Gooseberries

Anton Chekhov
Introduction
About the author
● Anton Chekhov is a russian playwright
● Born in 1860 in Taganrog ,southern Russia
● Son of Pavel Yegorov Chekhov, a grocery store owner and
Yevgenyaow, an excellent storyteller
● Abusive father that helped him model many examples of
hypocrisy in his stories.
● Started writing as a means to look after the family and
pay his children’s tuition fees
Theme
● Deals with selfishness
● Pursuit of happiness
● Greed
● Obsession
● Isolation
Outline of the Story

● It was a cloudy day Two old men—Ivan, a vet, and Burkin, a teacher

—walk across the fields.

● By this time a storm breaks and the men runs to find the shelter at

their friend Aliokin’s estate.

● Aliokin stands near a winnowing machines in one of his barnes and

was dirty from his work.He invites them into the house to bathe.

● While Aliokins Maid Pelageia brings the men towels and some soap.
● Aliokin makes excuses that he has not washes for a long

time.Ivan finds a wide expanse of water in front of the house and

jumps into it.

● After having tea Ivan starts telling the story of his brother

Nicholai.

● Ivan says that after their fathers death there were several

debts.His brother Nikolai hated his government job but he had a

desire to own an estate himself with gooseberry bushes.

● So , he married a window who is rich and owns an estate with

her money.

● Ivan suggests Nikolai was responsible for her death.

● Eventually Nikolai retires and buys a scrappy farm with "a brick

factory on one side … and a bone-burning factory on the other".

Nikolai orders and plants 20 gooseberry bushes.

● When Ivan visits he finds his brother pompous, insufferable. The

gooseberries – the first harvest – are "tough and sour", but Nikolai,

"with tears in his eyes", pronounces them delicious.

● This made him distressed and then embarks on a passionate tirade

against the inequality of a society.

● Ivan calls happiness, just like the perceived succulence his brother's

gooseberries, an illusion

● Ivan's speech drags injustice and misery into Alekhin's snug drawing

room.

● Burkin and Alekhin find it boring to hear a story about a “wretched

official who ate gooseberries”. They understandably don't want to hear

about inequality and hardship, cosily swaddled as they are.

CHARACTER SKETCH
Nikolai Ivanych

Nikolai is ivan’s brother. He’s two years younger than Ivan, and he becomes a government employee at 19
while Ivan is studying to become a veterinarian. Nikolai and Ivan had an idyllic childhood in the countryside on
their father’s modest estate, and Nikolai desperately wants to return to this lifestyle in adulthood.Nikolai spends
over 20 years living an extremely frugal lifestyle to save as much money as possible, to the point that he
marries a widow for her money and then deprives her of enough food to eat until she dies. When Nikolai is in
his forties, he finally achieves his dream, buying a rural estate called Himalayskoe.Nikolai’s character more
broadly represents the rising landowning class in Russia in the late 19th century (when the story is set),
implying that wealthy landowners tend to be complacent, entitled, and self-deluding.

Ivan Ivanych

van is a middle-aged veterinarian who spends most of the story telling his friends alekhin and burkin about his
younger brother, nikolai. For decades, Ivan has been dismayed by Nikolai’s dream of owning land, as he finds this
lifestyle isolating, meaningless, and spiritually deadening. He tells Alekhin and Burkin about his recent visit to
Alekhin

Alekhin is ivan and burkin’s friend whom they visit at his estate, Sofyino, to seek shelter from the rain. Alekhin
is a landowner and farmer of about 40 who has an intelligent and artistic air about him. Yet he’s also notably
humble, dresses like a peasant, and spends all of his time doing manual labor—he even forgets to bathe for
months at a time. Like Ivan’s brother nikolai, Alekhin is successful and affluent; his estate is even more
sprawling and impressive than Nikolai’s. But unlike the selfish and entitled Nikolai, Alekhin is very kind and
generous.

Burkin
Burkin is a high school teacher who’s friends with ivan and alekhin . At the beginning of the story, he and Ivan
are walking the fields outside their village when it begins to rain, and Burkin suggests that they take shelter at
their mutual friend Alekhin’s estate. Not much is revealed about Burkin’s character; he fades into the
background and remains mostly silent while Ivan tells him and Alekhin a story about his brother nikholai. After
Ivan ends up ranting about Nikolai’s sheltered, meaningless life and urging Alekhin not to let himself befall the
same fate, Burkin seems bored and fed up, declaring that it’s time for bed. He and Ivan turn in for the night in
Alekhin’s guest bedroom, but Burkin is unable to sleep because he’s distracted by the odor of stale tobacco in
Ivan’s pipe on the nightstand. That the story ends with Burkin, seemingly one of Ivan’s closest friends.
Pelageya

Pelageya is alekhin’s young maid. When ivan and burkin arrive at Alekhin’s country estate to take shelter from
the rain, Pelageya is the one who greets the men at the door of the main house, and they’re stunned by how
beautiful she is. Pelageya doesn’t play a particularly active role in the story, simply completing domestic tasks
and serving the men with whatever they need. Nevertheless, her youthful beauty is mentioned several times,
which characterizes her as an embodiment of the youth and potential that Ivan wishes he still had—and that
he urges his friends not to waste.
SETTINGS

● The story is set in an exquisite landscape

● The dream land of Nicholai,the estate is also given in explicit detail .
● The story even though set in a mundane world with mundane issues ,it it is
the conflict and the feelings of greed that makes the story interesting to read
● Chekov has used symbols abundantly in the story with the gooseberries, and
the weather
CONFLICT
● Conflict revolves around Ivan and Nikolai’s views and of their own actions.
● Nikolai planned to pursue his passion but Ivan considered it selfish
● Nikolai found gooseberries sweet,Ivan found them bitter
● Ivan is in conflict with others world views and what makes life satisfying.
INNER JOURNEY
Nikolai’s Gooseberries represent the idea that the people tend to

delude themselves into happiness rather than accepting the truth.

The brothers’ opposite perceptions of how the gooseberries taste

represent their opposite views of what makes life meaningful.