Ernest Hemingway. In Our Time - 1925 - A Short Synopsis

This was Hemingway's first published book after Three Stories and Ten Poems and is one of the best illustrations of his stripped down, declarative sentences method of writing.

In Our Time is a collection of short stories - some of which had been published in literary magazines, and marked Hemingway's American debut and made him famous. In Paris he had published a much shorter book and only just over a hundred copies.

They say all great authors write about what they know and this collection of stories is about Hemingway's emotional experiences. In this book, Hemingway introduces the hero, Nick Adams who is very closely based on Hemingway. Nick grows up in the Chicago area, vacations in northern Michigan, shares with his doomed father a love for fishing and hunting, participates in World War I, where he is severely wounded, and eventually becomes a writer. (complete echoes of Hemingway's life)

THE STORIES

Indian Camp. Nick Adams (who is a teenager), his father (Dr Adams) and Uncle George are going to an Indian camp, to help a woman in a difficult labour, to give birth.

In the beginning of the story the father treats his son like a child in a slightly protective way but with an intense emotional security for Nick. By the end of the story Nick is sitting alone, at one end of the boat, while they are returning home, trying to make sense of the things that have happened in his time at the Indian Camp.

And horrible things have happened.

Nick and his Uncle George, have to watch as his father operate on the Indian woman with only a pen knife and no anesthestic for the woman.

Nick's father saves the woman's life, delivers a baby boy and brags about his achievements in operating with such crude equipment; a pen knife and tapered gut leaders to sew up the cut in the woman's body. (In real life Hemingway was persuaded by his father to have his tonsils removed, which was performed without anesthestic). Nick asks his father to stop the woman's screams, but his father states 'No, I haven't any anesthestic, but her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are unimportant'.

The husband of the Indian woman, who had cut his foot very badly with an axe, three days before, slits his throat because he can not bear to watch his wife suffer in such pain.

The boy, Nick is no longer a boy but has to start realising the meaning of life and death and although his father is there to comfort him when the Indian man commits suicide, Nick has to wonder about his own life and mortality.

This story by Hemingway is closely related to his own personal experiences as an Italian Ambulance driver in the war. Hemingway himself, claimed the account of Henry's wounding in this book was the most accurate version of his own wounding he had ever written. Hemingway also of course, met a nurse in the hospital when he was recovering from his accident and fell in love with her.

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