Online Discussion - All literature is one literature

To read the original story by Anton Chekhov - Click here

#  Instructions by Teacher

Read the short story (English and Gujarati translation of original Russian short story is attached) and give your interpretation on these lines in reply to this email.

Clues:

·        Marie feels nostalgic about childhood/adolescence experience of going in the mountains over the sled. Can you read this as not merely childhood freedom from worldly preoccupations and give interpretation of the first lover or infatuation or attraction which is on the verge of lustful relation?

·        Do you see any connection in these lines with overall theme of the poem which is spiritual degradation where all are burning with lustful fire?

·        Any other possible interpretation?

# My answer of the given task:

      In The Waste Land, there are many scenes which clearly show the sexual perversion and spiritual degradation.

   

       In the case of Marie and Nadia there is similar symbolism and that is ‘Sled’ but the symbol is differently used.

    

      In Marie’s incidence we can say that Marie was having pleasure in going in the mountains over the sled and it was enjoyment only. So we can connect that with going down from her spirituality but in Nadia’s experience it is all about the confession of love. The boy was telling her “I love you” in a joke but she was having feelings towards that boy.

   

     Here Nadia was expecting words of love only, the ride was just a medium to have words of love and she was not enjoying the ride but it was the words she have heard from that boy and at the end she was able to heard that without riding on sled.

   

     In The Waste Land, Marie is going down from mountain, but in the story A Joke, Nadia was climbing again and again and at the end of the story she was at balcony and the pure spring wind was blowing and she was crying, the positive connection of nature with Nadia cannot be described if there was a sexual perversion.

     The connection of Marie’s incidence with the theme of spiritual degradation is clearly that they were feeling freedom in having sexual activities, as she said,

“And down we went. 
In the mountains, there you feel free.”

    

      There was not any guilt or shame in doing that so they were spiritually dead, all was burning with lust but from their perspective it all was fun, enjoyment and feeling of freedom.

    So it can be said that in modernist literature the archetypal symbols could have vast difference, or it’s all about the perspective of a reader.