Doctor Glas
There are moments in every human’s life that could considerably change their behavior, interests, attitudes towards others or outlooks. Such turning points test peoples’ endurance as well as an ability to take important decisions. Whether it may be large or small these events modify us physically or mentally and teach never to take anything in life for granted. Experiencing these occurrences, humans learn more about themselves and their lives. In the end, people become even stronger individuals, with a clear vision of success and their own ways of realizing cherished dreams and achieving goals. Doctor Glas’ s diary is the mirror through which readers can see the character’s soul and all interior voices that are fighting in his head.
The astonishing classic Swedish novel, Doctor Glas, by a successful novelist, playwright and short-story writer Hjalmar Söderberg presented a good example of such turning point in life and how the character was able to cope with it. This is not a polemic or work of advocacy but a vigorous, sophisticated and tightly-knit psychological study of an entangled personality who stands before a perilous but so irresistible doorway and could not make his mind whether or not to go through it.
The main protagonist of the novel is Doctor Tyko Gabriel Glas, thirtyish medical man who is at the same time quite intriguing, inquisitive and strange character. The whole story is given to the readers in the form of his personal diary, different notes about Doctor’s thoughts, things he does or people he meets, his meditations about Sweden, Stockholm and the entire world in general. Following the character through his wishes and yearnings, memories and opinions of the society he lives in, everybody has a chance to understand who this man was and how his life looked like.
Prince Gerald considered Doctor Glas’s diary “a verbal process of the spiritual trail he is going through, a cross-examination of his interior voices” (Prince 3). The diary according to the author can be seen as some sort of a confession of a sinner who is trying to get out of a scrape, finding the best solution to the apparent deadlock of his life. The character did not ask help or advice in other people but was fighting with own self that tended to be even harder.
Gerald Prince believed that Doctor Glas’s diary served his judge and friend at the same time. Writing down all his thoughts and cherished desires, the character’s soul simply spoke through the words.
All the complicated challenges the man faced in his life were soon described in details in his diary. Gerald Prince considered that Doctor Glas’s diary was in fact his interior world skilfully presented in the form of words. He needed to understand his self and writing a diary was the best way to look closely at his thoughts. If the character managed to draw an appropriate conclusion of all thoughts, he would be able to save his soul and pass the exam of life.
The day when Helga, the wife of the local clergyman, Gregorius, came to his office turned the protagonist’s life upside down and started the process of his cross-examination. Completely indifferent to any love affair, there now began some sort of anxiety in Glas’s spiritual adulthood. This passion that was born of ignorance gradually turned into an uncontrollable obsession to the married woman.
Doctor Glas finished university quite early and decided to start earning his own money rather than do a doctoral degree. The life of thirty-year-old man, however, did not appear to be as interesting as he imagined. Tired of the day’s routine, the character was looking forward to some absorbing adventure. Doctor found himself a well-educated man, a progressive and cultivated intelectual in a city with quite conservative opinions. He rejected all the requests for abortion, not of his own convictions and beliefs, but because he was afraid to be ostracized by Sweden’s hypocritical society.
Glas’s diary also portrayed him as unsociable and very susceptible man who had an aversion to anything all too human. He had never had a relationship or any physical contact with a woman not because nobody attracted him. The thing was that only married and already in love women could catch the fancy of him, since they emitted radiance and joy. This romantic idealist definitely craved for the marriage and his own family but did not have enough energy and vigour to attract the young woman in town who loved him. As a result, any love feelings became ridicule to the character at all.
Some kind of struggle was happening in Glas’s head. On the one hand, there existed clear and convincing inner voice that exhorted to give up that idée fixe of helping Helga and continue to live his ordinary life of a loner.
He was satisfied with it up to the present day and was now responsible to sustain the chosen path till the very end. On the other hand, several other voices did not leave Doctor Glas in peace of mind. The strongest of them stimulated the man at least to attempt to court that lovely woman.
Never in his entire life had Doctor Glass experienced the loneliness as hard and painful as when he met Helga. He even considered himself the most miserable and lonelier man in the entire world who at times was helping many people but was now unable to save his own soul. The character found it extremely difficult to fight with his own desires as he was completely overfull with obsessiveness and compelling passion for the forbidden woman, perhaps first in his life.
