Midterm Question

IV. Essay

3. How does Chekhov use the natural world within his tale?

     Chekhov's tales are episodic and impressionistic rather than plot-driven. The natural world thus forms a changing backdrop to ordinary lives, whuch tend to remain the same from day to day. While the characters follow a monotonous daily existence, nature blossoms or undergoes violent transformation. In particular, Chekhov focuses on the details of nature. He delights in describing a snowstorm that is like an ''orgy'', the ceaseless murmuring of birds and insects. These features represent the true dramatic focus of Chekhov's tale. The author also focuses on his character's relationship to the natural world across all levels of society. The author suggests that for many nobles, land is firmly equated with wealth, prestige, and aristocratic status. Chekhov thus looks at nature in two ways, he both examines the importance of the natural world to a feudal society and looks at its symbolic relationship to mankind.

1. What is literature? What are courses of literature mean to you? Why do we study literature? Find the perfect quote and thought-starters that help you develop your own point of view to float your boat.

     There are three major kinds or genres of ''imaginative or creative writing'' that form the heart of literature, by focusing on fictional stories, poems and plays. Literature helps to bear in mind what others have thought of literary work. And the primary goal is to get you to think yourself, as well as communicate with others, about what ''imaginative writing'' and ''artistic value'' are and about what counts as literature. About literature study, some knowledge and understanding of both can greatly enhance our personal appreciation of literature and our conversation with others about it. Literature also has a context and a history, and learning something about them can make all the difference in the amount and kind of pleasure and insight you derive from literature. Most important, study literature will give us practice in analyzing literature in great depth and in considering alternative views of both the works themselves and the situation and problems the work explore. In ''On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'' by John Keats, he makes us see literature as a ''wide expanse'' by greatly developing the metaphor. Most important, he shows us what literature means and why it matters by allowing us to share with him the subjective experience of reading.