the first small paragraph consisting of two simple sentences proves to carry much more information than is outwardly expressed. Each sentence is loaded with addition­al, implied significance.

2. Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

2) In the second paragraph we are given two more details burdened with implication: 'the camp rowboat' shows that the first, unmentioned boat of the beginning belonged to this side of the lake. Its permanent presence on the lake shore is so familiar to the narrator that he is concerned only with 'another boat', which is 'the camp boat'.

'Uncle George' as the name of a personage can be accounted by the extreme youth of the narrator. This is the first indication of the age of the narrator.

3. The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oar-locks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. 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 mist all the time.

3) We learn the name of the narrator from the third par­agraph. Nick's age is never mentioned. We may guess it from indirect hints: 'Nick lay back with his father's arm around him' is not enough yet an indication to the age of the son, because this gesture may signify comradeship, intimacy, etc. But the very next sentence gives an explana­tion: 'It was cold on the water', and father was shielding his little boy from cold. So Nick is a little boy, hence — the vocabulary his father uses in his effort to explain the facts of life to his son. Hence — the interest of the boy in the outward details of their journey — which boat was the first and which the second, his inability to evaluate the distance between the two and a rather vague indication that the first boat was 'quite a way ahead of them'. It is necessary to note here that the impression of considerable distance is created by the word 'quite' which, without concretizing the absolutely indefinite 'a way ahead', at least suggests the general characteristics of the distance. (Compare it with such colloquial phrases as 'quite some time,' 'quite a grown up', 'quite a show', where 'quite' shows not the completion, but a higher degree of quality, evaluation, emotion, etc.).

In the middle of the same third paragraph there are two attributes, generally rare in Hemingway's early prose. Pay attention to their character: 'quick choppy strokes' do not so much convey the author's attitude to the described phenomenon, which is the main characteristic feature of epithets, but rather manage to create a picture through a very economically used vivid detail.

Not often does Hemingway resort to Past Continuous, preferring Past Indefinite even in cases when grammar textbooks rigorously demand Past Continuous. But when he employs the tense he fully utilizes its grammatical mean­ing of a lengthy action in process: 'The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard' emphasizes the fact of unabating efforts of the Indian and enhances the atmosphere of tenseness and hurry, hinted at by several preceding details: 'started off in the dark', 'quick strokes', etc.

4. "Where are we going, Dad?" Nick asked. "Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick." "Oh," said Nick.

4) From the next, fourth paragraph, we gather further information about Nick's age and his relations with father. The boy addresses his father in a colloquially-intimate way 'dad'; the latter explains the aim of the journey in a manner used with children: without terms, specifications, etc. More than that, the very choice of the word 'lady' to designate the sick Indian woman is also indicative of the extreme youth of the boy, because it is by little children (and adults in conversation with them) that all females are called 'ladies' regardless of their age, social and pro­fessional standing, etc.

5. 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.

5) The fifth paragraph consists of 4 simple sentences, each one presenting a successive step in a series of actions. Every sentence expresses one action of one person.

Mark the word 'beached', finishing the first sentence; whenever Hemingway has the alternative between a prep­ositional phrase ('on the beach') and a verbal one he gives a marked preference to the latter, again employing the implication of action suggested by verbal forms: 'beached' is definitely a result of action and implies certain effort to achieve it, while the prepositional phrase merely in­dicates the place without that concealed allusion to the work preceding it. The appearance of a prepositional phrase in the third sentence is explained by the fact that here the action is expressed by the predicate while in the first case the predicate was already linked with another action, and the syntactical scheme, chosen by the writer for this particular paragraph, did not allow two verbs.

In the same paragraph we again see the colloquial vague reference to the distance ('way up') of which we spoke in the commentary to paragraph three.

6. They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young In­dian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young In­dian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road.

6-7) The sixth and seventh paragraphs continue meticulous registration of every step in the outward development of events. The author's desire to present them as a single picture, to collect them in one elaborated unity is syn­tactically expressed in the choice of one verbal tense for all the predicates: even in those cases when grammar rules demand Past Perfect ('the timber was cut away') or Past Continuous ('an old woman stood', 'who carried a lantern', etc.). Such a preference for a grammatical form or category is generally characteristic of Hemingway and is always employed to sustain the effect of oneness, of unity of the described events. In addition to the effect of unity, repeated usage of the same form creates a definite rhythmic effect, thus enhancing the expressive force of the narration.

