The Use Of Force By William Carlos Williams

Though on the surface, William Carlos Williams' "The Use of Force" is about a doctor checking in on a sick girl, when viewed through a feminist lens, Williams' text clearly displays a case of male dominance over a young girl. Williams starts by referring to the girl as, “an unusually attractive little thing,” (par. 4). This statement begins the near-obsession the doctor feels for the girl. The way he chose to describe the girl was almost sexualizing the obviously naive and young child. The doctor begins his inspection of the girls mouth, and when faced with opposition, he instructs the father to restrain her, “Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists,” (par. 24). Here, the doctor tells

Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.

have been organizing and lobbying local, state and federal government to restrict abortion. Not only that, but they have also lobbied evangelical voters to gain support. That puts politicians in a tight spot, either work against abortion or leave politics. (1) So far, 18 states require abortion procedures done at hospitals, and Wisconsin requires it done no closer than 30 minutes away from a

The turning point of the story is when the doctor started to act mean towards the little girl, and thinking to himself how he enjoyed it. The little girl knocking his glasses off and trying to claw at his eyes was probably the final straw for him. All he was trying to do was help her, and all she was doing was making it even more difficult. In my opinion I believe she was the reason he began to enjoy acting mean towards her, so his thoughts could have been and probably were a normal thought of someone who was trying to do their job, and just got stuck with a difficult patient.

For many years abortion has been the topic of controversy among the political, social and religious spectrum. Each holds individuals with dichotomous views on the legality of abortion. In recent times, the topic of abortion has returned to the courts to challenge political and religious opposing views. In this case, Texas has attempted to combine their religious perspective of abortion into the political sphere by demanding laws restricting abortion practices in clinics. On the other hand, liberal women and women’s rights groups are demanding the unconstitutionality of these restrictions. Therefore the restriction of women’s reproductive rights in laws that are being implemented in Texas should be rejected because of its potential threat

Being a doctor requires a lot of hard work and commitment to help others and look for the patient’s well being, but has it always been this way? In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, she claims in paragraph 4 on page 130 that doctors used to withhold information from patients just so they won’t deny the test being made, and this way obtain their wanted benefit. The author’s claim is supported by the events of the patients from jail, Henrietta’s autopsy, and Henrietta’s cells overall.

In the case of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas v. Abbott (2014), The American Civil Liberties Union, The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and a Texas law firm filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of several women’s health-care providers in Texas for seeking to enforce their rights and those of patients for declaratory judgment and pertaining to the regulation of surgical abortions and abortion-inducing drugs by enjoining two provisions of the 2013 Texas House Bill No. 2. (Planned Parent Hood v. Abbott, 2014). To many, Planned Parenthood challenges the state of Texas abortion law as it places an unconstitutional restriction on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. It also

The Affordable Care Act was a funded mandate issued by the federal government use funding to help persuade states in implementing the new healthcare reform. With almost half the country, including Texas, refusing to enact Obamacare, there is an obvious difference between what the states and the federal government want. The controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and similar clinics is the ethical debate of abortion. Single-issue groups, interest groups that primarily focus on one specific issue like pro-life and pro-choice advocates relentlessly fight for their beliefs on the merits of abortion and seemingly, pro-life resonated with Texas policymakers. Policymaking starts in the interest of the people and their concerns which is translated to the state and local government through public interests and elections. The issue will be discussed for the state’s policy agenda whether to be pursued further. In this case, pulling funding from Planned Parenthood, which was introduced by the people and given to the attention local and state officials, will now be debated to be made an official state policy, which was successful in the favor of pro-life advocates. But by defunding Planned Parenthood, many low-income women no longer have access to effective birth control or other forms of healthcare. Krugman, in his opinion, insists that political participation of the people is the only way to prevent unfavorable state and local candidates to hold public office and therefore, prevent unfavorable legislation to be passed within state government that may negatively impact the state and its

Recently in California, there is some controversy around the Reproductive FACT act (Chemerinsky, 2015). This act requires healthcare facilities to have displayed or posted the public programs, which can provide immediate free or low cost family planning services, which include contraception, abortion, pre-natal care and more. There are non-profits and other organizations saying this is an infringement of their first amendment rights. It is argued that they have no ground on this stance because they are not being asked to perform or advocate for these services, but their patients need to have access to such information. This also is not singling out religious groups it applies to all healthcare facilities (Chemerinsky, 2015). This is very scandalous

