Category: Berger

John Berger, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (Pantheon, 1967)

Reading Response to Berger’s A Fortunate Man

“One of them shouted a warning, but it was too late.” (p.17)

With the very first sentence of his story, Berger throws his reader right into the unknown: there is no setup, introduction of the place or characters. This short piece is an example of ethnographic writing, a social observation which Berger wrote while accompanying an English country doctor. The writing is fast-paced, mirroring the action of the doctor hurrying to save the man crushed by the tree. The narrator of the story is Berger himself: an observer, not emotionally involved in the events but reporting on them. His writing, however, is not devoid of emotion: behind the events, Berger conveys emotions which paint an image of his characters: pain of the injured man, worry of the onlookers and dedication of the doctor.

The doctor is the main focus of Berger’s writing: he is the one whose actions we follow from the moment he gets the call about the accident until the injured man is taken away in an ambulance. Conveying the reality of the country doctor’s life is at the heart of the story. As people around comment on what’s happening, the doctor’s attention is focused on helping the trapped man. He also takes the time to explain what he’s doing to the three onlookers, reassuring them. Berger wonderfully captures the reactions of the onlookers to the doctor’s presence and his actions. To them, he is a friendly saviour but also a not-always-welcome outsider. To the injured man, he is a source of courage and hope.

“The three onlookers were relieved by the doctor’s presence. But now his very sureness made it seem to them that he was part of the accident: almost an accomplice” (p.18)

“Again the doctor, whom they knew so well, seemed the accomplice of disaster” (p.19)

So strongly tied to ideas and memories of illness, the country doctor seems to the people a part of the accident. His presence is synonymous with the presence of illness and injury. At the same time, he can relieve pain and illness but also be a constant reminder of their existence. The above sentences convey the mixed emotions people have towards doctors and reveal a truth about being one. The country doctor is a friend who is only present during most difficult and unpleasant of times. When that time is over, he doesn’t necessarily want to be remembered.

Works cited:

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. Canongate, 2016, pp. 17-19

Whittington Response 1 (Berger)

Hannah Whittington

Professors Thrailkill and Rivkin-Fish

ENGL 264

26 January 2020

In “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor” John Berger and Jean Mohr explore how and when stories develop from traumatic events causing injury. The most striking sentence in this piece to me was: “The man would tell the story many times, and the first would be tonight in the village. But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over” (Berger & Mohr 17-18). When do events in our lives transition from our present to a sequence of events from the past that we can narrate? Later in the passage, the doctor comments “’You know Sleepy Joe?…He was trapped under a tree for twelve hours before any help came”’ (Berger & Mohr 19). This event, which is now a story, was not always one. Likewise, though the story of the man with the crushed leg is not a story yet it will be in the future. In class, we discussed how illness interrupts our stories. However, Berger and Mohr’s story seems to argue the opposite. Illness and injury become a part of our personal life stories, and become stories for other people to tell. It is true that the man’s leg injury will likely interrupt his life, his career, and his functionality. However, it is not the end of a story but the beginning of a new one, for him and for the people around him who witnessed this event take place. This is important because even traumatic events contribute to our identities, not just positive ones.

Works Cited

Berger, John and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country       Doctor. Vintage International, 1967. pp. 17-23.

Response to A Fortunate Man

Kyle Lambert

Profs. Rivkin-Fish and Thrailkill

ANTH 272

1.26.2020

The second vignette in John Berger’s A Fortunate Man recounts the relationship between a country doctor and his patient/ex-patient who is now described merely as a “woman of about thirty-seven.” The story truly begins ten years prior, when the doctor first encounters the woman and attempts to address the cause of a cough. The doctor is quick to conduct scientific inquiry on the woman, ordering a chest X-ray and allergy test, and though he recognizes something emotionally troublesome is proliferating below the surface of the symptoms, the doctor fails to elicit explanation. The woman becomes zoomorphized by her illness and lack of pertinent treatment: she is described as having round rabbit eyes that twitch like a rabbit’s nose, trapped in the cage of her sickness, and frozen as if stalked by a predator. Her agency in life is lost as she “survives on steroids” and “seldom leaves the cottage.” The doctor’s role as not only biological investigator but as social healer is both revealed and relinquished in this episode. Kleinman may diagnose that the doctor correctly identified the disease while ignoring the woman’s illness; Frank may perceive this aborted restitution narrative as indicative of modern medicine’s insufficiency in healing that which is not inflicted by genes or germs. With “the girl with asthma” now reduced to her most animalistic mannerisms, the doctor is now cognizant of his shortcomings. In the final poetic passage, the woman is personified as a body of water who, once profound and full, has been diminished by nature and others to a bubbling brook of anxiety and worry. The river bend symbolizes the tempestuous time when the doctor may have been able to straighten the woman’s path but inadvertently allowed the illness to overcome. This reflection suggests the country doctor’s growth in his role as healer.

 

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man. Granata Books, 1989.

