"The Use of Force" and Other Stories Literary Elements

"The Use of Force" and Other Stories Literary Elements

Genre

Short Story

Setting and Context

1930s New Jersey, in the private home of a new patient

Narrator and Point of View

The Doctor is the narrator and his account is autobiographical and memoir in style therefore the story is told from his point of view.

Tone and Mood

Disturbing, threatening, and mystifying

Protagonist and Antagonist

The doctor is the protagonist, the child the antagonist.

Major Conflict

The conflict between the doctor and his young patient is entirely physical as she fights him off in ever more savage and forcible ways.

Climax

It is implied that the doctor overpowers her as he tries to force her to allow him to conduct a throat examination.

Foreshadowing

The way in which the little girl begins to defend herself against even the beginnings of an examination foreshadows the physical struggle that ensues.

Understatement

The doctor admits that his feelings of love for the child are strange and unlikely, but this is an understatement because he never confronts how completely inappropriate his feelings are.

Allusions

The doctor alludes to other experiences of diphtheria but there are not cultural allusions, merely allusions that refer to his own personal experiences.

Imagery

The imagery is very dark and the forcible throat examination actually creates an image that is almost a violation of the little girl.

Paradox

The doctor believes that he has fallen in love with the little girl, but at the same time acknowledges that this is strange and unbelievable.

Parallelism

There is a parallel between the way in which he physically overpowers the girl to conduct the throat exam she doesn't want, and the way in which a rapist violates his victim.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

No specific examples

Personification

No specific examples

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