Chapter Synopsis of Fathers and Sons - Study Guide by Ivan Sergevevich Turgenev

his peasants, who are not paying their rent and arguing over land divisions. Over the next ten days Bazarov returns to his dissections, while Arcady finds his mind constantly straying back to Katya and Nicolskoye. He then returns to Nicolskoye, taking with him letters that were once written to his late mother by Anna, Odintzova’s mother.

Meanwhile, at Maryino, Bazarov and Pavel mainly avoid arguments with each other, although the animosity between them remains undiminished, but soon Pavel catches Bazarov stealing a kiss from Fenichka, which sends him into a rage and he challenges him to a duel. Pavel misses and Bazarov wounds him in the leg. The next day Bazarov leaves and soon after Pavel having assured himself that Fenichka does love his brother, implores him to marry her, which he agrees to do.

Back at Nicolskoye Arcady’s romance with Katya continues innocently. Then Bazarov reappears and the next day Arcady declares his love to Katya and asks for her hand inmarriage, which she gives. The next day, Bazarov once again leaves for his estate where he is joyfully received by his parents. However, he soon slips into depressed apathy and while performing an autopsy on a typhoid victim, cuts and infects his finger, and the infection soon spreads to the rest of his body and his impending death becomes obvious. He sends a message to Odintzova who arrives with her own doctor, but it is too late and he dies alone with her.

The action of the final chapter of the novel takes place six months later in January of 1860. The marriages of Arcady and Katya and Nikolai and Fenichka have taken place two weeks previously in the parish church and a farewell dinner is now being held for Pavel, who is setting off for Moscow on business. In the last paragraphs Turgenev then tells the reader what has happened to his characters now, and we learn that Odintzova has remarried a lawyer, Princess K. has died, both Arcady and Nikolai have settled down at Maryino, where the former has become passionately involved in the running of the estate. Katya has given birth to a son, while Fenichka’s son, Mitya is already growing up. Pavel, meanwhile, has relocated to Dresden, where he spends most of his time with Russian and English visitors. We also learn that Madame Kukshina is in Germany too, studying at Heidelberg, while Sitnikov continues to gad about St. Petersburg.

The very last paragraph of the book, however, is less cheerful in tone, and depicts the pristine grave of Bazarov, which stands in the midst of a derelict churchyard often visited by his bowed and destroyed parents, who can scarcely tear themselves from their prayers at their son’s graveside.