Reading Journal - Gooseberries : Anton Chekhov(1898)

 Rating : 7/10

I have been reading a lot of stories by Anton Chekhov lately, and the most recent book, <Gooseberries> is one of those that I didn't really relate to. The main character Ivan Ivanovich tells the story of his brother Nikolai Ivanovich to two friends of his, to say what he thinks is 'happiness'. Nikolai and Ivan grew up in the countryside, and because of those happy memories Nikolai wants to pursue his dream of building a rural farm and retiring there to live in peace. However, in the process of doing that he lives a dull and not exactly lively life, for example marrying a wealthy woman to get hold of her fortune, and putting up with a job he was not satisfied with in order to achieve his goals. In the end he finally got his wish, with 'gooseberries', which came to symbolize his life's wish, growing in the backyard. When Ivan visited him, he was taken aback with how disillusioned his brother was with his current life, which although was in reality pathetic, was the world to him. This experience left Ivan to believe that, 'the natuure of human happiness is very much the result of any happy man's unawareness of how much grief and pain there is behind the walls of the narrow world he has built for himself'. Although this is, with Chekhov's <The Student> one of the more philosophical stories that he has wrote that I have read, it also is one that I don't really relate to. I don't agree with Ivanovich's view of what 'happiness' is, and also that even though Nikolai can seem disillusioned with his reality, we have to consider that that is what we see; he can see his life from a different angle. To sum up what I think about the novel is that it gives much to think about, but what it's trying to say isn't really what I do think about the topic. That is why although the literary value of the story itself is of high quality, I have to rate it only a 7 out of 10.