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The doctor is passive and bound by his own indecision and failure to act. Although he is tormented throughout the story by the thought of his servant, Rosa, being assaulted by the groom, the doctor does nothing to help her. Even after witnessing the groom biting Rosa, the doctor stops himself from threatening the man because he rationalizes that he knows nothing about him or his origin. Instead, he leaves Rosa to fend for herself against the groom, never turning back when he understands the groom is breaking down doors to get to the woman. The doctor is also paralyzed by his own failure to do anything meaningful for the patient. When confronted by the seriousness of the wound, the doctor merely concludes the man will die without ever making an attempt to help him. The only true agency the doctor demonstrates is escaping the house. Even then, he does not take action to protect himself from the cold. Instead, he is resigned to the inevitability of his freezing to death and never returning home. He resolves not to think about Rosa or what she’s enduring and blames others for his predicament instead of taking action himself.

The doctor struggles to face his own human frailty, including his failures as a doctor as well as his own mortality. The doctor laments that he cannot save every patient even though he feels pressure from his community to perform miracles. When he is in bed with his patient, his nakedness suggests his vulnerability. The song the children sing reveals that he is disposable and that if he cannot do his job, he should be killed because he is replaceable. These surreal elements are suggestive of the doctor’s fears about his own role in the world and his inability to fulfill expectations. Likewise, he frets about Rosa and how he cannot protect her from the groom, yet every time he thinks of her, he resolves to focus on something else because he knows he is too weak to act. When he faces his own mortality in the end as he travels, naked and freezing, he does not try to change his circumstances, refusing to even stop to dress himself and retrieve his coat. For the doctor, his weakness is something he accepts as a foregone conclusion and something to avoid thinking about even though he is obsessed with the intrusive thoughts of his own frailty, both mentally and physically.

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