, Research Paper
A Trifle from Real Life
A Russian writer Anton Chekhov wrote the story A Trifle from Real Life in second part of 19th century. Story appears in St. Petersburg where two main characters Aliosha and Nikolai Ilitch Belayeff are having a conversation about Aliosha s relationship with his father. Through this conversation the writer is giving us a message about adult/child relationship.
This story happened in capital of imperial Russia and has two main and three minor characters. Aliosha, who is one of them, is an eight-year-old kid. Anton Chekhov presents him as a very smart and intelligent. Aliosha was able to carry conversation with another main character, Nikolai Ilitch Belayeff, through all the time even that he is 32 years old. Nikolai is an Aliosha s mother s lover who is rich and well respected in community. He is a wealthy and influential supporter of local racetracks. Nikolai did not love Aliosha s mother so much. Their relationship for him was long and boring. He never took notice before about Aliosha while he was visiting Aliosha s mother, which showed to me that he is snobby. He would never bring himself at lower level and talk to somebody who is not rich as he is or not even more. This time he broke that unwritten snobby rule but just because he was bored waiting for Olga Ivanovna. Olga is Aliosha s mother who is divorced and unhappy with her life. She is single mother with two children left alone to raise them on her own. In that period of time a father was the figure that would work and provide living for family. For some unknown reason Olga does not allow Sonia and Aliosha to see their father. Pelagia who is house made for Olga s family takes Sonia and Aliosha every Thursday and Friday for a walk be
Conflict appears when Aliosha tells the story about him visiting his father to Nikolai. Na ve Aliosha thought that he could believe to anybody who gives him a word. He was wrong, at least with Nikolai. Nikolai is one of those people who cares just about his self and nobody else. If he did not want to hurt Aliosha and still thought that he should tell Olga the truth he could wait to stay alone with her and tell her then. But he did not do that. He chose to say it in front of Aliosha even that he know that he would hurt him and make him think, that there were things in this wold besides pasties and watches and sweet pears, things for which no name could be found in the vocabulary of childhood. From that point Aliosha realized that world is no perfect and simple as he thought.
Even that Anton Chekhov wrote the story hundred years ago and that since then lot of things changed but still there are some things that did not change, and probably won t ever. Adult/child relationship is one of them. Now and then most of adults do not realize that a kid is a person who has feelings that could be hurt as much as adult s feelings if not even more. Feelings and thoughts in childhood are things that shape and give the main frame of the life to any kid. If people are not careful with it they could be responsible for consequences that could appear later in life of young individual.