Doctor Glas even declared that “if, by pressing a button in the wall, I could kill that clergyman, I do believe I should do it” (Soderberg 45). Helga had that radiance about her, so Glas could not resist and fell for her. The doctor, however, could not give way to temptation and act on his emotions and desires. That’s why he made a brilliant plan of Gregorius’s separation from his wife. Diagnosing Gregorius with a weak heart, Doctor Glass strongly warned him against any physical contact as it was extremely dangerous for him and could quite possibly kill him.
There eventually came the final stage of his moral trial and cross-examination of all his interior voices. The idea of beautiful Helga in clutches of that obnoxious pastor drove Doctor Glas mad and could not allow him to think reasonably. He began to contemplate the problem and even considered the possibility of killing Gregorius as a way of relieving the “burden” upon Helga (Soderberg 76). The man, who got used to stay away from any human interaction, was now taking an initiative moral stand. After thorough reflections on love, morality, sex and religion, the character was going to commit “ethical” murder (Hofmann 2).
Doctor Glas stepped back from ordinary morality and began to excuse planned murder as a rescue of the victim’s wife. Gregorius in his eyes was believed to be a brute who did not deserve to live and do harm to the poor woman. Finally, if the doctor deprived the world of the pastor, he would definitely facilitate Mrs. Gregorius’s suffering.
Glas’s thoughts were gradually transformed into ill-conceived and feverish ones, as well as his actions were becomimg more courageous and rash. The man prepared tablets of potassium cyanide and was thinking about the best way of killing Gregorius.
The confused mind of Doctor Glas reached its peak, with all its inner voices speaking at once. Whether he actually tried to kill Gregorius and wooed Helga for himself or dropped the entire matter returning back to reality and morality, depended now only on his strength of mind.
Though Doctor Glas believed that he finally found the love of all his life, it was not love at all. In fact, it looked like the dream of love. There was even some kind of dreamlike quality to this story. The character himself felt that he had lately lived in a dream and the time to wake up from that bright nightmares had finally come. In order to justify his actions and explain all his thoughts, the man was appealing to the mental conversations with his own self.
The way of retelling all the events and expressing the most secret opinions in the form of a diary proved very useful to the complicated inner world of Glas. For him it was some kind of reflecting surface or a mirror in which he was able to see his true identity. The protagonist had never considered himself a man of action and now when the destiny was giving him a second chance, he was not going to miss it, but make the best of it.
The diary helped the character to understand how boring his life was till now and that he always had to follow the rules of the society. His dilemma was to be the puppet in hands of the majority. However, when Doctor met Helga, some new mission appeared in his life. He was so obsessed with demonstrating his ability to resist the society with its eternal duties that did not notice all the absurdness and faultiness of his beliefs.
The device of the diary was practical not only to Doctor Glas, but also to the readers. It allowed everybody to follow events as they developed and at the same time afforded an opportunity to listen in on Glas’s reactions to them. Thanks to the subtle workings of the novel, the readers at first did not even notice that it had any. The voice of the character was so instant and blunt that everything resemled the reading of the uncensored thoughts of a real person.
Doctor Clas promised to be as sincere as it was possible. Of course he was not going to write down the whole story of his life. However, the man managed to record everything that appeared to be the solemn truth. Ultimately, Doctor Glas was sure that it was impossible to “exorcise his soul’s wretchedness, if it is wretched, by telling lies” (Hofmann 4).
In the process of writing the diary, the character came to conclusion that in his case, thoughts were gradually driving him for ill. In the same way as an acid, different thoughts together with his inner voices were eating the man away. All Glas’s thoughts turned in one direction only and there could easily come a moment when he would not be in control of his desires, but on the contrary became a helpless victim of them. There would appear special desire for unlimited power in Doctor’s reflections which would inevitably cause misfortune and misery for those who used to confide in him
So, Doctor Glas is a fascinating and deeply moral novel arranged in the form of a journal. The book covers a lot of themes such as abortion, adultery, marriage, guilt, euthanasia and murder. It is surely one of the best masterpieces that would never fall from favor in their readers.
. In the end, the device of the diary played its exceptional role. The audience had a chance to feel all the character’s pain as if it actually was the witness of his inner struggles.
Works Cited
Hofmann, Michael. His spectacles reflected only my window, its curtains and my rubber plant. London Review of Books, 28 November 2002. Web.
Prince, Gerald. The Diary Novel: Notes for the Definition of a Sub-Genre. University of Pennsylvania, 1989. Print.
Soderberg, Hjalmar. Doctor Glas: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009. Print.