When the indication at the duration of the action be­comes as important as the indication of the fact of the action itself, Hemingway, not to destroy the syntactical structure of the paragraph, resorts to participial construc­tions: 'came out barking'; 'stood holding', 'walked follow­ing', etc., where the '-ing'-form of the second element implies that the first one also expresses a process.

6) The sixth paragraph again demonstrates Hemingway's skilful usage of detail. We remember that the boats 'start­ed off in the dark'. The only suggestion as to the possible time of night was given by the reference to the mist, which is known to appear on the lake close to dawn. In the second line of the sixth paragraph we are sure that dawn is near, because 'a meadow was soaking wet with dew'. And still further on 'the Indian blew out his lantern' shows that dawn has come, but only just, because in the next, the sev­enth paragraph, lights are still burning in the shanties: it is always darker inside than outside, especially with inadequate windows of Indian cabins.

This (the sixth) paragraph also reveals another charac­teristic feature of Hemingway's writing: abundance of prepositions and adverbs to show the exact direction of the action: 'walked up from the beach through a meadow', 'ran back into the woods', etc. All in all in this paragraph we find 14 of them, with the total number of words 80, which makes 17.5 per cent of the paragraph and is quite impressive.

7. They came around a bend and a dog came out bark­ing. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

7) The seventh paragraph closes the first part of the story. We are briefly acquainted with the place and time of action and characters (not through the author's introduction, but indirectly, through hints and implication) and we know very vaguely the purpose of their journey which brought them to the doorway of an Indian shanty.

The second part also begins as if it were not "the very beginning", because we left the characters outside and now "the inside" part is given without any link between the two (e. g., the writer did not tell us that they had gone in, we understand it ourselves from the very first word 'inside', from the change of the rhythm, grammatical tense, etc.).

8. Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an axe three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

8) Paragraph eight masterfully presents the atmosphere of the shanty and the history of the sick woman. Again mainly short simple sentences, each carrying one concrete observation of Nick constitute the paragraph. Here it is also necessary to mark the time of definite actions and their duration, because the indication at the length and duration of the woman's sufferings and the help of other women of the camp is as important as the mere denomina­tion of both processes. Hence — the Past Perfect Continuous of 'to try to have a baby' and 'to help'. It is also important for a better explanation of the future outcome to make a point of the fact that the husband had cut his foot still before his wife began her painful delivery, so that he could not shut out her screams and was practically forced to go through his wife's tortures. Hence — the Past Perfect of "to cut" and meticulous count of days: 'he had cut his foot three days before', 'she had been trying... for two days'. Pay attention to the unemotional tone of the narration. There are exceptionally few attributes and adverbial mod­ifiers of manner and none of them express the author's attitude to the events described: it is 'a young woman', 'old woman', 'lower bunk', 'upper bunk'. When some evaluation of the proceedings is required the writer selects the least original, the most hackneyed and, consequently, almost devoid of emotive meaning intensifier "very" and uses it thrice 'very big', 'very badly' and 'very bad'. "Bad", very much like "very", through constant usage, practically lost its individual emotive character and became merely a very general and vague negative characteristic. This last fact of using words of extended, general semantics to be specified only in some definite context characterizes collo­quial speech and may be considered one of its norms. Compare, how often in informal speech we use "thing", "matter", "to fix", "to get", etc., not bothering to find a more exact word to convey our idea, because we are sure that the context, the situation, the tone will help to add the missing characteristics and to complete the necessary effect. Hemingway's prose is always close to colloquial norms, hence — "very" and "bad" used to denote various shades of feeling and meaning.

Still another feature of colloquial style favoured by Hemingway, is represented in this paragraph by a some­what loose word order, when the sentence begins with a secondary member which is thus emphasized, and prolongs its inversion into the subject-predicate group: '...lay a young woman', '...was her husband'.

9. Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick. "This lady is going to have a baby, Nick," he said. "I know," said Nick. "You don't know," said his father. "Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. 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." “I see," Nick said.

9) Paragraph nine explains to us the reason for Nick's accompanying his father to the Indian camp: the doctor wants to initiate his son into the realities of life. Look, how carefully and simply he tries to explain to the boy the complexities of the process of childbirth. He explains first the facts which might have been noticed by the boy and misunderstood: the screams, the necessity of an operation. In his conversation with Nick he uses a medical term once (paragraph 10), when, as the answer to the boy's question the meaning of the word 'anaesthetic' can be understood correctly due to the context, and the second time, later, in paragraph 15 when again, the word 'incision' immediately follows 'to sew up' as its direct object, so that the meaning of the verb clarifies the meaning of the term quite suffi­ciently.

