Uncle George
Nick Adams's uncle, who comes along to the Indian camp, gets bitten during the operation, and is gone by morning.
The book
At a glance
- "Indian Camp" only
- George the husband in "Cat in the Rain," George the skier in "Cross Country Snow," or George Gardner the jockey in "My Old Man"
- Nick's uncle; the doctor addresses him simply as George
- Rows over separately, hands out cigars, holds the patient, gets bitten, and leaves
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeUncle George is Nick Adams's uncle and the third adult in "Indian Camp," the first story in the book. He crosses the lake in a second rowboat, hands out cigars, and is drafted into holding a woman down while Nick's father delivers her baby by Caesarean section with a jack-knife.
He is in the story for about four pages, does nothing especially memorable, and then is not there. The book never explains where he went, and the small mystery of his absence is one of the things "Indian Camp" leaves for the reader.
How the book draws them
- The cigarsHe is smoking one in the dark on the beach when the others land, and gives one each to the two men who rowed them over. It is the only generous thing he does in the story and it reads, in context, like the behaviour of a man buying his way out of the errand.
- The biteDuring the operation he and three other men hold the woman still. She bites him on the arm, and he swears at her using a racial slur for a Native woman. One of the men who rowed him across laughs at him for it. The narration reports both without comment.
- "Oh, you're a great man, all right"Afterwards, while the doctor is exhilarated and talking about writing the case up for a medical journal, Uncle George stands against the wall looking at his arm and says exactly that. It is the only judgement passed on the doctor in the story, and it comes from the man he has just told to pull back the quilt.
- The disappearanceHe is not in the boat going home. Nick asks where he went. "He'll turn up all right," his father says. Neither this story nor any other in the book comes back to it.