In �A Country Doctor,� Kafka reveals his unique gift of imposing the incredible upon the mundane events of daily life. As with any truly nightmarish scenario, the events of the story open with a simple, but agonizingly true observation: �I was in great difficulty.� In the lines that follow, this sentiment is revealed as the great understatement that it is, carrying the weight of the doctor�s torment upon its shoulders like a messenger. What appears at the outset to be the doctor�s �great difficulty� (the absence of his horse and the inability to fulfill his medical duty), broadens into a metaphysical contemplation of the impossibility of his position. Thus, the story becomes not only a series of fantastic dream-like events, but a metaphor for the atrophy of the doctor�s ability and reputation, and by extension, his life.
Many of Kafka�s works utilize otherworldly events, characters, and circumstances often circumscribed only to our most terrible nightmares. In this example, Kafka again proves his great genius by displaying for us the turmoil inflicted on the doctor�s mind by the obstacles set before him. Each challenge (the search for a horse to bear him to the patient, the great bewildering abandonment of Rosa to the maniacal intentions of the groom, the patient�s request to die juxtaposed against the will of his family and the duty of the doctor to heal, and the doctor�s impotent attempt to return to save Rosa) return to the ultimate theme of the story: the inevitability of fate. The �icy winter,� having already killed the doctor�s horse during the night, now descends upon the doctor in silence. Even before his �urgent journey� can commence, the doctor finds himself standing �useless, increasingly covered with snow, becoming all the time more immobile.� This immobility is classic nightmare imagery, replicating the impotent fights and flights of our dreams. It is the impossibility of escape, and signals for the doctor the beginning of his end.
The Term Paper on Kafkas Metamorphosis
Kafka's Metamorphosis Franz Kafkas short story The Metamorphosis deals with a man who turns into some sort of insect, resulting in a conflict between the household and the transformed individual. Whether the man, Gregor Samsa, literally or figuratively turns into a bug is not known. The story is full of themes and symbols that Kafka uses to make his story as ambiguous, yet as comprehensible, as ...
The white winter surroundings are a metaphor for the doctor�s final days, and as he is �increasingly covered with snow,� we can see him growing hoary with age, stumbling cold-footed and numb into the final act of his life. But the doctor, who sees himself as one who does �my duty to the full, right to the point where it�s almost too much,� does not realize the final heroic act he foresees. Rather, the appearance of the mysterious groom and �unearthly� horses, which at first bear so much promise as the vehicle of his triumph, become in a moment a mechanism barring him from the performance of his duty. As the doctor finally leaves his home, borne in a rush toward the invalid, he his struck with the great �catch-22� of doctors and benevolent folk in general: whom to aid, and whom to leave to the inevitability of their fates. The horses act as yet another gear in the nightmare�s machinery, serving to remove from the doctor the ability to decide for himself whether to save poor Rosa or hasten to the aid of the patient. He is transported, almost instantaneously to the doorstep of the sick man and away from Rosa, ultimately thrust into the banality of his duty against his own free will.
The mystery of the unearthly horses is echoed in the contradictory wishes of the patient and the patient�s family. The sick man�s request �Doctor, let me die,� would be granted by the tormented doctor caught up in the agony of his abandonment of Rosa. But even this decision, the ability to perform for the patient what he ultimately wants, is removed from the doctor�s hands by the sudden appearance of the town�s families. Again, the nightmare�s circumstances force themselves upon the doctor, resulting in the fantastic image of a naked old man, carried by the chanting townspeople by head and feet to the bed of the dying young man. Whether he would or not, the doctor is forced to lay with death, to contact it, and even contract it as his own. For the �life inside [his] wound� is the tolling of the death knoll for both the young man and the doctor. Ultimately, though he fulfills the letter of the law of his duty, the doctor has no intention of helping the patient, and through the final great exertion of his aging body, escapes the sick room naked, bewildered, and impotent.
The Essay on A Man Called Horse 3
This act had earned him a promotion to Second Lieutenant and job as a scout for land and enemies in the Frontier of America. For the first few weeks of his new post on the Great Plains, Second Lieutenant John Dunbar was quite lonely, with only his new horse Cisco, the horse he had ridden on the day of his promotion, to keep him company. Soon, a wolf with two white feet started to visit every day, ...
What remains for the doctor is to return to the decision he would have made from the beginning, to find and liberate Rosa from the seething groom. But just as the initial act of abandonment was forced upon him, the decision made by the �gods� who apparently produced the horses, now the hopeful act of returning to his home and servant girl becomes quickly the last futile gasp of his life. The horses which once transported him in a moment now drag �through the snowy desert like old men.� He is now nothing but a naked, voiceless old man, �abandoned to the frost of this unhappy age.� In these last impotent moments, when physical warmth dangles just out of his reach, the great tragedy of the doctor�s life is crystallized: he has been betrayed by those to whom he dedicated his life in service. And in this betrayal, the very worth of his life snaps into focus and then into doubt. The realization that he gave his own life, and the life Rosa, in order to prolong and improve the lives of the taunting, spiteful �rabble of patients� signifies the doctor�s submission to the inevitability of his own fate. Naked and alone, he does not even reach for the fur coat, does not wrestle the unearthly team of horses, and resigns himself to his destiny, to �drive around by [myself], an old man.� Kafka reveals the finality of death, and the fleeting comfort of a life of service. Even the doctor�s best intentions flap impotently behind him, and the icy winter overcomes him at last.