On the other hand, when the doctor talks to Uncle George, his vocabulary and syntax change markedly: while his wish to be understood by the boy makes him avoid terms and “difficult" words, and adhere to lucid complete structures, in the conversation with a grown-up person he is not a lecturer but a mere interlocutor. Hence — free usage of terms ('peroxide' — paragraph 16, 'Caesarian', 'nine-foot, tapered gut leaders' — paragraph 19), colloquial ellipses (paragraphs 19, 20), emotionally coloured words (paragraphs 19, 20), etc.

In the central part of the story — the operation and events immediately preceding and following it — the iden­tity of the narrator is most clearly indicated.

Nick's unsophistication and ignorance make him a keen though a non-understanding observer, who is fully aware of all the proceedings without grasping their meaning or purpose. And again such words as 'he put several things' (paragraph 11) or 'he put something...' (paragraph 14) register facts without analyzing them.

10. Just then the woman cried out. "Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick. "No, I haven't any anaesthetic," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important."

10) In paragraph ten we notice one more indirect hint at the tenderness and understanding between father and son: it is the diminutive form of 'Daddy', used by Nick, and the seeming lack of logic in his father's answer 'But they are unimportant'. The boy did not ask about the meaning of the screams but he was excited when he mentioned the word: the sentence in which Nick used the word 'screams', begins with an interjection which is always a signal of accumulating emotion. And his father, receiving this sig­nal, abates the boy's natural sympathy with suffering by his explanation.

11. The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

"Those must boil," he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

12. "You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they're not. When they're not, they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while."

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

"Pull back that quilt, will you, George?" he said. "I'd rather not touch it."

12) Paragraph 12 is mainly continuing the explanations of Nick's father and it concludes the second step in the de­velopment of the story, which began in paragraph 8 with the world 'inside'. The place of action is complete, the char­acters are introduced, and we are taken into part three — the culmination of the story — very much in the manner we were transferred from part one to part two — as if jumping over a gap and landing right in the middle of events of part three, i. e. the process of medical examination and the decision to operate are left in implication and are easily reconstructed from the very first words of paragraph 13 — 'when he started to operate'.

13. Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, "Damn squaw bitch," and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

13) It is interesting to note how the attention and interest of Nick waver and disappear: all the preceding paragraphs, paragraph 13 included, demonstrated his acute observation of and minute attention to the stages and details of this adventure. But as soon as all the characters stop their outward activities and the action drifts into the deeper spheres, where mere observation is neither sufficient nor interesting, where it is absolutely necessary to put meaning into fact, Nick's mood and attitude change.

Hemingway indicates this change at the very end of paragraph 13: 'It all took a long time' — it is an observa­tion of a bored and tired person and it ushers us into par­agraphs 14 and 15 which are devoted to the operation itself. Hemingway persistently stresses the fact that Nick is no more interested — he is too small to understand and appreciate the proceedings of his father. So, the same idea is repeated several times: 'He was looking away... didn't look... did not watch', the tense of the last predicate of paragraph 15 also is encumbered with the same idea of time 'had been gone', and at last the finishing words of the paragraph repeat the introduction: '... a long time'. Thus this episode is put into framing, formed by the re­peated syntagma which marks the beginning and the end of the unique operation that affected all the participants so differently.

Throughout the operation (paragraphs 14, 15) we meet only father and son, where father proceeds with his task of instructor while son proves to be a yet inade­quate disciple. Though the positive results of the opera­tion will be stated much later (paragraphs 18, 19), now from the remarks of the doctor we may grasp that everything is going much to his satisfaction: compare his volubility, his colloquial formulas 'See', 'There', 'As you like', his jocular address to Nick — 'How do you like...', the satisfied comment on his own word "That gets it' with the word of wide semantics (see the same commented in the analysis of paragraph 8), and Nick's only remark, his laconic answer to father's direct question. Thus merely through unequal distribution of dialogue Hemingway creates additional information which concerns both the logical and the emotive sides of the narration.

14. His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

"See, it's a boy, Nick," he said. "How do you like being an interne?"

Nick said, "All right." He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

"There. That gets it," said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it.

15. "Now," his father said, "there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I'm going to sew up the incision I made."

Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

16. His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

"I'll put some peroxide on that, George," the doctor said.

