AUTHOR: Ernest Hemingway
PUBLISHED: 1927
PUBLISHER: Charles Scribner's Sons
COLLECTION: Men Without Women
It's nice to think Nick Adams, Hemingway's auto-biographical doppelganger device, is so young and naive that he fails to practice just 'prudence' and therefore loses his 'Indian girl' Pru to his father's lie of her infidelity. The truth, however, is that prudence is, in fact, practiced fully and Nick decides to buckle to the times and believe those oh-so-obvious lies.
Sadder still, it was likely the most prudent action to take. The path of least resistance.
And all this on Independence Day, so ironically-so. Saddest is to think of the innocent Pru, as she dissolves post-haste from Nick's memory on the July 5th morning. She, having done nothing wrong and having had her name dragged through the mud. The girl he supposedly maybe loved. It's probably for her best, really.
"In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake for a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken." It simply does not work that way. At best, in giving Nick perhaps more credit than he deserves, he simply lamented the way of things.
But my guess is not for too long. Ten Indians, then, is not a sort of cautionary tale to apply critical thinking so as to not be deceived. At least not a type of critical thought we'd today be comfortable with the outcome of... but instead it's a study in cowardice and how that cowardice feeds the system until the said system is a bloated tick of status quo.
PLOT: B+
CHARACTERS: A-
SETTINGS: A
DIALOG: A
FINAL GRADE: A-
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79
::: very :::