Comment on the embarrassment faced by lvan in the story The Death of a Government Clerk.

Tchervyakov is "a no less fine" government clerk and the central character to the story. One evening, he visits the theater to see opera, but accidentally sneezes on another man, a general in the Department of Transport. For the rest of the story, Tchnervyakov is overcome with mortification and shame over what he did, and relentlessly attempts to apologize to Brizzhalov, the general. Tchervyakov is an example of the "little man," or a figure who ranks low in the social hierarchy and who leads a relatively simple life.

Both Brizzhalov and the reader know that Tchervyakov's offense was unintentional and minor, but in Tchervyakov's mind, it was cataclysmic. The story presents Tchervyakov's anxiety over the incident as completely unwarranted (compounded by Brizzhalov's pleas to dismiss the occurrence altogether), but nonetheless all-consuming. Thus, Tchervyakov's becomes a casualty of his own anxious thoughts, spurred by his exaggerated concern for social mores.

the stimulus behind Tchervyakov's crippling anxiety is the fact that he sneezed on Brizzhalov in particular – a higher-ranking government official with the power to destroy Tchervyakov's career and livelihood. While the story makes a joke of Tchervaykov's over-the-top shame for his sneeze, it also in some ways validates Tchervyakov's behavior, especially when his wife seems to share the same worries. Tchervyakov's anxiety is therefore indicative of a larger problem in the story – the extreme disparities between social classes.