SOURCE: "Medical Ethics and the Problem of Role Ambiguity in Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Murderer' and Pear S. Buck's 'The Enemy,'" in Literature and Medicine, Vol. 7, 1988, pp. 107-22.

In the following excerpt, Dagi discusses the moral ambiguity embodied in the physician, Dr. Yashvin, in "The Murderer. "

Several years after the October revolution, Dr. Yashvin, an urbane man and excellent surgeon, appears unusually preoccupied during a soirée. The conversation turns to the way in which the public fails to appreciate the moral probity of physicians. If a patient dies, for example, the physician is called a murderer. This appellation, the host argues, is absurd: "'A surgeon with a pistol in his hand—that . . . might be murder. But I've never met any such surgeon in my life. .. . '"T o the astonishment of those present, Dr. Yashvin announces that he has killed a man—a patient—deliberately. The night...