(318 words) This story gives a positive impression, as it contains humorous features. The reader sees the degradation of a person, a doctor, a personality, which can even cause regret. Zemsky doctor, Dmitry Ionych Startsev, a young man who is educated, cultured, has some goals, even in love, turns under the influence of the environment into an irritated, flabby Ionych who almost starts to knock with a stick.
The work also shows that the first impression is not always true, does not always reflect reality. The Turkins family to the residents of the city of S. seems gifted and exemplary, but in reality it is a family of though simple-minded, but still mediocre, narrow-minded people.
There is also a love motive similar to “Eugene Onegin”: Dmitry Ionych falls in love with Ekaterina Ivanovna, but she does not reciprocate, and after a few years, when the rejected person left his feelings in the past, it turns out that the girl is now hoping for his previous passion for her . As a result, both remain unhappy.
And although the main character is changing, albeit for the worse, the Turkins family remains unchanged: Ivan Petrovich still laughs “with one eye” and tells jokes, his wife reads her absurd novels, and his daughter also plays the piano for several hours a day and plays the same heavy and difficult passages. There, they still invite guests to dinner, and the already grown-up servant of Pava, as before, depicts the scene from Othello “die, miserable!”, Amusing the guests and the owner.
Ionitch can teach the reader that one should not dissolve in a crowd. You can not lose your identity among people who are intellectually and creatively lower. It is necessary, as they say, "to know one's own worth." Like any young man, Startsev showed hope, was saturated with enthusiasm, but after years when his wealth grew, and he lost all his life goals, the reader sees a deserted and limited person. Nothing interests him. He is not striving for anything.
Thus, this work will be useful for those who are interested in observing changes in personality, what results in the loss of goals and priorities, how a person degrades and what should not be considered a model and talent. We can say that the story contains edifying motives.
