Jean Beick From The Doctor Stories Summary

William Carlos William’s “Jean Beicke” from The Doctor Stories, portrays a grim setting for the infants and children of immigrants in an impoverish neighborhood where conditions force the local hospital staff to constantly struggle with their morality. Within the first pages, the reader is given a glimpse to the cruel world that these sick and often unwanted children live in. The children are left with the staff, “under all sorts of pretext” (p 69), then disappear without trace. The most common reason for abandonment being either lack of money or disinterest, for which the staff could care less for. As a health professional their priority and loyalty lies with their patients and nursing them back to health no matter the circumstance. Even with knowing that their efforts and emotions are in vain they continue to prove the best care they can give. This brings up the

Leaving the children at the hospital can be seen as an act of love, rather than abandonment. A mother and family are exchanged for a warm bed, food, clothes, and above all an increase chance of survival. If children were undesired, then a more logical and less troublesome alternative would have been to expose then or drop them off at an orphanage, yet these parents chose a hospital. While a somewhat noble act, this does not lessen the consequences of their abandonment. Both nurses and doctors begin to question whether healing these children is worth the trouble when they will wither struggle for the rest of their life or pass away from illness. The tone of this passage suggests that all of those working at the hospital are frustrated with the situation, as seen with the nurse who wanted to slap the women whose baby was in the hospital just last week (p 70) and the doctor who claims that the baby girls will grow up to be a “cheap prostitute”. Though not a pleasant thought, it is one that rings