Brief summary of “Tosca” for a reader’s diary
Full name of the author : Chekhov Anton Pavlovich
Title : Longing
Number of pages : 4. Chekhov Anton Pavlovich. "Stories". Publishing house "AST". 2011
Genre : Story
Year of writing : 1886
The material was prepared jointly with a teacher of the highest category, Kuchmina Nadezhda Vladimirovna.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 27 years.
Main characters
Iona Potapov is an old cab driver, a simple, illiterate man, lonely and deeply unhappy.
A military man, three young men, a janitor - people with whom Jonah wanted to share his melancholy.
Please note that we also have:
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Summary of “Tosca”
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The main characters of "Tosca"
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Read “Tosca” in full
Summary
On a snowy Sunday evening, cab driver Iona Potapov stood in the usual expectation in the city square, shaking wet snow from the back of his decrepit horse. The man went to work in the morning, but there was still no start.
The gray streets were completely plunged into the evening darkness, lanterns were lit all around, and the bustle of people became even noisier. Finally, the first client approaches Jonah . The military man asks for a ride to Vyborgskaya. The driver is gnawed by unbearable melancholy, so he wants to share his thoughts with the person who got into his carriage, in the hope of finding understanding. It turns out that Jonah recently lost his son. The guy spent several days in the hospital and died of a fever. The military man listens with complete indifference to the story of the unfortunate father and, having reached the desired point, leaves the cab.
The next people who needed Jonah's services were three young men, hot with drink. Pushing and shouting swear words, the merry company demands from the old man to make his horse gallop faster. The dashing guys give the cab driver a few slaps on the back of the head, but he is not at all offended, and he timidly tries to start a conversation about his dead son. As in the case of the first rider, no one cares about other people’s grief.
The disgruntled man goes to a shack where hard workers like him spend the night. One of the cab drivers wakes up at the moment when Jonah enters the room. Potapov does not miss the opportunity to start a conversation - he begins to talk to the man about his bereavement, but he cuts him off mid-sentence. Not finding understanding among the people, Jonah goes to his mare, thinking that near the stall, thoughts will only come to him about oats and hay.
Without noticing it, he pours out his soul to the horse. He tells her about how he dreamed that his son would become a successful coachman and live a long and happy life. He thinks about the inadmissibility of young people passing away earlier than old people.
Jonah can only wait for his time; death does not frighten him, but seems to be the only salvation from suffering. His four-legged friend seems to understand him. As if a stone had been lifted from the cabman’s soul after talking with the animal, Jonah thanks the horse with all his heart for at least listening to the old man attentively.
Plot
The cab driver Iona Potapov and his little horse stood motionless for a long time, and white snow covered them so that they looked like ghosts. Each of them was lost in their own thoughts, and the lack of work plunged them even further into a state of numbness. Only when dusk fell on the city did Jonah have his first client - a military man who urgently needed to get to Vyborgskaya.
Jonah waved his whip more out of habit, and the sleigh started moving. Suddenly, a carriage appeared from the darkness, which an old cab driver collided with, then a passer-by almost fell under his horse. The military man urged Jonah on and joked about his slowness. The driver whispered with difficulty that his son died this week: he lay in a fever for three days in the hospital and died. The military man listened to Jonah indifferently and ordered him to hurry up.
Having dropped off the military man, the old man waited for several more hours for new clients. They turned out to be tipsy young people. They offered him too low a price, but Jonah had no time for that now: as long as there were riders and he needed to take them somewhere. The friends noisily boasted to each other about the amount of alcohol they had drunk and discussed women. Jonah called them cheerful gentlemen and tried to tell them about his dead son, but no one was going to listen to him. Having finally given the driver a slap on the head, the company left. Again Jonah was left alone, in silence. A terrible, boundless melancholy came over him, and there was no one to pour out his grief to ease his soul. He tried to talk to the janitor, but he advised him to drive past.
Realizing that it was useless to address people on the street, Jonah headed towards the courtyard. The house was full of people - old and young cab drivers were sleeping, and there was no one to listen to Jonah’s grief. And he so wanted to tell in detail how his son was ill, what he said before his death, how he died, how the funeral took place. Jonah got dressed and went out to the stable to feed his little horse. He didn’t even notice how he told her everything...
Analysis of the story by A.P. Chekhov's “Tosca”
Story by A.P. Chekhov's “Tosca” was published in January 1886 in the Petersburg Newspaper. True fans of the author’s work greatly appreciate this particular work. I myself am one of them and readily agree with this position. The story was written presumably under the impression the writer had of St. Petersburg during his first visit in 1885. It turned out to be not the most favorable; the city was shown to the writer as very fussy, cumbersome, always in a hurry to get somewhere.
The very idea of the story is quite simple: living in a society full of people, a person still remains completely alone, to such an extent that his best interlocutor turns out to be a creature who cannot really understand what you are talking about.
Main character
The plot is also absolutely clear, transparent and straightforward. The main character of the story, who is also the only one, is the old cab driver Iona Potapov. Jonah's son recently died of fever. And the wound in his heart after this terrible event has still not healed, which is why the cab driver wants to share his grief, to speak out, so that someone will show sympathy, listen to him, and share his story of the loss of a loved one. However, no one cared about the old cab driver. As a result, the only one to whom he was able to pour out his soul was his horse, because she was in no hurry, did not urge him on, rushing about her overly “important” business.
