Foil

Character Role Analysis

Nick's Father/Indian Woman's Husband

Nick's father is, at first, the epitome of stoic manhood: he's a stern doctor with a strong stomach who seems to effortlessly ignore the Indian woman's screams in order to get down to business and perform an operation under high-pressure circumstances. At least, that's how he tries to appear in front of his son. The Indian woman's husband, on the other hand, comes off as weak, quietly committing suicide while his wife screams and gives birth on the bunk below. Together they are opposing views of manhood, and the actions of the latter end up calling into question the attempts of the former.

Indian Woman/Indian Woman's Husband

Another foil pairing is the Indian woman and her husband. We can start with the basic idea that they are mirrors of each other because of their genders, but this is an idea that we get through the fact that their positions are mirrored in the story:

Her head was turned to one side. (10)

The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. (43)

They're both in the same bunk bed too, him up top (because he's a man and they're supposed to have authority and whatever) and her below. Their actions, though, are completely opposite:

Just then the woman cried out. (16)

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall. (19)

The woman expresses her suffering vocally (crying, screaming, and weeping are conventionally associated with women or femininity) while the man suffers silently.

Finally, we realize by the end of the story that there is another layer to this pairing: birth and death. Birth, unsurprisingly, is also typically associated with women, so it makes sense that if death has to be anything then it has to be associated with men. But it's not just death we're talking about here—it's suicide—and it's a paring that totally calls into question all those ideas of stony silence and stoic masculinity.