Some Stray Observations on Kafka's "The Country Doctor"

This post supports the study of the Module 2, Short Fiction, of the Core Course “Modes of Fiction”, assigned for the Semester 3 students of the MA English programme at CMS College. 

YouTube Movie: https://youtu.be/ZDjmW-gIsKs

“… your mistake is that you have no perspective.” – this is a statement in “The Country Doctor”. This is an essence of the theory highlighted by Kafka: people are confused when perspectives vanish. Perspectives come from our dependence on ideas and concepts, religion and history. A true and authentic living is beyond perspectives.

 Postmodernism

The term originated in in the late 19^th century. But it developed in the mid 20^th c, marking a departure from modernism. Modernism concentrated on the objective and the rational. Postmodernism employs an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what is considered as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism.

Existentialism

Bringing in meaning for life rests in the individual, and not in social patterns. This living is to be seen as living “authentically”. When you fail to give this meaning to life, when you can’t live passionately/ sincerely (“authentically”), you don’t live; you just exist. Existentialism studies this disoriented man. Philosophical thinking begins with the human subject. Not just a thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. When you can’t be all these, you don’t live. You just exist. 8i

Franz Kafka

(3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Kafka strongly influenced genres such as existentialism. Most of his works, such as "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Prozess (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle), are filled with the themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality, parent–child conflict, characters on a terrifying quest, labyrinths of bureaucracy, and mystical transformations.

Kafkaisque

Eponym: named after a particular person or group.

A term indicating a characteristic feature in the narrative style of Kafka. It speaks of situations where the individual is powerless: not able to comprehend, or control what is happening. “Nightmarish/ bizarre/ illogical”

 Is this story an example of Magic realism?

Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. Magical realism is a part of the realism genre of fiction.

Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world.

This work, after the first few sentences, (I was in great difficulty…. I kicked my foot against the cracked door of the pig sty which had not been used for years) shifts to the unreal, and moves on that note till the end. So, it is more than magic realism. More of surrealistic elements: attempts to bridge together reality and the imagination. Surrealists seek to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by creating unreal or bizarre stories full of juxtapositions.

What are the major themes in the story? How is existentialism reflected in the story?

The usual themes in Kafka are:

Alienation      

Physical and psychological brutality 

characters on a terrifying quest                     

mystical transformations

parent-child conflict   

labyrinths of bureaucracy

The first four are reflected in the story. We need to go through the definitions of existentialism mentioned above, and try to find reflections of this within the story.

Alienation: the doctor removed, out of his will, from his home. He cannot comprehend the way the alarm came to him. The way he was forced to travel, the talk with the patient, the treatment he faces in their home: all these indicate physical or psychological brutality. The element of quest is seen in the doctor’s attempts to travel amidst adversities, and his attempts to find out what really ails the patient. The appearance of the groom and the horses, the wound which was not seen earlier, and the way the horses behave throughout are all situations of mystical transformations.

The bizarre behaviour of the ill young man’s family: Why did the people make the doctor to be in bed with the patient? Is it their notion that the patient will be cured if he is laid with the doctor or is it that they wanted to kill him because he lied at first? Is there any particular sense at all for that, or just a nightmare which can never be explained?

 Had it been a conventional story, we would have sought for explanations. In this story, all that happens at the patient’s house are to be seen in the existentialist mode: they drag him into the house. The patient’s shift in desires: wants to live/ wants to die; the family cannot point out the wound, which seems to be non-existent upon the first examination; the choir, and the climactic point where they drag the doctor to be on bed with the patient.

Here, we are dealing with a story where the plot is not traditional, and the question of existence is evident.

The doctor is forced to live with the patient. He escaped. This explains, in a way, what existentialism is! Someone is forced to do things out of will. But, the whole concept balances on the next idea: “he escaped”. In a conventional story, this escape is the turning point. Out of his own power, or with help of others, someone escapes, and that is the turn of fortune. But here, the escape itself is in the flow of fate: the doctor has little control over it. His nakedness may be seen as an indicator of this.

