In this post I am going to share with the reader a critical analysis of Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor. A Country Doctor is a narrative account that presents professional, moral, and psychological aspects of human self. First I discuss the major themes of the story; it is followed by my reaction on the four challenges faced by the doctor and the frustrations accompanying these challenges; then I analyze important aspects of the story which can help analyze it as a nightmare.
The Central Themes in A Country Doctor
The main themes of the text are traceable in the light of at least two contemporary influences on Franz Kafka.
1.
The first one, his symbolic illustration of
Jewish folklore in his writings, in connection to life that was in then Europe (the
time of Kafka’s life);
2.
The other influence is Kafka’s predisposition
toward the growing popularity of the tradition of psychoanalysis (essentially Freudian)
and its troublesome interpretation of human sexuality and sexual tensions in
general life.
These two themes construct a complicated picture in the story that represents quite a few social and psychological predicaments shown to us around the short life account of the doctor, the central character of the story.
It is essentially these two influences (Jewish folklore and Freudian psychoanalysis) that produce several sub-themes in the narrative. For example, it would probably be very rational to follow Lorenz who states that the character of the doctor is Kafka’s masterful depiction of a mixture of “divergent models” that signify, sexual desire, manhood, civilization, and feebleness that one may feel while making just one straight decision or choice.
It is this situation that makes the doctor feel lost while he confronts his psychological predicaments.
One more important theme is the changeover that (seemingly) the Jew doctor feels between his conventional position and the strains of the human flesh. Therefore, when we see the doctor emerging as the hostile groom, this is in fact the vicious side of the doctor. His maid, Rosa, however, is a representation of the doctor’s sexual side – the back of his mind inflicted with sexual thoughts. The sick young man in the story may be a signification of the “Gentile stereotype of the Jew”. Similarly, when the Jew doctor just readily lies down besides the young patient, this intensifies the hidden tension between the conscious and unconscious thoughts present in the doctor’s mind.
The Challenges
There are quite a few challenges confronted by Kafka’s
central character in the story.
The First Challenge
Firstly, the doctor cannot find a horse on a stormy
night and he has to attend to a sick man in another village. As his horse
already died of overwork, he is frustrated both psychologically and
professionally. The psychological frustration comes with the fact that with his
horse dead, no one from the village is ready to lend him a horse and so the
professional frustration emerges out of this one. Perhaps, this can increase
his frustration because no one takes this doctor to be worthy of lending a
horse even when he wants to attend to a sick person.
The Second Challenge
Second challenge takes place as the groom comes out of
the pigsty followed by two horses “with thick steaming bodies” (¶ 1). As the groom offers him
the horses and leashes up his lustfulness for Rosa, the doctor is faced with
the challenge as weather to go to attend to the patient or to save his servant
Rosa from the blue-eyed beast. This challenge has sexual, physical, and moral
frustrations that remain with the doctor up to the end and we see him
completely haunted by these thoughts even when he checks up the sickly young
man.
The Third Challenge
The
doctor confronts the third challenge as he tries to examine the patient. This
challenge is a blend of the previous thoughts, his professional loyalty, the
vulnerable family of the patient, and the intrusion of the horses during his
examination. Thus, he is frustrated by how to find out the cure of the wound in
the boy’s body “in the region of the hip”, and how to satisfy the patient and
his family. This challenge is heightened by his failure to cure the boy’s wound
and because the patient’s family “demanded the impossible from” him – he is
frustrated since he finds no way to go about any of the ways.
The
Forth Challenge
The
forth challenge comes out of his thoughts of Rosa, perhaps being raped by the
groom; he has to save her by going back home. Here he is frustrated by the fact
that now on his journey back home the horses are not moving fast enough (¶ 1).
This entire scene from the showing up of the groom up to this phase is regarded
by some critics as the stage that Kafka set to portray the subtleties or human
psychology and how different forces within a human mind work in opposition to
each other (Marson & Leopld).
Conclusion
The
entire story can be fairly regarded as a nightmare because the story has events
taking place in a manner which is far from reality, and most have negative
connotations. For instance, the appearance of the groom and the horses from
pigsty is as odd as the doctor’s instant movement to the other village leaving
Rosa behind with the groom, and the way the patient’s wound is reflected: A
wound representing the psyche of the doctor, a rusty wound; additionally, the
story is beyond reality when we see how the patient’s family rips the doctor
off his clothes and the sloth with which he moves back home, naked (Potter).
