The Multiple Functions of Characters in a Story Such as The Use of Force - Essay Example

Although there is little room in a short story such as “The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams for the full development of several individuals, significant insights regarding the multiple functions of characters can often become very well developed by the careful use of phrase or action. With the judicious application of only very meaningful phrases and language, the author is able to relate a specific event while providing the reader with a complex understanding of four individual characters. Told from the perspective of the doctor, it is necessarily him that the reader is given the most complete understanding. Comprised of just over 1500 words, this very short story still manages to show us this individual as the professional doctor at work, the human man who can’t help but respond to the atmosphere in which he finds himself and the epiphany moment when the man and doctor gain a new respect for another human being. The very first thing the reader understands about the narrator of the story is that he is a kind and compassionate country doctor: “They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick. When I arrived …” Since he didn’t have anything more than a name and had never seen them before, yet still rushed out to the house demonstrates his compassion. As the mother leads him into the kitchen where they’re keeping the sick child, it becomes obvious that this family lives in poverty and a call for the doctor is a last resort. His professional attitude comes out immediately as he observes “her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever.” His immediate suspicion is to look for signs of diphtheria, which had been affecting several children at the child’s school, but his professional manner doesn’t happen to work to get the child to relent to his inspection and the interference of the parents only serves to bring out his human reactions. As the doctor works to try to get the child to open her mouth, the story becomes a battle of man over woman as the professional doctor gives way to the irritated man. At the mother’s attempts to coax her child to open her mouth for the doctor, the doctor grinds his teeth in disgust at her choice of words and becomes angered at the parents. At the child’s struggle to keep the doctor away, he becomes angered at her. “Don’t call me a nice man to her. I’m here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that’s nothing to her.” As the child continues to struggle to keep from being examined, she begins to scream and fight, causing the mother to worry about her overexerting herself and the father to berate the woman. “But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.” In this struggle, the child manages to fight off the first attempt to invade her mouth, but comes out of the altercation bleeding and with a cut on her tongue. She is not successful, though, in fighting off both men during the second attempt, finally revealing the secret she’s kept hidden for three solid days. With the revelation that the child indeed has the dreaded diphtheria and that she has kept her highly inflamed, obviously very sore throat kept hidden from her concerned parents provokes a grudging respect out of the doctor who had thought he’d seen everything. He begins the narrative by discussing the appearance of the child, that she is “an unusually attractive little thing” with “magnificent blond hair in profusion.” In her first defense against him, he describes her as catlike, but as the battle proceeds, he concedes her some respect as a fighter as the parents “grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me,” but he doesn’t make her seem any more human. Having finally achieved the inside of her mouth, the doctor is surprised that “before I could see anything she came down again and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I could get it out again.” Despite this, he ends with a certain respect for her as a person by describing the as having “fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret” as well as her continuing struggle to get back at the doctor who had exposed it. Even though the story is a short one, the reader is able to get a very clear picture of the doctor’s character as he performs his job duties, as he conducts himself as a man and as he admits to himself when he has come across an individual who has an equal or greater strength of character. As a doctor, he enters the story describing himself as a compassionate and caring healer. As a man, he admits to having lost control over his own emotions in response to the immovable stance of the child in her refusal to be examined, which is also couched in strong terms of the battle of man over woman. In the end, he presents a considerable amount of growth as a result of this encounter, one from which he has learned a lot about himself as well as about this small girl in his charge. Works Cited Williams, William Carlos. “The Use of Force.” The Collected Short Stories of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996. Read More