A Review of The Use of Force, a Short Story by William Carlos Williams

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William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1883. While he was a a student attending high school, Williams started his writing career as a poet. Williams continued his studies at University of Pennsylvania where he continued to write poetry and receive a Medical Degree. Some of Williams most popular works include “Kora in Hell," "Spring and All," "Use of Force" and many other poems. The Use of Force is a short story about a doctor's encounter of a young patient that resist to his treatment.

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If the reader were to look deeper into "Use of Force," the reader would find that the doctor's personality and point of view builds up to the main conflict of the story, which is to help the little girl that drives of using unwanted force.

The reader can interpret the doctor's behavior differently such as caring or sometimes just cruel due to the situation at hand. The story commences by a young girl needing help because she has diphtheria and is in need of medical care.

The doctor can be first seen as a caring doctor because he wants the child to become better. Throughout the course of his procedures the girl prompts to become violent.

The doctor gets agitated because "both of her hands clawed instinctively for (his) eyes and she almost reached them too." The doctor could be seen as not caring because he tells the parents not to call him a “nice man” after he is attacked. The girl progressively becomes more and more aggressive to the doctor and he begins to use more impractical methods of treatment that require force.

At one point of the narrative the doctor enjoys providing pain to the little girl. The reader sees this his cruelty because the doctor "could (of) torn the child apart in (his) own fury and enjoy it.” The reader might think all the doctor wants to do is hurt the girl but in reality he actually is doing everything he can to save her life. The doctor's actions become like a fathers actions because he will do anything to make the child become better even if he has to use force. Even though the doctor might seem cruel throughout the entire story, all his actions are acted to the well being of the child to get better because he does not want her to die.

The reader's opinion of the doctor is strong because the reader sees everything in the first person view of the doctor. Due to the narrative of the story, the narrative implies the harshness of a setting when common roles and personal compulsion are uncovered within characters. The reader begins to fell bad for the girl because so many thoughts of the doctor are unspoken and they are very sinister and cruel.

The reader becomes one sided throughout a short story such as "The Use of Force." The reader either understands what the doctor is doing what he is doing and understands his methods, or one completely does not like him and says he is a cruel doctor who does not care for his patients. One being the reader has to keep an open mind to not become biased in the situation and understand all the parties and their situations throughout the story. The reader does not understand the true pain the girl is in because the doctor describes on what he can see. Even though one cannot truly understand the pain the girl is in the doctor describes her pain well. The point of view can shift the view of a reader due to being in the head of the main character.

Seeing the situation through the doctor's point of few and how he tolerates to the little girl's behavior helps bring about the conflict of the story. The doctor's behavior regarding the girl and her responses to his treatment highlight the complications people have showing their emotions, ethics, and morals. One can see the conflict in the story can be related because the story can relate to an actual or believable matter that has happen in real life.

The conflict between the doctor and child progressively gets stronger throughout the story when the gets more attached to his patient. One can see at the end of the conflict that the doctor has one the battle because the girl "tried to get off her father's lap and fly at (him) while tears of defeat blinded her eyes." Through the conflict the girl and doctor, even though one could barley tolerated the other, became closer then they would ever realize. The doctor saved her life yet she can not understand this yet because she just saw the doctor as something that just brought her more pain.

Even though the doctor's nature and point of view forms the main struggle, in the end the girl will is saved due to the doctor's actions and method. One can relate to this story to oneself because someone onetime would of done anything to make you a better even though it caused one tremens pain. One would be like the little girl crying "tears of defeat" because even though it hurt so much she realized he saved her life.