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He has to sleep sitting up because lying down makes him choke. That need seems innate for Chekhov. ." However, while Pavel Ivanych rants on, Gusev ceases to listen to him. As a doctor and philanthropist, Chekhov would have been sensitive to such inhumane acts. Gusev goes to stroke the pony, but it tries to bite him. However, the date of retrieval is often important. This juxtaposition of events suggests the futility of the angry activism exemplified by Paul Ivanovich. Paul Ivanovich says he will advise his friend to drop his more traditional subject matter "about female amours and the beauties of nature." Chekhov described Ceylon in a letter (cited in McVay, Chekhov: A Life in Letters as "the original paradise." During the 14 years remaining to him—he was only 44 when tuberculosis ended his life—he wrote all of the other work on which his reputation is most firmly based. The theory of increased beauty may be due to the pale complexion and red cheeks that were characteristic both of the consumptive and of the ideal of feminine beauty. … I share Chekhov's distrust of labels. The hell of the ship's sick-bay is man-made; the heaven of the sunset belongs to nature. Both characters die; both are dumped after brief ceremonies into the sea. His brother drinks and beats his wife, and does not respect his (and Gusev's) aged parents. While tuberculosis, or consumption, has existed in various forms since antiquity, it became particularly prevalent in the nineteenth century, when it spread rapidly among the urban poor. sources give his birth date as January 16.) Introduction Ivan is in such a state that he is insensitive to the social circumstances; one might call his diatribe an expression of "bad form," an offense against taste. He adds that even if he were imprisoned, he would starve himself to death in order to burden the consciences of his gaolers. Paul treats Gusev with utter contempt, as he is irritated by Gusev's placidity and lack of comprehension of what he is saying. Ivan is prone to extremes, it seems—lacking in a certain saving balance or humor. Paul Ivanovich and Gusev are representatives, respectively, of the intelligentsia and rural peasant classes. There is a climax of sorts in "Gusev," but it consists in the transcendence of nature in the final sunset scene, and Gusev's joyful somersault into the natural world. Your IP: 147.135.211.136 The issue is not whether Ivan's views are "true" (who can quarrel with abstractions like "the meaning of life is to do good," as such? 6, No. "Gusev" is by the Russian short story writer, dramatist, and novelist Anton Chekhov. Paul Ivanovich, for his part, is mocking writers who keep to safe, commercially successful subject matters of romance and sentimental descriptions of nature. (October 16, 2020). By the end of that year he was raising funds to assist peasant victims of famine. Ivan, Burkin, and Alyohin are sitting in a luxurious drawing room, dressed in "silk dressing gowns and warm slippers," savoring the physical ease after a long, fatiguing, wet day. Chekhov undoubtedly sympathized with many of Paul Ivanovich's criticisms of social injustice. "You must deceive yourself. . 6" ("Ward No. Paul Ivanovich thinks that such cases should be kept somewhere quiet, not put on a hot steamship where everything makes the condition worse. 89, 90, 98-99. According to biographical evidence, those feelings help to account for his decision to leave Russia "perhaps never to return"—or so he wrote in justification of the unusually bitter tone of his letter to the editor of a journal that had just named him as one of "the high priests of unprincipled writing." During his stay in 1890 at the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin and on the journeys there and back, Chekhov witnessed scenes of human degradation and suffering that are reflected in the scenes on the ship in "Gusev." (That radical malcontent, so ostensibly concerned with social justice, is as self-centered and as concerned—his envy and hubris reveal it—with his own status as anybody could possibly be. Gusev is thinking about his homeland again. A possible alternative is put forward in the character of Gusev. ©2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Chekhovs moved to Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog to finish his schooling. She asks for sympathy, not a moralistic lecture, but when Trofimov says "You know I sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart" Ranevskaya replies in a way also appropriate to Burkin and Alyohin's response to the gooseberries tale: "But you should say it differently … differently." In only one story I know, "Gusev," does Chekhov offer us a glimpse into an apparently immutable truth, the truth that for him must lie within or beyond our longings. He plans to tell his friend about the "verminous bipeds" he has met during his time abroad so that the friend can write about them. … Whatever his own mixtures, Chekhov has remained of inestimable service to me over the decades because of his unobtrusive insistence upon a freedom beyond our political and religious institutions. 