Julia Gordon-Bramer

wordgirl@nighttimes.com
314.517.0158
1,477 words

EASY WORDS, DOUBLED MEANINGS

An Analysis of “A Country Doctor,” a short story by Franz Kafka
© 2011 Julia Gordon-Bramer

In less than five pages, Franz Kafka’s symbolic short story, “A Country Doctor” has been

well-known reading in college lit classes for decades. That doesn’t make it any easier to

find one clear interpretation to this oddly compelling story. It is a first-person narrative

of a country doctor, journeying through a snowstorm, to help a gravely ill patient. Yet

this journey is fraught with contradiction, opposites, and strange turns from the very

beginning.

“A Country Doctor” reads like a loose juxtaposition of dream-scenes, with a

suspended logic, and little sense of time and space. The reasons for actions are vague or

non-existent, particulars are obscured, and plot progress seems to be interrupted without

motivation or provocation. Before writing this off as a meaningless hodgepodge,

however, the story is also a fascinating study of Freudian symbolism, pairings and polar

opposites.

FREUDIAN SYMBOLISM

As educated, notable men in their German community, author Franz Kafka and Sigmund

Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, knew each other personally. Freud’s ideas and

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images are strongly woven through a great deal of Kafka’s work, and this story is no

exception.

Extremely Freudian in nature, “A Country Doctor” deals with the personal and

abstract concepts of ambivalence, sexual repression, the sublimation of libido into

professional aims, and the splitting off of parts of oneself into distinct and different

personas. It is a study of Justice and Reason, as they yearn to balance and make sense in a

senseless world.

The opening sentence in this short story, “I was in great perplexity,” in the

original German translation most likely holds much of Kafka’s intent. Kafka wrote this

as, “Ich war in grosser verlegenheit.”1 The German word, verlegenheit, is a treasure; it

is loaded with three different meanings or allusions2, each pointing to a distinctly

different direction of interpretation. Franz Kafka’s real genius here is that a clear and

definite case can be built for all perspectives:

Verlegenheit can be defined as a noun, meaning ‘dilemma’ or ‘conflict.’ Despite

all sorts of troubles, the Country Doctor must tame evil impulses and complete the task at

hand. As an adjective, it means ‘shame’ or ‘embarrassment,’ and he sees his share of it,

being unable to protect Rose, unable to perform his duty, and ultimately, he is ashamed of

being unable to heal the boy and humiliated, as he is stripped naked. As a verb,

verlegenheit means ‘to misplace or lose, due to distraction.’ His distraction seems to be

his ultimate downfall. Sigmund Freud believed that shame and embarrassment were what

prevented man from revealing sexually intimate fantasies and daydreams. He also

believed that misplacing objects was related to repression of significant memories or

1
Logos Library – Logos Translations multilingual library
2
www.frasi.net/dizionari/tedesco-inglese/default.asp?vocabolo=verlegenheit

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urges. The alchemy of these three meanings lends a balance and unfolding to “The

Country Doctor”.

In the first scene, the doctor calls his dilemma “perplexity,” but he appears to

handle it with a strange, Freudian ambivalence.

We are not told why the doctor’s own horses are dead at the beginning of this

story, but they may be symbolic for the impotence and age of the Country Doctor as he

advances in life. More symbolism abounds when the doctor thoughtlessly

(unconsciously) kicks open the pig sty door with Rose beside him. From this Freudian

perspective, Rose appears to have been the catalyst to opening up the doctor’s dark,

subconscious, primal urges.

The large, strong horses appear “found” in the Country Doctor’s time of need,

from within his own house, his mind. They allow the doctor to go and save the patient in

this time of crisis, yet in doing so, he knows that Rose’s fate is “inescapable” and the

uncontrollable groomsman at his house will rape her. The Country Doctor is now in the

most difficult situation; one of betraying himself and Rose, in order to do his job.

Despite his guilt, the doctor visits the boy patient, who lies in bed, begging to die.

