"The Use of Force"

Up until now, the name William Carlos Williams always reminded me of the poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."

so much depends

upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

This poem remains striking to me because of its inclusion in one of my favorite novels, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. The character Adah says, "He wrote the poem while he was waiting for a child to die." Throughout the book, Adah says, "So much depends on ___." It's a theme that runs throughout her narration. However, it is not Adah's odd narrative style which made me think of this poem while reading "The Use of Force." It is the fact that he wrote this masterpiece while waiting for the death of a child.

And so this short story is another child who will probably die, and I wondered how often William C. Williams encountered death in his practice, especially with sick children. Was that his speciality? Did one event with a child scar him forever, or was it many individual patients, sick and dying children, that made at least a theme in both this short story and poem? This connection raised a lot of questions for me about William Carlos Williams and his history.

As for the story itself, I read it twice over and was still puzzled. It's short; its plot development consists of a single scene where a little girl fights a doctor while he tries to examine her. My first puzzlement was whether a not the little girl was scared because he was a doctor, or if she knew she was dangerously sick and wanted to hide it from the world? And if so, why did she want to keep her sore throat a secret? Did she know deep down that sore throat meant a serious illness and possibly death? Would the doctor's discovery have meant a confirmation of death for her? Children are surprisingly intuitive and precocious, so part of me thinks she understood in a way that the doctor examining her would reveal what she'd been trying to hide--her sickness and possible impending death.

But was she hiding it from herself or her parents? She stubbornly lied to her parents about her sore throat. Perhaps it was she didn't want the doctor to be called at all. I know that all little kids are terrified of doctors. They run away from needles and shy away from the popsicle stick. But I think this little girl's fear ran deeper than the classic little kid hating being poked and probed by a scary man/woman. No one likes going to the doctor, and no one hates a doctor's visit more than a little kid.

The narrator says at one point "I'm here to look at her throat on the chance she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that's nothing to her." At first I was confused, because just a couple sentences later he says she's old enough to understand he needs to look at her throat. I think the narrator was saying she was to young to understand that her life is at stake and that this examination is a matter of life and death. I think the child is more understanding even than that. She comprehends that if she lets him see inside her throat, all will be confirmed and she will die soon. She is more than aware of the deeper meaning of the doctor examining her. She grasps this concept well, so she hides her secret, afraid of death, afraid of her parents, afraid of a stranger who wants to reveal her.

To us, the idea of diphtheria being a killer is foreign. It's not a threat. Diseases like that are on the periphery now, few and far between thanks to immunizations and good sanitation. My great-grandmother's second son died of diphtheria at Christmas; the family had to burn all his Christmas presents after his death (much like the Velveteen Rabbit, come to think of it). It was a tragic event from which my great-grandmother never recovered, even though she lived to be one hundred (she died when I was eight). This story is sad at the end, even if it not specifically stated. Her "tears of defeat" are more from the resignation of what will happen to her rather than the fact that the doctor got the chance to examine her throat despite all her attempts at resistance. One can only guess what happens afterward--her imminent death, probably. "She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this." What outcome is this? Her parents now knowing the truth? The doctor uncovering the cause of her illness? The acceptance that she is seriously ill?

Such a short story, so many meanings, so much like "Hills Like White Elephants."