Introduction To An Artists Story English Literature Essay

An Artist’s Story has been written by Anton Chekhov, a Russian dramatist and is known as one of the greatest writer of short story. After going through this story, I came to know that Chekhov has very beautifully portrait the sketches of different characters by adding both irony and humour in it. I am sure, nobody will get bore after finishing the whole story because the author has explained everything in a very graceful way. His writing style is very rational and unique. Moreover, the story revolves around a young artist, and a family consisting of 2 sisters named as Lydia and Genya and their mother. Lydia being a social activist and teacher does not like the artist and all the time both confront each other with serious and fierce type of philosophical arguments. Whereas on the other side her younger sister Genya and young artist fall in love at the end but due to some reason they did not meet up. Author has narrated the whole story in first person by describing it in three different sections to make it easy for the readers.

After reading the story for about two times with great attention, I can say that the two main characters of this story that is the narrator (young artist) and Lydia possess contrasting views about people and society. Lidia thinks that an artist does not know anything about social activities and political concerns and thus he can only portray different landscapes, whereas the narrator of the story takes the social activities and political views of Lidia to be wrong. Both characters see life and helping people from different perspectives. Moreover, the basic theme of this story revolves around “social activities/change, peasant’s life and their health issues”.

Moving further, the story clearly reveals that the narrator of this story had no interest in life and his life was dull and without any meaning before meeting his love Genya. But Genya’s elder sister does not like the artist. Narrator replies “She did not like me. She disliked me because I was a landscape painter and did not in my pictures portray the privations of the peasants, and that, as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she put such faith in.” moreover, I have also analysed that the main conflict of artist with that Lidia was that she was not focusing on her field of expertise instead she used to cure patients from their illness as mentioned by the narrator “doctoring peasants when one was not a doctor was deceiving them”.

As I have mentioned above that the main theme of this story revolves around social activities, peasant’s life and dealing with their health issues. Since Lidia was a teacher and she was all the time busy in teaching her students and has also opened different hospitals, schools, dispensaries for peasants and their children. Thus, after reading the story I analysed that the narrator wants to say that one should not devote all his/her life in making libraries dispensaries, hospitals or medical relief centres for the poor people instead the social activists should try to lessen their burden and workload. In-addition when we would put less burden and amount of work on peasants, give them free time to think about their life, then naturally they will feel relaxed and their health will remain better and in this way there will be less chances of their illness.

Moreover, I have also analysed that the narrator also wants to say we should become practical rather than impractical. He argues that instead of imposing a lot workload on peasants, all the people including upper class, middle class should distribute the work such as different physical activities among themselves. This action would bring change in society. In this way the life of poor people would be much easier. He also argues that we should focus more attention on improving the public health rather than focusing majorly on building medical centres, hospitals, dispensaries etc. as mentioned in story “If one must cure, then let us concentrate not on the treatment, but on the prevention of disease.” Contrary to artist’s views and thoughts Lidia was very different thus she replied: “It’s true that we are not saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we do what we can, and we are right.”

Similarly, through telling the story, narrator wants to convey his message that everyone should work for social change. All the society members must empower change in society by adopting new behaviors of pattern. According to narrator of the story, in order to improve one’s life, every individual should opt for spiritual or philosophical approach.

I am going to favour neither artist nor Lidia because in my point of view both are right in their own way. Lidia being having a very dry personality wants to help people; contrary to this the narrator of the story wants to bring social change (means to bring change in attitudes, behaviors, laws, and policies). Thus and bring some positive change in society as is reflected in this famous phrase i.e.; “Change , not Charity.”, the story wants to convey this message that in today’s global and fast moving world, people or society have become so much materialistic and selfish that they don’t have enough time to solve people’s problems and share their burden. Poor people have no power or authority to decide what is good or bad for themselves. For this reason they should set some goal and make some movement towards achieving their goal to improve their wellbeing.

To be concluded, “An Artist’s Story” has been written in a very unique and impressive style which has elements of humour, irony, love for humanity and a blend of romance also. Reader does not get bored after having finished it. Moreover, the meaning of this story was very clear and easy to understand. The vocabulary usage of Chekhov was far too good. But, on the other side for a lay man it might be little bit difficult to get to the meaning or theme of this story since there are some words and dialogues which might be little difficult to understand for a lay man. Moreover, the end of the story was very sad since the artist cannot be able to meet his love but he also has some hope that he will met his love (Genya) one day “And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too — that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet” which also shows that one should not lose hope in any way.