thoughts on readings, chapters 6-7

Chekhov’s command of perspective in “The Lady With the Pet Dog,” aligning the narrator’s voice closely with Dmitry’s throughout most of the action, becomes clear toward the story’s end. The acerbic description in graf 58 of “the slightly coarse arrogance of a happy male” troubles our view of the antihero, before the controlled point-of-view is stripped bare by Anna’s meltdown in grafs 97 and 99, her sobs shattering the diction and poise of Chekhov’s refined illusionism. Our identification with Dmitry is conclusively ruptured by his gaze in the mirror in grafs 114-115, catching sight of his aging looks. The image of the couple split across two vertical planes marks the shift into an editorial voice, distancing us from Dmitry’s consciousness and casting judgment on his chronic manipulation of women by asserting, “not one of [his lovers] had been happy with him,” and that “he had never once loved.”

In “Battle Royal” the noxious haze of smoke filling the town burghers’ banquet hall provides a suggestive symbol for the ambient racist sentiment confronting the protagonist when he steps outside the black community. The “agonizing” smoke is one of several figures for blindness or partial vision in the scene. Some of the “tough guys” in the ring with him are “blinded” at beholding the blonde stripper in grafs 7-8 (“[they] stood with lowered heads”; “I saw one boy faint”). With the other combatants, the protagonist is blindfolded by his hosts in graf 10 and warned sharply against trying to nudge it; “a blow to my head” in graf 38 leaves his “right eye popping like a jack-in-the-box.” The poisonous haze must be cleared from the protagonist’s senses, his naiveté must be exorcised, before he can perceive accurately his position with seemingly all of white society ranged against him.