Stylistic analysis of the short story “Vanka” by Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He is a literary artist of laconic precision who probed below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters. Chekhov’s best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions. Concentrating on apparent trivialities, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed haunting or lyrical. Chekhov describes the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school. His famous works are: “Three sisters", "The Cherry Orchard", "The Lady with the Dog" and others.

The extract describes a poor unfortunate orphan Vanka Zhukov a nine year old. Three months before, when his mother died, Vanka was sent away from his village and apprenticed to the cruel shoemaker Aluakhin. The story is about the action the young and abused Vanka takes in response to his desperate situation, and the language is simple, elegant and effective.Vanka misses for his past life in the village with his grandfather. These recollections warm him. His dream is to come back home.

To my mind, the title of the story is suggestive and symbolic. The author gives us a hint about whom the story is. Due to this hint we can also guess or predict the events of the story. It is symbolic because Vanka (a nine years old boy) is a symbol of life of those times (1886). This boy embodies the life of all people. "It's worse than a dog's life, and so miserable", is how Vanka describes his life in Moscow. It is the time where poverty, slavery, unemployment are common sights. Illnesses and death often left children alone to defend themselves. Forced to work at a young age, Vanka doesn't receive a formal education. The lack of education creates a perpetual downfall for Vanka. It requires him to obtain a job in a craft field. Chekhov introduces us the story which is one of a million. So we can't but agree that the life in the 19 century in Moscow was "worse than a dog's life, and so miserable". This boy is a good example, image, symbol due to which we can imagine, feel and empathize while reading the story.

To those who have read other Chekhov stories, the problem with this analysis should be apparent. As a rule, Chekhov writes to powerfully depict what is real, absolutely objectively. His themes also tend to be centered around dark times, dissolute people, adultery, and the like. In my point of view the suitable theme for this story is the universal plight of orphans and how they are mistreated by the society back then. The author also focuses on the social problems namely homelessness, poverty, slavery, unemployment. It causes the social inequality. The protagonist Vanka Zhukov comes face to face with such a problem, working in the boot maker Alyakina. In this paragraph we can see the Alyakin's attitude to Ivan, and how they mock him at all times: “Yesterday they gave me a dressing down. The master dragged me into the yard by the hair and thrashed me with a strap because when I was rocking their baby in the cradle I accidentally fell asleep. A week ago the mistress told me to clean a herring and I started with the tail end, so she picked it up and started pushing its head into my face. The workmen make fun of me, they send me to the inn for vodka, and tell me to steal cucumbers from the master, and the master beats me with whatever comes to hand. There is nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, then gruel for dinner, and for supper bread again. But as for tea or cabbage soup the master and mistress guzzle it themselves. They make me sleep in the lobby, and when the baby cries I don’t sleep at all and have to rock the cradle. Dearest grandpa, please help me with God’s help, take me away from here to home, to the village, for I have nothing left that I can do. I bow down to you to the floor and I will forever pray for you, take me away from here, otherwise I will die.”

The main idea is to prove that family ties are the important fabric of our lives. They are what keeps people grounded and rooted in what they believe. Shown too is the innocence of children, the longing for the families and the unrealistic promise of the desperate.

The setting of the events in the given extract is realistic. It is presented in a general way. It provides a historical context that reflects the characters and embodies the theme, and symbolizes the emotional state of the characters: (epithets) “He looked several times anxiously at the door and the window; heaved a trembling sigh”; (comparison): “My life is done for, it’s worse than any dog’s life”.

From the point of view of presentation the text is the 1st and the 3rd person narrative. It is the 1st person narrative, because it includes epistolary passages. An epistolary passage is one in which a character either writes a letter (epistle) or reads a letter. In this case, the epistolary passages comprise a letter being written by Vanka.

