SOURCE: Tilton, Margaret A. “Garnering an Opinion: A Double Look at Nick's Surrogate Mother and Her Relationship to Dr. Adams in Hemingway's ‘Ten Little Indians.’” The Hemingway Review 20, no. 1 (fall 2000): 79-89.

In the following essay, Tilton examines the behavior of Mrs. Garner in the story “Ten Indians.”

Ernest Hemingway's short story “Ten Indians” involves a cast of predominantly male characters, for the Garner and Adams families include five men and only one woman. Many readers have interpreted this woman, Mrs. Garner, as sympathetic and nurturing. Joseph Flora, for example, praises her for being “relaxed (but not lax) in her roles as mother and wife,” a decided contrast to Nick's absent mother (46). Paul Smith finds the Garners in general, and Mrs. Garner in particular, to be “a standard for … what is diminished or missing from the scene at Nick's home” (“Tenth Indian” 54). Paul Wadden praises “the communal glow of...