The Undertaker: Ashley's thoughts

A coffin-maker, angered by others' derision of his profession, drunkenly his corpses to dinner at his home; in a dream this happens.One point of interest in "The Coffin-Maker" is the honesty, or rather lack thereof, of Prokhoroff.. When Prokhoroff is preparing for the funeral of old Trukhina, her grieving family member says that he will not bargain about the price of the funeral necessities, but rather will trust Prokhoroff to deal with them honestly. In response to this, "the coffin-maker, in accordance with his usual custom, vowed that he would not charge him too much, exchanged significant glances with the bailiff, and then departed to commence operations" (83). This statement causes the reader to pause and become suspicious. One can easily imagine Prokhoroff and the bailiff winking at each other, sharing as a private joke the fact that Prokhoroff will act solicitous and kind while overcharging the distraught family members as much as possible. This line of thought is corroborated by the fact that, later on in the dream, a skeleton asks, "don't you remember the retired sergeant of the Guards, Peter Petrovitch Kourilkin, the same to whom, in the year 1799, you sold your first coffin, and that, too, of deal instead of oak?" (84). In this way the dishonesty of Prokhoroff is set out to the reader, thus casting his earlier angry question of "why is it that my trade is not as honest as any other?.Why did those heathens laugh?"(82) into a different light. It turns out that his trade is not as honest as the others; he has been cheating his clients in a way that the others would not be able to. A person is far more likely to bargain when he is buying shoes or bread than when he is buying the coffin for a loved one, and thus the coffin-maker has more of an opportunity to cheat people than does the shoemaker or baker.