Subject: Indian Camp
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 12:49:14 EDT
'... In my reading, this story seems to be straightforward,
but I have doubts. Is Nick's father a good doctor or a bad
teacher? Is Uncle George the real father?...'
These points have been gone over ad nauseam on Heming-L
& I can only think they once occurred to some ferret eyed,
if somewhat paranoid, academic & have now entered
the critical canon (if you can have such a thing) to be ignored
at peril of an omega-minus in Am.Lit Studies.
The question of George's paternity appears to hinge largely on:
1) his passing out of cigars to the attendant Indians, in the manner
of a travelling salesman in the waiting room of some maternity ward.
2) the fact that the mother bites George at the moment of greatest
pain.
3) George disappears mysteriously after the height of the action.
You would have to be very cloth eared indeed, given the whole
setting of the story, to give credence to 1). Cigars are given out
AFTER the arrival of a child & the text gives no evidence elsewhere
that George is so arrogant or so stupid as to advertise his paternity
to the gang at this moment. Could it be he was simply thanking
the chaps for rowing them across? Unless, of course, you want
to follow up the suggestion of one of the geniuses that this was
a gesture in the tradition of tobacco exchange, long practised by
your peace-pipe smoking injuns. (Honest, I'm not making this up.)
As for 2), no woman at the point of having her uterus opened up
without benefit of anaesthetic CHOOSES whom she'll bite to express
her displeasure.
I can't remember what came under 3). Maybe he'd gone off to find
another subject for his lust. Or perhaps was having second thoughts
about handing out those cigars quite so blatantly. It was very
portentous, though, I can tell you that. Just as are the concentric
rings left on the surface of the lake by the rising fish. I can't recall
what they were about either. Something to do with the never intersecting
worlds in which the Red Skins & the Whites are forever trapped.
Some such balls.
As for his medical proficiency, I can tell you anyone who performs
a Caesarian with the equivalent of a blunt Swiss Army knife &
some fishing line knows his stuff. A GOOD doctor,Will, a very
GOOD doctor.
As for being a BAD teacher. A teacher of what? Obstetrics?
Ethics? Empathy? Interracial Amity? Is there really to be no
escape from this awful American obsession with morality?
Calm yourself, Will. It's all very simple & straightforward, just
as you first thought & as Tim & I are trying to reassure you.
Scottie B.
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