The Kiss by Anton Chekhov

In 'The Kiss' by Anton Chekhov several military officers are invited to an aristocrat's house at night to partake in a party. The military officers are worried about going to the party because they recently experienced a similar situation where a rich old dude kept them up all night talking about boring stuff. But this party turns out to be a lot better than that experience. There are women, dancing and drinks at this party which creates an awkward situation for one soldier in particular named Ryabovich. For every other soldier, this is seemingly not an awkward situation. Ryabovich is decribed as shy, modest and undistinguished in comparison to his fellow soldiers.

Ryabovich enters a dark room where he is kissed by a woman who mistakes Ryabovich for another man. This accidental kiss has a profound effect on Ryabovich. In the days following the party, he thinks about the kiss constantly and it gives him something nice to think about while going through the day-to-day of a soldier's routine.

This is basically all there is to the story. There is also the detailed descriptions of scenery that for me exemplify Chekhov's unique writing style. The way that Chekhov describes the setting of his story is similar to a painter. Chekhov uses visual language which allowed me to imagine the story in rich detail. Here is an example:

'The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little ripples ran over the reflection, stretching it out, breaking it into bits, and seemed trying to carry it away...'

Writing such as this is my favorite thing about Chekhov's stories. The scenery is so richly imagined and described that it almost takes precedence over the story. I know that Chekhov was interested in landscape painting and this interest is reflected often in his stories. In a story like 'The Kiss' where the plot is short, I find myself looking more at Chekhov's descriptions to find insight regarding the story.

At the end of the 'The Kiss' we can see a distinct change in Ryabovich's mental state. At first Ryabovich daydreams about the kiss, causing him to feel pleasure while going through his daily routine. But after revealing the incident to his comrades, Ryabovich's emotions change drastically. "And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovich an unintelligible, aimless jest." This character arc left me with a sad feeling regarding this story. It would seem that Ryabovich would be better off without the kiss from the woman because it merely opened his eyes to what his life is lacking. It's the kind of encounter that is so far removed from daily life that it opens one's eyes to how unpleasant life is in comparison to other people. Just a tiny taste of a better life has left Ryabovich in a depressed state. It's the kind of revelation that leads people to abandon their jobs in the search of something better. Indeed the story ends with Ryabovich refusing the next invitation to a party in favor of going to sleep in his tent.

Here are some other things I noticed about the story:

• The story's unique structure. There is one climactic event (the kiss) that takes place early on and the rest of the story examines the effects of this climactic event on the story's protagonist.
• The social obligation that requires wealthy families to invite military officers to their home. It provides a great setup for this story.

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Analysis of 'Pastoralia' by George Saunders

As you may or may not know, I am a pretty big fan of George Saunders' work. 'Pastoralia' is the first story in Saunders' collection of stories titled 'Pastoralia' that was first published in 2000. This collection is interesting in that it only contains 6 stories each of which originally appeared in the New Yorker. This collection also contains my favorite of Saunders' stories, 'Sea Oak,' which I have written about here if you are interested.

Pastoralia inspired the Geico caveman television ad.

Here is the fun part where I explain the strange world of 'Pastoralia." I greatly enjoyed entering the bizarre world inhabited by the story's characters and seeing how those characters interacted with each other. 'Pastoralia' is the story of a man whose job is to impersonate a caveman at an amusement park. The man's goal is to impersonate a caveman as authentically as possible while also providing a pleasant experience for guests. This man narrates the story in first person with a very dry sense of humor. He describes the daily tasks of his job such as roasting goats or squatting and pretending to eat bugs like a bureaucrat working in an office.

The second most prominent character in the story is Janet, whose job is to play the caveman wife of the narrator. Janet does not do a good job of playing a caveman. She speaks english in the cave when she is not supposed to and she has much less passion for her job than the narrator does. Fortunately for Janet, the narrator does not want to rat out Janet's poor performance in the performance reviews that he fills out each night and faxes to his supervisor. But Janet's performance becomes so bad that the narrator has no choice but to disclose Janet's failures as a cavewoman. This is the main conflict of the story: the narrator's internal struggle of whether to accurately fill out a performance review that would cause Janet to be fired.

I loved this story. Saunders is one of the best at portraying the monotony of having a boring job. The way that certain phrases and actions are repeated throughout the story is one of my favorite things about it. For example the narrator says each day whether or not someone has poked their head in, meaning a visitor has come to his cave. In the past the narrator says that people would "poke their heads in" all the time but now this happens much less frequently. The repetition of phrases such as this makes it easier to feel the narrator's strange experience. While I could see how someone might interpret the repetition of phrases as bothersome, I am thankful that Saunders used this technique and I believe that it makes the story better.

At the end of 'Pastoralia' Janet is fired and replaced by another woman named Linda who possesses a permanently installed uni-brow. The narrator is encouraged by his supervisor to obtain a permanent uni-brow for himself. The narrator is also surprised by his new coworker's commitment to playing a cave-woman. She squats and pretends to eat bugs all afternoon and even eats a bug. There's a sense that life will continue as normal for the narrator with the exception of one thing: he will now have to be even more committed to caveman authenticity because of the pressure to match his co-worker's dedication.

It has been a few months since I have felt the urge to write about a story I have read. Reading Saunders' 'Pastoralia' rekindled my need to process the sheer absurdity of what I read through the act of writing down my thoughts. This is a story I know I will come back to again and again. I recommend it to anyone who is in need of a good laugh or who wants to enter the world of a caveman impersonator.

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