27, No. Gusev replies that he would not know, and slips back into his reverie. Gusev joyfully gives thanks to God that he has seen his family. Again, the first criticism could apply to Paul Ivanovich, the accusation of "swinishness" to the bullish and animalistic Gusev, and the accusation of "indolence" to Gusev's drunken brother. He appears never to have converted his convictions into constructive action; he would rather indulge in ceaseless complaints. This danger has much to do with mirrors—the possibility that the writer we admire is but a reflection of the ideal we posit for ourselves. The redemption payments were due to be paid over a period of forty-nine years, and were only cancelled in 1907. "‘Behind the door of every contented, happy man,’" holds Ivan, "‘there ought to be someone standing with a little hammer and continually reminding him with a knock that there are unhappy people, and that however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws…’" For Ivan, "‘there is no happiness, and there should be none,’" and the purpose of life is to feel guilt and do good. The soldier tells Gusev that he, Gusev, will also not live to see his homeland again. But if the answers provided by this jury member unwittingly reflect his ideal self, they at least permit his conscious awareness of what that ideal consists of. Criticism Gusev, on the other hand, in his glorious final somersault into the sunset-illumined sea, is sufficiently unencumbered to become part of the joy that flows through nature. He does not think about such matters, and when Paul Ivanovich repeatedly tries to alert him to injustice, Gusev does not entirely understand what he is saying. Critical Overview Historical Context He sees some neighbors trading a hare for a piece of soap. Why Burkin and Ivan Ivanych's walk over the plain, the rainstorm, the refuge at Alyohin's, the bathing, and the tea upstairs with the "pretty Pelageya, stepping noiselessly across the carpet and smiling softly"? While both characters in "Gusev," are limited in outlook, Gusev has the edge on Paul Ivanovich in terms of the simple gift of happiness, which he experiences viscerally. A shark plays with the body and cautiously rips open the sailcloth. In his stories as in his plays, Chekhov rejected the long-standing tradition of emphasizing action and plot, in favor of foregrounding situation, mood, and internal psychological states. Between 1883 and 1885, Chekhov published numerous short stories, including "Smert chinovnika" ("The Death of a Government Official," 1883), and "Ustritsy" ("Oysters," 1884). He worries about his brother's daughter, Akulka, sticking her legs out on the family sledge and getting frostbitten. Research the history of tuberculosis (consumption) from the early nineteenth century to the present day. At various moments in my life, both difficult and happy ones, I have thought of Anton Chekhov, finding in his stories, plays, and letters the kind of mirror that enables me to see my inner rather than my outer image. peasants opposed redemption payments, and troops had to be called in to suppress rural riots against these payments. Paul Ivanovich is a discharged soldier who has served for three years in the Far East. You'll get access to all of the He says a prayer for his little nephew and niece: "‘O Lord,’ he whispers, ‘grant them reason and the sense to honour their parents, and not be cleverer than their mum and dad.’" Gusev fears that the children will feel themselves superior to their parents and cease to respect them. As he tells his story, Ivan gets more and more worked up, ending with a diatribe against all contentment, and a pathetic plea to Alyohin to "do good" while he has his youth and strength. Or might it not have come from his acquaintance with the "old convict woman" briefly assigned to him as a servant who found his personal possessions, including his blanket and the books she probably couldn't read, of extraordinary worth, for they recently had been in the country of her own dreaming? Chekhov's literary career is widely considered to mark the end of the age of realism in Russian literature, as exemplified in the work of nineteenth-century writers such as Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. In a glum mood they arrive at Alyohin's mill, with its noise, vibration, wet horses standing about, and peasants running here and there with sacks over their heads. The spread of the disease frequently followed mass movements of people, such as those that occurred in the industrial revolution with the migration of rural people into the cities, and also the migration of people that occurred during and after war. May writes that the British novelist E. M. Forster has noted that Chekhov's highest gift was negative in that he did not write stories with the conventional snap ending. Different colored rays burst through the clouds in a glorious display. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. But if Gusev seems sane in his acceptance of life, for all his peasant simplicity, Pavel's is a rancorous hatred of life, fundamentally abstractive and life-denying. Gusev is a discharged soldier from the peasant class.

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