A pretentious alcoholic named Hemmingway

I feel like a man-hating pessimist so far in this class, but that is not who I am. I swear. That being said, it seems as though Hemmingway has pedestaled himself into greater importance than neccesary. Please tell me I am not the only one who feels this way! His Nick Adams stories are interesting enough, but they felt so diconnecting. Nick Adams is an averagish (not a word, I know) kind of guy. He doesn't do or say anything utterly brilliant or original. He does normal things. He gets drunk with his friend, he breaks up with his girlfriend but is indecisive about his decision, etc. In all honesty, he is a rather dull character. Here enters the vignettes. My take on Hemmingway's purpose for these vignettes is to prepare the reader for a specific type of reaction. Though the stories and the vignettes seem unrelated at first glance, there is a common emotion being diplayed. Sometimes it is anger, outrage, disbelief, sadness, or humor. Maybe Hemminway realized his stories lacked a connection and thought, "Oh, crap. I better find a way to peak my readers' curiosity." Or maybe he really IS a genius and I have completely missed it.

Back to the Case!

The style of all of the stories is a story within a story. However, Gooseberries and Man in a Case were both told my men who were witnesses to other people’s lives whereas About Love was about the man who was telling it. Burkin and Ivan tell stories about a colleague and a brother respectively whereas Alehin tells a story about himself (I think….). I think that because Alehin is telling his own story, the story becomes more intimate and we are better able to understand the feelings behind the actions of the main character. In Gooseberries and Man in a Case we are left to wonder about the exact motives behind actions that the main characters take because their stories are told from the perspective of an onlooker. This gives us more of an understanding into Alehin as a character outside of the stories while Burkin and Ivan remain somewhat of a mystery.

The structure of the three stories is also the same. We start out with a description of the setting and what our story tellers are doing, and then we dive into the story. After it is over, we revert back to the setting of our story tellers and we get a chance to see their reactions to the story that was just told.

In Man in a Case, Byelikov puts himself in a case to protect himself from being hurt. He feels a need to control his life because he feels vulnerable or fragile. He also talks a lot about the past, because it is something solid that is 100% certain. The past cannot be re-written whereas the future is so vague. He tries to use the past to control the present. The irony here is that he breaks. The more he tries to incase himself, the more his colleagues try to pull him out. Although he tries, he is unable to control the people around him.

A thought I had was that maybe his colleagues were exaggerating Byelikov’s personality. It is always easier to point out the flaws of other people and I think that they took the way he is very solitary to the extreme in order to take the focus off of themselves. My evidence is at the end of the story where after Byelikov dies, the feeling of having too look over their shoulder was still there. I think that they made Byelikov the scapegoat that kept them in line instead of looking at their own morals and beliefs which were probably holding them back instead. To say that they’re giving themselves freedom to act however they choose but then saying that Byelikov makes them act differently when really it’s their own subconscious that is holding them back.

Of course, one could argue that this is not true because it is made clear how Byelikov feels towards the actions of the other characters, especially when he watches Kovalenko and Varinka riding along on bikes. But there is still something that points me towards thinking that there is something else in play here that makes the other teachers feel the way they do in regards to watching their actions.

I think a lot can be said about happiness and love from this story. Maybe it’s that everyone has his or her own case and that staying inside that case makes one safe and happy. However, to experience love, you must get outside of your box and truly experience it. I think that the idea is that every person can be happy inside their own little world but when love comes along, it tears you out of that box and forces you into new, uncomfortable situations. I think that these were brought into literal action in the story. Byelikov is perfectly happy in his case until his colleagues start trying to bring him out and he falls in love with Varinka. When he encounters Kovalenko and she misinterprets a situation between the two, his world is shattered and he retreats so far back into his box that he eventually dies.

To me, this was a sort of sad story. I was really angered at the other school teachers for butting into Byelikov’s life. It was really no business of their’s, but then again, maybe that says something about the culture at that time. It was unusual for a man like Byelikov to not be married and they were just trying to help him, but I still think it was not any place of their’s to push him so hard towards liking her. I think they should have just left the poor man alone. Ivan is also agitated at the end of the story. He wants to tell a story of his own, but Burkin cuts him off and goes to sleep. But Ivan is unable to sleep and eventually goes back outside to smoke some more.

The story ends back with our story tellers and a description of the town at night. It is described as peaceful, quiet, dark, beautiful, and with no movement. This description gives us the impression that the town is sort of in it’s own case.

I think I’ve rambled on for too long and have made too little sense…

The Man in the Case

The thing that caught my attention almost immediately was the fact that this story is a story within a story. This means that there are two narrators: the unnamed, and Burkin. I think in order to discuss the style of these two narrators, we have to split them apart and discuss each story on its own.

