Anton Chekhov wrote quite a few plays which were inspired by actual events of his life and how he felt. Is The Bear sending a message that there is love at first sight or just a myth we would like to believe?

Authors Avatar

Moore

A Bear’s Love

Anton Chekhov wrote quite a few plays which were inspired by actual events of his life and how he felt.  Is The Bear sending a message that there is love at first sight or just a myth we would like to believe?

Careful analysis of the details and generalizations in Chekhov's stories present a remarkably complete and realistic picture of significant classes and institutions in Russian society.  In the course of this study, in order to test the accuracy, objectivity, and validity of Chekhov's observations and judgments, his views will be carefully compared with scholarly research. Chekhov's views have been distilled from a careful analysis of all of his stories.   Chekhov's purpose for writing them was not simply providing light and lucrative entertainment. Though the works themselves were never intended to be taken seriously, Chekhov never lost sight of his goal of becoming a "serious writer." These plays represent studies in the craft of playwriting.   Hard-hitting satires, the vaudevilles mock love but also revel in how fickle our hearts can be. He is laughing at us, but given his own amorous escapades, he is also laughing at himself (Fen 7).

         The Bear is a story that takes place in the home of an affluent Russian widow which is invaded by a boorish creditor.   Sparks fly between them leading, inevitably, to farcical, satiric romance. Though easily dismissed as vacuous fluff (as if often was by Chekov himself), this is a neatly mounted story of characters trapped in a cycle of irrational self-destruction.  Smirnov blustering bully falls head over heels in love for the umpteenth time, utterly convinced that this time will be different when it is blatantly obvious that it will not, while the widow finds herself irresistibly drawn to a man so like her husband and so destined to disappoint her equally as much that everyone apart from her can see it will only end in tears.

Join now!

Ernst Cassirer discusses how mythical thinking has seen the individual personality, but it gives an account of mythical thought itself, its application is intended by the author to be quite general; and the analogy with our own generally accepted ideas about the whole mode of apprehension of the artist, in contrast maybe with the technologist is so plain that it needs no elaboration .  The second part of Cassirer's account of mythical thought which is sometimes linked with literature is alike but distinct from it.   It is his account of how that kind of thinking does not analyze and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay