Kafka was a genius in writing absurd novels. What he wanted to express was to satirize the absurd society at that time by writing out of touch with reality and ideal, as well as his own helplessness for not being able to choose and control fate as a human being. The following is an interpretation from the three aspects of the maid’s fate, the patient’s fate and the doctor’s fate in the Country Doctor. If we’re the country doctor, how do we decide whose fate to save?
When the doctor is forced to take the carriage that appears in the pigsty in order to treat the patient, a difficult choice arises: if the patient is to be treated, the maid’s home will be tainted by the groom; If we stay behind to save the maid, the patient will die in a hurry. Although it is the doctor who is forced to choose to save the patient instead of the maid in the end, it is a sad choice. The doctor does fulfill the professional duty of saving the dead and healing the wounded, but at the cost of the moral duty. Is this choice right or wrong? When facing the patient has no medicine to save, and he was forced by the patient’s family to take off clothes and sleep with the patient, and faced with a choice: try to leave, otherwise have to face the risk of saving the patient at the same time on his own life; If we leave, the patient will surely die because he or she has not received good care. Although the doctor finally chose to leave the way of self-rescue to save himself, it is also sympathetic to think that a doctor with such noble professional ethics had no one to help him in such a difficult situation, and he had to sacrifice his professional duties as a doctor to meet his survival instinct needs. Is it wrong to make such a choice?
First the maid should be saved. She has sent out a distress signal to the hero, and has an instinctive desire to escape the doom. The maid, as the most obedient and faithful character in the whole text, ends up being scorned by the groom. The maid here is supposed to represent the most meek and undefiant people in that society. Such a group of people who do their jobs conscientiously, they deserve a life of ease and stability. They have done nothing to harm the interests of others, but have prayed for peace and quiet, and they are very obedient to society as a whole. They have never rebelled against or disturbed that society, however ugly or chaotic it may be. But even this desire, that kind of society can not meet them, still will rob belong to their stable life. Just like the maid in the novel, how did she never think that she would be bullied by a groom who did not know where to come from? Such a sudden disaster makes people unprepared, and we should not sympathize with such a tragic fate? The maids need to be saved, the lower class of people need to be saved. They may not help us in our work and career, nor can they improve our social prestige, but they are closely related to our life, clothing, food, shelter and transportation are a kind of people, without them our survival is a problem. Just as the maid in the novel commits suicide after being humiliated, the life of the country doctor will become chaotic because there is no one to take care of it, so will our life without so many workers who serve our lives. The fate of saving the maid should be implemented immediately, because the doctor’s hesitation and missed the best rescue time, resulting in tragedy. In fact, it reflects the irony of the society at that time for people who obey the society like maids but don’t get a good ending, so I don’t approve of the doctor’s decision to give up maids. If we come across a group of people like the maids who need to save their fate, we should not give up rescuing them because it seems irrelevant. What we need to do should be decisive to save them, they are the solid underclass of this society, without them, our life will become shaky. The choice to save the maid is to save our own circle.
The second thing I’m against is saving the patient’s life. Whether to save the patient depends on the patient’s self-attitude, should not be forced to save the outside world. The contradiction between doctors and patients is highlighted in the novel, and there is a misunderstanding of communication between doctors and patients. This kind of rescue is inherently full of contradictions, and it is doomed to be an invalid outcome. In the novel, the doctor replies, “I say; ‘It’s a shame, but I’m a doctor now, what am I going to do? Believe me, it’s not easy for me either ‘” and the patient’s reply, “Will you satisfy me with an apology like that? Well, you have to be happy if you can’t be happy. I always have to be satisfied. Came into this world with a beautiful wound from my dowry “. From here we can see that there is a huge difference between the two. On the one hand, the doctor should treat the patient in line with his professional duty, which is his inescapable responsibility, he must treat the patient in front of him; on the other hand, the patient’s family forces him to treat the little boy, otherwise he may be in danger of life. Under double pressure he had to treat the boy unilaterally. But on the other hand, as a little boy who is a patient, he does not feel that his wound has much harm to him. On the contrary, he does not want to be treated. He thinks that his wound is beautiful and is his dowel. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish who is saving whose fate. More attention should be paid to why there is such a huge contrast in the understanding between doctors and patients. The biggest root cause is the intensification of contradiction between doctors and patients, who can not understand each other. If the doctor could understand the little boy’s desire to die and his love for the wound, he would not forcibly rescue the patient, and he would understand that the greatest salvation for the patient is to let him die. In fact, this also symbolizes the reality of us, often think that they are saving the fate of others, but did not get contact with others on communication, often wishful thinking is thankless outcome. If we can understand each other, maybe not to interfere in other people’s affairs, this may be the salvation of others.
Finally, I see a deep sense of sadness in the doctor’s act of self-rescue. A doctor is obviously a person to save others, but by that world into a weak, a need for help from others, but no one out to save him. From the beginning, when the coachman patted him on the back and forced him to save the patient without giving him a chance to stay and save his maid, to the latter, when the family of the patient stripped him naked and made him sleep with the dying patient, to the end, when he was “an old man, naked, jogging around in an earthly cart, driving an unearthly horse.” It suddenly dawned on me that I had always thought that the fate of the previous characters was decided in the hands of the rural doctor, who decided the fate of the maid and the little boy. He should be the strong one who had the right to decide, but I did not think that the ending was that the fate of the doctor also needed to be saved, and he was also the weak one in this world. He was suffering from the greatest earthly affliction, that he had not been able to rescue his maid when she had been insulted. His patients and their families did not treat him as a doctor. They even took off his clothes and let such an old man run away naked in a carriage in the cold winter. When I saw this, I fell into the bottom of the trough with the old man. Such a doctor is the most need to be saved, he has saved so many people all his life, once was the savior of others, but now become so fragile. In the end, the doctor’s inner monologue was so sad that no one came to save him, nor did the patients he had saved come to help him, leaving him with a feeling of being cheated, and his last hope for this world was shattered. The doctor who most needs to be saved is so isolated at the moment, this world is too cold. The doctor is also a symbol of the people who have helped others in this world. When they need help, none of those who have been helped will help them. This is the despair of the hearts of the society at that time, the despair of the whole world. For a group of people like doctors, whose fate is in each of our hands to save, we should not let them despair of the whole world.
Saving the maid’s fate should have been done, but the doctor did not do it; To save a patient’s life is to leave the patient alone, but the doctor has to take care of it. Between the two, the doctor who should make the right choice has to make such a misplaced choice. It is ridiculous and pathetic. It also symbolizes that in real life, we often make the same choice as doctors, and we ignore the meek people who should save the same fate as maids. Whose fate can be saved when we ignore the full understanding of a group of people like a little boy?
We tend to focus on those who seem weak, often ignoring that those who seem strong also have a weak side. They give generously to others in trouble, save others in trouble, and that kind of rescuer deserves to be rewarded. They must not despair of the whole world when they are suffering, and feel that men have cheated them of their goodness. Otherwise there will be no more rescuers, and the human nature of this world will turn cold. Both the rescuer and the rescued, their fate should be saved.