Before the incident at the Indian camp, Nick is still just a boy. Like a child he lays in his father's arms in the boat on the way across the cold lake. When his father tells him where they are going, he simply answers "Oh" just as any child would. His father has to explain what the pregnant Indian woman is going through. Nick wants his father to give her medicine to stop her screaming, but, in his first realization of the pain which must be endured in the adult world, his father informs him he has no anesthetic. His father says the screams are "not important." 

Nick has to watch his father do a Caesarian section on the woman with a jack knife and fishing line. At first Nick is interested but turns away after realizing what his father is doing. Hemingway writes, "Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time." As if watching the gory details of the birth were not enough, Nick also witnesses the body of the Indian father who slits his throat in the upper bunk of the Indian dwelling, presumably because he "couldn't stand things." His father apologizes to Nick for bringing him along. Nick is full of questions about suicide which his father patiently answers.

The reader cannot help but believe that Nick is changed. He has watched a life come into the world and one depart all in the course of a morning. As father and son row back across the lake, the boy, who is now not so childish, is no longer in his father's arms. He sits alone in the stern. He is now unafraid as he drags his hand in the lake. This lesson in life even seems to bolster his youthful enthusiasm as he thinks, "he felt quite sure that he would never die." This final sentence would presume that Nick will be able to "stand things."