Anton Chekhov’s “The Student” is a
representative realistic short story. However, in this journal, I will focus on
the story’s theme, rather than its literary form. I want to discuss the main
theme and explore reasons why the author chose and intended to write about that
the idea and conclusion. Also, I will state my own opinion on the controversy
over the conclusion of the story.
The protagonist in “The Student”, Ivan Velikopolsky, is dissatisfied with the situation around him. It seems to him that poverty, hunger and misery have always existed, and would exist in the future. However, after the experience in the widows’, where he tells the story of Apostle Peter to the widows and observes their emotional response to the story, he shows sharp change in his emotion. Suddenly, “inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious
happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him
enchanting, marvelous, and full of lofty meaning.”
When I read the story for the
first time, I really couldn’t understand why Ivan feels “happiness” after he
realizes that the past is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of
events flowing one out of another. He finds out that the tragedy, in this case
inability to protect the person they care is repeated over time, and he feels
happy. I felt that the reaction is ironic. I thought he should feel depressed. On
the contrary, when I reached the conclusion I felt like I’m locked inside a tragic
destiny. History is repeated and we are bound to it, and unhappiness and
tragedy will occur again and again.
After reading the story many times, I could slightly understand what
the story meant. Then I thought that it is probably the feeling of resignation
and acceptance. The author wanted to say that we don’t need to get depressed
about tragedy or unsatisfied with the situation because it is always with us. For
instance, when something bad happens to us we tend to think “why does this
always happen to me, life is unfair!” But we really don’t need to feel that way
since it is our destiny to face certain difficulties. We can overcome our
anguish by thinking that people, our ancestors, faced similar situations before.
The other possibility is that his happiness merely comes from
realizing the fact that the destinies of distinct lives are linked.
As I was reading a commentary on “The Student”, I found that there
are two antithetical interpretations about the realization of Ivan
Velikopolsky. According to Andrey Shcherbenok, there are two opposite views about
the realization of Ivan at the end. One view is that Ivan’s realization agrees with
the author’s point of view, and another view is that the Ivan’s idea is
different from the author’s.
I think the first explanation makes more sense than the second explanation, considering the life of author himself. I think that the author is expressing his enlightenment through Ivan’s mouth. The author’s personal situation resembles that of Vasilisa. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, was an abusive father. Also, Chekhov attended Gymnasium, and he was kept down a year for failing his Greek exam. Because of those circumstances, he had a very tough childhood. He described his youth as a “suffering” later in his letter. Also, when the author wrote the story, the situation surrounding him was not very favorable. The story was written in 1894, and in 1892, there were outbreaks of famine and cholera. In my opinion, through his suffering, Chekhov realized that the destinies are connected, and expressed his feelings through the experience of Ivan Velikopolsky.
