Gooseberries | Social Sensitivity
Chekhov clearly uses Ivan's speech as a vehicle to defend his stand on social issues of concern in Russia in the late 1800s. Education of the peasants and the mistreatment of the peasants by the bourgeois class were primary issues at this time, and Chekhov appears to be laying these issues out for evaluation.
Chekhov was criticized for his lack of social consciousness and noted for first supporting, then rejecting, the views of Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian novelist and noted religious thinker. The influence of Tolstoy is apparent in "Gooseberries." Tolstoy believed that...
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