—Wenyi Luo
The literary text that I did not understand when I first read it on my own is The Lady with the Dog written by Anton Chekhov. It is a story about extramarital affair. There are two people, Anna and Gurov, lovers who are married to different people, and are tortured by their individual marriages and boring lives. At first, I was so confused, because basically, this extramarital love is immoral. Chekhov describes such experience and considers it worthy praise rather than critique, which seems to encourage people to engage in such unethical affairs. However, the story is one of the most famous literary masterpieces in the world. So I realize that this short story must have deeper ideology that Chekhov wants people to understand, rather than just staying in the appearance of extramarital love.
During the discussion with my classmates, all of us seemed to only concentrate on the extramarital affairs and issue of romantic love, while the professor reminded that it was more about the attitude towards life. Firstly, the story encourages people to be curious to try new things. Only in constant attempts can people discover true selves. To further illustrate, if there is no comparison, how people can determine what is their favorite food or who is their favorite person. Thus, the story motivates people to experience more. More importantly, Chekhov wants to use this extramarital love metaphor to describe the pursuit of a better life. This passion of life can come from romantic love, and also love for something like food, music, and sports. It is because people love someone or something deeply and sincerely that they could explore the neglected beauty of life with each other’s company and have the courage and determination to change the unsatisfying parts. Chekhov encourages people to love.
The reason why I didn’t understand the story at the beginning was that I didn’t put myself in Chekov’s time. At that time, there was no Internet, no video games, no chatting software, and even writing a letter took an extreme long time to get the feedback. In a word, there were no such rich entertainment activities at that time. Therefore, people repeated their boring life day by day. I never had similar feelings before until the coronavirus break out, and I have already been trapped at home for the whole March. Although I still have the Internet, my life becomes very simple without shopping, concerts, nice restaurants or parties. I get up around noon, watch some funny videos, and then go back to sleep again when it goes dark. This situation “inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable” (Chekov, 2). I have nothing to do or pursue, and I am still looking for something I am interested in and could do at home. However, fortunately, I have to prepare for my midterm in the following days, which provides me a target to concentrate and work on. Although it is a suffering, at least I have something to do instead of sleeping all day, which is similar to Anna and Gurov’s extramarital love, suffering but providing a direction to go. While waiting at home for the coronavirus to get under control, I have a deeper understanding of this literature: Passion of the life comes from love. Whether it is affection or a hobby, it will become the direction of life, and conversely motivate and encourage people to move forward.
