This is a brief, searing portrait of an ill-tempered father and his cowering family.
Doubtless it was inspired by Chekhov’s own ill-tempered father, Pavel. Chekhov did not write from life, exactly, and the circumstances of the Zhilin family in this story are different from that of the Chekhovs, but the character of the father in the story seems to match quite closely that of Pavel Chekhov.
Here is the fictional Zhilin, practically screaming at the dinner table about the quality of the soup: “One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that! There’s too much salt in it; it smells of dirty rags… more like bugs than onions… It’s simply revolting.”
And then he turns his wrath on his little son, speaking of him almost as he did of the soup.
Ugh. That was written in 1885, when Chekhov was 25 years old.
A few years later he would recall a similar scene in a letter to his brother, Alexander: “Despotism and lies destroyed our childhood…. Think back to the terror and disgust we used to feel whenever Father made a fuss about the soup having too much salt in it, or cursed Mother for being a fool.”
Ugh, ugh, ugh!
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Looking for a portrait of a volatile, cruel father? Chekhov has lots to choose from. “Difficult People” concerns a small-town farmer whose son is in university and desperately trying to break free from his deeply unpleasant childhood home.
A Chekhov Circus 