The Use of Force is a story dealing with a conflict of a little girl being ill with a disease called diphtheria. The main character the doctor experiences internal and external conflicts in this story. In this paper, these devices and elements will be analyzed.
The doctor is the narrator of the story, and he is the main character in this story. The reason he is the main character is because he determines whether the little girl in the story dies or does not die. The main conflict is whether the little girl lives or dies. This makes the doctor the key to the main conflict that makes him the main character in “The Use of Force”. The parents do not change much in this story, which shows they are not the main characters. However, the little girl is sometimes seen in the story as the main character because her illness is the main conflict in the story. The doctor faces an internal conflict in this story as well, which makes me believe he is the main character of the story.
The internal conflict of the story, “The Use of Force”, is the doctor turning to the use force on the little girl to examine her throat. When the little girl will not open her mouth, he tries being very kind to the little girl. He actually kind of sides with her over her parents at first, as show in the text, “After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me.”(lines 22-23) At this point the doctor sees the parents as being almost despicable. The little girl continued to not listen to her parents or the doctor ordering her to open her mouth. This is when the doctor starts to think about using force to open the young girls mouth. He knows it is wrong and cruel for thinking to use force to pry open the little girl’s mouth. This shows us the doctor may be a little crazy. Then when the doctor goes to use force on the little girl she cries out, “Don’t you’re hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked