Chekhov's story "Student": analysis. Chekhov Anton Pavlovich

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, AP Chekhov called the story "The Student" written in 1894 the most beloved of all his works. The writer created it at the age of 34 years. This article presents Chekhov's story "Student", an analysis of his ideological and artistic features. The work even by the standards of Chekhov's prose can be called brief. The author of it once said that "brevity is the sister of talent". In volume of slightly more than 3 pages is Chekhov's story "Student". Analysis of it, however, shows that the work leaves an impression of completeness and artistic perfection.

Events in the works of Chekhov

It is impossible to fully explain and understand the essence of beauty. We can only get closer to understanding. This impression of Chekhov's plays and stories is not uncommon. In them, as if nothing happens. But this is a visible impression. Speech should go, in fact, about the special nature of the event in the artistic world of this author. This event is most often invisible. It occurs in the soul, in the consciousness of the hero. A person suddenly discovered something in his life, or something that had not been noticed before became noticeable, or his point of view changed, or it seemed something different before. Further events depend on this, the invisible. From it come the outlook of the hero, his visible actions, relationships with the surrounding people.

It is about this event - the story of Chekhov's "Student". Analysis shows that in this work there is also a transition of the hero of the work from one state of mind to another, the opposite.

The composition of the story

The composition of the fissile in 3 parts of the story is extremely clear and simple. At first - the initial worldview and mood of Ivan. Then - a meeting in the "widows' gardens" as a push to change. And at the end of the work - a new attitude to the world and a new mood. In the final and initial parts of the story, one can notice the use of similar syntactic constructions: "I thought that ...", "it seemed to him that ...". Such a roll gives the story construction even more clarity.

Chekhov - "Pushkin in prose"

For apparent shortness and simplicity, the deepest perspectives and horizons unfold, which can be found after reading Chekhov's "Student" story. Analyzing the work of this author, Leo Tolstoy accidentally called Anton Pavlovich "Pushkin in prose." As Alexander Sergeevich first in the domestic literature developed the language of poetry, to which everything was accessible, including the subtlest spiritual movements and laws of the universe, so Anton Pavlovich in the language of Russian prose completed such searches.

A review of Chekhov's "Student" can include an observation that in the stories of Anton Pavlovich the narrative is called a merged one. He has his own pictures with the scenery of everyday sketches. Both are imbued with the mood of the perceiving hero. And he not only perceives nature, reacts to the life surrounding him, but at the same time can think about the connection of times, reflect on the laws of being, about the ways of mankind. Extremely capacious, saturated picture of the world is obtained in the end. At the same time, it is represented in a small space - just like in the lyric poems created by the best Russian poets.

The initial mood of the main character

The mood of Ivan Wielkopolska, the hero of the story, first is a feeling of hostility, unsettled universe and surrounding life. If you look closely, you can see that already in the first paragraphs there are three elements, three beginnings. This is history, way of life and nature. They determine the worldview of the main character. In nature it is the cold weather that wins in the spring, in everyday life - longing, ignorance, hunger, cruel poverty; In Russian history - a bad infinity, because "these horrors were, are and will be."

Organization of time in the story

The close attention paid by the author of the organization in the story of time is not immediately evident. This is a combination of its various dimensions in which an event occurs. Each of the three elements listed above lives by the time. Evening in nature is replaced at night, winter should change spring, but winter takes over it, and it is a sign of the prevailing disharmony. In everyday life, in everyday life, there are also temporary measures: before the approaching holiday, fasting, and in such a life the ordinary state of hunger only intensifies and prolongs. Time in history moves in a closed circle. Ivan seems that nothing will change from what will take another 1000 years.

All these directions of time intersect in the consciousness of the main character, which was created by A. P. Chekhov ("Student"). A general unhappy mood, a sense of desperation, hopelessness, oppression arise at their intersection.