The main story, telling of Ivan and Burkin in the barn, is told matter-of-factly, with no hints as to what is going on in each character's mind. The secondary story (which is really the main story, but that's just technicalities), told by Burkin, is a little more insightful. Through Burkin's side comments, we learn a little bit about his personality. Burkin tells the story as if he knows what others thought--and perhaps he did.

I think the characters' ideas on love and happiness don't come across as clearly. However, it does seem to me that Burkin doesn't think love happens naturally, that it's a destined thing... it seems as though marriage is what's expected, and one who doesn't marry is strange. It seems obvious to the reader that Byelikov wasn't happy living the way that he did. However, it seems to me that coming out of his shell is what made him so unhappy that it killed him.

What I took from this story is that there will always be people in boxes, and that some of those people absolutely cannot live outside them. There will always be people that conform strictly to rules, routines, etc., and to remove those things would be devestating to them.

So yeah. I liked this one a lot better than The Lady with the Pet Dog. However, I have to say that I didn't much like Burkin and his cohorts. They just seemed... I don't know, too nosy for their own good. We can't like everyone.

A Jump Back to Poe.... I'll be quick about it...

In class, we really went through the trouble to think about each character specifically in The Oblong Box. Characterization is very important here because the main character's development and motivation are what drives the story along. Without the narrator, there would essentially be no story due to the fact that the story is driven by his obsession with the other characters and particularly in the oblong box.

While elements of the narrator’s personality aren’t spelled out for us, it is easy to comprehend what kind of a person he is by his actions and internal dialog. We know that he is not a very patient person from the way that he gets irritated with the delay of sailing and from his frustration at not being able to find out what’s in the box. We also know that he is highly critical of other people after he calls the captain stupid and his friend Wyatt a “madman.” Maybe one of the most compelling elements of the narrator’s personality is his ability to assume. He assumes that he knows everything from the get-go. Not once did he question whether he was wrong about his friends trying to pull a fast one over on him or what he believed to be the contents of the box.

I think it was also interesting that the fake wife was the only character to receive a description in the story. I think that this was done as a foreshadowing effect, showing the reader what to focus on without being too dramatic about it. I think that the way that the narrator describes the behaviors of all the characters is a bit of foreshadowing, but the deep comparison of the real wife that the narrator was told about and the fake wife’s actual appearance and disposition are really the shining examples.

We didn’t discuss The Fall of the House of Usher as we did Oblong Box because we were less impressed with this story. However, I wanted to point out that characterization is very apparent in this story as well, but not where you might expect it. I think that the house itself was given more thought as to characterization than any of the actual people in the story. Maybe this would better go under setting, but I really believe that the house became a character of it’s own and that it could be the main focus of characterization study.

Ranting About Chekhov's Minute Particulars

I can't argue that Chekhov has the ability to describe nature in that rare way that enables you to picture his thoughts when you close your eyes. However, in continuing with my opinion of Gurov, I don't think Chekhov convinces the reader of his protaganist's epiphany in "The Lady with the Pet Dog." This character meets another woman (with whom he is irritated) and magically falls in love with her? It is true that the idea of forbidden love is wildly romantic, but after a few walks in the park and rolls in the hay, I would hardly consider this a tragic love story. Everyone reaches a breaking point in a miserable marriage. This was just Gurov's. He was unhappily married and it was only a matter of time before he aquired the misconceived notion that he was in love. He had to believe he loved her. It was the needed distraction from the stark realities of his pathetic existence. So there.

A Bit on Poe's Characterization

We talked about a lot of different aspects of Poe's characterization in class, but here are a few of the highlights that have stuck in my mind since Tuesday:

In both Usher and Oblong, the narrators act as witnesses to events that quite literally have nothing to do with them, yet they are thrust into a central part of the story. In Usher, I believe the story would be pretty much the same even if it was a different narrator... for example, if it wasn't an old school friend but a random passerby. I originally thought the same for Oblong, as well, but it was brought up in class that the narrator's personality made the story. It was also the narrator's actions (the obsessive curiousity about the box) that moved the story along. I now think that the narrator's personality made the story, rather than the narrator simply being a witness to it.

What we talked about in class, mainly, was the self-centeredness of the narrator in Oblong, as well as his self-believed superiority to everyone else around him. We talked about how this painted a picture of him as someone wealthy and with enough social status to get away with it, but I think he's not as wealthy and socially high up as he wants himself to be--hence his need to put down everyone around him.

The narrator in this story is dynamic and round, whereas all the other characters are static and flat. This really shows that Oblong is about the narrator, and that the title is somewhat deceiving. It's a story about his obsession with something not concerning him, and his need to make it concern him. The oblong box just happens to be the object of his obsession.

We didn't discuss Usher as extensively, probably because the plotline bored us to tears. The narrator seemed content with meandering along, and it was a difficult story to read. For me, at least.

Any other thoughts?