Physicians as Illness Narrative Components

William Shuford

Julio Villa-Palomino

ENGL 264

1/26/2020

Physicians as Illness Narrative Components

John Berger’s A Fortunate Man reflects cultural beliefs and conceptualizations of illness’ relationship to the physician. Berger’s vignette of the woodsman trapped beneath a tree helps show how the physician is a key component in the development of illness narratives. The piece implies that the doctor is the determinant of both the temporality and conclusion of the narrative. Berger frames this in writing “The [woodsman] would tell the story many times, and the first would be tonight in the village. But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over…” (Berger 17-18). This passage recognizes that not only is an event unfolding, but that a story is forming. Furthermore, it claims that the conclusion is formed by the advent of the doctor thus yielding a concrete timeline and resolution.

This narrative framework is further implied in the story’s continual meditation that the doctor’s personhood, as perceived by the bystanders and patient, is inextricably tied to the advent of suffering. The story suggests this twice, the first time stating that the doctor’s “very sureness made it seem to them that he was part of the accident: almost its accomplice” (18) and later stating that “the doctor, whom they knew so well, seemed the accomplice of disaster…” (19).  This association reveals a cultural understanding of the doctor as a person who is in a sense othered based on their occupation (in the most basic sense of the word). This is interesting because it places the occupation of medicine in the same realm as race, religion, and nationality as categories of otherness.

Moving forward, Berger’s depiction of the cultural conceptualization of the doctor is interesting and provocative– yet dated. In present time people have much more agency over their health due to the advent of the information age. It is an interesting question whether this narrative relationship is still relevant in the present given that the doctor is no longer the sole symbol of health and wellness.

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. Vintage Books, 1997.

Ashlyn Beach, Reading Response 1

Ashlyn Beach

Professors Rivkin-Fish & Thrailkill

ANTH 272

January 26, 2020

Reading Response 1

I chose to examine a paragraph from one of the stories from “A Fortunate Man.” This part of the story is striking to me because it reflects on the nature of stories. A man tells the doctor how the injured man is “suffering something terrible,” (Berger and Mohr 17). This man’s account is acknowledged by the third-person narrator to be a story; “The man would tell the story many times,” (Berger and Mohr 17). My first reaction to this was the question, what makes a story? This seems to be a significant question to consider, especially for our class. However, we get another piece of information about the nature of stories. The text says, “But it was not yet a story. The advent of the doctor brought the conclusion much nearer, but the accident was not yet over: the wounded man was still screaming…” (Berger and Mohr 18). There are many interesting things to unpack from these sentences. First, we learn that a story must have some sort of end or conclusion. We also learn that the injured man’s expression of pain is an indicator that the accident has not stopped, and therefore no conclusion has been reached. My interpretation of these points is that a person’s active suffering cannot be classified as a story, because it has not yet reached a conclusion. Another important aspect is the diction, specifically “advent” to describe the doctor’s arrival – the word means, according to Google dictionary, “the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.” He is not just present in the scene, but is an important force in moving toward the conclusion of this story. Based on these interpretations, I see this scene as a “modern” or “expert” view of suffering, where the medical professional is the bringer of healing and stories of suffering.

 

Works Cited

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man. Granata Books, 1989.

The Doctor’s Failure

 

Passage taken from A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor

“Her asthma continued and caused structural deterioration of the lungs. She now survives on steroids. Her face is moon shaped. The expression of her large eyes is placid. But her brows and eyelids and the skin pulled tight over her cheek bones twitch at every moment and sound which might constitute a warning of the unexpected. She looks after her mother, but very seldom leaves the cottage. When she sees the doctor, she smiles at him now as she would probably smile at the solider of the Salvation Army.”

Before, the water was deep. Then the torrent of God and the man. And afterwards the shallows, clear but constantly disturbed, endlessly irritated by their very shallowness as though by an allergy. There is a bend in the river which often reminds the doctor of his failure” (Berger and Mohr 23).

In A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor, John Berger and Jean Mohr create a story detailing the relationship between a doctor and a young girl in a village in rural England. At the beginning of the passage, words such as “structural deterioration” and “steroids” which are associated with disease, “an alteration in biological structure or functioning,” are used to describe the girl’s condition (Kleinman 5). In the middle of the passage, words that describe the patient’s specific features such as her “placid” eyes and “cheekbones” twitching signify the doctor’s transition into also recognizing her symptoms of illness, or “the innately human experience of symptoms and suffering” which he realizes two years later (Kleinman 3).

Towards the end of the passage, Berger describes a body of water which is likened to the girl’s personality. Prior to the assault, the girl is characterized as “deep” where she is willing to put a deep trust in those around her. Then, there is a “torrent” when her trust is shattered by her sexual assault and the doctor’s inability to understand her anxiousness. Given her trust has been diminished, her personality is likened to the “shallows” in her maintenance of a superficial relationship to those around her.

Through word choice and metaphor, Berger and Mohr ultimately reveal the deterioration and destruction of the doctor-patient relationship that can arise when doctors only consider symptoms of disease and are unable to earn their patients’ trust. The doctor has failed to recognize symptoms of illness in the girl’s facial expressions and nonverbal actions by merely questioning her instead of trying to recognize her actions, thereby losing her trust. The doctor’s failure is clearly seen in her smile towards him as how “she would probably smile at the soldier of the Salvation Army,” a superficial smile signifying a lack of trust which he cannot earn back.

 

Works Cited

Kleinman, Arthur. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition. Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2007.

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. Canongate, 2016.