SOURCE: "Further Freudian Implications in William Carlos Williams' The Use of Force'," in The CEA Critic, Vol. 34, No. 4, May, 1972, pp. 20-1.

In the essay below, Gallagher identifies the characters of the child, the doctor, and the parents in "The Use of Force" with the function of id, the ego, and the superego in the human psyche.

In his interesting article on William Carlos Williams' "The Use of Force," R. F. Dietrich points out the sexual connotations of the story that "are there because they express the savagery in human nature that, lying so close to the surface, can erupt at any moment in a flow of irrational behavior . . ." (Studies in Short Fiction, Summer 1966). The interpretation of the doctor-child conflict in terms of a sexual encounter does indeed appear to be valid when one considers the sexual overtones of the language of the story as Dietrich does. However, I...