In 1492, an explorer by the name of Christopher Columbus landed on the Canary Islands off the coast of the North American continent, and ran into the indigenous people, the “Indians”, who lived there. His discoveries of this new continent, and the lust for natural resources such as gold that were spotted on the people that lived there led to an abundance of European conquistadors, Spanish for conquerors, coming to the Americas in order to pillage the land for its exquisite and valuable commodities. With this sudden introduction of Spanish people to the land, many Indians, or Native Americans, succumbed to new diseases that were brought over from Europe that their immune systems could not handle. Many of the others were practically enslaved
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From the entrance of the white man onto the land of the Native Americans by boat, to the surgical “invasion” on the body a Native American woman which results in the suicide of her husband, it is evident that “Indian Camp” shows a more modern and small scale version of the European conquests that took place four centuries prior to the writing of this short story. Viewing this through a postcolonialist lens, it is clear that both the “colonizers” (the doctor) and the “colonized” (the Indians) have different mindsets regarding the matter at hand. These different mindsets reveal a lot about the human nature of these two radically different groups of people. To the doctor, the medical procedure is simply another child birth, but to the Native Americans, it is a sign of shame, intrusion, and dishonor. The will of colonizers to gain as much as possible, and the will of the colonized to preserve their culture and honor will always clash, and the colonizers will always be the ones who are victorious in the end. Viewing Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp” through a postcolonialist lens, it is clear that the doctor’s drive to gain new medical experiences and money is fueled by his feelings of intelligence and superiority over the Native Americans, and this mindset overpowers the drive of the Native Americans to preserve their honor, resulting in tragic damages for the colonized
From the entrance of the white man onto the land of the Native Americans by boat, to the surgical “invasion” on the body a Native American woman which results in the suicide of her husband, it is evident that “Indian Camp” shows a more modern and small scale version of the European conquests that took place four centuries prior to the writing of this short story. Viewing this through a postcolonialist lens, it is clear that both the “colonizers” (the doctor) and the “colonized” (the Indians) have different mindsets regarding the matter at hand. These different mindsets reveal a lot about the human nature of these two radically different groups of people. To the doctor, the medical procedure is simply another child birth, but to the Native Americans, it is a sign of shame, intrusion, and dishonor. The will of colonizers to gain as much as possible, and the will of the colonized to preserve their culture and honor will always clash, and the colonizers will always be the ones who are victorious in the end. Viewing Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp” through a postcolonialist lens, it is clear that the doctor’s drive to gain new medical experiences and money is fueled by his feelings of intelligence and superiority over the Native Americans, and this mindset overpowers the drive of the Native Americans to preserve their honor, resulting in tragic damages for the colonized