The Death of a Clerk

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Synopsis:

This work tells the story of a clerk named Ivan Dmitrich Cherviakov and how he deals with an unfortunately timed sneeze.

As the narrator begins to recount the events, he interjects, “But suddenly…This “but suddenly” occurs often in stories. The authors are right: life is so full of the unexpected!” This direct address to the reader veils the narrator behind another narrator, further veiling the author from his role in the piece.

The narrator continues to describe how Cherviakov is seated behind the little old General Brizzhalov at the opera The Bells of Corneville. Cherviakov sneezes and believes he has sprayed the general; the rest of the story is essentially a detailed account of his intense anxiety and attempts to apologize to the Brizzhalov. For example, his wife is frightened for his political career, since the general might “think you don’t know how to behave in public”.

After repeated attempts to apologize, the general finally gets annoyed at the trivial nature of the offense and explodes at Cherviakov. In response to this episode, Cherviakov returns home…and dies. This story mocks the strict conventions of society that are seemingly arbitrary and cause people unnecessary anxiety.

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8 thoughts on “The Death of a Clerk”

  1. What is the cause of Cherviakov’s death? While it is intentionally ambiguous and open to interpretation, I believe that it was primarily due to social anxiety. This story highlights the absurdities of a strict social hierarchy and the customs and niceties which surround it. The fact that Cherviakov’s wife fears for his political position due to his sneeze seems to ridicule the position of the lowly clerk in society, while trivializing the social customs expected of him.

  2. I will not be so bold as critic Leo Shestov as to exalt Leo Tolstoi (especially philosopher Leo Tolstoi) as one of Chekhov’s idols, but I will say that Cherviakov’s fatal snapped stomach recalled for me “The Death of Ivan Ilych”. Indeed, Shestov attributes Chekhov a “singular infatuation for death, decay, and hopelessness” (from a disagreeable 1916 essay entitled “Anton Chekhov: Creation from the Void”).

    1. Food for thought: let’s assume that there is indeed some link between Cherviakov and Ivan Ilych and ask ourselves that torturous Tolstoyan question–“if I am to die one day (from hanging curtains or something more exhilarating), how do I live today?” Do we all spend our living days groveling for the respect of our superiors?

  3. As is mentioned in the synopsis above, the narrator curiously comments, “this ‘but suddenly’ occurs often in stories” (1). I note this because it seems an especially fitting interjection given that Chekhov would go on to challenge traditional modes of narration in his later works. Literary critic Conrad Aiken (in a 1968 essay entitled “Anton Chekhov”) characterized Dr. Chekhov’s narrative technique as exuding a “quality of natural, seemingly artless, actuality–casual and random in appearance, abrupt, discursive, alternately overcrowded and thin”.

  4. This is certainly one of Chekhov’s earlier stories, and in it we see more pronounced Gogolian themes. For example, the names Cherviakov and Brizzhalov are reconstructions of Russian words meaning “worm” and “to spray”/”to grumble” (according to Volokhonsky and Pevear), respectively. We may attribute this tradition to Gogol and such memorable characters as Akaky Akakievich and Chichikov, for example. Finally, the excessive deference to disinterested authority, as well as the ridiculous demise of Cherviakov in “The Death of a Clerk” seems to capture the Gogolian absurd.

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