Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull is a Russian comedy, despite some tragedy, written in the end of the nineteenth century regarding the drama revolving around a group of people living in the countryside. The characters face the lack of satisfaction in their lives as they fail to achieve their desires. The characters desires are most about success; they desire success in love and art. Since these characters are lacking at least one of these desires, they are thus left to be loathing their lack of success in life throughout the play. Overall, The Sea Gull does exemplify the human disappointment through the characters which face disappointment or dissatisfaction with their lives and effectively portray disappointment through the characters’ actions and thoughts.
First, some of the characters show their discontent with life regarding the issue with love. Love becomes a major portion of The Sea Gull’s conflict as most characters love another, but this leads to “chains of romance” for the characters. For instance, Medvedenko, a poor school teacher trying to support his family) is speaking with Masha, who herself is mourning for her life, speaking about how he is unfortunate and how Masha does not have a real reason to be unhappy. Medvedenko then confesses, “I love you. Too restless and sad to stay at home, I tramp here every day, six miles and back, to be met only by your indifference” (Chekhov 106). Masha then responds saying she acknowledges his love for her, but does not feel the same way about him. Already, there is a small conflict regarding Medvedenko. Chekhov addresses human disappointment right at the start of the play through Medvedenko’s conversation with Masha and effectively shows this as the audience may feel his emotions. The...
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...intment through their dialogue.
The human disappointment manifests itself mostly by the characters themselves. Anton Chekhov creates lively characters that exemplify these disappointments. The cause are mostly from lack of success, to be more specific in the arts and love. For instant, Treplev faces the issue of love and the arts. They are related as Treplev’s attempt to get his mother to love him is a cause for his attempt in creating of a new, successful art form that features metaphor, humanity, and the senses. Trigorin on the other hand has an issue with success in the sense that his success causes disappointment. His faces the chronic need to write novels as he writes one after another, taking muses from his surroundings and events. Consequently, Chekhov effectively addresses human disappointment through his characters in The Seagull via dialogue and actions.
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, the last of his fiction stories to be published before his death in 1961 (Lombardi). The novella is still celebrated to this day as a riveting tale of man versus nature under the most dire of circumstances. The story’s protagonist, Santiago, is a man with supreme determination and hope. His battle with the great marlin is an illustration of human strength, physically and mentally, at its finest. These qualities about him, along with the decisions he makes throughout the novel, give him similarities to Christ, while other elements of Hemingway’s prose can arguably serve as Christian symbolism as well.
Seafarer” is a monologue from an old man at sea, alone. The main theme in The Seafarer is
The Europeans changed the land of the home of the Indians, which they renamed New England. In Changes in the Land, Cronon explains all the different aspects in how the Europeans changed the land. Changing by the culture and organization of the Indians lives, the land itself, including the region’s plants and animals. Cronon states, “The shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities,” (Cronon, xv). New England went through human development, environmental and ecological change from the Europeans.
The juxtaposition of the Titanic and the environment in the first five stanzas symbolizes the opposition between man and nature, suggesting that nature overcomes man. The speaker characterizes the sea as being “deep from human vanity” (2) and deep from the “Pride of Life that planned” the Titanic. The diction of “human vanity” (2) suggests that the sea is incorruptible by men and then the speaker’s juxtaposition of vanity with “the
Bad choices are made every day by everybody. Those bad choices could lead to consequences that are going to bother a person for a long time. Even more, that person may try various ways to correct that error. The intention is good, but things can go even worse if the effort is based on unrealistic fantasies. This effort is presented as a part of modernist ideas. Modernist writers dramatize this effort through the tragic outcomes of the characters. Three modernist pieces, A Street Car Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby, all of them sent out a message to the audience, the loss of past and how it cannot be recovered. Each piece features a character who lost hope, strived to recover the hope, and ended with a tragic outcome. A Street Car Named Desire featured Blanche; Blanche spent her whole life trying to get some attentions. Death of a Salesman featured Willy; Willy spent his whole life trying to apply the idea “Be Well Liked.” The Great Gatsby featured Jay Gatsby; Gatsby spent his whole life trying to win back Daisy. All of those characters ended with tragic outcome. Blanche was sent to asylum by her own sister. Willy committed suicide after felt humiliated by his sons. Gatsby was murdered with a gunshot planned by Tom Buchanan. Blanche, Willy, and Gatsby’s tragic fates are caused by their false beliefs about life, which are proven wrong by the contradictions between the reality and the illusion.
The idea of falling victim to one’s own flaws is often closely associated with the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, particularly the concepts of hamartia (a tragic or fatal flaw) and hubris (pride before a fall). Although The Winter’s Tale, The Great Gatsby and The Remains of the Day are not widely considered to be tragedies, yet there are elements of the definition that are relevant. This c...
After reading the entire play, the reader can safely say that fate works in mysterious ways. To love and be loved in return is considered by many to be one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. At the same time, it is thought of as unbearable to love someone you cannot be with. Especially when the reasoning behind limitations is cau...