14-16) Paragraphs 14 and 15, when compared to the preced­ing and following ones, look like film-stills stopped for minute observation. But in paragraph 16 everything once again comes to life, everybody is again moving, doing something, and Nick revives from his stupor. It is imme­diately reflected in the syntax of the text: paragraph 16 consists of 5 sentences, each of which marks one stage of action, all of them embracing the characters' reaction and behaviour immediately after the tenseness is gone. Pay attention to the only epithet of the paragraph. Hemingway's epithets seldom merely indicate the author's (or character's) evaluation of the phenomenon, but as a rule offer some additional information, which is demonstrated in this particular case: 'reminiscently', reviving the epi­sode of his injury, serves as a link between Uncle George's look at his arm and the ensuing words of the doctor.

17. He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

17) In paragraph 17 once more should be noted the use of Past Perfect Tense in which its grammatical meaning of precedence before another action is not only fully employed, but also made the leading characteristic of the verb, thus participating in the formation of its contextual lexical meaning.

Another point worth mentioning is one of Hemingway's favourites — a word of extremely wide semantics — 'any­thing'. The word embraces the whole situation, its reali­zation completely depends upon the context, and this contextual concreteness of an otherwise semantically vaguely outlined word, which enables the speaker to use it in an unlimited number of situations and makes it a charac­teristic lexical unit of oral speech, creates or enhances the colloquial character of Hemingway's narration. Though the narration is not conducted in the first person singular, we realize from various hints (mentioned above) that it is Nick through whose eyes we are observing events. This type of presenting a picture of life as if perceived by a character creates the so-called effect of immediate presence, which in classical Latin rhetorical books was called the ad oculos effect.

18. "I'll be back in the morning," the doctor said, stand­ing up. "The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she'll bring everything we need."

19. He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a 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.

18-19) In paragraphs 18, 19 we obtain further implied characteristics of the doctor and Uncle George: though the operation is over and the nurse is expected, Nick's father still feels responsible for his patient; hence, the all-embrac­ing pronoun: 'we need'. Uncle George, on the other hand, is concerned only about his bitten arm, and the writer again mentions the fact: 'was... standing, looking at his arm'. (Compare with paragraph 16). This time, as in sev­eral previously discussed instances the grammatical meaning of the Past Continuous Tense is used to stress the continuity of the process without any specially employed extra lexical units, which creates additional information and becomes one of the sources of laconism and terseness, so characteristic of Hemingway's individual style.

Uncle George is so preoccupied with his own person, that he can't appreciate the medical exploit to which he was a witness and he is ironic about the natural exultation of his brother-in-law: the conversational and condescend­ing 'all right' warns the reader against attaching an un­due importance to 'a great man', and 'great' acquires a contextual meaning if not completely opposite to its logical meaning, then, at least, much differing from it.

At the beginning of paragraph 19 we find not an implied but a directly given description of the state of his character. Such an explicit evaluation of actions or feelings of characters can be found in Hemingway's fiction but rarely: in our story we have it just this once. To make it more vivid and concrete the author resorts to a simile. Simile is one of those stylistic devices which can be, though not often, observed in Hemingway's creative prose. As a rule, compared objects do not belong to greatly varying classes, most often comparison involves natural phenomena— sounds, shapes, colours of animals, trees, running water, etc. In this case compared objects stand so close to one another that the effect of a simile is sustained not merely by the fact of one object being likened to another, but by the fact that the other is presented in a developed manner: 'football players' are mentioned in special circumstances in a definite place, they make a picture, and it is the com­pleted picture that brings forth associations, indispensable for the creation of a vivid simile.

20. "Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs," the doc­tor said. "I must say he took it all pretty quietly."

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

20) Paragraph 20 begins in the same light conversational elliptical manner in which the short dialogue of para­graph 19 was rendered. 'Doing a Caesarian', 'That's one for the', and 'Ought to have a look' do not differ from one another in structure or colouring. The effect of casualness, lightheartedness is carried on further by the jocular periphrasis 'these little affairs' or the sympathetically-ironical epithets 'the worst sufferers' and 'the proud father'. And when after the tenseness of the operation, the reader is soothed by the tone and ordinariness of the conversation, and is in no way prepared for any dramatic events, the blow comes, much stronger for its unexpectedness.

