Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov. Short summary

5 seconds

A petty official, through years of severe austerity, realizes his dream of an estate and his own gooseberry tree. The new landowner is happy and does not see how much grief is around him.

1 minute

The teacher Burkin and the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich, coming back from a hunt, get caught in the rain and visit the landowner Alyokhin. Over tea, the vet remembers his brother. Nikolai Ivanovich served as a civil servant and longed for country life. Once they had an estate, but after his father’s death it was sold for debts.

Nikolai dreamed of buying a house on the river or lake, eating their own products, sitting in the sun, admiring the views, the garden, the ducks. All the dreams necessarily included gooseberries. He saves and marries an old widow for money. The wife soon dies, unable to withstand the half-starved life. Finally, the dreamer buys a house, plants 20 gooseberry bushes and becomes a landowner.

The vet visits his brother. He has grown old and fat. At tea, the cook serves him a plate of gooseberries — the first harvest from the bushes he has planted. Nikolai eats and is blissfully happy. He is happy, but Ivan is sad. He understands that it is a crime to be happy when people around him are suffering, and he realizes that he is no better than his brother.