The story �The Country Doctor� written by Franz Kafka is a story which tells about an old country doctor who receives an emergency call to attend to a patient who is ten miles away from the doctor�s place at a very late hour of the night. The introductory part of the story is quiet ambiguous and creates a lot of anxiety in the readers� minds. To the doctor�s discomfort, he has his carriage without a horse � horse had died the previous night. The happenings in the story that follow are really scary. It is really tough to understand the actual and entire plot of the story when read for the first time.
As already stated above, though the doctor is in an urgency to attend to his patient, he is left with his carriage alone with no horse to drive the carriage. The doctor�s maid goes in search of horses all around the village but her efforts were in vain as nobody was ready to lend their horse and expose it to the horrendous weather. She returns home helpless. At that instance, frustrated by the situation, the doctor kicks the cracked door of the pig sty which was actually not been opened for years now.
To his surprise, the doctor finds a groom with two strong and well-bred horses. Though the doctor was initially happy when the groom offered his horses, he was shocked when he came to knew that the groom wants his maid Rosa in exchange for the horses. The doctor is in a dilemma between protecting Rosa from this demon and attending his patient � who had called for him in a dire emergency or ostensibly so (Johnston).
The Essay on A Country Doctor Boy Story Injured
A Country Devastation People would never accept the way the doctor in Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor" performs. The Doctor acts completely unlike a genuine doctor. The whole story is based on a situation that is completely unlike that of an authentic house call made by a real life country doctor. A doctor would never leave one of his employees after being injured, a doctor would not go to tend to ...
Even while evaluating the situation � between saving Rosa and attending to the patient � the doctor much to his horror � in a flash of a second � just appears in front of his patient�s house � which is highly inexplicable to the doctor himself as to how he came there! Though the doctor finds the patient, a young boy, to be in perfect health, he realizes that his assumption is wrong when he takes a look at a bloody towel waved by the patient�s sister. He then takes a second look at the patient and discovers that the boy has got a wound beneath his hip which is already flooded with living worms which are lengthy enough as the doctor�s little finger. At this instance, the doctor comes to a conclusion that there is nothing he could do to save the boy.
The doctor, who initially failed to discover the fatal wound because of his pre-occupation of grievances and distractions in his personal life, is dishonoured by the villagers by stripping his clothes off and making him lie beside the patient on the bed (Literature, Arts and Medicine Database).
�This was because the villagers required the helpless doctor to take the role of a spiritual counsellor and put the boy�s mind in ease so that he can die in peace (Bernardo).� Finally, the doctor grabs together his belongings and escapes in order to go back to his house but is left amidst an unknown path between his own house and his patient�s house.
The story, though creates a lot of anxiety and curiosity, is something which speaks about the strong belief that many people have got about the power of medicine and a doctor. When viewed from a personal level, the story reveals that a doctor is also a human being who is often mistaken by many can only deliver or accomplish what best he actually could and nothing beyond that. In addition to these, the story also strongly states that professional goals and private life, though inter-related and cannot be separated are filled with a lot of tension.
The doctor faces many challenges all through the story. The first and foremost challenge that the doctor is faced with is that he is left with no horse to drive his carriage in order for him to go and attend to his patient who is ten miles away from him who has called the doctor in an extreme emergency. The doctor becomes extremely frustrated because he was in a hurry to go and attend to his patient but was left with no horse to drive the carriage, as his own horse dies the previous day night and nobody in the village was ready to lend their horse. The second challenge being his inability to save Rosa, his maid, from the groom who lends him two strong and well-bred horses. The doctor faces a trauma in this situation as he was could not decide whether to stay back in order to rescue Rosa or to leave her to her fate and go attend to the patient.
The Term Paper on Does Doctor-Patient Communication Affect Patient Satisfaction with Hospital Care?
The results from the study show that most of the patients are served within five minutes upon their arrival at the hospital. Taking an overview look on the results, it emerges that medical personnel in Netherlands serve their patients faster than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia. However, it is discouraging to find out that the percentage that is served beyond five minutes after the arrival is ...
The doctor was not able to comprehend the actual ailment of his patient as he seemed to be in his perfect state of health. In this context, the doctor�s reputation was at stake as he could not discover the wound of the patient when he takes a first look at the patient. This was because the doctor was actually preoccupied with the thought of inability to rescue Rosa from being sexually assaulted by the demon i.e., the groom who lent the horses to the doctor.
After all this, the final challenge was that the doctor was not able to realize how and where from the groom evolved all of a sudden in that late hour of nigh in his own pig sty. The doctor really gets scared of the horror filled consequences which were happening right from the moment he is standing in front of his house in search of a horse in order to travel ten miles to attend to a patient to the moment when he was lost in his way back home as the horses which brought him to the patient�s house in a flick of a second did not carry him back to his house.
The story can be called as nightmare as the entire story is filled with scary scenes like the doctor and the maid discovers a stranger in their own house all of a sudden in the late hour of night, the stranger i.e. the groom hurts Rosa on her cheek by kissing her and finally sexually assaults her, the doctor in a flash disappears at one place and appears at another and many other similar scenarios. Thus, the story is surely a nightmare.
The main theme of the story is an expression of fear that haunts the sub conscious when he finally steps into the evening of his life.
Bibliography
Bernardo, Karen. “Franz Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” – Commentary by Karen Bernardo.” Storybites.com. 18 November 2008
The Essay on Doctor In The House
“Doctor in the House” by R. Gordon The text under analysis is taken from the book “Doctor in the House” written by Richard Gordon. Richard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere, an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written numerous novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is ...
Johnston, Ian. “Franz Kafka – A Country Doctor.” e-text. 18 November 2008
Literature, Arts and Medicine Database. Literature annotations. 18 November 2008
