Ward No. 6

Interesting Facts

• The main character, Dr. Andrey Yefimych Ragin, becomes a patient in the psychiatric hospital where he worked.
• In this work, Chekhov raises important questions about humanism, freedom, and the meaning of life.
• Ward No. 6 symbolizes not only a psychiatric hospital but also society as a whole, where people often find themselves in 'psychological' isolation.
• The work was written during a period when Chekhov himself worked as a doctor, adding realism to the medical and psychiatric descriptions.
• Dr. Ragin and patient Ivan Dmitrich Gromov engage in philosophical conversations that are central to understanding the ideas of the work.
• Chekhov uses the contrast between rational and emotional approaches to life, reflected in the characters of Ragin and Gromov.
• The work critically examines the state of medicine and psychiatry in late 19th-century Russia.