"Araby" by James Joyce

 From a distance, James Joyce’s "Araby" might appear as a story showing a failure of love. The narrator of the story is ‘I’, whose name is not presented within the passage. ‘I’ have a crush on his friend’s older sister, and he suffers from the emotion of love. When he gets an opportunity to appeal to her by going to the Araby bazaar and buying her something, he really looks forward to it and anticipates very much. But, after arriving at the bazaar and realizing that the bazaar is not like a ideal place which he thought, the narrator feels epiphany, which he realizes that his love isn’t ideal.

 After all, when the nameless narrator depicts his behavior and emotions throughout the story, it helps the reader to dive deeper and empathize with the main character. The main character is a young boy, which he looks the world in his sense, as depicted in the fourth paragraph. He also uses allusion to explain his feelings of love, thinking like “my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.” This shows that he feels love in a very pure and emotional way, believing love as a divine thing, which is separated with the ordinary world. The depiction of the complex emotions of childish love, and an anxiety toward it is shown well during the passage.

 However, on the other hand, not only his emotions and behaviors but also the depiction of the objects throughout the story shows the narrator’s emotions too. As shown in “but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar.” or “In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.”, narrator’s expectations for the bazaar and the hope of buying something which can appeal to Mangan’s sister is alluded in his words. Also, when the dissatisfaction of the bazaar and his childish love is felt by the narrator, the background is said as “The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.” , which I think collaborates well with the current emotion of the narrator.

 Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that "Araby" isn’t a simple short story, but a story which contains various allusions. Most of the materials shown in the story has its own meaning, (such as the ‘spike’ which Mangan’s sister holds) which resembles Chekov’s Gun. During the course of the passage, it is shown that the narrator, although being in similar age with his friends, is more mentally grown. Sentences like “Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings.” shows that the narrator had exited the child stage, and feels love as he goes into puberty.

I think this story is better than ‘the student’ because this story is easy to empathize, since most of us have the situation which we had first felt love in elementary school or in middle schools.

"The lady with the dog" by Anton Chekhov

 From a distance, Anton Chekhov’s "The lady with the dog" might appear as simple story which the characters cheat against their spouses. But although the content of the story isn’t much educating, I think that the description of the emotional elements is outstanding. Not just focusing on the ‘love’ itself, the story shows the background of their feeling of love, and their conflicting moments when the internal intent, love, is restricted by outside factors, such as distance or the people around them.

 After all, when the nameless narrator describes the female character as ‘The Lady with the dog’, he may want to provide the character some mystic aspect. But as Gurov’s feeling toward the character changes throughout the story, as he engages with her, her name within the story changes to ‘Anna’, which shows the intimacy between them.

At the first part of the story, the relationship between Gurov and the lady seemed to be a transitory, since the place of their meeting, Yalta, was their temporary place to stay. But as story progresses, the temporal attraction to each other developed into the feeling of love.

 Gurov constantly checks if someone is around them when they are kissing at ---, but when he later meets Anna again at the theater, he ignores the presence of observers(students) and kisses Anna.  This means that at first Gurov’s feelings were somehow shallow, not wanting to be exposed to others. But as their love progresses, Gurov starts to take risks like the incident described above, and planning a new life with Anna.

 The story is open-ended, as Gurov and the Anna starts to discuss about their future plans. At this state, Gurov is feeling exhausted about his family and his wife, and Anna is feeling miserable about her life with her husband. Although they are married, and in case of Gurov, have children, they are both not satisfied to their life. So, they are both in pursuit of finding more satisfying person instead of their partners. I think this is the reason for Gurov and Anna to be attracted to each other so quickly, only a week after they had made their first acquaintance.

“The student” by Anton Chekhov

 This is the shortest short story I’ve ever read. In the story, Ivan Velikopolski, a student and the son of the priest goes through the harsh winter weather and visits the widow’s garden, where two widows live in. While first woman, Vasilisa, is a bit talkative, the second woman Lukerya sits still and frowns. And then Ivan tells them the story of Peter and the denial of the Jesus, which makes Vasilisa cry and Lukerya frowns. And then Ivan heads home filled with happy feelings.

 The story is a bit awkward at the first glance, since the story ends with no apparent conclusion. Also, the correlation between the characters aren’t mentioned specifically in the text, so we have to guess the stories.

 For example, what was the reason Vasilisa cried when she heard Ivan’s story? I think the Peter and ‘denial’ of the Jesus have somehow touched Vasilisa’s emotions, and it can be inferred that maybe, the memory related to her husband made her cry. Although the story how the two women got widowed isn’t mentioned in the passage, maybe there was some kind of ‘denial’ or ‘dissatisfaction’ related to Vasilisa’s lost husband.

 In the story, there is a story within a story, which is the story of Jesus. Although the story doesn’t seem to have a coherence with the overall story (dissociation between cold Russian winter and Jesus’s suffering?), the story acts as a main factor which makes the emotional change within the characters. This emotional change is depicted in the weather’s change, which at first Ivan feels the weather “cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things”, but in the end he thinks the weather condition as “ cold crimson sunset (….)without interruption to this day”.

 The word ‘east’ appears on the first paragraph and in the last paragraph, the word ‘west’ appears. I think this means something related to the opening and termination of the overall story, since the word ‘west’ means ‘death’ in some circumstances.