The Teacher of Literature

"The Teacher of Literature" tells the story of Nikitin, a young teacher at the local school, who proposes to Masha, the daughter of a wealthy man. The story oscillates between bouts of happiness and immense love to moments of depression and existential crisis. The realization of the main character that the world is nothing but filled with vulgarity clashes with his previous perfect state of existence. Chekhov masterfully manipulates the story and his protagonist, leading him to the realm of madness and uncertainty.

A prolific writer of seven plays, a novel and hundreds of short stories, Anton Chekhov is considered one of the best practitioners of the short story genre in literature. True to life and painfully morbid with his miserable and realistic depictions of Russian everyday life, Chekhov’s characters drift between humour, melancholy, artistic ambition, and death. Some of his best-known works include the plays "Uncle Vanya", "The Seagull", and "The Cherry Orchard", where Chekhov dramatizes and portrays social and existential problems. His short stories unearth the mysterious beneath the ordinary situations, the failure and horror present in everyday life.