Use of Force

Nobody Is Perfect

“The Use of Force,” I believe, retells a story we can all relate to: restraining oneself from circumstances that can truly test our principles. The story is told through the eyes of a doctor who is trying to diagnose a screaming, kicking, rebelling child. This child, a beautiful blonde girl, puts up full restraint in order to make sure her secret is kept hidden. She is sick, has a sore throat, and is showing signs of the fatal disease diphtheria, but she does not want anyone to know, due to her fear of the doctor and the diagnosis. The way the parents handle the little girl and the way the little girl wills herself to hide the fact that she is sick, truly test the doctor’s restraint in the most difficult way. There is a moment when this thought actually occurs inside the doctor’s mind: “I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it” (para. 31). That is the pivotal moment in the story when the doctor’s mind crosses such an inconceivable threshold that he actually wants to attack the little girl. However, he restrains himself from acting upon this thought, even though the very idea of it makes him feel “pleasure” and his face is “burning with it” (para. 31).

From the beginning, you can tell that there is going to be a bit of resistance from this family. The doctor states that “all [I] had was a name” (para. 1) to this family and that they are “eyeing [me] up and down distrustfully” (para. 3). The fact that the child is “eating [him] up with cold, steady eyes and no expression to her face whatever” (para. 4) is another indication that a struggle will soon be ensuing. Soon enough, the battle in trying to obtain a throat culture from the child in order to properly diagnose her.

A number of things causes the doctor’s mind to drift across such a threshold of wanting to “tear the child apart” (para. 4). One of these things includes the child fully resisting him from trying to help her get better. When the child makes an attempt to claw his eyes out when he first approaches her, he tries to maintain his patience with the child by speaking to her in a soft, calming voice. However, when the child crushes the wooden tongue depressor in an effort to rid him of a way in diagnosing her, the doctor’s mind drifts into a mode of unreasonable thinking in which he wants to attack the young girl for her behavior. Even though her mouth is bleeding from the splinters, she is still fighting him at all costs. He soon grows “furious- at a child” (para 29). This revelation, in itself, makes him contemplate his own mind-set of thinking. He resolves himself of these thoughts by telling himself that the “damned little brat must be protected from her own idiocracy (para .”

Another factor that pushes the doctor to drift into this mode of unreasonable thinking is the way the parents are handling the little girl. In this intense situation, the wife’s choice of words such as “he won’t hurt you” (emphasizing the word hurt) and “bad girl” (referring to the daughter) just irritates the doctor further. We can assume that the girl has a fear, perhaps maybe even a phobia, of doctors by the way the doctor describes one of the situations as follow: “[The girl] surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me” (para 22). The child having