Who He Is
Vasya, Vasily Ivanovich, is the youngest son of Ivan Ilyich Golovin and Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina, one of the two children of the couple who survive the three who die young. He is a gymnasium student of thirteen or fourteen in chapter I, so like his father that Pyotr Ivanovich sees in him the young Ivan Ilyich of the School of Jurisprudence. He hardly speaks and is hardly seen: he enters the scenes without being noticed, and that is exactly why the book reserves for him the gesture that coincides with his father's passing, in chapter XII.
Trajectory
In chapter I, right after Pyotr Ivanovich greets his sister and her fiancé, the boy appears from under the staircase, eyes red from crying and with the look the narrator attributes to thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys who are no longer innocent; upon seeing the visitor, he frowns, stern and embarrassed.
In chapter II he is an object of dispute between his parents: Ivan Ilyich wanted him at the School of Jurisprudence, where he himself studied, and his mother, out of spite, put him in the gymnasium. He studies reasonably well. In chapter III he has a study room in the new house and learns carefully, with private tutors, what is taught in the gymnasium. In chapter IV, amid his father's nagging at the table, the son's elbow appears on the tablecloth.
In chapter VIII, in the morning, the footman Pyotr tells the sick man that Vassily Ivanovich has gone to the gymnasium. In the evening, when the family comes to say goodbye before the theater, he enters behind Lisa and her fiancé without anyone noticing him, in a new uniform, with gloves and terrible dark circles under his eyes, whose meaning Ivan Ilyich knows. The son had always stirred pity in him, and the boy's frightened, compassionate look frightened him. The narrator says what the father thinks: apart from Gerasim, only Vasya seemed to understand and to pity.
In chapter XII, at the end of the third day of screaming, an hour before death, he enters the room slowly, the father's flailing arm falls on his head, and the boy holds it, presses it to his lips and weeps. At that same instant, the text says, Ivan Ilyich falls into the hole and sees the light (The Light). He opens his eyes, looks at his son and feels pity for him; he points him out to his wife with his gaze, and tries to ask forgiveness:
Он хотел сказать еще «прости», но сказал «пропусти», и, не в силах уже будучи поправиться, махнул рукою, зная, что поймет тот, кому надо, He meant to say "forgive," but said "let it pass," and, too weak now to correct himself, he waved his hand, knowing that whoever needed to understand would understand.
Themes Embodied
Vasya embodies Compassion and Charity without going through speech. The book places him beside Gerasim in chapter VIII, the only two who, in the father's eyes, understand and pity, and in chapter XII his gesture, kissing the fallen hand, arrives at the same moment the father, trapped in the black bag, finds the passage. In the end, the pity Ivan Ilyich feels for someone else, and not for himself, begins with him, who had always stirred pity in him.
What he wants the text does not say; what he feels appears in his face, in the eyes red from crying in chapter I and in the frightened look of chapter VIII. What he knows is what the father thinks he knows, and the father is right: in chapter XII he comes in quietly, alone, and is the first to touch the father. Where the book errs, it does not show, because it gives him no judgment to get wrong.
Divergent Readings
The text sustains two readings of the boy. In one, Vasya is a repetition of the father: he is the young Ivan Ilyich of chapter I, and the dark circles of chapter VIII, whose meaning the father knows, tie him to the youthful acts Ivan Ilyich forgot in chapter II, so that the same life might begin again in him. In the other, Vasya is the opening the household lacks: the only one in the family who feels pity, the one whose kiss coincides with the light, and whom the father, at the end, looks at with pity for him and not for himself. The book ends before saying which of the two comes to pass, and the boy leaves the scene in tears.
Relationships
- Ivan Ilyich Golovin: the father, whose copy he is in Pyotr Ivanovich's eyes (chapter I) and whose hand he kisses at the end (chapter XII).
- Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina: the mother, who put him in the gymnasium against his father's wishes (chapter II) and to whom the father points him out on the last day (chapter XII).
- Gerasim: the only one, besides him, who seems to the sick man to understand and to pity (chapter VIII).
- Lisa: the sister, behind whom he enters unnoticed (chapter VIII).
- Pyotr Ivanovich: who sees him at the wake and recognizes in him the boy his father was (chapter I).