Using the title "My Life" seems a bit far-fetched at first glance. After all, the story began with a hot conversation between my 25-year-old "I" and my father, and ended with my little niece left by my sister going in and out of the cemetery, only three or four years before and after. However, when "I" constantly suspects in my mind that a city that has existed for hundreds of years is muddled and slow, it is not difficult for readers to understand that Chekhov intends to explain that a person's experience in just a few years is enough to promote his "life" trajectory.
In fact, in the last chapter, Chekhov wrote at the beginning: "If I had the heart to customize a ring for myself, I would choose this sentence to be engraved on my ring:" Nothing will pass ". I believe that nothing will go away without a trace. The smallest step we take is meaningful for our present and future lives. "
As a chapter of the finale, Chekhov briefly described the whereabouts of many relatives and friends around him, mentioned the meeting with the governor again, lamented that "my father is much older", borrowed the scene of meeting Anuda in the cemetery, talked about his dead sister, and talked about "how sad life is in this world", and summarized this article and drew a full stop. It seems to tell the world that the past life has sadly continued, and the initial decision has doomed the final outcome. The only comfort is that happiness and happiness are inadvertently dotted in it, just like a painter with truth in his heart, just like a naive little girl.
The novel describes the experiences of the hero "I" when he "pursues" the work he wants to do: the fierce conflict with his father on the issue of treating labor, the views of people around him on "I", the struggle of the bottom people in the double contradiction of helplessness and contempt for truth, the arguments of people of different classes on labor and progress, and the recognition of value.
Twenty-five-year-old "I" witnessed the current situation of mental work around me: my stubborn father designed the same stupid house; Railway engineers complain about the lack of all kinds of workers and denounce the waste of doing nothing after sitting at a desk; My colleague lost his manor and got a position as a writer, but he wandered around all day, sleeping, drinking and hunting. "I" didn't want to go along with this life and decided to engage in manual labor that was despised by the world.
My father thinks that manual labor is done by slaves and barbarians, and blames "I" for escaping the mental work exchanged for money and education. It is a shame to accept manual labor and "put out the family flame passed on by my grandfather, uncle and father." "I" know very well the real idea behind my father's contempt for making a living: losing face and attracting the whole city's discussion, which was almost the consensus of the mental workers living in big noble Street at that time. My father threatened me that if I went my own way, I would lose the love of my father and sister and the right to inherit. After I couldn't stand the boring mental work and insisted on choosing a painter's job, my father wrote to the governor, hoping that the governor would come forward to convince me or let me move out of the local area.
If you only hold this view in the aristocratic class, for example, an acquaintance is embarrassed and sorry when he meets "I", and the neighbor (Anuda) even asks "I" not to say hello to her and not to associate with her, which can also be understood as the idea that the nobility is trying to keep his identity and avoid suffering. However, the attitude of the bottom people towards mental and physical labor has played a more important role, which really surprised me and made me sad. Chekhov described it this way: Ever since I became a painter, people have started to say sarcastic and malicious things about my back. The most rude person to me happens to be an ordinary person who made a living by doing heavy manual work not long ago. They pretended to be careless, throwing dirty water at me or throwing sticks at me.
The helplessness of their present situation is precisely the sad practice of the bottom people chasing the seemingly distant "drunk fans" and self-anesthetizing, while deceiving themselves with an illusory attitude and raising themselves.
My sister is undoubtedly the victim of her father's rigid education. She is caught in the cracks. She didn't dare to disobey her father's style or indulge his anger, but she loved her brother, secretly supported the idea of "I" and gave him material help. My sister longed for love in depression, but she dared not face it squarely. Precious love became extremely humble. She did not hesitate to please: she recognized that the doctor had a wife and children, that the doctor was in the field, ignored her, and finally gave birth to a little girl and died. My sister is always in anxiety, trying to find a middle solution to ease the contradiction between me and her father. She didn't know what love was, and she didn't dare to brave enough to love. Finally, she went to the point of no return.
When my sister was seriously ill and ready to leave, my last conversation with my father also ended in a dead end. My father used the argument that "as we sow, so we reap", and repeatedly insisted that "I" and my sister's current "tragic situation" were self-inflicted, and stressed that only by returning to the concept advocated by my father can we be forgiven and get the necessary financial support.
With the most intense ideological conflict, the reaction of the people at the bottom makes "I" mourn its misfortune and anger its indisputable:
Painters who work hard to earn money steal oil paintings in partnership, and the wages they earn can only be obtained by begging, and they also try their best to flatter when they ask for money. Shops sell them bad meat, bad flour and brewed tea, police push them in churches, doctors and nurses in hospitals blackmail them, and they are scolded in post offices. The general's wife who lost her manor will show a glimmer of life in a decadent life when she emphasizes etiquette and recalls the luxurious life in the past. Mammy, the servant tried to persuade me to compromise with my father and ask for forgiveness. My wife is committed to running a school in the countryside, and what she sees is the ugly state of drunken farmers rolling in the mud, and the narrow vision of "throwing watermelons and watching sesame seeds" between drunkenness and labor.
From the aristocratic "joining" to the painter, "I" have more opportunities to see the lack of social justice. Therefore, "I" and doctors have also discussed about labor and social progress: although there is not much contempt, doctors still believe that nobles should be liberated from manual labor and devoted to human progress, while "I" opposes the view that people often regard comfort and happiness as the inevitable privilege of money and education, and thinks that the happiness of life can be combined with anything, even with doing the dirtiest work.
This is undoubtedly to cover up the deeper troubles under different labor: the actions and thoughts of the living are far less important than his sadness. Sadness makes people have no strength and time to think, but blindly carrying out the present behavior, which in turn aggravates their own sadness. "People feel their hands, their feet and their tall bodies, but they don't know what to do or where to put them." The deep confusion of "I" can be seen from this.
Fortunately, even in the darkest place, there is always some faint light flashing: as a noble railway engineer, he did not abandon me, allowed his daughter to marry me and move to a manor in the country, and even supported me to engage in agricultural activities and start a school. The railway engineer also said: "Being a decent worker is much smarter and more upright than consuming public paper and wearing a public hat badge."
Radish, who is also a painter, shows his worldview in extremely simple words: "I see things this way: if an ordinary person or a gentleman takes a little money, he is a bad person, and his heart will not make any sense." He also has a famous saying that has been on his lips: "Aphids eat grass, rust eats iron, and hypocrisy eats the soul." Yes, hypocrisy eats the soul.
Perhaps, material progress confidently declares that people will never slash and burn and never walk in a carriage again. However, some important topics, such as the distribution of interests, personal inner pursuit, contradictions between classes, and the differentiation of values within classes, have always accompanied human society. At the same time, rich materials also add more added value to these topics.
Some people are thinking, some people stand up and try to solve it, and more people compromise step by step in complaints, sink in helplessness, wait and see, shrink back in disappointment, sleep and wake up in confusion, and deduce the vivid characters in Chekhov's works.
Perhaps this is the proper state of society. No matter how good the system design is, it will always be despised by people, and there will always be a sigh of "intentional killing of the enemy, powerless to return to heaven." Life moves forward relentlessly like a heavy wheel, sealing all the world in a file called "Life".