A Country Doctor is a short story published in 1919 by the famed Franz Kafka, and, along with other works published alongside it in the same year (contained in Franz Kafka: Collected Stories), portray a picture of the absurdity and potential utter confusion of existence. A Country Doctor and the other short stories alongside it contain strong elements of surrealism and absurdism, which makes them all the more compelling.
Franz Kafka: Collected Stories begins with The New Advocate, describing a man named Dr. Bucephalus, who had “little in his appearance to remind you that he was once Alexander of Macedon’s battle charger” (163). It is then mentioned that Alexander the Great was no more, and that “There are plenty of men who know how to murder people; the skill needed to reach over a banqueting table and pink a friend with a lance is not lacking” (163). It is then mentioned that Dr. Bucephalus now spent his time reading law books, since he knew from his own experience that the conquest of the entire world was impossible, considering that even in Alexander the Great’s prime, there was still more to conquer: there is always more land beyond one’s reach. Or as Kafka puts it, “the gates of India were beyond reach, yet the King’s sword pointed the way to them. Today the gates have receded to remoter and loftier places” (163).
The next story is A Country Doctor, and it is told from the first person point of view, though in a detached manner. The setting is immediately established as being abnormal, as the country doctor stated that it was perplexing, as he was unexpectedly told that he had to see a seriously ill patient “waiting for me in a village ten miles off” while “a thick blizzard of snow filled all the wide spaces between him and me” (164). The doctor then remarks that fate was ironic, as while his horse was alive the day before, it had died during the night, “worn out by the fatigues of this icy winter; my servant girl was now running around the village trying to borrow a horse; but it was hopeless, I knew it, and I stood there forlornly” (164). Right as he gave up hope, a strange man came onto his property on a carriage with two horses, “”enormous creatures with powerful flanks,” offering them to him to use (164). The doctor was grateful, but then was shocked as the man who had just offered him horses bit the cheek of his servant girl. He told him that he was a brute and threatened to flog him, but then remembered that the man was a stranger who had helped him. The man then notified the country doctor that he wouldn’t be coming along with him, but would stay with the servant girl, whose name happened to be Rose. Rose, upon hearing the news, shrieked and fled into the house “with a justified presentiment that her fate was inescapable,” proceeding to lock herself in the house.
The country doctor then told the stranger that he was not going to accept the use of his horses in exchange for Rose’s safety, but the stranger then clapped his hands, causing the horses to move with inhuman speed. As the horses left, the country doctor could hear the groom breaking into the house to get to Rose. The journey, which was supposed to be long, was very short, as the horses arrived there instantaneously. The country doctor then heard his patient’s family, noted in their ecstatic behavior. The country doctor entered the house and saw the patient who seemed to be fine, as while he was gaunt, he was “without any fever, not cold, not warm, with vacant eyes, without a shirt” (166). His patient then “threw his arms around my neck, and whispered in my ear: ‘Doctor, let me die’” (166). The country doctor then looked at his horses, discovering that they seemed to be eyeing his patient. He then thought about his profession, finding it ironic that people would value his judgement so much while he was a human being like everyone else. Just as he was about to leave, thinking that the patient was fine, he saw the boy’s mother, “apparently disappointed in me,” and the boy’s sister, who was “fluttering a blood-soaked towel” (167). Coming to the realization that the boy was sick, he noted that he was seriously injured and was suffering from an infection: “In his right side, near the hip, was an open wound as big as the palm of my hand. Rose-red, in many variations of shade, dark in the hollows, lighter at the edges, softly granulated, with irregular clots of blood, open as a surface mine to the daylight … But on a closer inspection there was another complication … Worms, as thick and as long as my little finger, themselves rose-red and blood-spotted as well, were wriggling from their fastness in the interior of the wound toward the light, with small white heads and many little legs” (167-8). After examining the wound, the country doctor noted that his patient was past saving, and states that his wound is a blossom of death. He then noticed that his patient’s family were feeling better as they watched the doctor at work, making him think that people in his district were “Always expecting the impossible from the doctor” (168). The boy then asked the country doctor to save his life, a clear contradiction of what he supposedly said before.
The country doctor was then made by the family to strip himself and to sleep next to the boy to take care of him. During the night, he had an imaginary conversation with himself, imagining that his patient was telling him that he wasn’t even a proper doctor and didn't deserve to be consulted, for he was blown into his house by lucky chance, not by careful preparation. The country doctor even imagined his patient complaining about how he was ruining his final moments: “‘Instead of helping me, you’re cramping me on my deathbed. What I’d like best is to scratch your eyes out’” (169). His patient then remarked ironically that the only thing he brought into the world was his terrible wound, and that his life was utterly meaningless. The country doctor attempted to provide his patient with some hope, telling him that even though he was wounded, it could have been much worse, as he has seen various cases of illness and injury, which gives him the authority to tell him that he has a likelihood of recovery. His patient, somewhat pacified, fell asleep. The country doctor then utilized the opportunity to escape, showing the audience that he views himself as a victim of fate without any say in the matter: “my flourishing practice is done for; my successor is robbing me, but in vain, for he cannot take my place; in my house the disgusting groom is raging; Rose is his victim … Naked, exposed to the frost of this most unhappy of ages, with an earthly vehicle, unearthly horses, old man that I am, I wander astray” (170).
