Misery by Anton Chekhov - Literature review Example

Anton Chekhov’s story ‘Misery’ is a brilliant depiction of the growing lack of communication among human beings. In a world where everyone is busy with her/his own immediate concerns, the misery of individuals who are desperate to connect with another human soul is most often neglected. One may realize this only at times of utter desolation and helplessness. The story transcends the time and space in which it was conceived and addressed to, since it deals with basic human emotions and needs all over the world from time immemorial. The protagonist of the story is Iona Potapov, an elderly sledge-driver. He is depicted in the opening lines as a lonely figure, “all white like a ghost” sitting in the box without any movement. His little mare stands next to him in a similar, motionless stance, seemingly lost in thoughts. Their reverie is broken by their first customer after a long wait, a military officer who needed to go to Vyborgskaya. Iona drives the sledge absent-mindedly amidst the abuses flung at him by the passers-by and other cabmen. He tries at last to communicate with the military officer. He tells hesitatingly that his son dies that week. The officer asks indifferently what the cause of his death was. Iona tried to explain that he was not sure of the cause, but it could have been a fever for which he was hospitalized for three days. At this point the officer is distracted by some scolding from outside regarding Iona’s ride, and urged him to drive on faster. Iona loses further connection with the officer since he keeps his eyes closed for the rest of the journey, presumably to ward off further communication. Iona gets three young customers from Vyborgskaya. They urge him to take them to the Police Bridge for twenty kopecks. Iona does not mind the overload or unfair price, since he was not getting sufficient work for the day. The young men happen to be foul-mouthed and they treat Iona badly, abusing him verbally and physically throughout the ride. He tries to be sportive with them, but to no use. However, he grabs a moment of relative silence to tell them that his son died that week. The young men pay not attention to this at all, other than the curt “we shall all die” and continue to use foul language and urge him to drive faster. One among the young men later asks Iona whether he is married, and he confides that his wife is also dead. He tries to say further how strange it is that death has claimed his son before him. He tries to tell them how his son died, but before he could do that, notices that they have reached the destination. The young men get down and enter a dark entry, leaving Iona alone once again. Iona sits amidst the crowds of people flitting past him, and feels his immense misery suffocating his heart. He is in desperate need of sharing his misery with someone, but there is no one who is willing to listen. He tries to approach a porter in hope of a possible conversation, but he turns a cold shoulder to him. At last, he goes back to the yard with his mare, by instinct. He hadn’t earned enough to buy oats, and is worried that it adds to his misery that both his mare and he won’t have enough to eat. He tries in vain to communicate with a sleepy cabman who wakes up for a moment. But he realizes that he has fallen asleep again as he was just half way through his narration about his son’s death. Iona is thirsting for speech with someone. He needs to share his agony with a living soul. Even though it is nearing a week since his son’s death, Iona had been unable to tell about it to anyone else. He wanted to talk in detail of all the incidents that too place before his son’s death, what his last words were, and about the death itself. He wanted to talk of the funeral, how he went to the hospital to collect his son’s clothes. He also wanted to talk of his daughter Anisya in the country. He needed so badly to see his listener moved by his accounts, sighing in exclamation and lamenting. He feels that it would be even better to find a female listener. It is evident that he had gone through his misery all by himself and hopes against hope that communicating with someone else will lessen the weight of his heart. Finally, Iona finds solace in the silent companionship his little mare provides him. She responds to his conversation by quietly munching and breathing to his palm. He starts talking with his mare as if with a human companion, and spills out all his misery to her. The story reveals the ever-widening gap between people in modern societies. It could be the result of the zest for individual fulfillment for which every human being is ultimately concerned. Not matter big or small, personal needs and dreams invade human minds frequently, and they have little space left to accommodate the lives and needs of others. The need for companionship gets ignored while everyone keeps seeking some means of self-gratification. One realizes this fact only when there is an immediate need to communicate something very deep to others. Those who are willing to listen to you on very general, shallow matters are unable to spend a few seconds for someone else’s genuine grief. Chekhov describes Iona’s misery in superlatives, but anyone who has experienced such a state of mind will be able to identify with it: His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Ionas heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight… I have experienced such misery a few times personally. For instance, the unexpected death of my grandmother had a great impact on me because I was very close to her, but I failed to communicate this properly to a single person. I tried my best to talk about this to my close friends, but they would immediately change the topic for something more interesting to them, but utterly trivial in my viewpoint. I felt so much let down by this behavior, and was even upset about it for a time. But I slowly learnt that this was basically how the world was, and one was essentially alone all through her/his life when it came to personal grief. I could connect very well to the immense longing of Iona to tell someone about the death of his dear son. Sadly, the world is so much preoccupied with its immediate needs, however trivial they happen to be, and it fails to identify the genuinely desperate needs of people like Iona. Iona’s grief reaches such an extent in his loneliness that he is willing to communicate with even an animal, his little mare, which is willing to listen to him. To him, the mare is at least attentive, and not distracted by its personal needs. Moreover, it must have developed the ability to understand its master’s emotional needs through long association, while Iona is never connected to his colleagues or his clients other than for the purposes of his job. The busier the world gets, the needs of competition and success are apt to subsume all human minds into a senseless indifference to the world outside them. Every man becomes an island in such a scenario, which would be the worst predicament human society would have to face. The time spent for self-realization may turn out to be utterly meaningless when we are left alone at the end of the day to fight with our inner demons. When one is in need of a listener and is left alone to face the misery for long periods, one can assume that all efforts to build a society based on mutual benefit is breaking down. This could even lead to a state where frustrated human beings let out their grief through a destructive streak, causing trouble to others. Iona was at least fortunate with his little mare, who lent her ears to him, but the people of today’s world filled with great misery cannot even hope for that. One has to think seriously on how to face this. Perhaps, many personal and societal priorities have top be changes, in the years to come. Read More