Ward No. 6
2 hrs. 4 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Anton Chekhov
Author
Anton Chekhov
Narrator
Vadim Krivosheyev
Narrator
Vadim Krivosheyev
Description
Motifs of the anguish of existence and oppressive reality, which often and piercingly sound in Chekhov’s stories, shade the sharpness and complexity of their characters’ experiences. A subtle psychologist and master of subtext, A. P. Chekhov lays bare the most hidden regions of consciousness, creating not a spectacle of puppet-like characters, but a dramaturgy of human souls.
In the horrific conditions of a provincial hospital, five mentally ill patients live in Ward No. 6; their doctor — the apathetic Dr. Ragin — sees no point in treating those who are doomed and prefers reading books to work. Taken with debates with one of the patients, the doctor begins to strike his colleagues as insane, and soon he himself ends up in Ward No. 6. Chekhov, who shortly before writing the novella had visited Sakhalin as a journalist, uses a time-tested essayistic style to describe a gradual slide into madness. Perhaps, at the same time, he shows the reader how convenient it is to explain the incomprehensible behavior of others as madness: Ragin’s point of view is close to that of the narrator, and this creates tension in the novella, which in the finale leads to an explosion of violence. Leskov called “Ward No. 6” an image of Russia in miniature; Lenin, after reading the novella, experienced a fit of terror. At the same time, Chekhov himself did not initially take his novella seriously and feared that it was dull.
In the horrific conditions of a provincial hospital, five mentally ill patients live in Ward No. 6; their doctor — the apathetic Dr. Ragin — sees no point in treating those who are doomed and prefers reading books to work. Taken with debates with one of the patients, the doctor begins to strike his colleagues as insane, and soon he himself ends up in Ward No. 6. Chekhov, who shortly before writing the novella had visited Sakhalin as a journalist, uses a time-tested essayistic style to describe a gradual slide into madness. Perhaps, at the same time, he shows the reader how convenient it is to explain the incomprehensible behavior of others as madness: Ragin’s point of view is close to that of the narrator, and this creates tension in the novella, which in the finale leads to an explosion of violence. Leskov called “Ward No. 6” an image of Russia in miniature; Lenin, after reading the novella, experienced a fit of terror. At the same time, Chekhov himself did not initially take his novella seriously and feared that it was dull.
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