Review of Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor

Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor is an enigmatic tale of country doctor beset by various dilemmas. This doctor’s life is predicated on duty. His main obstacles in the story serve to challenge his ability to carry out his duties. This is where the conflicts in the story arise and revolve in.

This paper will examine the different nightmarish trials the physician encounters as he struggles to perform his duty. How the doctor faces those challenges, the nightmare aspects and the themes of the story are all discussed in the paper.

Details

Kafka’s doctor finds himself in midst of events that is spinning out of control. In the story, the doctor faces four main challenges: 1. severe snowstorm, 2. the mysterious groom, 3. the dying patient and finally 4. the torment he feels for Rosa.

The first challenge the doctor confronts is the severe snowstorm. At the start of the story, one learns that the doctor struggles to respond to an emergency some ten miles away in the midst of a heavy snowstorm. His horse died due to overexertion amidst the harsh elements. The brutal winter greatly frustrates the doctor and causes him "great perplexity."

The same scene repeats at the end of the story as the doctor hastens to go home but is "dragged slowly through the snowy desert" hindering his progress. The brutal winter is a steady element all throughout the story.

The second challenge the doctor deals with is the wicked groom. The lecherous groom appears out of nowhere from the pigsty. This description gives him a surreal-like presence which lends a nightmarish feel to the story. Suffice to say, the doctor’s nightmare becomes real when the groom appears.

The groom’s intentions on Rosa is obviously anything but honorable which is blatantly kept hidden under the guise of helping the doctor by lending him two horses.

The doctor finds himself torn between saving Rosa from the unwanted advances of the groom or saving a patient’s life. But the decision is made for him when the groom sends him off. The doctor sped off helpless in preventing the groom from breaking into the house and raping Rosa. One gets a feeling that there is something foreboding and unbecoming in the doctor’s complacency in this part of the story.

The third challenge confronting the doctor is the patient. The ill young man looks perfectly normal at first except that he begs the doctor to let him die. It was only then that the sister take out a bloodied towel that he realizes the patient is mortally wounded. An ugly, gaping, worm-infested wound confronted the doctor. Despite his heroic efforts to reach the patient in time, there is nothing the doctor could do to help him.

The fourth and final challenge that the doctor faces is largely due to the third challenge. It’s the torment the doctor feels for Rosa. He left Rosa in danger, in the hands of a devilish stranger. He offers a huge sacrifice in the person of Rosa so he could attend to the sick patient and his efforts are all to no avail.

The doctor is forced to make a choice between two people who urgently need his help: one, physically ill and the other, he exposes to great peril. This puts the doctor in the midst of a moral dilemma. Since he swore to the Hippocratic Oath to attend to the ill, his sense of duty is strongly inculcated in him. In the end, he chooses to heed his profession.

It is the thought that he is saving another person’s life that accounts for his earlier complacency with regards to Rosa’s fate. But since the young man is beyond saving, the thought offers him no comfort now. His torment over Rosa only serves to heighten his feeling of inadequacy.

His contant thoughts dwell on the fate of Rosa while he is attending to the patient. He torments himself for his decision to leave her as he thinks, "I had to see that Rose was all right...and I wanted to die too." Even the patient's wound, twice described as "rose-red", seems to remind him of Rosa even more.

The story is an epitome of a nightmare. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, nightmare is defined as “a variety of frightening experiences associated with sleep.” All throughout the story one can sense surreal, terror dominating the scenes.

At the start of the story, the narration is short and tight which is probably to depict the anxiety the doctor feels. The strange nature of the horses and the groom are part of the doctor’s nightmare. Their appearance from the pigsty seems to be based on creatures of ancient mythology. These horses resembled the mythical creatures in that they carried the doctor to the patient in almost instantaneous swiftness like he is "deafened and blinded." When they return to the doctor’s place however their pace is "like old men".

All these lend to the nightmarish atmosphere that is prevalent in the story - when the groom and two horses crawl out of the pigsty door, when the horses watch and neigh through the bedroom windows of the ill and when the family removes the doctor’s clothes so he can lay beside the sickly patient.

The theme, which is the basic and universal ideas expressed in the story, revolves around various truths.  One probable theme of the story springs from a telling line when the doctor reflects on the people of the village. He says they are “Always demanding the impossible from the doctor. They have lost the old faith. The priest sits at home and tears his religious robes to pieces... But the doctor is supposed to achieve everything with his delicate surgeon’s hand.”

This is the dilemma which beset doctors even to this day. In the story, Kafka examines the importance of faith by reflecting on its absence as demonstrated by the dying young man. It is about faith vs medicine. Can physicians heal without faith? Is the spiritual aspect removed from the physical? Are physical ailments manifestation of metaphysical conflicts? The soul (mind)-body debate has echoed through the years and it is difficul to overlook the close correlation between the two. Kafka’s faith predisposes him to believe that ailments have spiritual struggles. 

