Characterization In Lady With The Dog

Anton Chekov is a famous Russian writer whose best skill in writing is reflected in showing the psychology people’s relationship and the psychology of human being itself. The interesting fact is that Chekov’s main field of activity was medicine, and he wrote for his own pleasure. Anton Chekov is read and loved all over the world, writers of many generations find Chekov as one of the best dramatist in the world. Though Chekov should be better read in Russian, there is still can be find the elusive meaning in each word of his writings, no matter in what language he is read. In the story “The Lady with the Dog” Chekov showed the complicated relationships between lovers, the conflict, which rises man versus man himself. Chekov, the teller of human soul, represents us the world of people who live in cocoon and throughout the story gradually start to crawl out of it. The story reflects the love line, the setting and the nature of characters.

Love line finds its big place in “The Lady with the Dog” and shows the way how Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna cope with their love. The remarkable thing of Chekhov is that he convincingly shows the incredible love of people, ordinary and unremarkable, figuratively speaking “little.” They are – mediocre and, in general, boring. They cannot cope with either love or their lives and their relationship remains a regular relationship because they can neither break their relationship, nor join together in matrimony. Gurov is afraid of his wife, and Anna does not want to hurt her husband. However, in reality this is not important: we know that both of them fear the changes in their lifestyles. They continue from time to time to meet secretly in order to “grab” a grain of life happiness, but happiness is artificial. Chekhov leaves open end of the story, he shows the reader how to love his characters has been steadily sinking into the swamp of banal everyday life, but this is easy to guess, because they told the story can have no end. This is – a kind of bad infinity, because neither Gurov, nor Anna came to anything; their life is not full of meaning, which could give them love, if they were not so weak. However, it cannot be definitely denied that both characters did not experience love. For Gurov, this little woman, in no way remarkable, was for the whole purpose of his life, the dearest one. It is unlike him, who believed women for being the “lower race”(par. 5, p. 218, Chekov). Firstly, their “love” can be assumed as just an affair. Nevertheless, this southern romance brings excitement to their existence, they do not think about consequences, but understand that after that they will continue their routine lives. Love is stronger than they are; it is stronger than these weak people.

Nature and setting in the story plays a big role and creates the mood of the wholly story line. Story “The Lady with the Dog” from the perspective of philosophy of nature in Chekhov is a considerable interest. The author’s idea is expressed by means of the Crimean landscape – an absolute visual harmony, mainly natural values of the southern coast of Crimea: mountains, sea and sky in a series of endlessly changing panorama of sceneries. Gathering in a story set off the moment suddenly broken out of the heroes’ feeling, he introduced a description of the scenery: “the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it” (par. 15, p. 219, Chekov). Not a little role in the story plays the sea, it lives separately from the whole world, and it is the master of everything, for Gurov and Anna the sea might be a symbol of freedom and harmony. When Gurov goes to see Anna in S. he sees the lifeless landscape: fence, gray, long, with nails, which describes how passionate feelings in Yalta became as this fence, gray and mediocre.

The nature of characters is complicated and ambiguous. Firstly, Gurov, at the beginning of the story he seems heartless, just does not respect the people around him, including his wife. But once he meets Anna Sergeyevna, he gradually begins to change, to think differently about the world and people around. And at the end of the story we see a completely different person. This man can love, does not think only about himself and begins to be capable to sacrifice himself for love. It is hard to say whether positive or negative character Gurov. Most likely he is a man found a life meaning only through love. In the story it is very clearly seen the emotional nature of Anna Sergeyevna. Basically, all her gestures have strong and emotional nature. She grew up in St. Petersburg, but was married to in S., where she has lived for two years. Anna somehow ambivalent about her husband, it may seemed she loves him, on the other side of her pride hurts because of that her husband has a low place in the society. She recently was a student; she did not have a lot of courage in conversation with strangers. She must have been the first time in her in the resort, when she was talked to with only one aim, to which she could only guess. Anna to what had happened to her with Gurov reacts in a very serious way, as to her downfall. She is the incarnation of naivety, purity and honesty of a young woman, of a woman who have not lived a lot.

Through love line, nature and characterization of main characters Chekov shows his purposes of representing us the complicated nature of relationship between people. “The Lady with the Dog” is one of the greatest Chekov’s stories, the representation of people’s strong love and weak will.