In existential philosophy, a person’s life depends upon his own choices and  experiences.

 With reference to the movie, what is the significance of the two small human figures that occasionally pop up in the video?

Yes, especially in visual representations, there is a tendency to present matters in a non conventional way in existentialist literature. Here, in the movie, the doctor’s self is presented in two ways: the appearance of the two puny figures, and also voices (in harmony). Some instances:

1.         Soliloquy: when the doctor speaks about his dead horse.

2.         I don’t know where this man comes from…

3.         Yes in such cases the gods do help…

4.         I have no intention of improving the world

5.         But this kind of thing is familiar to me now.

6.         Regardless I am thinking of a fleeting, expedient reason…

7.         Poor young man, there is no helping you

8.         Now it is time to think of my escape

 Does this story discuss absurdity as a feature?

Absurdity is a significant element in existentialism.

The philosophical term “Absurd” or “Absurdism”, as Wikipedia explains it, is the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe.

The doctor, the priest (referred to in the words of the doctor), Rosa: all these are trying to live a life of meaning. But the universe around them appear irrational, and hence they fail to live.

 Was it a nightmare? Why did the horse slow down at the end? Is that an unwrapping of Kafka's own inner mind? Kafka rode the horse through the faces of people who found frozen or dead in winter, in this video. Any significance to that part?

Was it a nightmare? Kafka leaves us in doubt. If the alarm was a false one, then how can we explain the presence of an ill man in the very house the doctor knew? (He knew the place he had to visit; it is only the quick movement of the horses and their reaching the destination that are beyond logical explanation.)

The horses’ slowing down at the end: a contrast. The existentialist man is thrown out of his normal life when he loses control of situations. But now, he is returning to his own life, which has lost its vigour and vitality. He has lost his practice. He fails to comprehend what has happened.

The doctors faces absurd situations that pull him along and finally doom him. That is the catastrophic note in existentialism: the character fails to save himself.

The movie, which depends on the story, has brought in elements that are not mentioned in the story. (One such case is mentioned earlier: the appearance of two small figures who seem to be loudspeakers of the doctor’s mind). Interpretations are left to the audience.

Sense of immediacy; shift in tense forms

If you notice the tense forms, it is interesting. The story starts in the past tense: “I was in great difficulty”. Then, from the point Rosa is attacked, it is in the present. But this is the point when the doctor loses control of situations.

The story is also exciting because of its fragmentary character, a symptom of Kafka's searching mind, reflected here in an almost stammering rhythm.

 What led Kafka to write his works in such a distored manner?

For one thing, Kafka’s works are experiments of existentialism. Along with that, his own life – or his own fears and anxieties – reflect in his stories. His deteriorating health, and problems reflecting from his second engagement to a lady named Felice Bauer find reflection here. He was diagnosed of tuberculosis, and he has observed that he had predicted this disease himself: his anticipation occurred in the wound of the sick boy. The misunderstanding between the physician and the patient is a reflection of the equally barren relationship between the old Kafka and the young Kafka. Knowing to what extremes Kafka tends to carry the art of name-giving, it is easy to see that the servant girl's name, Rose, is by no means accidental: "rosered" is the color of the meticulously described wound, and the color rose, as well as the flower, is an age-old symbol of love in its manifold facets. There is no need to insist on one specific meaning of the word, if only because Kafka himself does not. The meaning is clear, considering that December 1917, the year after he wrote "A Country Doctor," brought Kafka's final separation from Felice, his "rose" in both senses of the word.

The groom represents Kafka's sometimes almost obsessive fear of a sexually superior rival. On this subject, he wrote that Felice did not stay alone and that someone else got close to her who did not have the problems which he, Kafka, had to face. In the story, the groom certainly gets to Rose easily, and if she says "no," she nevertheless runs into the house fully aware of her fate.

The word 'groom' used in the story does that mean only one who keeps the horse or something more to it? Why it is used here?

We are not sure of the exact word used in the original German. Groom is a word in English, and it generally means a person who looks after horses and the like.