Another one of the stories included in the section designated for A Country Doctor is Before the Law, which explores a central theme of Kafka’s many works (including The Trial and The Castle), that of a massive bureaucratic structure which is virtually endless in its proceedings. The story reads like a parable, and is told in the style of a narration. Kafka describes that “Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law” (173). The doorkeeper tells the man that the law is not available at the moment, but might be available later. The man looks into the doorway to catch a glimpse of the interior, and the doorkeeper laughs, telling him that he can go inside if he wishes, but should know that there are many more doorkeepers in the interior who are more menacing than him: “From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him’” (174). Deciding to wait, the man decides to sit on a stool next to the door. He waits there for many years, making “many attempts to be admitted,” only to weary “the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet” (174). The man, growing increasingly impatient, attempts to bribe the doorkeeper by giving him all his possessions, but is still denied entry to the law. Over many years, the man forgets about the other supposed doorkeepers, only cursing the one in front of him: “He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeepers’ mind” (174). Eventually, the man, old and about to die, asks the doorkeeper why he was the only person to wait for access to the law for all those years. The doorkeeper, seeing that he was dying, “roars in his ear: ‘No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it’” (175).
The next story, Jackals and Arabs, involves a traveller crossing the desert with an Arab caravan who is approached by jackals during the night. The jackals tell the narrator that they know that he has come from the North, which makes him more intelligent than his Arab companions: “‘Not a spark of intelligence, let me tell you, can be struck from their cold arrogance. They kill animals for food, and carrion they despise’” (176). The jackals then state that there is a major enmity between them and the Arabs, but they can’t kill them because they have guns, not to mention that if they slay them they will be no better than they are. They then propose for the narrator to kill the Arabs with a scissor. They then told the narrator that their ancestors prophesied his coming, and that they stated that he would come to the desert to cleanse the natural world of Arabs: “‘You are exactly the man whom our ancestors foretold as born to do it. We want to be troubled no more by Arabs; room to breathe; a skyline cleansed of them; no more bleating of sheep knifed by an Arab; every beast to die a natural death; no interference till we have drained the carcass empty and picked its bones clean. Cleanliness, nothing but cleanliness is what we want’ - and now they were all lamenting and sobbing … ‘And so, sir, and so, dear sir, by means of your all-powerful hands slit their throats through with these scissors!’” (177-8).
At that moment “a jackal came trotting up with a small pair of sewing scissors, covered with ancient rust, dangling from an eyetooth” (178). Before the narrator could respond, it became apparent that the Arabs were indeed awake and listening to the whole conversation, and the leader of the caravan flailed his whip, causing the hyenas to hastily retreat. He then tells the narrator that the jackals have existed ever since the Arabs entered the desert, and “‘so long as Arabs exist, that pair of scissors goes wandering through the desert and will wander with us to the end of our days’” (178). He then describes how only European men are offered it, and that the jackals view every European man as their potential savior: “‘They have the most lunatic hopes, these beasts; they’re just fools, utter fools’” (178). The leader of the caravan then noted that a camel died the previous night, and was brought with them to give to the jackals. The moment the camel was dumped in front of the jackals, they forgot their supposed hatred with the Arabs and began eating the camel: “In a trice they were all on top of the carcass, laboring in common, piled mountain-high” (178).
The Next Village is the shortest tale in the series; consequently, it can be quoted in its entirety: “My grandfather used to say: ‘Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that - not to mention accidents - even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey’” (182). This quote captures the theme of existential dread pretty well, as there is truly no guarantee of tomorrow, for the axe of time remains always above our necks, fully capable of coming down at any moment. And indeed, it eventually will, sooner or later.
The next story, An Imperial Message, begins with the declaration that the emperor has sent a message to you, an “insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun,” and to you only (182). The message he wants to send to you is of the greatest importance to him, so important that he had his royal messenger recite it back to him before leaving the palace. Despite the fact that the emperor is a powerful man, and the messenger is “a powerful, an indefatigable man,” it takes an eternity for the message to reach you, as “the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end” (182-3). Kafka then proceeds to narrate the immense scale of bureaucratic procedure: “If he could reach the open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you would hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. But instead how vainly does he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained” (183). This story, like Before the Law, is meant to illustrate that the bureaucratic process serves no one, not even those in charge.
