192:"A Country Doctor" comments on man, who, buffeted by the scheme of things, is unable to transcend the part assigned him by the absurdity of that existence. Because he does not lack conscious knowledge of his condition, but refuses to act in the face of his portentous freedom, the doctor, an archetype of the anti-existential hero, deserves his fate. Lacking the human stuff necessary to create and structure situations, he permits himself to be manipulated by the groom, the family, and the horses; but he becomes, by submitting, a tool within the situations they create. Never, consciously, does he attempt through an overt act, until too late, to establish his own essence, to rise above any manipulative value he possesses for others. As doctor he is a thing, an object, a tool; as man he is nothing.
157:. The groom, being the oaf that he is, boorishly kisses Rosa when she tries to hand him a harness, leaving two rows of red tooth marks on her cheek. The doctor scolds the groom, but quickly realizes that he is in the groom's debt and jumps happily into the carriage. The groom declines to travel with him, preferring to stay with the terrified Rosa, who dashes into the house and makes every effort to secure herself, although her fate is "inevitable". The doctor can do nothing to stop the groom, who, with a simple "Giddy up!" sends the horses on their way and breaks down the doctor's front door to get at Rosa.
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the doctor assures his skeptical bed mate that the wound is not that bad, gathers his belongings, and jumps out a window and onto one of the horses. He expects to get home so soon that he does not even bother to get redressed, but the horses do not move as quickly as they did on the outgoing journey. The doctor, disgraced, finds himself and the horses "crawl slowly through the wasteland of snow like old men". He feels betrayed by his patients and his community, and the story concludes with the line "A false ring of the night bell, once answered — it can never be made right."
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the patient to let him die. Initially, the doctor deems the patient completely healthy and feels annoyed that his patients keep calling him at night for no reason, but, after he notices the boy's sister holding a bloody towel, he reexamines the boy and discovers a large, deep wound on his right side that is full of worms. The family and assembled guests are pleased to see the doctor at work. The horses, meanwhile, having somehow freed themselves of their straps, have opened the windows and are neighing frantically.
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published a report in 2009 using "A Country Doctor" as the variable in a study testing what impact reading absurdist tales has on cognitive skills. The study showed that reading the story improved test subjects' ability to find patterns. Their findings summarised that when people have to work to find
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The doctor's thoughts keep returning to the fate of his maid, for which he blames himself. In accordance with a simple tune being sung by a school choir that has assembled outside the house, the family undresses the doctor and places him in bed alongside the patient. When the family leaves the room,
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The doctor is almost instantly transported to his sick patient's house. It is, he says, "as if the farm yard of my invalid opens up immediately in front of my courtyard gate". After being ushered into the house by a family whose explications he does not comprehend, the doctor is quietly implored by
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It begins with the doctor having to urgently attend a sick patient in a village ten miles away, but his only horse died the night before, so his maid Rosa goes off to find another. She returns empty-handed — "Of course, who is now going to lend her his horse for such a journey?" — and the doctor
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Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat and whispers in my ear, "Doctor, let me die."
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of the same title. In the story, a country doctor makes an emergency visit to a sick patient on a winter night. The doctor faces absurd, surreal predicaments that pull him along and finally doom him.
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expresses his frustration by kicking the door of what he thinks is his empty pig shed. A mysterious groom appears from within and supplies the doctor with two magnificent horses to pull his
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consistency and meaning in a fragmented story, it increases “the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities.”
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The plot follows a country doctor's hapless struggle to attend a sick young boy on a snowy winter's night. A series of
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1194:(1986 play)
1023:Diaries and
942:collections
940:Short story
926:On Parables
919:Give It Up!
856:The Vulture
737:The Refusal
705:My Neighbor
698:Eleven Sons
441:Franz Kafka
209:Adaptations
127:Franz Kafka
121:written in
119:short story
75:Publication
39:Franz Kafka
35:Short story
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1059:and essays
884:Homecoming
821:Fellowship
800:Prometheus
765:The Burrow
663:The Bridge
528:The Stoker
468:The Castle
383:: 337–347.
343:: 427–431.
334:References
325:1442247975
94:Kurt Wolff
1025:notebooks
905:Advocates
729:1917–1923
552:1914–1917
492:1902–1912
461:The Trial
263:Footnotes
90:Publisher
84:Anthology
1236:Category
985:The Sons
849:The Test
828:At Night
814:Poseidon
397:Archived
355:New York
298:Archived
200:and the
172:—
117:”) is a
67:Language
1130:Related
1057:Letters
870:The Top
621:A Dream
475:Amerika
223:カフカ田舎医者
143:surreal
1179:statue
453:Novels
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1112:Plays
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147:groom
381:1958
367:ISBN
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341:1965
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