Walking Dream 

A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka is about an unnamed Doctor who goes on a journey to see a patient that is 10 miles away during a snowstorm which he found difficult because his horse died before the journey even began. Does he get a horse in time to save the patient, does he make it through the snowstorm? Find out next time on the Exploratory essay. Five Lectures on Psyco-Analysis, by Sigmund Freud, is about the origins of psyco-analysis and Freud’s thinking within different lectures. These lectures introduce the theory of dreamwork which implies that it’s about dreams. Not just that but the different aspects of dreams and what they mean. Which will be told through a walking dream, The progress someone makes within their life.  In A Country Doctor, Franz Kafka shows us Freud’s theory of dreamwork through a walking dream.  

In A Country Doctor, the doctor is struggling to find a way to find a new horse since his recent horse died due to the cold. He was trying to find someone who was willing to lend him a horse, but no one gave him one until someone emerged. There’s this groom who came out of a pigsty along with two strong and young horses while the groom was down on all fours. “Yet hardly she was beside him when the groom clipped hold of her and pushed his face against hers. She screamed and fled back to me; on her cheek stood out two rows of teeth …. “Get in,” he said then, and indeed everything was ready …. “I’m not coming with you anyway; I’m staying with Rose (Kafka).” This essentially implies that latent content in a sense is a hidden meaning behind a dream. The groom wants Rose for himself so the little meaning behind the groom helping is to have sex or attempt to have it with the servant. Which happens since after that the groom clapped and told the horses to go.  

In A Country Doctor, after the doctor arrived at his destination, we learn that his patient is suffering from a wound that happened to be infected with worms. The wound caused him to wish for death as he “Whispered in my ear, “Doctor, let me die” (Kafka). This shows us that the reason why we said he wanted to die was from a wishful impulse which is something we want but can’t admit we want. In Freud’s third lecture, he talks about one of his patients which “a girl, who had lost her beloved father after she had taken a share in nursing him … her sister fell ill and died … They were summoned in all haste without being given any definite information of the tragic event. When the girl reached the bedside of her dead sister, there came to her for a moment an idea that might be expressed in these words: ‘Now he is free and can marry me” (Freud 2213). This is the perfect example of a wishful impulse, it shows the true desires of one person but doesn’t admit it, just like the same feeling the boy was suffering from in A Country Doctor.  

In A Country Doctor, Kafka shows us a walking dream through condensation. The unnamed doctor went out 10 miles to see a patient who he thought had no signs of being sick but once he saw a cloth with blood, he re-examined the boy only to find out he had a wound that was infested with worms. Essentially making the boy realize that there was nothing he could do to fix it. Toward the end of the scene, it says “Rose-red, in many variations of shade, dark in the hallows, lighter at the edges… Worms, as thick and as long as my little finger, themselves rose-red and blood spotted as well …. I had discovered your great wound; blossoming in your side was destroying you” (Kafka 3). This tells us that the boy is not well and that his wound is blossoming, and how does this go with condensation? Condensation is the combination of several themes into 1 symbol (Freud), the worm is the symbol of sex/desire. Freud does not show this but deep down he does want his servant, Rose, for himself but he represses the thought and focuses on his work. The Groom, worm clearly wants Rose since he bit her cheek. While the worms are destroying the boy’s body, the Groom is also potentially getting his way with Rose while the doctor is “fixing” the boy.  

Franz Kafka showed us Freud’s theory of dreamwork through the process of a walking dream. A Walking dream is a journey or process someone makes whether it’s in a certain something or another. Just as it implies dream work has to do with dreams, dreams mean certain things and there are certain dreams that can mean different things. The story of A Country Doctor is like a dream itself, the events that took place represent different aspects of a dream. Latent content, the hidden meaning here would be the groom helping the doctor with his actual intention, which is to have sex with the doctor’s servant, Rose. A wishful impulse, something we want but don’t admit we want, is represented by the doctor’s patient. He wanted to die due to his wound, like one of Freud’s patients. Freud’s patient had a sister who died and had the thought of being with her husband although she didn’t want it. Finally, condensation where the theme of the scene was the worm. It represented the desire for sex, and the boy’s wound had similarity to a vagina and the worm, a penis. It was representing what the groom could be doing with the doctor’s servant, Rose. These all represent a walking dream because it’s the process of the doctor’s journey in the text.  

Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., 1961. Semantic 

Scholar.  https://ia802907.us.archive.org/17/items/SigmundFreud/Sigmund%20Freud%20%5B1909%5D%20Five%20Lectures%20on%20Psych-Aanalysis%20%28James%20Strachey%20translation%2C%201955%29.pdf. PDF file. 

Kafka, Franz, et al. “A Country Doctor”. Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka  

(Modern Library). Reissue, Modern Library, 1993. bbhosted.Cuny.edu/bbcswebday/CTY01_FIQWS_HA8_12/19_1/A%20Country20% 

Doctor.pdf.  PDF file.