A number of literary scholars have interpreted "A Country Doctor" in existentialist terms. They argue that the eponymous doctor represents modern man's inability to rise above the absurdity of his existence in a godless universe. Far from creating his own identity and living fearlessly with the consequences, modern man all too often allows himself to be dragged through his inauthentic life by forces outside his control, whether it's his unconscious drives or the stifling conventions of society.

That's certainly what seems to be happening to the country doctor in Kafka's story. That he's dragged along by a team of horses assembled for him by the groom is particularly instructive in this regard. The doctor's whole existence is shaped by someone else; he lacks control over the horses just as he lacks control over the forces that shape his very existence. The horses, like the groom and the family, pull the doctor in different directions.

And the doctor responds by allowing himself to be so manipulated, chronically afraid as he is of laying hold to his own existence with the appropriate resolution and tenacity. Nothing more than a tool in the hands of others, it seems scarcely credible to call the doctor a man.