The Analysis of the Text from: “Doctor in the House”

Guschan Elena.
The analysis of the text
From: “Doctor in the house”
Richard Gordon was born in 1921. He has been an anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, a ship’s surgeon and an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He left medical practice in 1952 and started writing his “Doctor” series.
“Doctor in the House” is one of Gordon’s twelve “Doctor” books and is noted for witty description of a medical student’s years of professional training.
The text under analysis is the 1-st person narration with the participant narrator, the theme of which is final examinations. It is a true story, which shows us author’s recollections of the old days, when he was just a student, his feelings, when he had overcome the most scary event in his life – the finals. Gordon tries to explain to reader different actions and emotions during the passing oral and written exams in general and passing them in a medical school in particular.
“Doctor in the house” logically can be divided into several parts. In the 1-st one the author tells us about student’s attitude to the final examinations in general. This logical part presents in a dramatic tone with notes of bitter irony which gives to narration special liveliness. In order to show all the depth of student’s feelings and emotions during the process of finals Richard Gordon from the very beginning of the text uses different stylistic devices such as for example simile: “final examinations are something like death” which at the same time is also an exaggeration with the help of which the author underlines attitude of graduates to this inescapable event. Another stylistic device is trite metaphor “But the medical student cannot see it in this light“which was used in order to show differences between two views points: students point and examiner’s one. Besides there are many different epithets in this passage such as “unpleasant (inevitability)”,” fair and convenient”, “fighting (spirit)” and “well-established (rules)”....