Suffering
The action of Vanka is driven by a rather straightforward scenario: Vanka is tormented by his lifestyle as one of Alyakhin's apprentices, and longs to escape back into a more welcoming and nurturing community. Already central to the plot, the theme of suffering is emphasized again and again in Vanka's descriptions, which capture suffering in a stunning variety of forms. Beatings, hunger, mockery, and exploitation are but a few of the sufferings that Vanka endures, though underlying all these is the psychological suffering of isolation, loneliness, and desperation characteristic of much of Vanka's mental life.
Writing
As a theme, writing is central to the very structure of "Vanka" since large portions of the story are formatted as part of a letter to Konstantin Makarich. Such writing reveals the precise nature of Vanka's personality, education, and consciousness. At least in translation, the letter is presented complete with punctuation errors and run-on sentences, accurately reflecting the free-flowing, imperfectly-schooled mind of a nine-year-old. Already important to the reader as a means of delving into the mind of Chekhov's main character, the letter is important to Vanka for a more basic, visceral reason: it represents his best chance to escape Alyakhin's torments.
A Festive Past, and a Bleak Present
As a Christmas story, "Vanka" almost inevitably raises the theme of festivity or celebration. However, the manner in which it addresses Christmas jubilation is darkly original: Vanka's lonely life on Christmas Eve is defined by the absence of relatives, presents, holiday cheer, or even basic kindness. It is true that Vanka has memories of pleasant winters and Christmases—from the lyrical appearance of his home village to the jubilation with Olga Ignatyevna and the other Zhivarevs—but these memories are placed in pointed, melancholy contrast with his present condition.
City versus Countryside
Vanka began his life on the Zhivarev estate; only after losing his father and his mother was he relocated from the countryside to a big city such as Moscow. Much of "Vanka" is driven by the apparent tension between these two locations, since Vanka wishes to leave behind his new, hectic urban setting and return to the welcoming community and lyrical beauty that he found in his home village. However, the contrast between city and country is not a simple matter of negative and positive (respectively), at least not to the discerning reader of Chekhov. The village and estate are indeed the sites of the personal losses that made Vanka an orphan, while the city possesses a dynamism that Vanka, with age, may learn to appreciate.
A Sensitive Imagination
One feature that makes Vanka especially ill-adapted to life at Alyakhin's is Vanka's thoughtful nature. A callous boy could brush off beatings and insults, but not the considerate, sensitive Vanka. Nowhere is Vanka's ability to see the world with a sensitive eye more apparent than in his memories of the village and its inhabitants, from his precise recollections of Konstantin Markarich to his intrigued response to Eel to his visions of the village's wintertime beauty. There is no clear sign that Vanka will become an artist later in life, but that absence has not stopped Chekhov from granting his protagonist an original, acutely emotional, "artistic" view of the world.
Family Bonds
"Vanka" is premised on a breakdown in family bonds and an attempt, in the face of adversity, to reestablish them. The phrasing of Vanka's letter repeatedly calls attention to the kind of relationship that he once had, or in any case hopes to have, with his grandfather: a bond based on care and loyalty, in which adults take care of the children who will, in turn, care for them in their extreme old age. Konstantin Makarich's kindness would offer Vanka deliverance from a situation in which family bonds are nonexistent, or are travestied. After all, Alyakhin has technically welcomed Vanka into his family, but treats the young boy with a cruelty that is the very opposite of familial.
Social Class
In terms of social class, "Vanka" focuses primarily on the toiling and productive lower classes, whether the peasantry represented by Vanka's family or the small-time urban shopkeepers represented by Alyakhin's. None of the characters in these groups are seriously threatened with poverty and destitution, but all of them belong to a social sphere that is pronouncedly different from the world inhabited by Ogla Ignatveyna and the rest of the aristocracy. "Vanka" can be read as a story about a failure of cross-class connection, as the warm relationship between Ogla and Vanka is eventually ruptured. It can conversely be read as a story about class advancement, since Vanka (unlike the typical Russian of peasant stock) has learned to read and may be able to rise beyond the relatively low class that he was born into.