In Texas, a large cultural controversy has resurfaced. State lawmakers want to introduce a new set of guidelines which would essentially limit the availability of abortions to Texan women. This debate is very clearly divided into two opposing sides: pro-life and pro-choice. The pro-life side wants to pass this law, which says that clinics must be held to hospital grade standards and doctors must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortion takes place. According to the pro-choice side and abortion clinicians themselves, “the regulations [are] expensive, unnecessary and intended to put many [offices] out of business” (nytimes). This case has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning that

In spite of this, technological advances in medicine began to cause doctors to move further away from developing a relationship with their patients and to begin paying more attention to the equipment instead. “The Doctor” directed by Randa Haines depicts the fall and rebuilding of physician and patient relationships as the protagonist John McKee, a surgeon who once showed disrespect and scorn towards his patients, sees the hospital through their eyes when he is diagnosed with cancer in the vocal chords. The surgeon’s in the movie is “Get in, fix it, get out.” The credo shows that patients are treated as lesser beings much in the same way that Nurse Ratchet treats her patients in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. When McKee and his colleague Murray Kaplan are working with a patient who has a scar on her chest, the patient confides in McKee that she and her husband are not close anymore. McKee merely responds that she should tell her husband that she is like the centerfolds in the playboy magazines because of her staples. McKee insults the patient in ridicule much like Nurse Ratchet does to the patients in the mental hospital further displaying how the physician-patient relationship has dwindled emotionally. McKee shows no sympathy even for those who suffer from serious illness. In the chapter titled “Big Boys Do Cry: Empathy in The Doctor” by Lucy Fischer from the book “Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media” Fischer states: “Further contributing to this transition in medical practice was the professional assumption that, as highly (and expensively) trained scientists, physicians made better use of their valuable time ordering and interpreting test results than focusing on personal interaction” (150). What this implies is that because medicine keeps advancing with technology, the physician tends to focus more on the tools being

William Carlos Williams, the author of the story uses a doctor, which is on a house call to show variety of emotions and decision making that a doctor has to deal with. The author also illustrates a brief conflict between a patient and a doctor. The use of force is a short story about one little girl, Mathilda Olson. She has been severely sick from past 3 days. Mathilda Olson may have diphtheria, a contagious disease that has been going around in the area, and that disease had killed two kids already. The mother of Mathilda quickly calls for the doctor and the doctor takes no time to get there to check the patient.

In William Carlos Williams’ story The Use of Force, a resolute doctor takes an unconventional course of action and lets his frustration fuel his drive as he attempts to diagnose a very stubborn little girl with a life-threatening illness. The antagonist of the story, Matilda, portrays a persevering young girl with a secret, a secret she is determined to keep. Point of view makes a serious impact in the complexity of this story. While experiencing this story through the Doctors eyes, we are able to clearly see the shifts from a collected professional to those of an eccentric form of examination. The Use of Force is an unconventional portrayal of determination through the use of subject point of view.

William Carlos Williams was an American author, screenwriter, and poet who was “one of the great forces in the twentieth-century verse” (Rosenthal 1). Remarkably, Williams was also a professional doctor who continued to practice medicine fulltime while simultaneously writing hundreds of pieces of literature. He was the son of a New York businessman, spoke three languages, and even studied advanced pediatrics in Germany. He was part of the professional, upper class and had traveled around the world prior to practicing medicine. Williams stresses Marxism in the form of literature in “The Use of Force” through his creative display of clashing of social classes, power relationships, and the use of oppression.

The theme of The Use of Force by William Carlos Williams is about the use of force and asks the age old question, is it justifiable? Williams uses the first person point of view to help the reader judge if is acceptable or not. First person view gives the reader insight into the doctor’s thoughts and feelings towards the patient. For example, he mentions that he thought the little girl was attractive and even says, “I have already fallen in love with the savage brat,” (Williams p.425). As a result, the reader was able to interpret that the doctor knew what he was doing was wrong when he mentions he should have come back in an hour, “perhaps I should have desisted…”(Williams p.426) So, in the end, the doctor diagnosed the little girl with diphtheria but his use of force was not justifiable since he could have taken a different approach. Incidentally, the viewpoint is important because if it was written in the third person or in over the shoulder the reader would have lost the importance of the doctor knowing he was in the wrong if it was not written in this tense. Of course, if the story was written in omniscient would have been interesting, but for the reader to know what the little girl was thinking or even the parents would not have given such a strong point of the theme.