Fathers and Sons: Chapter 27 Summary & Analysis

Bazarov’s parents are overjoyed at his unexpected return. Fearful of annoying him, they try to keep their distance. Bazarov behaves uncharacteristically, however—showing a “vague restlessness” and a “strange weariness.” He stops shutting himself up in the study with his science experiments. He even seeks out his father’s company. Vassily worries—Bazarov seems sad and is losing weight.

Bazarov tries to distract himself by engaging with local peasants, since, in their hands, “a new epoch in  history is about to begin.” He’s disappointed by their halting and superstitious language, however, and ultimately turns away in contempt. As Bazarov walks away, one peasant says to another, “’E was just natterin’ away about something. […] ’Course ’e’s gentry: they ain’t got much understandin’.’” Bazarov does not suspect that in the peasants’ eyes, he’s a “sort of buffoon.”

One day Bazarov helps his father bind a peasant’s injured leg, and at last he finds an occupation, beginning to help regularly with the peasants’ medical complaints. He continues to gibe at various remedies, but Vassily just laughs, relieved that Bazarov is less depressed and filled with pride to have him as an assistant.

One day a typhus patient is brought to Vassily; the man soon dies. Three days later, Bazarov enters his father’s study and asks for some silver nitrate. When Vassily asks why, Bazarov says he wants to cauterize a cut. He explains that the district doctor wished to conduct an autopsy of the typhus patient, and Bazarov had volunteered; but he is out of practice, and he cut himself. Vassily turns “white to the lips” and cauterizes the cut more, though Bazarov points out that if he’s been infected with typhus, it’s already too late.

The whole next day, Vassily repeatedly goes into his son’s room on various pretexts, looking at him with great anxiety. By the third day, Bazarov has lost his appetite and admits to having a headache and fever, but he tells his parents he’s just caught a chill. He goes to bed and is unable to get up the next day; a gloom descends on the house. Bazarov just lies with his face to the wall. Vassily goes about the house in bewilderment and only laughs hysterically when Arina demands to know what’s wrong with their son. He sends for the doctor.

Bazarov speaks to his father in a slow, deliberate, husky voice, matter-of-factly admitting that, within a few days, they’ll have to bury him. Shocked, Vassily denies this, but Bazarov tells him a doctor mustn’t speak that way—the symptoms all point to a deadly typhus infection, including the red patches emerging on his skin. Vassily says they’ll heal him all the same. Bazarov just says “Fiddlesticks!” to this. He and his mother will have to “fall back on your strong religious faith,” he tells them. While he’s still in his right mind, he requests that a message be sent to Anna Sergeyevna. Vassily goes to his wife’s bedroom, and together they collapse before their icons.

Though the doctor has some hope of recovery, Bazarov doesn’t believe it. He hangs onto consciousness, refusing to fall into delirium even as his condition worsens. In anguish, Vassily begs his beloved Yevgeny “to do [his] duty as a Christian” and be mindful of eternity. Bazarov doesn’t object, but says he will wait awhile, since even the unconscious can receive the last anointing.

A rumble of a carriage is heard, and Anna Sergeyevna arrives with her doctor in tow. Vassily calls her an “angel of mercy” and Arina kisses her “like a mad woman.” After a consultation with the German doctor—who determines there is no hope for his recovery—Bazarov gets his wish to see Anna alone. She is taken aback by his deathly appearance, and it occurs to her that she wouldn’t feel this way if she didn’t love him.

Bazarov tells Anna that they must speak honestly with each other. It makes no sense now to tell her that he loves her: “Love is a form, and my particular form is already disintegrating. Better let me say—how lovely you are!” He calls Anna “noble-hearted” and encourages her to live long. He thought he would live for a long time, because there were problems to solve, and he was a giant. “And now the only problem for this giant is how to die decently.”

Bazarov asks Anna to be kind to his mother, since the “great world” doesn’t have anyone like his parents. His father keeps saying that Russia needs Bazarov, but this is clearly untrue, Bazarov says: “The cobbler’s needed, the tailor’s needed, the butcher…” Finally, he says farewell, summoning his last lucid moments to ask Anna to “Breathe on the dying flame and let it go out.” She kisses his forehead, and he never wakes again. That night the last rites are performed, and Bazarov dies the next day.