The tragic culmination of the story is the more striking for the almost casual way of the presentation of the event: the narrator with his reactions and emotions is completely eliminated and a dispassionate observer and registrar takes his place — sentences are neat and rounded, no ellip­sis, no complex structures, every subject is duly followed by predicate and one or two adverbial modifiers or objects, no attributes, for this is no description, but enumeration of a series of successive minute actions. All emphasis has been consciously removed both from the structure and from the semantics of the employed units — a strictly neutral layer of words, without any transference of meaning or special contextual effects, is employed. And it is this incongruity between the fact and its presentation, between content and meaning, that brings forth the main impression — the impression of incongruity of cause and result, of the absurdity of this death, of the minuteness of the demarcation line separating life from death.

21. "Take Nick out of the shanty, George," the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

21) The event is ugly, brutal, and totally unexpected (para­graph 21). Hence — the absence of comment on the part of its participants, who have been dumbfounded into speech­lessness. So it is no chance distribution of material that the only remark offered in place of all comment is that of the doctor, which is not referred to the accident proper but to its possible after-effects. Again, implicitly we are given another touch to add to his general positive characteristics: his first impulse is to shield the child from the unnecessary experience — childbirth, though painful, is natural and so is not to be shunned or misunderstood, while this death is unnatural and is likely to produce the un­wanted impression on the immature mind.

22. It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

"I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie," said his father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. "It was an awful mess to put you through."

22) The same tenderness and care is once more stressed by the writer in paragraph 22, in the diminutive form of the boy's name. 'Nickie' compared with 'Nick' shows that besides the nominal meaning the derived word has acquired emotive meaning too. The diminutive suffix conveys the emotive attitude of the speaker towards the object he names. We have already seen the doctor excited, but his excitement was caused by his own success, it bore, as it were, professional character, while here, in paragraph 22, his excitement is concentrated upon his dearest posses­sion — his son; and the fact is reflected in the manner of his conversation. Here we also see two epithets — 'awful' and 'terribly'. Neither of them is used in its original direct meaning and both are colloquial formulas showing the overflow of emotions, of any emotions, both positive and negative ('terribly happy,' 'awfully glad', etc.). Thus with the introduction of these epithets Hemingway does not break his artistic rules — he does not evaluate anything, trying to influence his readers by his own estimations; these words are signals, which indicate the state of the speaker.

23. "Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?" Nick asked.

"No, that was very, very exceptional."

"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."

"Do many women?"

"Hardly ever."

"Don't they ever?"

"Oh, yes. They do sometimes." "Daddy?" "Yes."

"Where did Uncle George go?" "He'll turn up all right." "Is dying hard, Daddy?"

"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."

24. They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

23-24) The next passage consists of dialogue, which is extremely interesting both in structure and essence. See how carefully and subtly Hemingway tries to make us witnesses of the laborious mental process by which Nick wants to explain to himself the fact of death — he understands that the two events — the birth of the baby and the death of the father — are somehow con­nected, and his first question, referred to the cause of the disaster, shows this understanding. But besides his nat­ural desire to have everything he saw explained, we see how a perception leads to generalization, how from this particular night Nick's concept of death is gradually form­ing, and the effort to grasp the meaning of death grows into a fixed idea in his flow of thought, it never leaves him (see the final line of the story), though in the con­cluding paragraph he again presents to us a series of successive actions. This idea is like an undercurrent un­disturbed by the water running above — the picture of the peaceful lake, with the rising sun above, the fixed idea underneath, and it is only in the very final sentence that it comes out onto the surface, flows into the outer per­ceptions and in combination with them, the concluding triumphant decision is formed, optimistic in spite of the sordidness of the circumstances under which it has taken shape. Thus the peaceful picture of dawn which first is given as a sharp contrast to the events that have just taken place, proves to be active, for it influences the intensity of the boy's thinking, enables him to come to his optimistic conclusion.

The formal structure of the dialogue in paragraph 23 is typical for Hemingway. The writer subtly reflects the norms of colloquial speech in all its peculiarities — 'syntax (ellip­sis, short sentences, question-answer pattern), vocabulary (set expressions, words of wide semantics, frequent repeti­tions), grammar (contracted verbal forms, preference for "simple" tenses). They allow him to create the effect of naturalness of the conversation and the authenticity of his characters, the reality of their lives, hopes and aspirations. Thus, though we have practically no direct references to characterize Nick or his father, we get their true-to-life portraits in the indirect, implied manner.

This type of characteristics of personages, places and events is one of the leading features of Hemingway's in­dividual style, while Indian Camp as a complete and per­fectly balanced entity reflects the main properties of Hemingway's creative prose in the domain of themes, ideas and mode of writing.

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