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Transcript

Ivan’s Wife

Conflicts

Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov

o Ivan's wife only appears in the first part of the play twice. Firstly, when Ivan prepares himself to go on fair, she attempts to prevent him as she had a bad dream about him that she considered to be a bad omen. Secondly, when Ivan is convicted, she pays him a visit but finally leaves him despaired as she too suspects him.

o In this short story, we have Ivan as the protagonist who is accused of a murder of a merchant; as a result, he is convicted and sent to Siberia for Twenty-Six years.

o At the very begining of the story, he is described as fair-haired, full of fun and fond of singing, but when shifting to the second part of the story we see he is described as “his hair turned white as snow and his beard grew long, thin, and grey. All his mirth went; he stooped; walked slowly, spoke little, and never laughed, but he often prayed.”

Makar Semyonich

• Man VS Society

o Here, the first conflict is presented in the story when Ivan stops for a short break, and suddenly an officer with two soldiers appear and interrogate with him about the merchant who was found with his throat cut.

• Man VS Man

o Ivan confronts with the authority again while they discover a secret tunnel made for eloping. The Governor interrogates with Ivan to tell his knowledge truthfully about the tunnel.

o Since Ivan knows the truth about the tunnel, as he found Makar digging it at the middle of the night, he had been threatened to be killed by Makar if he says a word about it.

• Man VS Self

o Ivan gets to his final conflict with himself while Makar comes to him at night confiding of being the one who murdered the merchant and now seeks for the forgiveness from him.

o Makar is the antagonist and joins to the events of the story.

o Throughout the story up to the end, Makar is presented as a vicious but at the same time demonic.

CHARACTERS

Symbols

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN THE STORY

• The first of these is Ivan’s home and his two shops. They are used to reflect the materialistic aspect of his character. From the very beginning of the story, the first thing the reader learns about Ivan is that he has two shops and a house.

• The second one is the prison which symbolizes his tragedy and grief, while home was the object of his longing and desire.

Biography

• It subsumes the whole of the life of the protagonist, Ivan Dmitrich Aksenov, from his young manhood to his death, a period of no less than twenty-six years. While the basis of the narrative is biographical, however, the number of incidents recounted is very small.

Themes

Any questions?

• Faith and Forgiveness

o Tolstoy indirectly leads the readers to infer the true value of faith and forgiveness and the importance of their outcomes by deducing that through Ivan’s character.

o The fact which Tolstoy wants to teach the readers is that God is the only one who knows the complete truth about everything, including our realities.

• Materialism and Spirituality

o Ivan begins as a material being unaware of his spiritual nature as being described full of fun. All of a sudden, he loses his confidence in his materialistic life and begins to be aware of his spiritual nature. He has not yet achieved full spiritual consciousness. Only after the second great shock, his protecting and finally his forgiving Makar, his spiritual nature comes to full expression as he feels that his soul is finally released only when renouncing his longing for his old materialistic life.

• Russian novelist, short story writer, philosopher Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy also called Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Tula Province, Russia.

• In 1843, he entered Kazan University and started Oriental languages then switched to Law. His teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn."

• He finally left the university without attaining the degree, and decided to return to the estate they lived in before in Yasnaya Pollyanna.

• In 1851, Tolstoy went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. During his service in army, he worked on his very first writings autobiographical story called Childhood. In it, he wrote about his fondest childhood memories.

• In 1860’s These years were considered as golden era for him in which he wrote some of his best known novels such as War and Peace.

• He found religion as an outlet to overcome his crises and started searching for a meaning of life.

• After years of increasing friction with his wife, Tolstoy renounced his aristocratic life and left his home in late October 1910. He became ill and died in a railroad station at Astapovo, Russia, ten days later, on November 7, at the age of eighty-two.

Tone

Leo Tolstoy

• The tone of the story is considered more objective and didactic rather than being passionate or pessimistic. . Since it does not give the very basic details of the characters' life as it is seen in a very quick shift, the time difference between the first part and the second is twenty-six years.

God Sees the Truth, But Waits

Leo Tolstoy

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