Reaction Paper-Short Story. "Misery" by Anton Chekhov

In the short novel “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Leo Tolstoy seeks to warn and hopefully save the souls of his readers from living empty lives by making an example out of the main character in the story, Ivan Ilyich. Although the main theme in the novel deals with death, Tolstoy presents a number of other themes such as: the need to live a natural balanced life not dominated by propriety and decorum, the dangers of living artificial lives governed by materialism, self-interest, shallow relationships, bourgeois societal expectations, suffering, and later on redemption and altruism. Tolstoy uses these themes as a way to convince people to live and pursue what brings them real happiness not to meet the expectations of others or society.

Unfortunately, Ivan's condition gets worse and he enters the cycle of depression. This is when an individual realizes that their death is certain. Signs of this cycle include becoming silent, refusal of visitors, and spending most of their time crying and grieving. In the book, Ivan is shown casting away his wife and his fellow magistrates. The only one he allowed to visit him was his servant, Gerasim. “And he ceased crying...during that loneliness Ivan Illych had only lived in the

Tolstoy talks about a sort of scholarly emergency that he endured late in his life, and his recuperation from it. In spite of the fact that Tolstoy appreciated what might conventionally be viewed as a successful and agreeable life, he started feeling tormented by worries of unimportance. Specifically, he reports starting to question why he should think about things that he once thought about, or why he should do the things that he would choose to do. At last, he discovered it inconceivably hard to give answers to these inquiries. The outcome, he reports, is feeling as though his life were a doltish, pointless trap played someone has bestowed upon him. He felt as though every individual task he attempted, and also his life in its totality, were without importance.

Many times when people give up they just sit there helplessly. Ivan was so depressed and helpless from his injury that he had no desire to move. When a person does not move for a period of time during an illness their body will begin to shut down. It was said that "Ivan Ilyich now no longer left his sofa. He would not lie in bed but lay on the sofa, facing the wall nearly all the time. He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness" this quote shows how a person's thoughts and actions can worsen their conditions (Tolstoy X). The fact that Ivan did not even move showed that in

need to be praised and to feel powerful, both of which are signs indicative of a true

Many people want to be just like the others. They want to fit in and therefore act the way others act. This is the type of shit people need to get out of there head. Everyone is different and it is what makes everyone their own unique selves. If

times put other people down to make ourselves look better. We see this everyday in

Salinger and Elie Wiesel both associate the actions in their pieces of literature to sorrow. In the excerpt from The Catcher in the Rye it states, “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about… It’s funny. Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Due to a fundamental need for positive regard from others, it is easier to 'be' this sort of person so as to receive such positive feedback. Over time, the individual looses the sense of their own identity and their own evaluations of experience, and the individual may partly or even entirely change due to the pressures felt from other people or the environment around them.

Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull is a Russian comedy, despite some tragedy, written in the end of the nineteenth century regarding the drama revolving around a group of people living in the countryside. The characters face the lack of satisfaction in their lives as they fail to achieve their desires. The characters desires are most about success; they desire success in love and art. Since these characters are lacking at least one of these desires, they are thus left to be loathing their lack of success in life throughout the play. Overall, The Sea Gull does exemplify the human disappointment through the characters which face disappointment or dissatisfaction with their lives and effectively portray disappointment through the characters’

A letter was brought to him which expatiated at length on the horrors committed by the Cossacks, Küstrin having been reduced to ashes. The blood mounted to his face as he read the letter. “Feel my forehead…how it burns. You see I have the utmost difficulty in restraining the violence of the first moment. I fear nothing for myself, but for my poor people.”

“On the Suicide of a Young Boy I Did Not Know” by Jennifer Weinblatt tells the story of the narrator grieving for the death of child in her community. She doesn’t know what to do with the grief, wondering if she should try to help the family but realises she would be no help as her connection to the family is distant and she has no right to it. She reconciles by saying that sorrow has no sense of what is right and will find its way into anyone’s mind that will support it.

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy teaches his readers through the torment of his characters that leading a life that is self centered and lacking in compassion to one’s fellow man can ultimately lead to unhappiness at one’s death because of the realization that it was a mistake to live their life that way. Tolstoy demonstrates in various ways throughout the The Death of Ivan Ilyich how living a life caring about nothing other than following and progressing through societal norms can cause a wasted life without companionship, but one of the first instances in which Tolstoy does this is within the first chapter when he discusses the Ivan’s colleagues’ reaction to his death. Ivan’s coworkers’ immediate reaction was the thought, “Well, isn’t

One of the themes of Tolstoy’s story of The Death of Ivan Ilych is detachment from life, considering that all material things can substitute the true meaning of life: compassion and care for others. “Everywhere in the novel, Tolstoy speaks of Iván Ilych's desire for propriety, decorous living, and pleasantness all while making this his first and most important priority. This motivation is a poor

I want you to stop and think about tone in day to day conversations. It mostly depends on the body language, volume of voice, and pitch of the person speaking. Written poems, on the other hand, develop their tone through imagery, language use, and form. To show this, I will be using the poem “Tonight I can write” by analyzing how Pablo Neruda works with distant imagery, nostalgic past tense, and repetitive form to develop a grief-filled tone. Through my analysis, I will be mentioning that the author generates loneliness in the persona. I expect the reader to agree that solitude is a state naturally feared and unwanted by humankind because of our undeniable biological drive to reproduce and survive, which requires the company of others. With that being said, I hope that we can assume loneliness is essentially connected to grief.