Inner Life of Characters of Anton Chekhov's Misery

Running head: INNER LIFE OF CHARACTERS OF ANTON CHEKHOV'S MISERY
INNER LIFE OF CHARACTERS OF ANTON CHEKHOV'S MISERY
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Author Note

1INNER LIFE OF CHARACTERS OF ANTON CHEKHOV'S MISERY
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is one of the famous playwrights and short story writers of
Russia and is considered to be one of the greatest writers who had been composing the literary
pieces that fall under the genre of short fictions. There are four classic plays that mark the career
of Chekhov as a playwright. The writer is known among the various critics as one of the best
short story writers of the era. Anton Chekhov is known to be one of the three authors who are
known to be the seminal figures involved in the birth of the early modernism in the genre of the
theatre. The Cherry Orchard (1904) and the Seagull (1896) are among the most famous works of
the Russian playwright that had gained the writer huge accolades from the critics and the readers
of literature. The following essay deals with the revelation of the inner side of the various
characters that have been portrayed in the concerned short story in discussion, Misery, composed
by the famous Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov.
Misery is one of the short stories of Anton Chekhov that was first published in the
Peterburgskaya Gazeta in the year 1886 after which the short story had been republished for
many times in various anthologies and finally underwent some minor changes after which it
gained entry into the third volume of the Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. The story majorly
deals with the loneliness of the father whose son has recently left for his Heavenly abode. The
story revolves around the desperation in the father that leads him to talk to every person he meets
about his loneliness after the death of his son. The story clearly points out the frustration that has
been built up within the father due to the loss of his only companion with whom he could share
his experiences. The author points out the fact that the father has been trying to strike up a
conversation with all those people whom he had been meeting in his daily life regarding the
loneliness that he had been facing and the ways in which he has shattered after the death of his
only son. The reader finds it very heartbreaking that none of the people whom the protagonist

2INNER LIFE OF CHARACTERS OF ANTON CHEKHOV'S MISERY
approaches in order to share his sorrows do actually pay heed to the suffering of the grieving
father. The story finds it end with the fact that the bereaved father starts talking to his own horse
after facing a lack of reciprocation from all the human beings whom he had approached for
sharing his own grief. The author in this masterpiece tends to portray the miserable lives of the
people who have been residing in the then society. The various critics of the short story have
widely acclaimed the short story writer for his ability to bring forth the drama that is present in
the various day-to-day affairs that have been taking place in the concerned society. The critics
stated that Misery is one of those masterpieces of the Russian short story writer that portrays the
actual face of the concerned society that is revealed by the way they deal with the bereaving
father who had lost his only son.
The major characters in the short story are the cab driver, Iona Potapov, the four
passengers that he ferries to their destination and the young man whom he finds to be fast asleep
in the yard. The story does not have any supporting character unless the reader considers the
horse of the protagonist of the story to be one of the characters of the story. The four passengers
that the concerned cab owner ferries to their destination might only be termed to be strangers due
to the fact that they have not shown any kind of humane interaction with the concerned cab
driver who had been grieving the loss of his only son1. The story does not portray the presence of
any female character by themselves, with other female characters or with any other male escort.
All the characters that have been depicted in the story might be termed to be flat characters since
the reader is unable to find any emotional upheavals that are depicted by the concerned
characters that have been depicted in the short story.
1 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich. Anton Chekhov Collected Works. Firebird Publications, Incorporated, 1990.
Print.