"The Country Doctor"

The first thing I had to wonder when I read “The Country Doctor” by Ivan Turgenev is why the story was told not from the source, but from another person who had heard the story. The narrator merely heard and relayed this tale, rather than the doctor himself giving this account. Did Turgenev need to create an image of the doctor that would not be possible had the point of view come from the doctor himself? The narrator supplies few observations throughout the piece, but perhaps these sparse additions to the recounting of the story creates a fuller picture of the doctor, impossible if the narrator could not add what passed before and after. For example, the narrator tells us when the doctor pauses to drink or take some more snuff, denoting which parts of his tale are the hardest for the doctor to repeat. These little moments create a better picture of what the doctor is like, but wouldn't the narration have been better if he could have written it down himself? Or are his speech patterns essential in portraying his emotions? The brief introduction and brief conclusion where action occurs between the narrator and doctor perhaps demonstrate how personal the story is to the doctor yet how quick he is to dismiss it from the pain it brings him.

Nevertheless, the story itself is intriguing. We first see the doctor as a greedy man who wishes he could prioritize patients based on how well they would pay, but to placate himself, he repeats, “However, duty first, you know.” Our sympathies are few for his dreary travel, but the whole tale of his short and desperate love affair with Anna is heartbreaking. There is nothing but overflowing compassion for a man who falls in love with a dying patient, and she returns affection merely because she is on her deathbed.

The way the doctor speaks is short and choppy, yet there are no paragraphs when the doctor speaks or indentations for new speakers within the quotation marks. It almost seems rushed, a sudden flood of feelings and emotions, long repressed, and best shared with a stranger than a close confidante. The doctor tells things out of order, forgets details, and has to backtrack often. Whether this is because the doctor is a poor storyteller or because of sadness. His story is full of ellipses and dashes—constant additions and pauses where he must find the next words. One wonders how long it has been since he has shared this event in his life.

The tale is sad and desperate—a beautiful young girl about to die, who falls “in love” with her doctor (another question of mine—were they actually in love?), the only person who has the chance to cure her but fails to do so (another lament of the doctor that he was too young and naïve to save her). Does she love him because she feels the need to fall in love before she dies? What is her horrible story that she tells him in rushed whispers but he cannot understand? There is a shroud of mystery surrounding the girl and her past circumstances. She seems overjoyed when she learns she is about to die. Her death is tragic, and her love affair with the doctor is fleeting. The doctor claims she had affection for him, but the only reason she loved him is she needed to be in love before dying. She seems to be seeking some sort of redemption, or that she is sacrificing herself in repayment for some type of sin.

And the end of the story is even worse. The doctor probably did truly love Anna even if her love for him came conditionally from circumstances, and now he is married to a woman he dislikes (vaguely reminiscent of Chekhov), and he passes his time playing cards and chewing tobacco, his lost love affair a painful memory.