Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1981

Thesis Director

Richard E. Rogers

Abstract

Studying the relationship of Chekhov's being a doctor to his being a dramatist reveals one reason for the scientific objectivity in his writing. Moreover, extensive reading of his letters and notes as well as careful readings of his plays leaves little doubt that he himself considered that his career as a doctor had a great impact on the plays he created.

Chekhov felt that a writer must not beautify reality or gloss over it but carefully present it as it is. He wrote that the writer must renounce subjectivity and report the grime of life along with the good; he suggested that, no matter how unpleasant the task might be, the writer must realize that dungheaps are no less a necessary part in a landscape than the scenic beauty. Briefly, he was convinced that the dramatist should dispassionately witness life, record it honestly, and not judge any part of it.

Chekhov set himself to give an accurate picture of all of Russian life by delving to its very core. No iota of Russian life escaped his discerning vision as he studied the relationship between will and environment, freedom and necessity, and man's character and his fate. As he pursued this theme through ordinary, pedestrian characters, Chekhov revealed his judgement against cruelty, greed, hypocrisy, against whatever degrades man and prevents him from achieving full stature.

Chekhov was most illuminating when he wrote about doctors, whom he considered moral people, for they do useful work. Being a doctor himself, he was able to draw insightful portraits of them--exploiting their shortcomings as well as their virtues. His doctors are fallible human beings first and doctors only second.

Chekhov's doctors were helpless to cure their patients, for most suffered from soul sickness rather than actual physical ailments. To him, soul sickness was largely a matter of self-indulgence and the essential result of individual and societal bumbling. It is only through suffering that his characters can become of service to society.

Chekhov believed that the pain of existence could not be overcome although it might be eased. He carefully presented his characters in a state natural to themselves and, in so doing, revealed some of his own admirable personality traits, such as his strong belief in conservation.

The key to Chekhov's objectivity is his sensibility to the fact that one's own fate, plus his mistakes, bound with the threads of one's environment, education, heredity, and thousands of circumstantial happenings determine the life of a man. The consciousness that man is created for great things forced Chekhov to deal with everyday pettiness in order to show how incompatible man's daily existence is with his inherent possibilities.

Chekhov's not being a typical, traditional turn-of-the-century playwright accounts for much of his success today. He did not write to please the critics or the masses, but to satisfy that within himself which said he must portray life as it really is.

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