[World Lit.] Short comment on "The lady with the dog"

Everyone has desire to feel beloved and cared by others. For that, Dimitri seemed to be a very phony, yet normal male character that can be seen fairly often in any community. He condescends women but also wants to be with them at the same time. No offense at all, but I wonder if this quality is something common among males. I find males in the controversial online community, which I wouldn't mention the name, show very similar behavioral pattern: they want to belittle women as to be lower than men, but they brag about how many girls they have met, slept with, etc. Well, this seems to be quite understandable. I can somewhat get the feeling they would have, but am still confused to explain why. Is this something that was earned through lack of care and attention, or just a natural quality among people? What's the cause that leads people to behave this way?

I was also not determined enough to "interpret" the love between Dimitri and Anna. (It's more like I dared not to, though.) What’s the difference between this story and the so-called dirty affair? Isn’t it just a difference between perspectives? I don't think we can really judge either way. I once read this book, actually a long set of essays, called “Shiver” written by 10 most famous and respected poets in Korea. (Their poems were usually very romantic, seemed to describe sacred love.) In that book, most of the essays beautified the so-called affair-ish meetings. While reading the essays, the real experiences, I was so into it that I almost felt as if I were in the story. I was literally overwhelmed and touched by the sincere and sweet nature of love between them. But to look at them with critical eyes, all the characters were already married, sometimes it included “affairs” between people who were in a family relationship, teacher-student relationship, with big age difference, etc. The social norms present in the society would never accept them as to be sincere. I mean, although I could sympathize with the characters and all that, I wouldn't still want my future husbands, parents, or whoever to be involved in that kind of relationship, whatsoever the hidden stories would be. I don’t think the couple described in this novella is necessarily more “sincere” than other couples in that sort of relationship. Dimitri’s attraction towards the innocence of that woman: is that the source of beauty in this story? Don’t’ you think many of those who have an affair with younger people would also feel this way, that they are going through the true romance in their lives? So why do we criticize them, but not necessarily Dimitri and Anna? Do we even have rights to judge what’s more moral and what not?

I want to share some opinions on these issues with other people.

[Free Write] "The Sacred Moment"

           Because I could confidently state that I trusted people, especially those who were close to me, I expected them to be sincere all the time: one naïve belief before I entered KMLA. Probably as one natural step of growing up, I began to notice all the duplicity of people around me while living here for almost two years. The greater I became aware of other people’s discrepancy between their words and behavior, the harder I tried not to be like them.

             It was last September when I suddenly realized that I was becoming part of this KMLA family, in a bad sense. I was turning into a hypocrite acting like those whom I always looked down for being insincere. Sitting alone in the dark cafeteria, all the things I had done wrong passed me like a panorama. I sometimes talked back on my best friends while always smiling nicely in front of them. I sometimes pretended as if I did not know some important information for classes because I did not want my friends to be better than me. I sometimes soothed my friends crying for low grades while I felt rather relieved inside. I sometimes celebrated my friends’ prizes while being jealous of them. I couldn’t accept all the pretentious jobs I had committed, the times I deceived my friends and myself with my phony words.

             Perhaps, I just did not want to admit it, though I already knew that I had been acting that way; perhaps, that was why I reproached my friends for being phonies, justifying my own duplicity with superficial comfort. But frankly, I was a phony myself. For whatever reason I turned to be a hypocrite, or had originally been that way, I couldn’t let myself living like a charlatan as long as I realized my insincerity. Crying for several hours, I was so despondent that I couldn’t do anything. I felt like all my 18 years of “sincere life” had disappeared and I was a completely different person, apparently whom I never wanted to be. Without telling my friends, or anyone, “the truth”, I thought I could never be able to live as cheerfully as before.

             Despite all the embarrassment in doing so, I told three of my closest friends all the “insincere” memories I could remember. They didn’t say anything, but listened to me with all their eyes staring at me. After two hours of long conversation full of burning shames, they all gave me a big hug with tears. I waited them to reply, expecting some “No, you’re not a bad girl” or “Try not to repeat those things next time” in silence. In contrast to my anticipation, however, they said “That is natural. That’s how everyone lives. We’re all human beings. We can’t be as perfect as Jesus or anything.” Then each one of them told me her story, her confession of the things she committed insincerely. All the stories were almost identical (and identically embarrassing to tell).

             My friends consoled me not by saying some typical encouragement, but by helping me acknowledge that we were all the same and that I was nothing weird. They shared their own experience of being phonies, telling me not to be overly strict on my moral standards but to consider the natural insufficiency of humans, including myself. I was literally overwhelmed. I thanked the world for letting me have friends who were ready to disclose their most shameful stories to assuage their disheartened friend. I thanked my decision to talk to my friends with all my heart; or I might have lost all my faith forever.

