The Polyphonic Reflections of Death in The Grasshopper and Gusev Anonymous College

Chekhov’s post-Sakhalin stories express the author’s view of death as a prismatic focal point for the human condition. Through dialogue, narratorial comment, and subtextual connections, Chekhov’s stories examine death from so many angles that it becomes impossible to give the theme a singular meaning. Rather, the multiple interpretations of the protagonists’ deaths in The Grasshopper and Gusev signify that death can be implicated in social injustice, personal transcendence, or existential insignificance, depending on the opinions of whoever judges the death. This implies that death can be assigned significance by people and their ideologies, but it has no intrinsic ethical value. In The Grasshopper, Dymov’s death is examined from two social and moral perspectives, both defined by the narrative as extremely individualized viewpoints.

First, because Dymov died from performing a risky medical procedure, his colleague Korostelev concludes that “he served science and died in the cause of science” (89). Here, Chekhov plainly introduces, in one character’s voice, an opinion on what this specific death might signify. In Korostelev’s dialogue, we are introduced to the prospect that one can die as a sacrifice for the benefit of others....