Stylistic Analysis. Doctor in the House
“Doctor in the house” is written by Richard Gordon a real ship’s surgeon and an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. The story deals with describing process of exams, difficulties provided by them and students’ feelings and thoughts before and after examinations. The general slant of the story is quite tense, gloomy and even a bit depressed. It makes the Reader feel anxious and it forces us to have a disagreeable sense of a heavy load because we worry about the narrator’s success at the exam. The author manages to create such an atmosphere by an abundant use of similes.
He compares examinations with a serious contest, an eight-round fight, a final breathless sprint and even with death. All these devices leave a very vivid description of the students’ anticipating such an unpleasant inevitability as the exam. By means of the author’s language our imagination depicts a distinct and colorful picture proving the effectiveness of the stylistic devices in Gordon’s description. It’s hard to believe but suspense is even growing from one paragraph to another turning just an investigation of a man’s knowledge into judgment day.
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And to my mind this allusion is chosen nonrandom but to emphasize a meaning of the exam for candidates. And Gordon asserts that if an examinee loses his nerve he’s like a cow in a bog and soon he will be finished. But not all students act like this and knowing that the author focuses his attention on describing different psychological types of candidates. He pictures them with common understandable vocabulary which refers us to life and makes the portraits very convincing.
At the same time Gordon adds some tiny but significant details like the Nonchalant lolling back on the chair, the Franky Worried tearing his invitation, the Crammer fondling his books, the Old Stager treating like a photographer at a wedding. Besides an attentive Reader could notice how skillfully the author names these types underlining their essences and expressing them shortly just in one word. Meanwhile despite of a psychological type everybody can find no peace after the exam not knowing anything about their results. And the author perfectly conveys students’ sense of futility and despair considering these days to be black.
It helps the Reader to guess how difficult to cope with such a condition when you are numbed, unable to realize what has happened and everything you can is just hope for the better. This is precisely what the author says about pernicious aftereffect of exams. So as I said the suspense is still growing especially when the results are about to come out. Gordon gives us a very unusual and picturesque image of the speechless world where everything isn’t going to stir, not a leaf. The Reader has already got used to a high speed of the story and this sudden stop makes a great contrast in mood between the whole text and the last part.
But this stillness is fake the narrator’s heart is on a point of leaping out of his chest. The description of the hero’s state is highly emotional. His wet palms, burning face, pulse in his ears keeps the Reader in so great tension which disappears at once after just one word ‘pass’. And a long-awaited relief covers the narrator and the reader because the author ideally coped with his main task – he hold our attention during the whole narration compelling us to feel we are inside of this story.
