Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov - Walter J. Slatoff (essay date 1985)
Walter J. Slatoff (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "Some Varieties of Armor and Innocence," in The Look of Distance: Reflections on Suffering & Sympathy in Modern Literature—Auden to Agee, Whitman to Woolf, Ohio State University Press, 1985, pp. 15-40.
[In the excerpt below, Slatoff considers possible reader responses, including his own, to the character Ivan Ivanych in "Gooseberries."]
[Ivan Ivanych in "Gooseberries"] is an elderly veterinarian who over the years has become so horrified by his brother's piggish and blind complacency that he becomes incapable of watching anyone's happiness without an "oppressive feeling bordering on despair." After spending an evening with his brother, he says to himself:
How many contented, happy people there really are! What an overwhelming force they are! Look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, horrible poverty...
[The entire page is 1100 words long]
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