famous short story "Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway, Native American guides take Dr. Adams, his brother George, and his son Nick across a lake to an Indian camp to help a woman who is in prolonged labor. Dr. Adams performs a c-section using a jack-knife with Nick assisting him. Because the operation is performed without anesthesia, the woman experiences great pain. Unable to cope with the trauma, her husband slits his throat.

The story focuses on young Nick and his reaction to the events. It's what is known as an initiation or rite-of-passage story, because what he goes through profoundly changes Nick, the main character. To determine Nick's relationship with his father, look closely at what transpires between them at various stages of the story.

In the beginning, during the canoe ride, Hemingway writes, "Nick lay back with his father's arm around him." From this, we can assume that Nick and his father have a close relationship, and Nick looks up to Dr. Adams and depends upon him. When they arrive, Dr. Adams has Nick observe the c-section procedure and assist him, and he carries on a running commentary while he works. He is either oblivious or doesn't care that the experience is troubling to Nick. Nick's discomfort is evidenced by his request of anesthetic for the woman and the fact that Nick looks away while his father is delivering the baby, doesn't want to look at the baby after he's born, and also avoids looking while his father sews up the woman.

Nick sees the Native man's body after he has killed himself. When Nick and his father leave, Nick asks questions about life, death, and suicide. Nick is obviously shaken by the events that have just transpired, and in the end, it is significant that he doesn't sit close to his father in the boat but, rather, sits in the stern by himself. It is as if the experience has somehow distanced him from his father.

First, Nick and his father do have a positive relationship in the sense that Nick's dad obviously wants to spend time with his son and wants to teach him about life and helping others.  One gets the impression from the beginning of the story that Nick is used to traveling with his father, because he goes with his father to the shore and gets in the rowboat before even asking where they are going.

Likewise, Hemingway gives the impression that Nick's dad wants Nick to admire him and be interested in what he does. He comments at the beginning of his visit to the laboring Indian woman and specifically addresses Nick, trying to make him a part of the situation. When he and George discover that the new father has killed himself, Nick's dad's concern is for his son, and he asks that Nick be taken out of the hut.  He eventually says to Nick,

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

Despite these positive qualities in the father-son relationship, there is also a sort of distance between Nick and his father.  Nick's father seems to be forcing his own interests on Nick.  When Nick finds out where he and his father are going at the beginning, he gives the lackluster reply of "Oh."  When Nick's dad asks him how he likes being an intern, Nick demonstrates the same lack of enthusiasm and replies, "All right."  Nick's father does not even seem to realize that his son finds the ordeal gruesome and longs to escape.  This "distance," however, between the two characters could simply be Hemingway's manner of illustrating the strain that often occurs in parent-child relationships when the the child enters into young adulthood.  Parents often try to force their interests upon their children and do not even realize that their children would like to pursue their own course in life.

Overall, the reader should infer from "Indian Camp" that Nick and his father share a typical relationship.  Nick's dad is very honest with him and does not sugarcoat the trials of life, perhaps because of what he has seen living in a difficult environment and through working in the medical field. Nonetheless, Nick's dad seems to want his son to be prepared for life but still longs to shelter him from some of life's problems.

In this story, Nick appears to be an elementary-school-aged child, though we are never told his age. His relationship is one of looking up to his father and feeling safe and secure in his presence, even after witnessing some terrible sights.

Nick goes with his father, a doctor, to an Indian camp where the father has been called to help with a difficult childbirth. When he hears the woman in labor screaming, Nick looks to his father to solve the problem, suggesting that his father is a capable and competent parent:

"Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick.

When his father says the screaming is not important and that he doesn't have a painkiller, Nick accepts that.

Like many children, Nick is carefully observant of everything his father does:

Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap.

However, as the situation turns dire and the father must do a C-section with a jack-knife, Nick is troubled enough to stop watching. When his father asks if he wants to watch him putting in the stitches, we learn that:

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

The episode, including seeing the dead body of the pregnant woman's husband, who kills himself by cutting his throat, is clearly disturbing to Nick, but his trust in his father gives him a sense of being protected and secure:

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.

