Here we have a gruesome little story about a beaten-down, nasty little man who is transporting his ailing wife to a hospital through a snowstorm.
She dies on the way, and then an even nastier fate befalls her husband.
It’s just an ugly little story, unpleasant in the extreme. It’s perfectly well-written and constructed, but there isn’t much to say about it other than “Ugh.”
READ THIS? READ THAT!
There are many Chekhov tales that elicit a response of “Ugh”: There’s “Misery,” about a man mourning his son, “Sleepy,” about an abused, overworked servant pushed beyond her limits, “Volodya,” about a miserable, misfit teen… the list goes on and on. What if, instead of comparing miseries, you were to read a story that, like “Sorrow,” is about a man unhappily transporting another person? “The Post” is that story, and while the tales are fundamentally different they do illustrate a key motif that occurs again and again in Chekhov’s work–a man (or woman) in transit, reaching a new place geographically but, psychologically, often making no progress whatsoever.
A Chekhov Circus 