In his play Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov uses many writing techniques to convey a sense of breakdown in communication. While his play has elements of humor in it, making it seem almost farcical at times, Chekhov was truly concerned about the lack of...

Destruction. It’s a powerful word, encapsulating a Pandora’s box of emotions. It implies damage beyond a state of repair, or even, at times, beyond a state of existence. Destruction plays an important role in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. What is...

Written in 1893, Anton Chekhov's short story "The Black Monk" is one of the most potent and revealing works of the writer. It reflects the profound philosophy of the author, as well as the feelings of worry and anxiety which, according to the...

Written by master realist Anton Chekhov, "Misery" is the story of an old man’s grief for having lost his son. He keeps looking for somebody with whom to talk about the death of his child. Throughout, the use of the old man's narrative perspective...

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Spring in Fialta” and Anton Chekhov’s “The Darling” both explore relationships focusing on the point of view of only one, Victor and Olenka respectively, in the relationship(s). The relationships in both stories end in the...

The Lottery Ticket by Anton Chekhov explores the everyday life experiences of lottery winners. In the narrative, Masha and Ivan are a married couple whose fears and distrust of the other emerge as a result of Masha’s potential lottery windfall....

Is Eudaimonia really attainable? One of the most important works that adopted this concept is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle was one of Plato’s students, but he rejected his teacher’s logic that reality lay beyond the everyday world in...

The Anton Chekhov short story titled "A Joke" is an interesting read for the inquisitive readers. Very carefully written, the story allows the readers a chance to dive deeper into the unconscious of the characters and dig out layers of meaning...

Anton Chekhov might look like a hedgehog when he returns time and again to the theme of universal humanity and its future path. But Chekhov as ‘the humanist writer’ does not really work towards a unified concept of mankind’s ultimate fate. Rather,...

Chekhov’s post-Sakhalin stories express the author’s view of death as a prismatic focal point for the human condition. Through dialogue, narratorial comment, and subtextual connections, Chekhov’s stories examine death from so many angles that it...