Death

Characters

• the narrator — a hunting landowner: A hunter who recalls several deaths and reflects on the way Russians meet their end.
• Avenir Sorokoumov — an unfinished student, a private tutor: The narrator's consumptive friend, ending his days in a stranger's house without complaint.
• Ardalion Mihalitch — a neighbour, a young landowner: The young owner of Tchapligino, who takes the narrator hunting and finds his contractor dying.
• Maksim — the contractor at the felling: A peasant crushed by a falling ash, who asks for a priest and settles his money as he dies.
• Kapiton Timofeitch — the medical assistant at Krasnogorye hospital: An acquaintance of the narrator, a keen sportsman who bought the hospital beds with his own money.
• Vassily Dmitritch — the miller of Liobovshin: A miller ruptured lifting millstones, who refuses the hospital and drives home to die.
• Gur Krupyanikov — the landowner who employs Avenir: A coarse gentleman who stops paying the tutor but writes to report his death.
• Gottlieb von der Kock — a steward from the Baltic provinces: A German of nineteen who reads a novel under a bush and laments the fallen oaks.
• Arhip — the village constable: A squat peasant who steps unmoved over the fallen oaks and is sent for the doctor.
• the old lady — a dying landowner: She dies keeping a rouble under her pillow to pay the priest for her own last rites.