# The Schoolmaster explained — Short Fiction > Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Anton Chekhov. ## What happens Fyodor Lukitch Sysoev, the schoolmaster of the Kulikin factory school, prepares for the annual dinner after the examinations. Despite his poor health and irritable mood, he attends the banquet where he is praised by colleagues and the factory manager, Adolf Andreyitch Bruni. During the dinner, Bruni reveals that a sum of money has been placed in the bank to provide for Sysoev's family, implying the schoolmaster's impending death. Sysoev reacts with horror and despair, breaking down in tears. The dinner ends gloomily, and later the district doctor privately tells Sysoev's wife that he has less than a week to live. ## Themes in this chapter ### Mortality and Legacy The chapter centers on Sysoev's confrontation with his own mortality, as Bruni's announcement about providing for his family reveals the schoolmaster's imminent death, forcing him to face his legacy and the end of his life. ### Hypocrisy and Moral Failure The praise and enthusiasm at the dinner mask the underlying truth of Sysoev's fatal illness, highlighting the hypocrisy of the celebratory atmosphere and the failure to address his condition openly. ## Character check-ins ### Fyodor Lukitch Sysoev The schoolmaster, preparing for the annual dinner, struggling with his health and temper, and later devastated by the revelation of his impending death. ### M. Laptev Not directly present in the excerpts; no matching character found. ## Key lines > he had not the gift of eloquence and that he was not prepared to make a speech. Further he said that during the fourteen years that he had been schoolmaster there had been many intrigues, many underhand attacks, and even secret reports on him to the authorities, and that he knew his enemies and those who had informed against him, and he would not mention their names, 'for fear of spoiling somebody’s appetite' Sysoev admitted he was not a good speaker and had not prepared a speech. He then complained about the fourteen years of plots, secret accusations, and informants against him, but said he would not name them to avoid ruining the meal. _Sysoev's bitter and paranoid speech at the dinner reveals his long-standing grievances and defensive nature._ > And all present at the dinner began as one man talking of Sysoev’s extraordinary talent. And as though a dam had been burst, there followed a flood of sincere, enthusiastic words such as men do not utter when they are restrained by prudent and cautious sobriety. Everyone at the dinner suddenly started praising Sysoev's exceptional abilities, releasing a torrent of genuine, passionate compliments that would not have been spoken in more sober, guarded circumstances. _The collective praise highlights the contrast between the earlier tension and the spontaneous admiration for Sysoev's work._ > With a pale, distorted face he suddenly jumped up and clutched at his head. For a quarter of a minute he stood like that, stared with horror at a fixed point before him as though he saw the swiftly coming death of which Bruni was speaking, then sat down and burst into tears. Sysoev's face turned pale and twisted; he leaped up and grabbed his head, standing frozen for fifteen seconds, staring in terror at nothing as if envisioning the death Bruni had hinted at, then collapsed into his chair and wept. _Sysoev's dramatic reaction to the revelation of his impending death underscores the emotional climax of the chapter._ > And meantime, while he was examining the exercise-books, the district doctor was sitting in the next room and telling his wife in a whisper that a man ought not to have been allowed to go out to dinner who had not in all probability more than a week to live. While Sysoev looked over his students' notebooks, the doctor in the adjacent room quietly told his wife that a man with probably less than a week to live should not have been permitted to attend the dinner. _The doctor's whispered statement confirms the severity of Sysoev's condition and the irony of the celebratory dinner._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se/chapters/the-schoolmaster - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se/chapters