A.P. Chekhov Chekhov's Literature Pays

¶ … a.P. Chekhov Chekhov's literature pays a tribute to mother Russia by his extensive and very carefully constructed descriptions of the natural environment his stories and novel take place. Nature plays a decisive role in the understanding of his characters' state of mind. The short story, the Exile, is an example of Chekhov's genius in creating a special character, Nature, that is mirroring the inside of the people living in it.

The story opens with the introduction of two of the significant characters: two men, one old and the other one young. The author places them n a cold and bare setting, by a riverbank, by a fire. Their fellows are asleep inside of a hut nearby. The atmosphere is frozen ad the place is deserted. No signs of life are present outside these men. It looks like they are on another planet that is lifeless.

The old one, Semyon, is suggestively describing the setting to the young Tatar whose name no one knows: "To be sure, it is no Paradise here," said Preacher. You can see for yourself, the water, the bare banks, clay and nothing else...Easter has long past and yet there is ice on the river, and this morning there was snow..." (Chekhov, 1892) Not even the water, a symbol of life otherwise, is used in this setting as a friendly trace. It is only flowing by, cold and grumbling and dark.

The young Tatar is frightened and sick and longs for what he left behind, at home. The old man whose appearance, despite his lack of teeth, his age and his drunken state, is presented to have a healthy appearance and he is also the one who encourages the scared young man with a remarks that show a keen sense of reality and experience that resulted in an awkward kind of optimism.

He came to peace with all the harsh conditions he lived in past the last twenty years of his life and he encourages his young companion to escape de desperation and be thankful for the very fact that he was alive and above the water, unlike the pike and the salmon that were under it.

The dialogue between the two seems to be that of two life sentenced prisoners, one who came to peace with his existence and another who has just started to feel how it was to live a life in prison. The old man's philosophy is that of someone who thinks about himself that he is free of anything. Although he was forced to live in the harshest conditions of the most unfriendly climate in Russia, he came to see himself as freer than most because he freed himself from desire.

He tells his poor young fellow to escape wishing for anything as the only way to find salvation. And he speaks like someone who is the living proof that his advice can worked when listened to. The young Tatar clings to the image of his beloved country he left behind, and to the memories of his family. His suffering could be the cause of his poor health. Semyon, the old man, whose nickname is Preacher, preaches him about the only way to salvation: to wish for nothing.

"And I wish no one a better life, I want nothing and I am afraid of nobody, and the way I look at it is that there is nobody richer and freer than I am." (Chekhov, 1892) Like any good preacher, old Semyon is using examples to illustrate his teachings and tells the young men the story of a gentleman who once came to the icy Siberia as consequence of having forged a will.

The story is aimed to make the young fellow understand that fate is not spearing anyone, be it a peasant, like him, or a gentleman like the one in Semyon's story. At the beginning of the old man's parable, Chekhov is revealing to the reader what this may have been guessing by now, the reason his short story's characters are finding themselves in that unfriendly environments, by with no one to comfort them frm their family or friends.

Semyon's gentlemen came to Siberia because he committed a felony, as there might be the case of all the rest of the characters. Semyon's vision about life seems to be opposite to that in the other world, where they all came from one day or another. But it makes sense, because the logic tells one that under special circumstances, there must be special conditions one must live under in order to survive.

His parable tells the story of that gentleman who committed a deadly sin for someone forced to live in Siberia: he wanted to bring along his old life with him. So he bought land and built a house and let his wife come to him. This was, in the old man's eyes a fatal error. Despite his advices for the young gentleman who became a settler in Siberia, the later did not listen to him.

He brought his wife and his old life along with her, but that only meant destruction for him. His wife soon got tired of the living in Siberia and left him behind, running back to her old life along with her lover.

The opposition in Semyon's philosophy is represented by this ex-gentleman's words who lost his wife twice: "I laughed and reminded him 'people can live even in Siberia."(Chekhov, 1892) in fact, one realizes at this point of the story that the old man does not teach about surviving techniques at all. By mocking the young gentleman's belief that on can live in Siberia he reveals, in fact, a different belief.

At the bottom of his heart, he must be convinced that being alive in Siberia did not necessarily meant living, as in what usually people understood in the other world. An his story goes on, because the ex-gentleman, the settler who meanwhile lost not only his wife, but also his land and almost his house, made a second mistake. He clung to his life again, a life he should have lost forever.

He came to what he thought it meant life again, through his daughter; still a reminder of the old ways of living. but, again, wise Semyon knew it would not last. It was a contradiction in terms and the life in the young girl had nothing in common with life as it was meant to be lived in Siberia: "wait a bit, the wench is young, her blood is dancing, she wants to live and there is no life here." (Chekhov, 1892).

Semyon defines this as "consumption." Even f the ex-gentleman's daughter never know life as it happened in the world they all left behind, her blood did and that was the factor that was bound to consummate her. Yet, the story as illustrative as it may seem, does not succeed to convince the young Tatar of the old man's convictions. He is still convinced that a moment of happiness is better than none.

Although a Preacher is usually convinced by his teachings, the old man himself seems to be questioning what he otherwise presented as a conviction beyond any doubt. He is talking to himself rather than continuing the dialogue with his young companion as if trying to reassure himself that he was right in his beliefs that kept him safe and sound under the most difficult conditions one may ever experience in a lifetime.

The young Tatar's conviction that his wife could come and live with him in Siberia are beginning to crumble when, aside his noble beliefs in happiness as the expression of.