‘’The Lady with a Dog’’ by Chekhov

Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright, and master of the modern short story aimed to get about human affairs. His characters are life-like in nature. His characters of stories are from Russia, but generally, he sets universal themes to reach every aspect of human life. ‘’ The Lady with a Dog ‘’, whose one of the famous works, made a strong impact on the world of literature. In ‘’Lady with a Dog’’, Chekov presents the forbidden relationship without judging it to the reader. He used a period of his life with realism in his story.

According to society, a married man or woman cannot be in love with somebody. It is accepted as immoral. However, Chekov sets a theme about those people, who love each other, had to choose isolation and deception. I really liked that this theme is presented to the reader without judging. If we talked about the beginning of the story, our protagonist feels like an old and unhappy man. His thoughts about women show that he sees women from the lower class and he doesn’t have any respect for them. He just sets a couple of affairs. However, after he met with Anna, he completely changed his behaviors, thoughts, feelings. At the beginning of the story, the author mentioned that ‘’ It was long since he had first begun deceiving her and he was now constantly unfaithful to her, and this was no doubt why he spoke slightingly of women, to whom he referred as the lower race. ‘’. At the end of the story, I read that ‘’ And only now, when he was grey-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life. ‘’ When I see this transformation, I really liked it. It is quite understandable that things, seem taboo for somebody else, can be the reality of someone.

When I started to set a relationship between the ‘’The Lady with a Dog’’ by Chekov and the ‘’The Storm’’ by Chopin, I realized that some people don’t get any pleasure from their life. For that reason, they just choose some ways, according to them which doesn’t matter it is wrong or true, and go to these ways to be happy or to be themselves.

To sum up, there are several things which I liked from this story, and I mentioned them above. I think ‘’The Lady with a Dog’’ and its characters life-like. We can see them in our lives. It touches our ethics, and maybe for that reason, we should learn that before judging people, it is necessary to learn their life story.

— Yaren Karakoç —