Oddly, the doctor finds him completely well. The doctor then realizes that Rose has been

sacrificed to the groom for nothing, and he is compelled to leave at once to rescue her.

Somehow, the family of the boy manages to take off the doctor’s coat so that he must

stay (Freud would call this a “symptomatic act,” to do something counter to what the

conscious mind would choose).

As things progress, the doctor himself is undressed and sharing a bed—a

displaced scenario for what he wants with Rose. Here, the doctor says a curious thing:

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“to write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.”

This might be the motto for the entire story: There are easy words, but the complexities

and dichotomies within a person and his or her actions are a different matter entirely.

Ultimately, man is helpless to fight his true nature. The unconscious mind is a bit of a

Hotel California, where one can check in anytime, but is never able to leave.3

This is not the end of the story, however. This nightmare switches tracks, and the

sister of the boy holds up a bloody towel, proving that the boy is, in fact, ill. At this

moment, the doctor discovers the wound, now horribly open like a “surface mine to

daylight,” and full of wiggling fat worms. This time, the boy begs to be saved. But now,

the family has stripped the doctor of his clothes altogether and laid him in the sick boy’s

bed! The doctor consoles the boy, who is irritated with the doctor for not healing him and

also for having to share his bed.

Finally, the doctor manages to leave the patient’s home, hurrying to get back and

save Rose. The horses are out of control, and he is barely into the carriage when they take

off. Unable to get his fur coat on in time, it is caught on a hook and dragging behind the

carriage, doing him no good in the cold winter storm, exposing him to the elements. The

reader is left with an unresolved sense of despair for the doctor, and the feeling that he

will never return home.

COMPOSITION

The composition of “A Country Doctor” also supports Freudian ideas, including using

the first person narrative tone to showcase the ego as a kind of centerpiece. The entire

3
The Eagles, Hotel California, © 1976 Asylum Records.

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story is written in the present tense, so that the reader’s experience is one of living each

and every strange and discordant moment.

Most notably, the composition of “A Country Doctor” is full of pairings and polar

opposites:

 When the Doctor’s horses are dead, he mysteriously finds two impressive horses
in his unused pig sty. These two horses are called “Brother,” and “Sister.”

 The evil horse groomer bites his maid Rose on the cheek and leaves a mark of two
rows of teeth.

 The patient’s wound is done with two strikes of an ax.

 There are two carriage rides; one fast, one slow.

 There are two examinations of the patient; one where the doctor finds nothing
wrong, and one where the doctor discovers that the patient is beyond help.

 There are two pleas from the patient; one asking to die, and one asking to live.

 There are two scenes of breaking down doors. One when the doctor breaks into
the pig sty; the other when the groom breaks into the house to attack Rose.

 There are two songs by the children in the village; one to kill the doctor, and one
to praise him.

 The horses’ heads watch through two open windows in the patient’s room.

 There are only two locations in the story; the doctor’s home and the patient’s
home. The space where the doctor travels between the two locations seems to be
outside of space and time.

Others pairings exist, if we consider dual natures. Looking at this tale with a Jungian

perspective, the Doctor and the Groom may be the same being with opposite natures:

Doctor Groom

Old Young

Tired Energetic

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 Good Evil

Weak Strong

Civilized Animal (with his sexual urges and

initially, found on all fours)

Protects Rose Molests/assaults Rose

Lived with Rose, never noticing her Only notices Rose

In books such as J.M. Coetzee’s Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews

[Harvard University Press, 2007], Kafka’s double-image idea is explored in greater

detail. We don’t know whether Franz Kafka used this technique in “A Country Doctor”

and other works to reinforce a point, to play with other thematic possibilities, create

concrete illustrations for Freud and Jung’s ideas, or just to have a little fun confounding

the reader. He juggled primal nature with civility; tension with peace; fatherly love with

shameful lust; and the physical need to rest with that push to serve the world. It is all of

these suits which we must wear in life; and double or nothing says Kafka meant it in

every way.