Grief

Grief

Ashley

ENG 125

December 12, 2011

Grief

We all face misery in our lives. At some point the clouds cover the sun light and our world is darkened. Anton Chekhov wrote a wonderful short story in 1886 called, “Misery.” He describes grief and misery in this story through a character named Iona Potapov. Iona recently lost a son and through out the entire story he is trying to express his sorrow and anguish, yearning for someone to listen and acknowledge his misery and pain. Chekhov’s main theme in this story is grief. Grief is a miserable thing to go through. Even though everyone grieves in different ways and for different reasons, grief is lonely and that loneliness turns into misery.

Losing a child probably causes the greatest grief a human can experience. In turn, a parent who has lost a child faces the greatest isolation because it is everyone’s worst fear. People do not know what to say to parents when a child is lost, so sometimes they pretend they do not see them or hear them to avoid the situation and do not say anything at all. “Several times he looks around at the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently disinclined to listen” (Chekhov, 1886, p.84). When a person is grieving they are miserable and depressed and that shows in their actions, like Iona, physical surroundings do not matter and are not recognized to a person grieving and they do not care about anything else but their loss. Chekhov (1886) describes grief very well in the way he physically portrays Iona, “If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off.”

Through out the entire story Iona tries to tell whoever he drives in his sledge about his son’s death. Misery is caused by grief because of the feelings of loneliness and isolation. When a person is grieving, talking about it helps, even though most people think the opposite, that it hurts even more by talking about it. By Iona talking about his...