Seo Yeon Kim World Lit. Journal

 Rating: 6/10 Selfish VS Altruistic This short story talks about altruism (Ivan) VS selfishness (Ivan's brother Nikolai). I felt that the author placed the altruistic character in the story to contrast and strongly criticize Nikolai. But, was Nikolai selfish from the start? At the first time, Nikolai had one great goal, being a landowner and growing gooseberries. Since he only focused on achieving his goal, he became selfish. This story tells that being blind with a strong desire is dangerous. I liked the message of the story (more than the lady with a dog). But the story is still vague and hard to understand clearly. Especially why author put a description that Aliokhin hadn’t take a shower for a long time that the water turned brown? Therefore, I rated 6.5 out of 10. (If teacher sees this blog, please make a comment why about my question toward Aliokhin)

 Rating: 6/10 Since this story talks about cheating on someone, which is morally wrong, I thought that this story would end with two main characters losing everything and getting only love. Unfortunately, the story is open-ended. If I had a chance to change the story, I would end this story by making Gurov and Anna escape from their own family but soon regrets and break up. Not only the ending, but I also didn’t satisfy with the main characters. Anna Sergeyevna, who looks naive, is not kind and innocent. Even though she felt guilty about her husband, she doesn’t stop the relationship with Gurov. Gurov, a playboy, had cheated on others a lot, which is wrong.  The short story was interesting that I was able to get into it, (I almost give it 10/10) however I didn’t like the ending and  rated 6/10.