Ivan tells women a story from the Gospel

But Ivan accidentally gets to know two women working in the garden. Something - whether the desire to keep warm from this communication, whether the similarity of the surrounding situation, a bonfire on a dark spring night - causes the main character to speak and tell the widows the story from the Gospel that came to his memory. She continues Chekhov's story "Student". A brief retelling of this story is the following: it talks about how the apostle Peter showed weakness in the equally cold spring night at the fire. He decided to renounce his teacher Jesus, whom he loved very much, and immediately regretted it. However, what Ivan tells to women is not preaching, not teaching. In his story, Peter appears as an ordinary man, who has both the ability to repent and weakness. In this legend and in the way the youth recounts it, beauty and truth of beautiful words and human feelings, simple and eternal, unite.

Women's reaction to the story

Then comes what may be called a small miracle. Illiterate, ordinary women react so naturally and vividly to Ivan's story, as if (the main character makes a conclusion), everything that happened 19 centuries ago on that terrible night has to their life, to them a direct attitude. In response to the story of Ivan, the old woman cried, and her daughter, hammered by a village woman, also expressed pity in her own way. In this - its own beauty and its own truth: people understood each other, experienced similar feelings, responded to the beautiful in the same way. Hence, not only poverty, darkness, hunger and cold "were, is and will be," but also this feeling of truth and beauty that unites people. This idea holds in the story of AP Chekhov. The student clearly sees this.

Another measurement of time

Then Ivan opens and enters into the story another dimension of time. It is excellent and from the historical, and from everyday, and from natural. These are eternal laws and eternal time that are relevant to all people. They directed human life then, 19 (now 20) centuries ago, and still constitute the main thing on earth and in human life. To feel this eternal time, to notice an unbroken chain of communication existing between times means to find yourself at the disharmony of nature, history and everyday life, to feel that the laws of being are imperishable.

The image of fire in the work

Thus, towards the end of the story, the horizon is widening, as if a light penetrates into the consciousness of the hero. The image of fire, light passes through the whole work, binding its 3 parts. The fire is mentioned at the beginning of the story. It glows on the widows' gardens near the river. However, this distant fire (we still do not know about its source) can not disperse the evening mist. He only emphasizes the gloom and desolation of the places on which Ivan is going. This fire does not reassure, but only strengthens the desperation of the protagonist.

Already near us we see a fire in the second part, when a fire describes Anton Chekhov ("Student"). He is burning now, his main character is warming his hands. However, this bonfire vividly reminds Ivan of another, which is described in the eternal book. Two ends of one chain, connecting at all times people, appeared to the hero of the Gospel fire and fire, which he saw on the widows of the garden.

The fire at the beginning of the third part is mentioned for the last time by Anton Chekhov. When the student looked back, the fire of the fire calmly and alone flashed in the dark. Near him, people were no longer visible. The fire remained the same. But the vision of fire here was enriched with an additional, special meaning. He separated from his concrete source. Now it is as if not a material fire, but illuminated Ivan's consciousness, which illuminated the protagonist of the work the further way. It is a symbol, but not artificial, but, like in other works of Chekhov, naturally and naturally grows out of everyday life, from life itself.

The new mood of Ivan

Gladly, the story ends lightly. It seems that nothing has changed for this evening, either in history, in everyday life, or in nature. However, in the soul of man the event has come to pass. Full consciousness of the young man, the consciousness of the connecting age of beauty and truth made it possible to see the world differently, overcome despair and despondency. Now the student's life seems full of high sense, wonderful and delightful.

Thought Chekhov

Does it just seem to him or is it really like that? What did Chekhov (the "Student") want to show us? The theme of the work is a change in the sensations of one young man (a student of only 22) or the perpetual, eternal patterns of being? The story does not give an unambiguous answer. Chekhov said that it was not the artist's job to give advice. Its task is to raise questions. This should be taken into account when analyzing the work "Student" by Chekhov. It is important that the questions about what and how our attitude to life and world perception develops are correctly posed. Not only disharmony and horror have a place in the world. In it you can find beauty and truth. And hopelessness and despair sometimes give way to hope and joy.