Sorokin's The Blizzard

In Sorokin’s, The Blizzard, the problems standing in the way of progress are seen through a doctor’s journey to a faraway village. The novel brings up current problems in Russia specifically dealing with scientific progress in relation to human ability. The main protagonist, Doctor Garin, is comparable to doctor Preobrazhensky in Heart of a Dog because they both are intellectuals with goals. In the way of their goals, however, is their own desires, a reoccurring theme in The Blizzard. Both doctors run into the same problems in regard to technology, and see that science and technology can only do so much.
The main character of The Blizzard is a scientist named Platon who has the fate of a small, distant village named Dolgoye on his hands. It seems he is the only one with the ability to save this village from their growing zombie population. "You have to understand, I simply must keep going!" Platon Ilich exclaimed angrily. "There are people waiting for me! They are sick. There's an epidemic! Don't you understand?!" (pg 1, Sorokin ). The doctor believes no one else could solve this problem but him, comparable to the weight society puts on the shoulders of intellectuals. Here, Sorokin shows the pressure intellectuals feel in Russia, depicting that …show more content…
He shows that human desires will always distract humans from progress. Humans have weaknesses, no matter how smart they are, and these weaknesses will always get in the way of them reaching their goals. For example, along with their journey to Dolgoye, the doctor and Crouper encounter a drunk man dead in the road. He had appeared to drunken too much vodka. “ ‘He drank it,’ the doctor agreed, ‘and gave up the ghost right on the road. There you have it, good old Russian stupidity,’” (pg 146, Sorokin). This shows that indulging in human pleasure can not only result in a hindrance to progress but also