Chekhov's "A Boring Story" as an Illness Narrative

Anton Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in his late teens; his sickness may have increased his capacity for empathy. His literary talent allowed him not only to internalize other people's suffering but to voice it, often creating new frameworks and vocabulary for the expression of fear and inner calamity. In "A Boring Story" (1889), a relatively young Chekhov renders the agonizing thoughts of the protagonist, a dying old man, an eminent professor of medicine, Nikolai Stepanovich. This article analyzes "A Boring Story" as an example of illness and end-of-life stories that have become the focus of narrative medicine. My purpose is to highlight some unavoidable limitations that a narrator such as Nikolai Stepanovich might have faced in the late 1880s. I argue that in presenting his old physician's thoughts, Chekhov started a discussion about the likelihood and usefulness of such concepts as a proper death and death with dignity, an important topic of today's debates.