Reflecting on Chekhov’s “The Death of a Government Clerk”
This is day 2 of my attempt to build a writing routine. Yesterday, I chose to talk about my free-flowing thoughts. Today, I am going to talk about a story I just read.
I seem to have sparked an interest in classical literature over the last few months, which led me to buy a book titled The Greatest Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, a prominent figure in Russian literature known for his famous short stories.
After my evening tea, I grabbed the book and started with the first short story, The Death of a Government Clerk. The character’s names are of Russian origin, which made them challenging to pronounce and required a bit of attention. Being lazy, I decided to read the names once and skip them later whenever they appeared in the story.
The story is about a clerk who accidentally sneezes on a general during an opera. The clerk, Tchervyakov, feeling embarrassed for violating social etiquette apologizes to the general, Brizzhalov, who offers slight forgiveness and asks Tchervyakov not to bother him anymore as he continues apologizing.
Tchervyakov narrates the whole incident to his wife after returning home. She is frightened that this incident might affect the clerk’s profession, as the general holds a superior position. She advises him to return to the general and apologize, and so he does. But the next meeting turns out the same way, with Tchervyakov insisting that he didn’t mean to spatter on the general’s head intentionally.
Dissatisfied with the general’s acceptance of his apology, he decides to visit him again, which annoys Brizzhalov this time. The general asks the clerk to leave his office.
The story ends with Tchervyakov returning home, where he dies. The ending was quite surprising and left me pondering the clerk’s reason for death. After the incident, the clerk developed a sense of anxiety, unable to stop thinking about what had happened. The general’s lack of proper acceptance of his apology only added to his worries. This story mocks the trivial practices of the upper class that cause unnecessary stress among the lower class.