Nick has a good relationship with his father. His father is attentive to him and explains things to him, trying to give honest answers to the questions he asks. It seems that Nick is being raised with a good foundation for facing adulthood.

In “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway, the relationship between Nick and his father, the doctor who is called to the Indian Camp to help deliver a baby, is loving. From the first sentences, it is clear that his father is protective of Nick. Specifically, when they first get into the boat, “Nick lay back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water.” His father is both warming and protecting Nick. It is a tender gesture from the father. Once inside the shanty where the pregnant woman is, the father explains:

"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.”

The father is patient and also wants to be instructive. He wants Nick to understand why they are there. His father addresses Nick so that Nick can learn from this experience. Once the baby has been born, his father asks, “'See, it's a boy, Nick…How do you like being an intern?”

Although Nick’s dad seems to be training him, perhaps for a career in medicine himself, he also understands that there might be things that Nick cannot handle yet at his young age. As he prepares to stitch the woman’s wound, he tells Nick that it’s alright if he does not watch. Thus, his father is also understanding and mindful of Nick’s youth and sensitive to his feelings.

After they discover that the baby’s father has slit his throat, Nick’s father immediately says, “Take Nick out of the shanty, George.” He does not want Nick to see the dead father. He wants to be protective of him and shield him.

Much of what makes Indian Camp such an interesting story is what is left out of it. Based on the events of the story, one would have to call Nick "trusting," or "obedient," although the story works to question that trust. Take for instance the brief moment in which the father explains to Nick what they are doing:

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

That "oh" expresses a lot about their relationship. Nick's acceptance of what they are doing does not, however, serve to explain what his father's motivation in bringing his son along on this trip might be. Nick does not question, either, the presence of Uncle Billy. For him, the decisions the adults make form the basis for his experience. Nick's neutrality matches that of the narrator, who simply gives the facts of the matter and leaves character motivations, particularly the father's, open to speculation.

1. Nick's relationship with his dad is compliant. Nick follows his dad seemingly without argument to a remote Indian camp to assist his father in a difficult delivery.  From Nick's questions, readers infer that Nick went along with his dad before even knowing what their mission was, and from Nick's lack of excitement when his dad answers his question, Hemingway demonstrates that Nick is used to simply going along with this dad.

2. Their relationship is also a typical father-son relationship.  Nick's father becomes so engrossed in his difficult task that he forgets that his young son is witnessing the quite horrific events, but when he does come down from his adrenaline rush from successfully delivering the child, he realizes that Nick is not doing so well and attempts in his own way to comfort him.

3. Finally the father-son relationship is honest.  Nick obviously feels comfortable enough to ask his dad anything (i.e., after the Indian husband's suicide, he asks his father if dying is hard), and Nick's dad thoughtfully offers concise but honest answers.

In the short story "Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway, Nick and his father, a doctor, go to an Indian woman who is struggling to deliver her baby. Nick's father talks with Nick openly about the medical aspects of the situation they are attending; he explains to Nick in clear language the reasons behind the woman's suffering, and he teaches Nick the steps that a doctor must take to help someone in this woman's situation. So in these ways, Nick's father is very honest with Nick.

As well, Nick's father avoids sugarcoating the descriptions of the procedures. At no point does he try to protect Nick from the scary parts of the operation he must perform to deliver the woman's baby. The one time Nick's father tries to shield Nick from something difficult is the moment at which the husband of the woman giving birth is revealed to have cut his own neck, but even then, Nick's father is honest with him once he realizes that Nick has seen everything. He apologizes to Nick for putting Nick through the trauma of the whole episode, realizing too late that it may have been too much for the boy. Nick asks his father hard questions about death and dying, and his father appears to answer them as sincerely as he can, which reinforces the father's reliably honest manner with his son.