Boys, Chekhov - Sac Paragraph

The winter sun, making its way through the snow and the frozen tracery on the window-panes, gleamed on the samovar, and plunged its pure rays in the tea basin. The room was warm, and the boys felt as though the warmth and the frost were struggling together with a tingling sensation in their bodies.




'The winter sun, making its way through the snow and the frozen tracery on the window-panes' is the moment in Chekhov's writing where he brings an outside fantasy up close to an inside reality. The concept of reality vs fantasy is continuous and fluid throughout each of Chekhov's stories. The characters are confronted with the illusion of a somewhat impossible fantasy and the reality of an ordinary existence. For the boys 'the warmth and the frost were struggling together with a tingling sensation in their bodies' implys the desire to be out living their fantasy, yet still feeling comfortable and warm in the fimilar. The use of the word 'tingling' eludes that the feeling they are experiencing is somewhat uncomfortable, unusual, curious and almost exciting.
The imagery of the 'winter sun' that 'gleamed on the samovar' reminds us that the boys are in a family home, with expectations from the family themselves. The samovar is a representation of the families tradition, it reminds us of love, warmth and togetherness - a fantasy of the families which is later shattered when Volodya comments that 'In California they don't drink tea, but gin'. Chekhov often uses clashes of individuals fantasies to address and bring the characters back to face their common reality. In the particular scene of the boys sitting down to tea the scene is set first with 'the winter sun', outside we can imagine that with the sun comes warmth and life, yet with the use of winter before the word sun it changes the scene completely. When first you think of warmth and life, winter clashes against this, eluding the family to the idea that everything outside is all well and good as they can only see the sunshine, but the boys who have come from outside have in fact witnessed the suprising cold which comes with the 'pure ray's of the sun......

And so on and so forth. The bell is about to go.



- Mara Hurley.