A Study Guide for William Carlos Williams's "The Use of Force"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Carlos Williams's "The Use of Force," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535840286

Book preview

09

The Use of Force

William Carlos Williams

1938

Introduction

William Carlos Williams's short story The Use of Force is about a country doctor who is summoned to the home of some poor people to examine a sick little girl. When he suspects that her persistent fever might be caused by diphtheria, a particularly deadly disease that was rampant when this story was published in the 1930s, he asks to examine her throat. The girl refuses, and what follows is an escalating battle of wills, in which the doctor loses his professionalism and reverts to a state of rage not much less savage than the girl's own fury.

If this story seems to be particularly realistic, that is because Williams knew his subject matter well. In addition to being an author, he was a practicing pediatrician in rural New Jersey for decades. The story, told from the doctor's point of view, captures the ways in which even the most calm, objective professional can fail when faced with the horrors of disease and the unthinking emotionalism of youth.

Williams was known primarily as a poet, and he is most often associated with the Imagist movement, which was a movement to write with concise imagery and language. His terse, objective poetic writing style is evident in this story, which was originally published in his 1938 short story collection Life along the Passaic River. It is available in The Doctor Stories, a 1984 collection of Williams's fiction that is still in print.

Author Biography

William Carlos Williams was born September 17, 1883, in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father, a businessman, was of English descent, while his mother, an amateur painter, came from a mix of French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish heritage. The household that Williams grew up in was morally strict, giving him the intellectual rigor and discipline needed to study medicine. In 1906, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He interned in Leipzig, Germany, from 1906 to 1909, then moved to Bergen, New Jersey, where he ran a private medical practice for more than forty years, until 1951.

Williams was interested in writing early in