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The Teacher’s Pet
The physician who gives Francie her smallpox shot. He attended Harvard and has plans to join “a smart practice” in Boston when his internship is over. He currently has to put in a few hours per week at the free clinic. The doctor is a snob who does not only recoil from the sight of Francie’s dirty arm—the result of making mud pies that morning—but uses it to launch into a tirade about how the poor should be sterilized. When Francie responds with outrage, he registers surprise that she was able to understand him, assuming that she would be an immigrant who could not speak English. In the end, he is indifferent and shrugs in response to her hurt.
The Doctor Quotes in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The A Tree Grows in Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by The Doctor or refer to The Doctor . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 18
Quotes
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap
route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can
forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion
and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the
cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in
the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she
had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving
of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she
lacked the courage to be otherwise.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire A Tree Grows in Brooklyn LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Doctor Quotes in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The A Tree Grows in Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by The Doctor or refer to The Doctor . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 18
Quotes
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap
route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can
forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion
and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the
cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in
the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she
had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving
of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she
lacked the courage to be otherwise.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
