The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories by Franz Kafka
"The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories" by Franz Kafka is a compelling anthology that explores existential themes through a series of interconnected narratives written between 1914 and 1917. The collection, curated by Kafka himself, opens with a story featuring a horse in a law firm and concludes with "A Report to an Academy," where an ape reflects on human existence. Central to these stories is a critique of modern society, which Kafka suggests is ensnared in bureaucratic constraints that overshadow the natural human condition.
Kafka often intertwines autobiographical elements, revealing his own struggles with professional obligations and personal relationships, particularly reflecting on how these duties distract from his true passion for writing. The stories delve into themes of inertia, mortality, and the often dehumanizing nature of societal structures, questioning the benefits of civilization against the backdrop of potential regression into barbarism. Notably, characters in the collection face a sense of futility, yet some narratives convey a sense of purpose, particularly in the context of death.
Overall, Kafka's work serves as both a personal exploration and a broader commentary on the complexities of existence, leaving readers with profound questions about identity, purpose, and the sacrifices made in the pursuit of societal conformity.
On this Page
The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories by Franz Kafka
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Ein Landarzt, 1919 (English translation, 1945)
Type of work: Short stories
The Work
The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories is a collection of stories written between 1914 and 1917. The order of the stories was determined by Kafka, who decided to withdraw the fifteenth story, “Der Kübelreiter” (“The Bucket Rider”), before publication.
The questions addressed in the stories are existential. Human society is so far removed from the natural state that it at times seems to have become lost in its own rules and bureaucracy. Old institutions no longer command respect and take up too much precious time. Behind these general observations, which were certainly true in the declining days of the Habsburg monarchy, there is in Kafka’s works always the autobiographical element, the realization that his writing was the most important thing in his life, and the resentment of his professional obligations as a lawyer and of his fiancé Bauer as diversions from his main objective.
Kafka’s story sequence establishes a framework whereby the collection opens with a story of a horse in a law firm and ends with one in which an ape delivers “Ein Bericht für eine Akademie” (“A Report to an Academy”). This framework operates to strip away any veneer of respect one may still entertain for these institutions, and, in a masterful kind of “reverse anthropomorphism,” it compares humans unfavorably with animals. What is done to animals is not to their benefit. The female chimpanzee has “the insane look of the half-broken animal in her eye.” By extension, Kafka seems to be questioning the benefit of what humankind is doing to itself, of the jobs that keep people occupied through the best years of their lives, causing them to conform to hierarchical constructs that deny and suppress their inner selves.
Yet the thought of usurping civilization’s rigorous and often dehumanizing controls and structures gives rise to the fear of a relapse into barbarianism. “Ein altes Blatt” (“An Old Manuscript”) describes what happened when the nomads assumed power. “Schakale and Araber” (“Jackals and Arabs”) cleverly portrays the logical fallacies inherent in the plans for most uprisings, and it identifies the real problem as the nature of the beast rather than the situation.
Some of the stories portray characters overcome by inertia, while others deal with the inability to overcome mortality. Offsetting these, however, are the two death stories that seem, ironically, infused with energy and a sense of purpose. In “Ein Brudermord” (“A Fratricide”), the man who is killed is the one who is a conscientious office worker. Is Kafka wishfully clearing his time-consuming professional life out of the way? In as immediate a style, “Ein Traum” (“A Dream”) portrays the burial alive of Josef K., who is also the protagonist in Kafka’s novel The Trial. While Josef is alive, the artist engraving the tomb has difficulty writing, but as soon as Josef is wafted down into a great hole, his own name races across the tombstone “in great flourishes.” An autobiographical reading of these stories is that Kafka’s involvement in his own life lacks authenticity for him and that aspects of his self need to be excised. The indication of where he belongs is given in the brilliant short piece “The Bucket Rider.” In it, a freezing man comes to the realization that there is no help for him in this world, and he ascends by supernatural means into the “regions of the ice mountains.” This image is a metaphysical removal from the world.
Kafka withdrew “The Bucket Rider” from the collection, perhaps because its message was more elaborately stated in the title story, “The Country Doctor.” In this story, the most beautiful and most fantastic of all, Kafka symbolically discards both the profession and the fiancé. The doctor loses his practice and his maid. Instead, he is transported by supernatural means to the bedside of a sick boy, who has a blossom in his side, an unsightly wound that he brought into the world as his only dowry and of which he will die. That is the gift of the artist, which is of consuming magnificence, transporting its owner into the world of the spirit.
Bibliography
Begley, Louis. The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka—A Biographical Essay. New York: Atlas, 2008.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005.
Bridgwater, Patrick. Kafka’s Novels: An Interpretation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003.
Corngold, Stanley. The Commentators’ Despair: The Interpretation of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1973.
Corngold, Stanley. Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Corngold, Stanley. Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Gilman, Sander L. Franz Kafka. London: Reaktion Books, 2005.
Heller, Erich. Franz Kafka. New York: Viking Press, 1974.
Marson, Eric. Kafka’s “Trial”: The Case Against Josef K. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975.
Rolleston, James. Kafka’s Narrative Theater. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974.
Rolleston, James, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Trial.” Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
Spann, Meno. Franz Kafka. Boston: Twayne, 1976.
Stach, Reiner. Kafka: The Decisive Years. Translated from the German by Shelley Frisch. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005.