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.
Great to see you integrating some of the sentence structures I suggested for forming a claim - which you have clearly done. Your focus on the nature of their public affection and risk taking is worthy of note! Bring that up in class. Keep up the great work, but also include more "I" and don't be afraid to wander away from the formal AP Lit type response. Keep it up.
답글삭제Some people say that the law exists for people to break it - for the catharsis of going beyond the boundaries. I guess that was what Gurov and Anna felt: the thrill, the danger, and the suspense of an illicit relationship.
답글삭제-Jongnam
삭제I liked how you pointed out that the nameless narrator describes the female character as "the lady with the dog" at first, but changes to "Anna" as Gurov and Anna's love for each other grows. Come to think of it, the nameless narrator usually gives us the perspective of Gurov, and I believe this is one way to show how Gurov gradually changes throughout the story. I am curious if you think that Gurov and Anna will live happily ever after. After all, it's only been a week since their first encounter and to be frank, both Gurov and Anna do not know each other THAT well.
답글삭제Finally, just to put in a thought of mine, I wonder what will happen to Gurov's wife and Anna's husband when Gurov and Anna actually do run away. Quite a lot of observers has seen Gurov with Anna in the theater, and I doubt Anna's husband will just sit back and do nothing if his wife runs away. What do you think?