Physicians must have moral sense to be able to heal and medicine should be an act of faith.

Another universal theme is man’s vulnerability to elements. We cannot battle nature and win. We are at the mercy of nature’s wrath. The same way that the doctor fights the elements and risks his life in the process. Nature kills the doctor’s horse, rots the patient’s wound and renders him helpless and eventually, kills the doctor.

Still another theme is man’s confrontation with obstacles. From start to finish, one can read in the story the unending battles the doctor wages against challenges and impediments. It is a hard fact in life that our challenges never end. Sometimes, we merely trade one stress for another, as evident in the fact that the doctor left Rosa at the mercy of the groom to be able to attend to a sick patient.

Man’s complacency is another universal theme. The doctor sadly permits these obstacles to overhwelm him – the groom, the family and the horses. By submitting to their manipulations he becomes part of the problem. He never consciously fights them until towards the end when it is too late. He should have asserted his rights, his beliefs and his decisions right from the very start to avoid complications.

Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” is a tragic tale of man’s failings. It offers no redemption, no consolation and no escape. We have to face our dilemmas squarely and assert ourselves like a real man. Perhaps, then, we would arrive at a safe place where we can perceive and eventually admit to ourselves our frailties as human beings.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

The themes of the play Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Love is the overriding theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play may be a comedy yet the idea it supports is serious. In the play Lysander said “Ay me, for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth….” Lysander utters these words to Hermia when she feels burdened by the obstacles to their love particularly when her father, forbid them to marry.

Lysander assures Hermia that the course of true love has never been easy. There will always be insurmountable difficulties to impede it. Lysander cites differences in age as one (“misgrafted in respect of years”) and difficulties caused by friends or “war, death, or sickness,” which make love appears “swift as a shadow, short as any dream” (I.i.137, I.i.142-144). Hermia counters by remaining positive all throughout their travails and believing that the difficulties are merely the price lovers pay for romantic bliss. The exploration of love’s difficulties is actually at the heart of the play. That, love’s trail was never paved.

Love’s difficulty is depicted in a number of instances in the play such as when Puck attempted to put love potion to Lysander and he ended up loving his fiancée Hermia’s best friend Helena. Helena, on the other hand, is in love with Hermia’s suitor Demetrius. But Demetrius loves Helena. The love triangle creates an imbalance with one Hermia having so many suitors while Helena has none.

All is well at the end, however, when Puck undoes his actions. Lysander loves Hermia again and Demetrius falls in love with Helena. A group wedding ensues.

Another theme of the play is fantasy or as the title suggests dreams. This dream or fantasy is represented by fairies in the forest and magic potions. The emphasis of this setting in the play prepares the readers’ mind to the fact that something “magical” is about to occur. This, of course, lends some sort of credibility to the story.

The fantasy part of the play also symbolizes loss of identities of the characters. This is best exemplified by Oberon and Titania who quarrels because of Oberon’s obsession to the Indian boy leaving Titania feeling unacknowledged.

It is this theme of lack of recognition of love that actually propels the story forward. This problem is not exclusive Oberon and Titania since other characters in the play undergo similar conflict. Demetrius ignores Helena’s love and Hermia also refuses to acknowledge Demetrius’ love for her.

That love causes loss of identity on the lovers is a certainty. Victor Kiernan, a Marxist scholar and historian said “It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes”.

The loss of identities is a mere blurring of distinction in the desire to pursue practical ties between the characters in order to cope with the daunting world in the dark forest as exemplified in the brief and strange relationship between Titania and Bottom the Ass.

Hamlet: Shakespeare’s Weakest Character

Hamlet is undoubtedly the most famous play penned by Shakespeare. It is a tragedy written around 1601 or 1602. The tragedy made Shakespeare very prominent in his time and even up to the present.

Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the hero of the play. Hamlet is the lead character of the play which is named after him. He is around years old at the time of the play. Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet. The present king who happens to be his mother’s new husband is his uncle Claudius.

At the start of the play, Hamlet is not a commanding figure. As a matter of fact, he is depicted as weak and vacillating. This may not be the best description of the leading character but Hamlet does appear to be confused at the start of the play.

Hamlet is a loner, bitter, and distrustful. He hates his uncle because he is aware of what his uncle did to his father. He dislikes his mother intensely because of her decision to marry his uncle right after his father passed away. Hamlet is actually an introspective young man who studied at the University of Wittenberg. He is indecisive and hesitant but sometimes can be impulsive in his decisions too.

His confusion becomes truly apparent when his father’s ghost appeared before him to tell him that Claudius poisoned him. Hamlet was at first passive after being told of the truth of the death by the ghost of his father.

