SOURCE: "Kafka's 'A Country Doctor': A Tale For Our Time," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 173-76.

In the following essay, Brancato interprets Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor" as a work concerned with the ultimate inadequacy of science.

Kafka's "A Country Doctor" is a surrealistic tale about the powerlessness of scientific man in confrontation with the brute force of nature. Although Kafka suggests the cyclical and interdependent aspects of all life, he makes it very clear that only man has the capacity to feel ultimately betrayed by life. This short story captures a profound sense of futility through its nightmarish quality. Coming to the end of "A Country Doctor" has the same effect as waking from a bad dream—the incubus has been lifted and we are relieved, but we also know that our anxieties, crystallized by the dream, are still very much with us...