The Looking Glass by Anton Chekhov

            After reading The Looking Glass by Anton Chekhov, I reflected on many different ways I the short story could be interpreted. A constant theme that kept coming into my mind, especially after close reading the smaller section, was sadness and imagery. The author constantly uses colors such as grey to describe Nellie’s feelings throughout the story. The detailed descriptions portrayed an image in my head following sadness. An example I found was, “Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold wind, lumps of frozen earth. She was suffering in body and in soul, and delusive nature has no arts, no deceptions to compensate these sufferings. . . .”. This perfectly describes and paints a dark and sad scene in my head. I realize the whole poem talks about how negative her life is. She seems to focus on how her husband and children will affect herself. Is she being selfish? She talks about how having 5 or 6 children, one will most likely die from a cold, scarlet fever, diphtheria, bad marks from school, or separation. It bothers me how negative she is about everything.  Another example of sadness and imagery is when she describes their financial problems. She explains, “Then she saw against the grey background how her husband every spring was in straits for money to pay the interest for the mortgage to the bank. He could not sleep, she could not sleep, and both racked their brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid being visited by the clerk of the Court”. The author keeps bringing in more negative for the reader to feel and image the depressing picture. It is interesting how the story ends with, “She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale, tear-stained face. There was no grey background now”. This leads me to believe that she really is a selfish, self-centered and sick person. The fact that she woke up from her dream happy that she did not actually have a sick husband makes me think she would not have been happy with a significant other in her life.