Gerasim

Who He Is

Gerasim is the pantry servant in the Golovin household, a young muzhik, clean and fresh, plumped up on city food, always cheerful and bright, as the chapter VII describes him. He is the character with the fewest lines and the most weight in the book: he appears at the wake in chapter I as the nurse whom Ivan Ilyich Golovin especially liked, and he is the only one who, during the months of illness, does not lie to the sick man. He holds the master's legs on his shoulders for whole nights (Gerasim's Legs on His Shoulders), speaks of death as something everyone shares and, without a word, is at the root of the suspicion that decides the end, in chapter XI.

The Russian calls him буфетный мужик (pantry muzhik, our translation): the peasant who serves in the pantry of a city house, the same status that chapter I gives him when it calls him a muzhik.

Trajectory

In chapter I he walks through the dead man's room with light steps, scattering something across the floor, and only then Pyotr Ivanovich smells the corpse and remembers having seen him acting as nurse. On the way out, he rummages through the coats with his strong hands until he finds the visitor's, and the visitor asks him a question just to say something:

In chapter IV he appears only in passing: Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina says she will send him to the pharmacy with the famous doctor's prescription.

In chapter VII the text puts him in the lowest place in the house, and it is there that he becomes the sick man's comfort: he is the one who carries the chamber pot. One day, too weak to pull up his trousers, Ivan Ilyich drops into an armchair and looks in horror at his bare, weak thighs. Gerasim comes in wearing thick boots, smelling of tar and winter air, in a clean apron with his sleeves rolled up, and, without looking at the sick man, holding back out of tact the joy of living that shines on his face, goes to the chamber pot. When Ivan Ilyich calls him, he shudders, afraid he has done something wrong. The master apologizes for the unpleasant task, and he smiles and asks why he should not put his back into it, since the master is ill. He carries him almost in his arms to the sofa, puts his legs on a chair and then, at the master's request, higher up, and Ivan Ilyich feels less pain. From then on he is called to hold the legs on his shoulders and to talk; he spends nights like this, says he sleeps afterward, and sometimes starts addressing the master with the informal "thou." When Ivan Ilyich sends him to rest, he says what no one else says:

The narrator explains the phrase: he does not tire because he does the work for a man who is dying, and he hopes that when his own turn comes someone will do the same. And he marks the contrast with the whole household:

In chapter VIII the morning is only morning because Gerasim has left and the footman Pyotr has come in; Praskovya Fyodorovna complains to the doctor about the legs placed on his shoulders; the narrator says that, apart from Gerasim, only Vasya seemed to Ivan Ilyich to understand and to pity him; and when the family leaves for the theater, the sick man has him called. In chapter IX the wife wants to dismiss him so that she can spend the night herself, and Ivan Ilyich does not allow it; after the opium, he wakes to find Gerasim dozing at the foot of the bed, patient, with the master's thin legs on his shoulders. Ivan Ilyich sends him out and only then, alone, weeps like a child.

In chapter XI he is not on stage, but it is because of him that the scene begins: the night before, looking at the servant's drowsy, kindly face with its prominent cheekbones, Ivan Ilyich for the first time stops pushing away the decisive question:

Themes Embodied

Gerasim embodies Compassion and Charity without the lie that the household calls care. He does not spare the sick man the truth and does not spare himself the dirty work, and both come from the same sentence: if we all die, caring for those who die is what each of us hopes to receive. The book places him at both ends: his is the only frank speech about death at the wake in chapter I, and it is before his face that, in chapter XI, the suspicion is born that the whole life was not "that."

The physical and moral relief arrive together. With his legs raised Ivan Ilyich barely feels pain, in chapter VII, and it is also only with Gerasim that he feels well, because he is the only one who understands the situation and pities him. The health and joy of others offend the sick man; Gerasim's calm him, because they do not come with pretense. He is the pole of Truth and Lies that the family avoids.

What he wants the text barely says, and it gives him little thought of his own: he exists for what he does and for what Ivan Ilyich sees in him. What he knows is what everyone knows and keeps silent about, that the master is dying; the difference is that he does not find it necessary to hide it. Where he is wrong the book does not show; the only thing that makes him shudder, in chapter VII, is the fear of having failed in his service. He treats the master's Death as if it were his own, and that is what the colleagues in chapter I cannot do.

Divergent Readings

The text sustains two readings of his goodness. In one, it is the simple Christian compassion of the peasant for whom death is God's will, as he says in chapter I, and serving the dying is a task done without grief. In the other, drier reading, it is reciprocity: the narrator of chapter VII explains that he does not tire because he expects someone to do the same for him, and the health and youth that the text never stops showing place him far from what he sees. Both fit in the same man, and the second does not diminish the first: it shows that his charity does not need to forget his own death in order to exist, unlike the calm of the colleagues in chapter I, who can bear Ivan Ilyich's death only by thinking it is not theirs.

One may also ask whether Gerasim is a character or a function, and the text gives reasons for both answers. He has almost no story and no desire, which brings him close to an exemplary figure; but the book describes him with a physical precision (the smell of tar, the sleeves rolled up, the fright of having erred, the patient doze) that it gives to no one else in the house.

Relationships

• Ivan Ilyich Golovin: the master whose chamber pot he carries and whose legs he holds (chapter VII), the only one with whom the sick man feels well, and whose sleeping face sets off the suspicion of chapter XI.
• Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina: who sends him to the pharmacy (chapter IV), complains about him to the doctor (chapter VIII) and wants to dismiss him at night (chapter IX).
• Pyotr Ivanovich: to whom he says, at the wake, that everyone ends up there (chapter I).
• Vasya: the only member of the family who, in Ivan Ilyich's eyes, shares with him understanding and pity (chapter VIII).