             After this “sacred” moment of my life, I changed my view of looking at things. I still love people and believe in them, but in a different way. I realized that my previous belief in human was not a true love in mankind, but rather a forceful pressure for everyone to become sincere all the time. That false trust was what made me suspect other people and hate myself. I decided to love people the way they are, and live my life as sincerely as possible but not with too much discipline on every single aspect because “we’re all humans.”

Special thanks to Minjung Kang, Gyeongmin Lee, Eunji Lee, and Yoonju Chung, who have always been next to me in whatsoever situation

[World Lit.] Ivan the student, and Vasilisa the Azumma

Jane Park

WorldLiterature

Mr. Garrioch

1^st Reading Journal on “The Student” 

             The first time reading “The Student” by Anton Chekhov was frankly a frustration for me. I couldn’t easily overcome my ignorance in literature to interpret the story as to be a truly realistic piece or not. The setting and the characters seemed to be realistic, but the essence of its message seemed rather romantic. When I read it several more times without the pressure to analyze in detail, I could eventually get to the tip of its core. “The Student” by Anton Chekhov is neither perfectly realistic nor romantic; it is more likely to be on the verge of realism and sensationalism. There is, however, more about the story itself apart from the issue of realism. I believe literature, regardless of any genre, has to tell the "truth" about reality.

             According to The American Novel and Its Tradition by Richard Chase, realistic literature (1) renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail, (2) is a selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot, (3) has its character more important than action and plot, where complex ethical choices are often the subject, and (4) makes the characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive, in which they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. In this sense, “The Student” is a perfect piece of literature that embodies realistic characteristics.

This story depicts the environment with great amount of details: “Needles of ice stretched across the pools, and it felt cheerless, remote, and lonely in the forest”; “A camp fire was burning with a crackling sound, throwing out light far around on the ploughed earth.” It also focuses on the development of characters rather than the plot itself, in which they are likely to exist in real life. Ivan Velikopolsky, the main character, resembles a common student who is concerned about both zeitgeist and his life. Both Vasilisa and her daughter Lukerya are as well likely characters in reality: Vasilisa is epitomized as “a tall, fat widow”; Lukerya as “a little pock-marked woman with a stupid looking face.” Although the inner part of this metafiction, in which Ivan tells an episode in Bible, is rather romantic, the overall story focuses more on each character’s development of ideas than on that of the plot.

             On the other hand, there are several aspects of the story that do not fall into the category of realism. Unlike in typical realistic literature where events are usually plausible, avoiding the sensational and dramatic elements, in “The Student,” characters suddenly realize the remorse and the eternal cycle of life. Especially Vasilisa dramatically reacts to Ivan’s story of Peter while listening quietly. She, in a sudden, “[gives] a gulp, and screens her face from the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her tears.” In realistic perspective, this abrupt outburst of emotions, in other words catharsis, is not at all considered banal. This extreme, rather romantic, contingency does not seem to be elastically allowed in Realism.

Furthermore, the message of “The Student” vacillates between realism and sentimentalism. In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within the social world," whereas in sentimental fiction, "the redemption of the social world lay with the individual.” This story, however, does not seem to fit in either category, but rather reside somewhere between the two. To certain extent, the recognition of the “cycle of life” that leads Ivan and Vasilisa to the new lives is tangent to both the real society, in which they have previously been trapped, and themselves as individuals. There seems to be no distinguishable boundary between the two factors. 

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

-Anton Checkov

             The most personally intriguing facet of the story was Vasilisa. Whereas the focus of the story is mainly on Ivan and his realizations of life through the time he spends with her, I was strangely more interested in Vasilisa than in Ivan. Although her moment of enlightenment is the most unrealistic part of the story, I can certainly sympathize with her flood of sudden remorse. With the detailed description of the character Vasilisa, it is easy to speculate that she has been living a tough life. “A fat woman in a man’s coat,” Vasilisa has been a woman of experience, first as a wet-nurse, and afterwards as a children’s nurse. She now lives with her daughter who was beaten by her husband. Considering her past and present, something amassed inside her is likely to have made her cry in a sudden.

One uncomfortable fact that I had to admit was that Vasilisa so much resembled the Korean concept of Azumma, who has packed a lot of stories in her heart, without having any opportunity to reach the moment of catharsis. It shows that this certain depiction of woman is present in any kind of society, no matter how distinct the cultures are. In other words, Vasilisa’s whole life can be represented as Han. This Han inside her can be understood as the instigating factor that leads her to react so dramatically to the well-known story of Peter. This is why I thought judging how realistic “The Student” was no longer an issue of great importance for me. The emotional outburst of Vasilisa, whether or not realistic, was the most meaningful part, for it truly portrayed the inner concern, at last completing the whole character. It was not about logic but Han.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like. The more reality they are provided with, the better people will become at understanding it. Reality, in my point of view, is not necessarily the “exact depiction” of the world. It is, however, the essence of that depiction. Only when people seek for something truly true-if such a thing exists-, will they eventually be able to interpret the world clearly.