In another story, The Cares of a Family Man, the tale of Odradek is seen. Odradek is an inanimate object, not biological in origin, yet somehow conscious. Kafka writes that “At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for spread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it … broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs” (184). Odradek is then described as being extremely nimble, being able to avoid being caught. It is also somewhat intelligent, as it can answer questions, as seen in how it replied that it lived in “‘No fixed abode’” when it was questioned about where it lived (184). Odradek is described as living in the house of the family man mentioned in the title of the short story, and even if he does disappear for months, he would always return to his house. Odradek, when laughing, does it in an abnormal fashion, as it has “no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves” (184). The family man doesn’t like Odradek, for he knows nothing about it, including its lifespan, if it has any. He admits that Odradek has harmed no one to his knowledge so far, but he finds it hard to accept that he will “always be rolling down the stairs, with ends of thread trailing after him, right before the feet of my children, and my children’s children”; Odradek will survive the narrator (184-5).
Josef K. is the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial, but he also makes a debut in the short story A Dream. In A Dream, K. was dreaming that he went into a graveyard, where an artist was inscribing a name on a tombstone. The artist, “With an astonishing turn of skill,” “managed to produce golden letters from his ordinary pencil,” writing “HERE LIES - Every letter was clear and beautifully made, deeply incised and of the purest gold” (193). K. was deeply impressed with the artist’s craftsmanship, but when the artist tried to continue writing, he found himself mysteriously disabled: “And in fact the man turned again to continue writing, but he could not go on, something was hindering him, het let the pencil sink and once more turned toward K. This time K. looked back at him and noted that he was deeply embarrassed and yet unable to explain himself” (193). K., heartbroken that the artist couldn’t continue to write on the tombstone, noticed that the only letter of the name the artist inscribed so far was a “J.” K. recognizes this as his tombstone, and when the artist “stamped angrily on the grave mound with one foot so that the soil all around flew up in the air,” K. began throwing the soil aside, coming to discover that the ground over the grave was a decoy, constructed only to mask the vast abyss under the tombstone. K. then sank into it, “wafted onto his back by a gentle current. And while he was already being received into impenetrable depths, his head was still straining upwards on his neck, his own name raced across the stone above him in great flourishes” (194). K., amazed at what was happening, then woke from the dream to the nightmare which was (or will become) his life, as detailed in The Trial.
In the last story in the anthology, The Bucket Rider, Kafka creates a bleak portrayal of reality. In the story, a person living in poverty has run out of coal, noting that “Coal all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold; the room freezing; the trees outside the window rigid, covered with rime; the sky a silver shield against anyone who looks for help from it. I must have coal; I cannot freeze to death; behind me is the pitiless stove, before me the pitiless sky, so I must ride out between them and on my journey seek aid from the coaldealer” (205). When he reached the house of the coaldealer, he cried in a loud voice that he needs to borrow only a little bit of coal, and that he would pay him back at his earliest convenience. Unfortunately for him, the coaldealer was rather hard of hearing, and relied on his wife, a selfish and cruel woman, to serve as his ears. His wife, hearing that a person in poverty was asking for help, told the coaldealer that no one was outside, even after the narrator yelled that he was a loyal customer. The narrator then became so desperate that he began to cry, and as the tears rolled down his face, they became frozen. He implored the coaldealer to give him only “‘a shovelful; and if you give me more it’ll make me so happy that I won’t know what to do. All the other customers are provided for. Oh, if I could only hear the coal clattering into the bucket!’” (206). The coaldealer, believing he heard someone, moved to see the narrator, but was restrained by his wife, who told him to remember that he was suffering from fits of coughing during the night. He assents, and the narrator begs the woman, “‘Frau Coaldealer,’” to give him some coal - “‘One shovelful of the worst you have’” (206). He tells her that he will pay it in full in the future, and Kafka describes that the phrase “‘not just now’” had a tremendous effect on the woman, causing her to turn away from the narrator. When the coaldealer asked what the narrator wanted, his wife lied, saying that no one was outside. She sees no evil and hears no evil - “She sees nothing and hears nothing, but all the same she loosens her apron strings and waves her apron to waft me away. She succeeds, unluckily” (207). The narrator, enraged at being deprived of the necessities for survival, yells at her as she retreats back into her shop in a manner “half-contemptuous, half-reassured” (207). The narrator then went “into the regions of the ice mountains” and was lost forevermore, implying that he might have frozen to death.
Personal thoughts:
A Country Doctor and Franz Kafka’s other short stories are truly great reads, for they can be interpreted in a myriad of ways due to their surrealist and sporadic nature. For instance, is the country doctor suffering from a mental illness? Does Odradek actually exist, or is he the literal, omnipresent representation of death for the family man, accompanying him and his family through this life, his presence being a constant reminder of his mortality? Can Jackals and Arabs be read as a polemic mocking national, political, social, and religious rivalries? Does the narrator of The Bucket Rider freeze to death at the end, or does he leave human civilization? Can The Bucket Rider be read as a critique of capitalism and greed? Regardless, these stories are to be experienced, not merely read, as Kafka’s imagination and scope are truly staggering. I didn't summarize every story Kafka published in 1919, as there are others which I left out, such as Eleven Sons and A Fratricide. Those stories are also worth reading, and my not summarizing them is not indicative of their quality whatsoever. I highly recommend A Country Doctor and Kafka’s other short stories for people interested in surrealism, implicit suggestions, and speculation of humanity’s place in reality.
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