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The literary style in “The Use of Force” tends toward pared-down, minimalist narrative. Details about setting and characters’ appearances are sparing, allowing the few Williams does include to shine. Punctuation includes only what is needed for readers to follow the story, excluding, for example, quotation marks around dialogue and any comma that can be spared without obscuring meaning. Strong statements like those in the story’s brief final paragraph end in matter-of-fact periods, and the final dramatic sentence isn’t even complete.
To those who have read Williams’ poetry or are familiar with imagist goals of conveying meaning through singular images and sparse language, the story’s minimalist style will not come as a surprise. Its intent is not to help readers visualize the kitchen setting, for example, but to immerse readers in the events as the doctor’s observations and reactions reveal them. The effect is an immediacy that heightens suspense. Readers want to know, just as the doctor and parents do, what the examination of the child’s throat will reveal. When the doctor finally sees the throat, a brief phrase—“And there it was”—announces without fanfare the resolution of the conflict. The dramatic and extreme reactions of the child and the doctor to the “battle” of the diagnosis contrast with the almost journalistic, detached diction and syntax, which allows the child’s fear and the doctor’s anger to emerge suspensefully from the straightforward language in which the story is told.
