Палата №6

English title: Ward No. 6
Note: the edition I've shelved is for the short story collection, but I read and reviewed only the singular story/novella.

Taking this off my short-stories shelf, because this is most definitely not a short story, but a novella. Shakes fist at goodreads for convincing me that this would be a much shorter read than it actually was! (Because I was reading on Kindle, I couldn't actually tell how long it was going to be...) Having said that it was utterly brilliant and I'm very glad to have read it.

My first thought on starting the novella was: why I have read so little Chekhov? I've seen some of his plays and know the general storylines to a lot of his most well-known works, but I can't really remember ever having sat down to read anything by him. I think the main reason for this is that Chekhov was such a prolific writer, and wrote so much, that I almost get decision fatigue when trying to decide what to start with. I picked this up as it themes on mental illness and treatment towards characters deemed to be “different” is something I am hopefully going to be writing about for the final semester of my undergrad. If this story hadn't sounded so perfect for that, then who knows how long it would have been before I'd finally have picked up a book by Chekhov.

Ward No. 6 is set in a provincial hospital and centres on the conflict between a mediocre and indifferent doctor, Andrei Efimich, and one of his mentally-ill patients, Ivan Dmitrii. Written in the 1890s, years before solid developments in clinical psychology, it's remarkable that Chekhov was able a story that discusses issues surrounding mental illness with such depth and insightfulness. Chekhov asks questions that are undoubtedly still relevant today; he questions what it is to be human, how does society judge us to be “mentally ill”, how do we decide that one person is right (sane) and one person is wrong (insane), and what happens to those we deem “wrong”? We separate them from society, and whose benefit do you think that's really for? Certainly not the residents of ward no.6 themselves, perhaps for society as a whole. The doctor compares the hospital to the nearby prison, when in reality the inmates of both buildings are treated little differently in the wider, outside world:

Раз существуют тюрьмы и сумасшедшие дома, то должен же кто-нибудь сидеть в них. Не вы - так я, не я - так кто-нибудь третий. Погодите, когда в далеком будущем закончат свое существование тюрьмы и сумасшедшие дома, то не будет ни решеток на окнах, ни халатов. Конечно, такое время рано или поздно настанет.

Once prisons and asylums exist, then there must be someone to live in them. If not you, me, and if not me, then someone else. In the distant future, when there are no longer prisons or asylums, then there will be neither bars on the windows nor hospital smocks. Such a time will come, sooner or later.

- А за что вы меня здесь держите?- За то, что вы больны.- Да, болен. Но ведь десятки, сотни сумасшедших гуляют на свободе, потому что ваше невежество не способно отличить их от здоровых. [...] Вы, фельдшер, смотритель и вся ваша больничная сволочь в нравственном отношении неизмеримо ниже каждого из нас, почему же мы сидим, а вы нет? Где логика?

- Why do you keep me here?
- Because you are ill.
- Yes, I'm ill. But dozens, hundreds of other madmen walk about in freedom, because your ignorance is incapable of distinguishing us from the healthy. [...] You, your assistant, caretaker and all the hospital scoundrels have morals far lower than ours, so why are we stuck here and you're not? Where is the logic?