Our journey starts in the year 1853 with four Scandinavian indentured servants who are very much slaves at the cold and gloomy headquarters of the Russian-American fur-trading company in Sitka, Alaska. The story follows these characters on their tortuous journey to attempt to make it to the cost of Astoria, Oregon. Our list of characters consists of Melander, who is very much the brains of the operation as he plans the daring escape from the Russians. Next to join the team was Karlson, who was chosen by Melander because he is a skilled canoeman and knows how to survive in the unforgiving landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Third was Braaf, he was chosen because of his ability to steal and hide things, which made him a very valuable asset to the teams escape. Last to join our team is Wennberg who we know is a skilled blacksmith who happens to hear about their plan and forces himself into the equation.
Chekhov’s portrayal of love is as an emotion that solidifies itself only if the precise person is encountered. However, Chekhov takes his idea even further through his characters Dmitri and Anna, by stating through them, that love may be discovered, even after marrying the “incorrect person.” This fact is made clear when Chekhov writes “I don't know what he does there, what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was twenty when I was married to him” through the character Anna. Hemingway on the other hand, instead of giving a view on what love is, his perspective is based on situation that may be mistaken as love. Both of Hemingway’s characters in Hills like White Elephants; Jig and The American, are reluctant to reveal the reality o...
In this poem, the author tells of a lost love. In order to convey his overwhelming feelings, Heaney tries to describe his emotions through something familiar to everyone. He uses the sea as a metaphor for love, and is able to carry this metaphor throughout the poem. The metaphor is constructed of both obvious and connotative diction, which connect the sea and the emotions of love.
This Passage is significant in many ways. O’Brien has a vague yet vivid memory of throwing a grenade and killing a young Vietnamese soldier in the midst of war and what really struck him was the corpse of the young man. He is dejected because of what he has done, and was even speaking in the third person and constructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. Weaving the story of the young man’s life into something similar as his own. The way O’Brien achieves this is through certain literary techniques. One is being Imagery. On the top of page 127 he says “The nose was undamaged. The skin on the right cheek was smooth and fine-grained and hairless. Frail-looking, delicately boned” (O’Brien 127). On the top of page 128 he also says “Along the trail there were small blue flowers shaped like bells. The young man 's head was wrenched sideways, not quite facing the flowers, and even in the shade a single blade of sunlight sparkled against the buckle of his ammunition belt. The left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. The wounds at his neck had not yet clotted, which made him seem animate even in death, the blood still spreading out across his shirt.” (O’Brien 128). O’Brien uses words like
“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.
Whether a person’s life is something experienced authentically, or factually written down as literature, there are more complexities faced then there are simplicities on a daily basis. This multifariousness causes constant bewilderment and hesitation before any sort of important decision a person must make in his or her life. When it comes to characters of the written words, as soon sensations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paranoia form, the outlook and actions of these characters are what usually result in regrettable decisions and added anxiety for both that character as well as the reader. Examples of these themes affecting characters in the world of fiction are found in the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and the play Glengarry Glen Ross written by David Mamet. Throughout both of these texts, characters such as Oedipa Maas who allows these emotions to guide her in her journey of self discovery, and Shelly Levene who is so overcome with these emotions that they become his downfall. For both of these characters, these constant emotional themes are what guide their most impulsive actions, which can generally also become regrettable decisions. Even though it is a distinguishing factor of human beings, when these characters are portrayed in print, it somehow seems to affect the reader more, because they are able to see the fictional repercussions, and also know how they could have been avoided.
Ernest Hemingway's classic novella The Old Man and the Sea is centered around an old
After reading this novel, "The Old Man and the Sea," by Ernest Hemingway, I was confused about something the old man kept repeating. During the course of the book, the old man, Santiago, refers to having gone out to far to catch the fish. To me, this sounds as though he is making excuses for himself as to why he could not bring the fish in. On the other hand, he may have realized that he should not have gone out so far because it was not worth it for everything he puts himself and the fish through. I reread over these parts and came to a conclusion about this problem. We know that Santiago sets out on the eighty-fifth day earlier than normal to get a head start on what he believes to be the day he will catch something. He does catch something and it just happens to be the biggest fish he has ever seen in his life. He does everything he can to hook the fish and once hooked; the fish carries him out to sea, moving further and further away from land. The man knows he is not prepared for what is to come but does not let this discourage him and keeps on trying. This tells me that Santiago is courageously devoted to his life of fishing After three days at sea, managing the marlin, and more importantly hunger, he brings the fish in and attaches it to the side of his boat. When the first of the sharks come, he does everything in order to defend himself, but as unprepared as he was, his actions are almost useless. This is when he first says to himself and the marlin beside him, "I shouldn't have gone out so far, fish. Neither for you nor me. I'm sorry fish" (110). The old man had considered the fish his friend and also a brother the entire time he had been trying to kill it. To me, this asse...