The Student, Anton Chekhov (1894)

 The student, by Anton Chekhov (1894)


Rating: 7.5/10


 I think 'The Student' does not fill the stage 3. The stage 3 is 'Refusal of the call' where hero refuses the adventure because of hesitation or fears. I think in this story, the adventure world is the place where widows are seating around the campfire. But, rather Ivan felt hesitation or fear when he bumped into campfire, he actually wanted to go to campfire because of the cold weather and he didn't want to go back to his house.

 At first, I thought the short story was a bit cliche. Ivan tell the story of Peter in the bible to widows and he learn a lesson when he saw the tears of widow. It seems like a typical story, but after reading this story several times, I thought this story shows Russian Realism really well. Especially, when Ivan felt despair in the cold, thinking about Russia's poverty that will not improve. Also, I loved this part because Ivan felt 'infinite' poverty from a 'finite' life, and after telling the story to widows, he realize that the past, present, and future are connected. For me, this feels like Ivan is crossing the boundary between infinity and finite. This is the reason why I rated this story 7.5 out of 10      

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov (1898)

 Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov (1898) Rating: 7/10 While reading this short story, I focused on the word 'happiness'. In this story, Aliokhin, Ivan, and Burkin all have different idea about happiness. Their different definition of happiness made readers think about the real happiness. What if that individual's own happiness equals to other people's unhappiness. If individual's happiness comes from another person's unhappiness, then when someone feels happiness, some others have no choice but to feel misfortunes. Through these questions, I could have think of the true happiness.  
Read more

The Sisters, James Joyce

 The Sisters, James Joyce Rating: 7/10  While reading this short story, I focused on the word "paralysis". This word first came when the boy thought of paralysis unconsciously but he didn't even know the meaning of the word. Also, he thought of gnomon and simony at the same time. But after seeing the dead body of Flynn, he thought of paralysis again and this time consciously. I thought this story ultimately describes the paralysis of religions and churches. It was intended to emphasize the seriousness of the paralysis by expressing the process of unconsciousness becoming conscious. Through this, I thought, it tried to strongly criticize the paralyzed reality of religion, which was so serious that it was imprinted in the unconscious mind of Irish children at that time. 
Read more

Reading Journal, A Sound of Thunder

 A Sound of Thunder, By Ray Bradbury (1952) Rating: 6.5/10  When I think of the hero’s Journey or movies I’ve read so far, I always think of how the main characters (or the heroes) improve their power and how they overcome hardships. Actually, most of stories related to hero follow a similar structure. However, “A Sound of Thunder”, though it is the story about Eckels’ hero journey, focused on different topic compare to other stories of heroes. This story doesn’t really talk about the characters, instead it uses characters to show the “butterfly effect.” In the adventure, Eckels accidentally step on butterfly and killed it. The change of president appeared as the result of Eckels' action. This event represent well about butterfly effect, which means a situation in which an action that does not seem important has a very large effect.  I think this is the uniqueness of this story. It actually focused on the topic, “butterfly effect”, rather than the journey itself. However, even thou
Read more