A Fortunate Man (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: John Berger
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Work: Cultural criticism
- Time of Work: The 1960’s
- Setting: Rural England
- Principal Characters: John Sassall
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction
- Subjects: Culture, Values, Psychology or psychologists, Rural or country life, Villages, Doctors, Dreams, Medicine, Idealism, Biography
Form and Content
John Berger’s extended essay A Fortunate Man is only minimally biographical. John Sassall, the country doctor whose career serves as the focus of Berger’s book, is more a type of existential hero of the atomic age than the particularized subject of a life narrative. This small deception is in keeping with Berger’s initial observation in the essay—that the landscape acts as a curtain behind which the drama of life and lives is played. Concealment, then, or at least hidden fears, desires, and motives, forms the structure of the village life...
[The entire page is 2616 words long]
