Response to "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekov

I absolutely loved this story and I think that Chekov's use of language is so brilliant.  He does a lot of telling in this story but he gives the reader just the right amount of information and it doesn't feel like it's overkill.  He is able to sum up Dmtri's emotions in just a few words.  One of the lines that I particularly loved was Dmtri's reaction just after Anna tells him how she feels about herself and her husband. "Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naïve tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a part." The description is beautiful, and these kind of lines make me want to not only continue reading the story, but to read that same line over and over again so the beauty of the words really sink in.

Though the character arc of the story was somewhat predictable: womanizing man falls in love with a girl, gets over his womanizing ways, and realizes how horribly he treated women in the past, I did not expect them to actually end up together.  I was glad, however, that Dmtri's character didn't change too radically; at the end, he still feels disconcerted by the way that he has fallen in love and has not completely given into the prospect of being in love.  He is happy though that he has ended up with Anna despite the fact that they have had to runaway together, whereas Anna is more reluctant about their decision to run away.  This contrast in their beliefs about the choice they made is very believable.

Towards the end of the story, one of the lines that stood out to me was: "He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret." I think that most people can relate to this concept of the open self and closed self, and it is especially true for people like Dmtri who want to portray a different type of person to the world than the truly are on the inside.  Again, the way that Chekov describes this concept of the open and closed self is done with beautiful, clear diction.  I hope to find ways to incorporate some of Chekov's great vocabulary and his genius way of sentence structure in my own writing.