preview

Examples Of Morality In The Lady With The Dog

Decent Essays

Morality in Shades
Colour is in the art and the art is literature. Often, one depicts morality the concept of shades: a color scheme that involves the gradation from lightest to darkest, which in most case, is white to black. In such scale, the shades white and black represent two contrasting extremes as they parallel the idea of morality, where white is right and black is wrong. However, the complication arises at the area between the white and black: the grey. The grey area possesses no absolute verdict, for one can be both morally right and wrong. Russian realist Anton Chekhov implements such perception as he colours the story with white, black, and grey. An exploration of “The Lady with The Dog” serves to examine his employment of colour …show more content…

As a symbol of purity and innocence, Chekhov serves a strong point in refusing to colour any of his characters with the colour white, therefore emphasizing the characters’ darker shades. In addition, the author gives an appropriate introduction to the story, for the first colour he mentions is the colour white to describe Anna’s “white Pomeranian dog” (14). Although it is true that a dog knows no fault nor morale, Chekhov’s intention is deeper, that because the dog signifies Gurov and Anna’s first meeting, the white implies an innocent beginning of their relationship. At this moment, their characters had only shared a line of conversation. However, the next colour the author alludes to is black, serving as a striking contrast, to describe the “dark eyebrows” of Gurov’s wife (14). Just as white is opposite of black, right is opposite of wrong, and something is definitely wrong. As a married man, Gurov should not have thoughts to “make her acquaintance” since “she’s here without her husband” towards Anna, a strange woman he meets in Yalta (14). Unlike the colour white, Chekhov does associate the colour black with characters in the story, implying that there is an absence of purity but there is a presence of an absolute fault. That said, the frequency of white and black does not compare to that of the colour …show more content…

Although the concept of morality in shades should not particularly be alien to the reader, Chekhov does provide an interesting take on morality – for instance, that he believes love, or feelings, to be an important factor of human morale – which he expresses using the colours white, black, and grey. However, the reader should not expect to learn about morals through this story, as everyone possesses his or her own opinion, but rather should reconsider what they value is right and wrong. The exploration of colour in “The Lady with The Dog” proves insightful in understanding the author’s perspective towards morale of actions, even though Chekhov does not entertain the reader with an absolute verdict. Colour is in the art and the art is literature; what this exploration reveals is only just one shade of the

Get Access