Initial Test Post - Natalie Whitaker


Here is where you all will post your close reading posts and be able to comment on each other's close readings! Hopefully, this will help in seeing how many different interpretations can come from a section of a text! Please feel free to include media if your analysis/interpretation made you think of a particular image, ad, or another form of media you can include it in your post.

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  1. UnknownSeptember 5, 2017 at 6:51 PM

    In the short story, The looking glass, Chekhov engages in the idea of a selfish women who is obsessed with getting married. Nellie is very obsessed calling her husband, “ the destined one”, and that her husband is everything to her. The dream that Nellie was an escape from her reality of being alone. She wants to live her life in sheer bliss and having husband means she doesn’t have to worry about anything.
    As the story continues with her looking through the looking glass, the author describes it to be a grey background on a cold winter night. It skips ahead to her trying to get a doctor to take care of her dying husband and again the author makes Nellie seem self-centered and only wanting the doctor to cure her dying husband so she doesn’t have to worry about anything like money or how she and her kids are going to live. She talks about the stresses of their financial situation and racking their brains about how to avoid the courts. Nellie also shows love and devotion to her husband in the since she will be there for him in sickness and in health. She takes no for an answer from the doctor and only wanting to save her husband.
    Towards the end of the story, Nellie realizes that being alone might not be so bad and that she can be happy without a husband. The author made the whole short story seem like a dream and the author shows that by mentioning how Nellie sighs in relief of it being a dream. Her sighing relief show that she is content with her life now and the whole thing was no more than a dream. Whether she pursues her dream or not is up to her and maybe down the line she will get married and have a happy family.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 7, 2017 at 1:40 PM

    In the short story, “The Looking Glass” written by Anton Checkov, the main theme that resonates throughout the story is the fear of loneliness. In the beginning of the story, Nellie is portrayed as someone who is isolated in her room, staring at a looking glass. Checkov uses words that that connect to the feeling of gloom. He uses descriptors like grey, dark, pale, empty and mist to evoke a feeling of sadness and melancholy. Nellie is portrayed as a character who is generally a, “…young and pretty girl” but is in majority categorized as a person who is sad, tired and lonely. She dreams of companionship and happiness, a life with her significant other. She describes the man she longs for as the object of her hopes and dreams and how her life without him is meaningless. She craves to be with someone else, and describes this person as the solution to all over he problems. It is evident that Checkov is illustrating how loneliness is pertinent and painful, yet inevitable throughout the story.

    When Nellie arrives at Dt. Stepan Lukitch’s door, she is by herself, fighting frantically for someone who didn't make her feel alone: her husband. She describes her state as someone who is suffering, which is heightened when she realizes that the doctor will not be able to help her husband, and death was creeping closer. She also thinks about how she will lose at least one of her children to illness, and how she will suffer once again; the pain and suffering caused by loneliness. She envisions her husband passing away, and realizes that a husband and a wife cannot pass away simultaneously. Nellie says, “And all the previous life with her husband seemed to her a stupid prelude to this.” The solitude and sadness Nellie feels at the beginning of the story, only comes back to haunt her by the time she is done with her vision. The imagery that Checkov uses paint a bleak picture in our minds of how loneliness would look if we could see it with the naked eye. It is the feeling that Nellie realizes she cannot escape, and will maybe lead her to realize that her happiness cannot be defined by someone else.

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