Thursday, October 4, 2007
The Use of Force
This story really reminds me of the exorcist, there were so many things that were so similar. However, the story starts out with a doctor making a house visit to a family, who's daughter may have contracted diphtheria. The parents are worried both for their child's health and her reaction towards the doctor. When the doctor first comes in he finds the girl sitting on her father's lap which represents protection. As much as the father wanted to find out what was wrong with his daughter he was still torn between should I help by hurting her or please her by letting her suffer, which was a very hard decision for him because no parent wants to see their child in pain. But being the parent whom he is, he chose to help her even though there was going to be pain for his little girl. The girl did not cooperate at all with the doctor, it took both her parents and the doctor to detain her. There was something about this particular doctor or doctor's in general she disliked. However I found the doctor to be sought of weird myself. It seemed like the challenge he was receiving from the girl was exciting him and made him try harder, when she tried to fight back he would use more force and when he finally got a hold of inside her mouth he felt a good feeling and a sense of happiness. He had finally captured his battle. In my eyes I found the doctor also to be a little sick himself.
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2 comments:
I have to aggree with you, the under the girl seem to fight back, the more of a challege it was for him to try under and get her mount open. What began as a life or death situation became a personal battle between patien and doctor or one abusing their authority figure. That being said we must bear in might the innitial reason that the doctor was there to see the child, as well as the disease that was spreading in school. So yes it became personal to him, but in the same note it had to get done to secure the child's health. This it doesn't make it right.
You're onto someting in the last couple of sentences--the strangeness, or extraordinariness of the doctor's reactions may lead to some interesting discussion of the doctor-patient relationship, but beyond that, questions of power, authority, cultural roles v. human nature, etc. think about what the various characters represent.
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