There is one protagonist in this story - Vanka Zhykov and 2 secondary characters - Vanka's grandfather Konstantin Makarich and the shoemaker Alyakin. The protagonist is characterised through direct and indirect and speech characterisation. Vanka is an unhappy 9 year old orphan that has been aprenticed to a russian shoemaker. On Christmas eve vanka decides to secretly write a letter to his farm owning grandad in Moscow, he signs it "To Grandpa in the Village". Vanka is hoping that when his grandad Konstatin Makarich reads this letter he will take him out of the orpanage to live with him. When Vanka is done with the letter he puts it in the mailbox, goes to sleep and waits for it to be deliverd. Vanka is unaware that there needed to be a stamp on the letter to go to his grandad and now the letter will never go through and doesn't have a chance to write another one. Lacking appropriate education, as was the case of most poor kids of the time, he still manages to write a plead letter to his grandfather, yet his style is incoherent at times, jumping from moments of sadness to joyful events, triggered by memories of a distant past. “Do come and fetch me, dearest Grandpa,” continued Vanka, “by Lord Christ I pray to you, take me away from here. Pity me, a poor unfortunate orphan, for here they beat me all the time and I’m desperately hungry, I can’t describe how boring it is, and I’m always crying. Just recently the master hit me on the head with a last so that I fell down and only just managed to recover. My life is done for, it’s worse than any dog’s life. Give my best wishes to Alyona, to one eyed Yegorka and to the coachman, and don’t give my harmonica away to anyone. Yours sincerely, your grandson Ivan Zhukov, dearest grandpa please do come.”; "Dearest grandpa, when they have the Christmas tree in the master’s house with presents on it, will you get for me the gilded walnut and hide it for me in the green chest. Ask for it from Lady Olga Ignatievna, say it is for Vanya.” His rushed writing is justified by feelings of despair, looking for a prompt solution to his misery. After all he is just a little kid, and at this age his mind is all about fun and games; instead he is even forced to steal. He overcrowded the letter with ideas, fears, promises and hopes. He is also able to transmit, with a limited perception, his visions and interpretations of the surrounding world, as it is described on the impression he has of Moscow: "Moscow is a very big city. The houses here are all huge mansions, there are lots of horses, but no sheep, and the dogs are not fierce. Children don’t go carol singing here carrying the Christmas star, and they aren’t allowed into the choir stalls to sing. In one shop I saw on sale fish hooks and lines for any sort of fish, very useful, there was even one hook big enough to hold a forty pound carp. And I saw other shops where there were all sorts of guns, like the gentlemen have, and I am sure they must cost a hundred roubles each. In the butchers’ shops there are grouse and woodcock and hares, but where they have been shot the shop assistants won’t tell you." Similarly he is able to picture vivid images of his grandfather, pet animals and remote events, all reminiscent memories of better days: "They give some snuff to the dogs. Kashtanka sneezes and wrinkles his nose, and offended, he goes off to one side. But Blackie, out of respect, does not sneeze and wags his tail. The weather is superb. The air is still, transparent and fresh. The night is dark but all of the village is visible with its white roofs and streams of smoke from the chimneys, the trees covered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The entire sky is scattered with cheerfully twinkling stars and the milky way is so clear it seems as if it has been washed and rinsed with snow for some festival." Nonetheless, the letter will not reach his destiny; he cannot understand how to address it properly. His cry for freedom will never reach the objective, but he is ignorant to all this and falls asleep with an intense feeling of hope.

As for Konstantin Makarich, he is described through direct and indirect characterization. He works as a night watchman on the the Zhivarev estate. He is a small, frail, but extremely agile and lively old man of sixty five, with a perpetually smiling face and inebriated looking eyes. In the daytime he sleeps in the servant’s kitchen or jokes with the cooks, but at night, wraps up in his spacious sheepskin coat he goes round the estate banging on his wooden board. He is a jolly man, his face always crinkling with laughter, who Vanka has spent happy times with. They have a wonderful time together. Grandfather chuckles, the frost crackles, and Vanka, not to be outdone, cluckes away cheerfully. Based on this description, it would be fair for us to assume that Konstantin Makarich will come at once to rescue his grandson once he hears of his  plight. But  I have also another view about him. Certainly Makarich sounds like an amiable man, but is he really willing to raise his grandchild? There is a subtle hint in the story that it was Makarich that sent Vanka away, when Pelageya died, they relegated the orphan Vanka to the servants' kitchen to be with his Grandfather, and from there he went to Moscow to the shoemaker Alyakhin. I believe, that even if the letter somehow reached Makarch, it is most likely that he wouldn't have come and rescued his grandchild. Frankly speaking, I have mixed feelings. Let everyone judges this character from his/her belltower. But I'm inclined to the fact that the grandfather doesn't just put his grandson into the wrong hands. It seems to me that the problem of social problems plays the big role here. So the grandfather is forced to do in such a way.

