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    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor"
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor"
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor"
    Ebook40 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535816564
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor" - Gale

      11

      A Country Doctor

      Franz Kafka

      1919

      Introduction

      A German-speaking author born in what is now the Czech Republic, Franz Kafka became known for stories that possessed eerie dreamlike qualities and hidden meanings. His short story A Country Doctor is no exception to this characterization. A Country Doctor is ostensibly a story about a rural physician who is called away during a snowstorm to attend to a dying child. Yet the story features elements of the bizarre and the unreal. A mysterious groom procures a team of horses for the doctor, when moments before there were no horses to be found. The groom, having bitten the doctor's servant, Rose, informs the doctor that he will not accompany him, but will be staying with Rose instead. As the groom sends the doctor away, he chases Rose into the house. The confused doctor knows he must help a patient, though he fears for Rose's safety. In addition to the impossible speed of the horses, and the presence of the violent, unknown groom, other strange elements appear in the story. The doctor's patient, a child, possesses an unexplained deep, rose-colored wound festering with strange little worms. For no apparent reason, the child's family, as well as a group of village elders who have appeared, strip the clothes from the doctor and carry him to the boy's bed, laying him down next to the wound. Unable to help the boy, the doctor seeks to escape. Yet the horses, which had earlier galloped at unearthly speeds, now trudge home slowly, with the naked doctor freezing in the carriage. The strange story has generated Freudian and biographical interpretations, yet critics admit that such analyses are speculative. The meaning of the story, which offers no sense of resolution or redemption, continues to generate critical debate.

      Originally published in German in 1919 in the short-story collection Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzählungen, A Country Doctor was translated into English and published in the collection The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Stories in 1945. Vera Leslie translated the collection, which was published by Counterpoint. The story is available in a variety of collections, including Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories, published by Schocken Books in 1971.

      Author Biography

      Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in the city

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