Mankind has not destroyed the perception of society as long as it knows itself and has tried to shape its life in line with that perception. Ways of thinking, body shapes, wishes, dreams… You will appreciate the idea when many people who have given up their own personality in order not to be excluded by the social structure and “not to be marginalized” and people who have made the idea of “my life, my own thoughts” their life philosophy, try to live in the same environment. separations, stigma, and humiliation are very likely.
Chekhov’s Sixth Ward was also a book that explained very clearly how these facts isolated people from society. Doctor Andrey Yefimitch; is a character who can’t talk to anyone properly in his monotonous life, who comes to life with his books, and one day he meets Ivan Dmitrich, who lives a life almost like him before he falls into the mental hospital he visits. Ivan’s way of thinking and his point of view on his experiences affect the doctor a lot and they have quality conversations that he has longed for a long time. While the doctor tries to explain that Ivan does not actually live a bad life with philosophical issues, Ivan manages to refute the doctor’s theses every time.
The doctor begins to enjoy his conversations with his new friend so much that he neglects his old life, order and friends. The doctor, who gradually loses his kindness and tolerance for other people, begins to go crazy like his friend and completely isolate himself from the outside world. Each of us experiences the mild form of this situation at some point in our lives. The feeling of not being understood by anyone, the desire to stay away from everything and everyone and stay with only your thoughts… But if a person starts to live only with his own thoughts and completely disconnects from the society and life, even if for a while, the end can be as dire as the Doctor.
Before starting to talk to Ivan, the doctor, who does not know what many emotions, especially pain, is, begins to understand the pain and suffering of the insane, who are marginalized by the society, because of the attitudes shown to him when he starts to lose his mental health. For the first time, he feels humiliated and angry when he leaves the municipality where he is treated as crazy.
The roles change at the end of the book. The doctor has gone mad and the madman is trying to cure him. The doctor who replaces Ivan in the sixth ward cannot comprehend the events. In the end, the emotions that he could not understand for 20 years cover his whole being and become unbearable. The doctor, who isolates himself from them because of the norms of the society, loses his respectability and becomes one of the marginalized. This novel has examined in every detail the basic social structure, human types, and the destruction of normal perception, including the current century and even previous centuries.