What lies on the surface can be deceiving; once one starts to dig deeper the truth is revealed. Turgenev’s The Singers highlights this idea as it depicts favorable peasant life despite an undesirable country landscape setting. While other works we have examined, such as Uncle Vanya, have presented a strong connection between the natural environment and the character’s behavior, the peasants in The Singers appear to act in a manner contrary to the negative influences of the environment. The narrator begins the story by describing the village of Kolotovka as “poor” and never a “cheerful sight” no matter the season (1,4). He observes the lack of water as well as the oppressive heat near Kolotovka, pointing to the lifelessness of the village and the likely poor condition of its residents (4). The narrator’s description leads one to wonder how and why under such conditions anyone lives in the village.

Instead of continuing with the description of the poor environment, Turgenev turns to the life of the peasants and focuses on their interactions at a local pub. A surprising part of this scene is how the narrator blends into the background and acts as a spectator to the events in the pub by not interacting directly with any of the peasants. Although the narrator is physically present, his removal, yet observation of the situation creates the idea for the reader that one is viewing the peasant in his or her natural environment. The convivial atmosphere around the singing competition within the pub plays out in stark contrast to the miserable country environment. Yashka’s emotional song brings both the narrator and the rest of the peasants to tears, shortly followed by all of them “talking loudly [and] joyfully,” momentarily forgetting about the problems of their past and the present (19). The narrator’s rapid departure from the pub, so as to not “spoil [his] impression” of the peasants, reveals the narrator’s desire to remember the peasants in a positive light despite their terrible environment (20). He wishes to retain this image of the peasants, as it is not plagued by the ills that the environment undoubtedly imposes on them. Particularly since the narrator reveals the difficult pasts of some of the peasants, he wants his memory of them to be this positive experience in the pub, which could very well differ from that of the peasant’s everyday lives given the harsh environment. While the narrator leads one to believe that the peasants lead a satisfying life, there is much that the narrator withholds or does not know about their everyday life, and the poor environment serves as an indicator that the way the peasants appear may not necessarily be the truth.