And the last character is the shoemaker Alyakin, who is characterized through indirect characterization. He is very strict and brutal "The master dragged me into the yard by the hair and thrashed me with a strap because when I was rocking their baby in the cradle I accidentally fell asleep." Alyakin's family is a wealthy family and tight-fisted at the same time: "In the morning they give me bread, then gruel for dinner, and for supper bread again. But as for tea or cabbage soup the master and mistress guzzle it themselves". They are the vivid example of inequality in the society: "They make me sleep in the lobby, and when the baby cries I don’t sleep at all and have to rock the cradle". They consider themselves to be better and above the rank of others. They treat people like dogs. Due to this family the author introduces us the picture of the whole society at the time. It is not an isolated case. Inequality makes people aggressive and angry at the whole world. I do not understand how it is possible to give the child in such family.

From the viewpoint of composition the text is made up of exposition, rising action, climax, anticlimax, resolution. The story starts with exposition. Here we get acquainted with characters and their lifestyle. We get to know that Vanka is in an orpanage because of his mother's death. So he is apprenticed three months previously to the boot maker Alyakina.

The Raising action is occured in the story when Vanka decides to write a letter to his grandad to rescue him from the orphanage. The author describes the preparation for writing a letter: "Having waited until the master and mistress with the other workmen went off to the evening service, he took down from the master’s cupboard a bottle of ink, a pen with a rusty nib, spread a crumpled sheet of paper in front of himself, and then started to write. But before forming the first letter he looked several times anxiously at the door and the window, glanced slantwise at the darkened icon, on both sides of which were ranged shelves with bootmakers’ lasts, then heaved a trembling sigh. The sheet of paper was spread on a bench and he was on his knees in front of it."

          The climax starts when Vanka writes the letter and puts it into the mailbox. Reading these lines, I was filled with feelings and compassion for the protagonist. Chechov describes this process with touching. The letter begins with such words: "Dear Grandpa, Konstantin Makarich", Vanka wishes him Merry Christmas. But the next sentence is a vivid example of climax. We observe an abrupt transition from the simple greetings to the weary pleas about his returning home: "I don’t have a mum or a dad, and you are the only one who is left to me...Do come and fetch me, dearest Grandpa".

Anticlimax - There was no stamp on the letter and the message will never reach grandad. Vanka writes on the envelope "To Grandpa in the Village" without address and adds “To Konstantin Makarich”. The boy can not say goodbye to his past. He cherishes himself with hopes that one day he will come home. He misses his past, and he describes his feelings and emotions in this letter, which never comes to his grandfather. This letter is to nowhere: "Then, lulled by sweet hopes, an hour later he was fast asleep. He dreamed of a stove. On the stove shelf grandpa was sitting with his bare feet dangling down and he was reading a letter to the cooks. Blackie was walking round the stove wagging his tale."

And the last point is resolution - Vanka will never realise that his grandad will not rescue him. It's very hard to realize that you are along in this world, and there is no one who can support and help you, when you need it, as we see through the Vanka's situation.

In terms of the contextual type the text is written mostly as narration with the elements of description. We can see here a portrait of Konstantin Makarich, and the interiors of Vanka's past life and his present surrounding.

To portray the setting, the main characters and events of the story the writer implies a lot of different stylistic devices.