Hamlet is very mysterious person. It is hard to fathom his character. You cam sense as you read the play that there is more to Hamlet that what meets the eye. This mystery is evident in the way he speaks. The reader always has a nagging feeling that he is implying something more than what he is actually saying. It could be that Hamlet, himself, is not aware of what he is doing but he comes across as such.

At the start of the play, we come to know that Hamlet’s stint at the University of Wittenberg is rudely interrupted by the painful news that his father passed away. This sudden turn of events could have turned Hamlet into the introspective and philosophical person that he is. He often ponders on complicated questions that do not lead to certain answers.

Hamlet’s strength of character is put to test when he learns that his uncle murdered his father. Hamlet, instead of acting on what he knew for certain, spends his time laboring on how to prove that his uncle is guilty before taking actions. The knowledge of the tyranny done to his father further fuels Hamlet’s quest for more introspection on the basic questions of life such as if there is truly an afterlife, if suicide is permissible, so on and so forth.

The most tangible step taken by Hamlet is to pretend to be a madman. This situation offers us a better glimpse of the man. Hamlet is a cautious young man who is reluctant to get into trouble. This is probably the first idea we can form of his character. But as the story progresses, we get to know another side of Hamlet’s character. That is, he can be an impulsive, irrational man too.

The irony of Hamlet is he spends a lot of time thinking over what course of action to take yet he is capable of acting impulsively at times. When he finally acts, he is fast and does not think much of his actions. This argument is best exemplified at the time when he stabs someone behind the curtain without even taking the time to know who the person is.

It turns out to be Polonius, the father of his intended Ophelia. His impulsiveness leads to the death of an innocent man. He is like a madman, sometimes irrational and wild in his speech and actions causing distress to other characters.

Hamlet does not only ponder his inner sentiments, he is also concerned with the state of Denmark and his family. His discontent goes beyond self-reproach. It is directed to the world, in general. He particularly dislikes his mother for marrying his uncle sooner than expected. He also turns down Ophelia, his love interest. He seems to distrust women in general. He is also constantly contemplating death even suicide and its consequences.

Hamlet’s weakness in character becomes very apparent in the scene where he quoted the most famous line in the English language in Act III, scene i (58) “To be or not to be.” In this scene, Hamlet was contemplating suicide and was weighing the consequences of his action.

He ponders “which is nobler? To suffer life, “[t]he slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” or to seek to end it? As Hamlet ponders on this question, he realized that it leads to more questions rather than answers. Hamlet restated his question by adding dreaming to sleep. He says that the dreams that may come in the sleep of death could be intimidating so much so that they “must give us pause.” To state it simply, Hamlet contemplates that the bigger question in suicide is what will happen to him in the afterlife if he chooses to commit suicide?

He answers his own question by saying that no one is wants to live except that “the dread of something after death” forces people to accept suffering rather than end their lives and find out later that they are in an even more desperate situation. Hamlet believes that the uncertainties of the afterlife caused extreme moral concerns that stop one from action: “conscience does make cowards of us all . . . thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

This scene is important because it reveals the quality of Hamlet’s mind. He is deeply passionate by nature. He could be impulsive, rash and thoughtless but at times could be logical, wise, reasonable and noble. Hamlet is like a clash of the new world and the old world. He tried to end his inner struggles by turning to religion to seek valid reasons to either commit suicide or find the strength to kill Claudius. When religion does not suffices, he uses philosophy by asking the immortal line “to be or not to be” to be able to come up with the right answer but still find the reasons insufficient.

The scene emphasizes the clash of ideals Hamlet holds and the harsh realities he faces. It is the old versus new values or faith versus doubt. These words emphasized Hamlet’s inner struggle to cope with two opposing forces which are preserving moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder.

The old or conservative values are represented by Hamlet’s bid to retain moral integrity, clear conscience, spiritual faith, wisdom, justice, nobility and rationality and will. The new or modern values are exemplified by apathy, cynicism, imprudence, disbelief, recklessness, vengeance and impulsiveness.

Another weakness that Hamlet exhibits is he seems totally self-absorbed to the point that he does not see the threats that plaque Denmark’s security and stability both from within and without. His focus on his woes seems to distract him from all other considerations outside his personal needs such as his duty as the future king of Denmark.

Ernest Johnson once said, “the dilemma of Hamlet the Prince and Man” is “to disentangle himself from the temptation to wreak justice for the wrong reasons and in evil passion, and to do what he must do at last for the pure sake of justice.… From that dilemma of wrong feelings and right actions, he ultimately emerges, solving the problem by attaining a proper state of mind.”

The universal appeal of Hamlet is based largely on the fact that we can all empathize with his struggles and ideals. Each of us, at one point or another, has to face the dilemma of making a crucial choice between two conflicting needs. Hamlet’s dilemma on how to deal a corrupt world at the same time preserving his moral integrity is a classic example of the choices every human being has to make. His conflicting thoughts, agitated reactions and unstable character may make him weak but at the same time perfectly human.