Indian Camp

This study guide will help you analyze the text “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway.  We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on summary, structure, characters, setting, narrator and point of view, language, theme and message.

Presentation of the text

Title: “Indian Camp”
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Published in: “Transatlantic Review”
Date of Publication: 1924
Genre: Short Story

World-known American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was a Modernist writer of short stories and novels who created new writing styles that we now typically associate with Modernism. His works brought him several literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. “Indian Camp” is one of the first stories featuring Nick Adams, a semi-autobiographical character who appears in many of the author’s short stories. Initially, the story’s draft was titled “One Night Last Summer” and was about twenty-nine pages long. However, the author had edited the story to only seven pages and changed its title upon publication. The story is said to have been inspired by the birth of Hemingway’s first child with his wife, Hadley.