Lexical:
In order to create a tense atmosphere, when Vanka is going to write a letter, the author uses such epithets: he looked several times anxiously at the door and the window; heaved a trembling sigh; darkened icon; a metaphor: on both sides of which were ranged shelves with bootmakers’ lasts. In order to describe Vanka's mood and his memories about his past life the author uses such metaphors: the reflection of the candle flickered; cheerfully twinkling stars; Grandpa crackled and grunted, the frost crackled; lulled by sweet hopes; oxymoron: the air is still and transparent; comparison: the milky way is so clear it seems as if it has been washed and rinsed with snow for some festival; To describe Vanka's life in Moscow the author uses epithets: dark window; a poor unfortunate orphan; comparison: My life is done for, it’s worse than any dog’s life; To portray the main characters Chechov uses oxymoron: agile and lively old man;epithets: perpetually smiling face; inebriated looking eyes; unusually respectful and fawning; the most Jesuitical cunning; comparison: like a loach; similie: giggling as old men;Irony: Vanka works as a shoemaker but doesn't have any shoes: "I wanted to run away to the village but I don’t have any boots and I was afraid of the frost."

Syntactic:
To describe grandfather's emotions here is a repetition: “Hold him! Hold him! Hold him! Also the author uses repetition to describe Vanka's strong feelings and emotions, his wish to go home: "Dearest grandpa, please help me with God’s help, take me away from here to home, to the village, for I have nothing left that I can do. I bow down to you to the floor and I will forever pray for you, take me away from here, otherwise I will die.” The use of polysyndeton is also present in the story: "No dog was better than him at nipping in at the right time and biting a leg, or getting up into the ice house, or stealing a chicken from a peasant.";
enumeration: "At this moment, probably, grandpa was standing at the gate, squinting his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping his felt boots as he joked with the servants."; "The air is still, transparent and fresh.";

Summing up the analysis of the given extract we see that Anton Chechov brilliantly uses different stylistic devices such as polysyndeton, repetition, enumeration, metaphor, epithet and many others. All these stylistic devices help to create the tense and melancholy mood of the story.

I’ve read the story "Vanka" by Anton Chekhov recently fo the first time and was surprised by what I got to know. As I sat down with the story and a cup of coffee, I steeled myself, remembering what a hard slog it used to be sometimes to read classic authors when I was at school. I had always assumed anything by Chekhov would also be hard work. But I was wrong. Now I say: "What a delightful ten-minute read!".

Stylistic devices 

To portray the setting, the main characters and events of the story the writer implies a lot of different stylistic devices. Lexical:

In order to create a tense atmosphere, when Vanka is going to write a letter, the author uses suchepithets: he looked several times anxiously at the door and the window; heaved a trembling sigh; darkened icon; a metaphor: on both sides of which were ranged shelves with bootmakers’ lasts.

In order to describe Vanka's mood and his memories about his past life the author uses suchmetaphors: the reflection of the candle flickered; cheerfully twinkling stars; Grandpa crackled and grunted, the frost crackled; lulled by sweet hopes; oxymoron: the air is still and transparent; comparison: the milky way is so clear it seems as if it has been washed and rinsed with snow for some festival;

To describe Vanka's life in Moscow the author uses epithets: dark window; a poor unfortunate orphan;
comparison: My life is done for, it’s worse than any dog’s life;

To portray the main characters Chechov uses oxymoron: agile and lively old man; epithets:perpetually smiling face; inebriated looking eyes; unusually respectful and fawning; the most Jesuitical cunning; comparison: like a loach; similie: giggling as old men;
Irony: Vanka works as a shoemaker but doesn't have any shoes: "I wanted to run away to the village but I don’t have any boots and I was afraid of the frost."

Syntactic:

To describe grandfather's emotions here is a repetition: “Hold him! Hold him! Hold him!
Also the author uses repetition to describe Vanka's strong feelings and emotions, his wish to go home: "Dearest grandpa, please help me with God’s help, take me away from here to home, to the village, for I have nothing left that I can do. I bow down to you to the floor and I will forever pray for you, take me away from here, otherwise I will die.”

The use of polysyndeton is also present in the story: "No dog was better than him at nipping in at the right time and biting a leg, or getting up into the ice house, or stealing a chicken from a peasant.";
enumeration: "At this moment, probably, grandpa was standing at the gate, squinting his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping his felt boots as he joked with the servants."; "The air is still, transparent and fresh.";

Summing up the analysis of the given extract we see that Anton Chechov brilliantly uses different stylistic devices such as polysyndeton, repetition, enumeration, metaphor, epithet and many others. All these stylistic devices help to create the tense and melancholy mood of the story.