German Literature

Topic: The physicality and sexuality repressed by Kafka’s protagonists, usually busy professional men, returns in frightening or disgusting forms’. Discuss this statement with reference to Ein Landarzt.

A country doctor has to visit a patient in a village located ten miles away form his residence but his horse has just died because of the harsh winter. Opening the pigsty of his farm, the doctor discovers a squatted man who agrees to lend his two beautiful and powerful horses to him. After having prepared them, this man attacks Rose, the doctor’s maid, and shows clear sexual intentions towards her. The doctor tries to defend her, but the horses leave the place and lead him almost immediately to destination. Over there, he will be plunged into a particular experience. In this story, Kafka describes in a symbolic way the repressed sexuality of the doctor. But from Kafka’s point of view, the sexuality has nothing to do with beauty. All the symbols he uses refer to violence, pain, and deception. In this essay, we will try to understand the sexual references, hidden by Kafka, and explain them from the doctor’s point of view.

As mentionned earlier, Kafka has a very personnal view of the sexuality. His representation of it is far from what we can find in soapy stories. This is something brutal, filthy, that brings unwelcomed consequences. After discovering his dead horse, Rose, the doctor’s maid, tries to find help from all the villagers, but no one answers. Completely lost in front of this lack of power, the doctor kicks into his pigsty’s door, and discovers a man. At this very moment, we can postulate that a projection of Kafka’s own sexuality occurs. The doctor is known as a respectable scientist, has an image of a wise man, but yet is diminished and no longer young. Nevertheless, this man seems both younger and stronger than him. Thus, in an environment, where reality and dream seem to be mixed, we could understand that the man’s sexual