Describing the situation in which the driver found himself, what was happening around him, the dialogues, thoughts of Jonah, the writer accurately conveys to the reader the image, emotions and internal state of the hero, who is like a lost child, about whom no one cares, because indifference has now become commonplace on the streets Petersburg.
However, the problem is not indifference or anger, but the fact that everyone has their own affairs and problems behind their shoulders and heads, they simply cannot pay due attention to the problems of an old man unknown to them. Even his colleague, a younger cab driver, did not have a free minute to talk with his workmate. The only thing he heard from his passengers on this topic was that “We’re all going to die.” These words do not calm Jonah, but only push him to philosophical reasoning and a repeating story about his and his son’s fate.
Everything is very realistic
It is difficult to say about this story that it is artistic, because the story itself is extremely realistic. Jonah's life is shown without any embellishment or literary softening. Social inequality speaks about this most of all. If the old cab driver had more finances, then with a much greater chance he would be able to cure his son, who would be his support and support in old age, which has already arrived. The more you read, the more the old man’s inner state, his loneliness, is revealed.
By this, the author emphasizes that it is vital for the cab driver to tell someone that his son has died, to hear words of support, even if insincere, but even this could help him cope with grief. If only one of the cabbie's fellow travelers had shown simple human compassion, simply listened to the old man, it would have become much easier for him.
Chekhov forces the reader to empathize with the character and show sincere sympathy and concern, even though the story is short.
It also speaks of realism that such situations occur in the present day, and even in front of close people, family, and modern civilized society. Due to daily worries, this may simply not be noticed. That is why it is worth spending time every day with your loved ones, getting to know them, their joy, their problems and grief. Don’t pass by unhappy people and give them, if possible, a couple of minutes of your time; maybe this help is vital for them now more than anyone else.
Conclusion and your opinion
In his work, the author masterfully reveals the theme of loneliness in a big city. An old man, exhausted by mental pain, cannot share his misfortune with anyone. He doesn’t need much: just someone to listen to him carefully, sympathize with him, maybe encourage him. However, no one cares about the lonely old man who lost his son - everyone lives in their own shell, not wanting to notice what is happening to other people. And only an old, faithful horse listens to its owner, thereby helping to alleviate his suffering.
Analysis of Chekhov's story “Tosca”
The hero of the story “Tosca” (1886) was a village man, Iona Potapov, who was engaged in cab service in St. Petersburg. The day before, his only son died. The narrator’s speech conveys the state of the hero, and in one of the paragraphs of the last part of the story it is replaced by inappropriately direct speech: “Soon it will be a week since my son died, and he has not yet spoken to anyone... We need to talk sensibly, with consistency... We need to tell . <…> We need to describe the funeral. <...> My daughter Anisya remains in the village... And we need to talk about her...". The repetition of stressed beginnings (“Need,” “Need,” “Necessary”) and unfinished sentences, graphically marked in the text with ellipses, creates a rhythmic movement of phrases that expresses the hero’s experiences.
The portrayal from the perspective of a hero does not become an obstacle for the author in his desire to cover the situation comprehensively. Chekhov builds his story in such a way that the reader gets the opportunity to look at what is happening both from the side of a grieving village person and from the side of city people. The village man is firmly convinced that he must tell a story about his son, and his “listener must groan, sigh, lament...”. And so, in the big city, the unfortunate father tried to strike up a conversation either with the military man who had gone to the Vyborg side, or with the young people hurrying to the Police Bridge, but none of them wanted to listen to his story. To the cabman’s grief, all these riders turned out to be deaf, but the reader understands that Iona Potapov hardly had the right to expect sincere sympathy from them: in a big city, only a fleeting incident brought them together with their unfortunate father. For the third time, Iona Potapov turns to one of his own - a young cab driver, but even he, falling asleep, does not react to the old man’s message about the death of his son. In the city there is no close connection between people; here you cannot find a listener who “must groan, sigh, lament...”. Understanding this, the reader, however, is unlikely to be able to take the side of people who are indifferent to Jonah’s grief: a person has the right to count on empathy everywhere.
It is easier for Iona Potapov to tell his story than to “think and draw” the image of his son, the latter for him is “unbearably creepy.” At the end of the day, the driver finally found the only listener; it turned out to be his own horse, which accompanied him throughout the day. At the end of the story, the reader comes to the conclusion that each person is destined to experience the deep pain of losing his or her root connections alone. As a result, for the reader of the story “Tosca,” human communication acquires the status of an ontological problem.
Source: History of Russian literature of the 19th century: in 3 volumes. T. 3 / ed. O.V. Evdokimova. — M.: “Academy”, 2012
Like a doctor conscientiously studying a patient and his illness, Chekhov peers into all the phenomena of life that come his way. The writer’s spiritual sensitivity allowed him to see in the life around him what the gaze of an indifferent person often does not notice. Thus, the story “Tosca” (1886) shows the grief of an insignificant person - the coachman Jonah, about whom no one cares in the big city.
The story “Tosca” is one of Chekhov’s first realistic works that reflected the position of a poor man in a big city. A writer-doctor, Chekhov depicts the inner world of people and the social conditions of their lives. In the future, many of Chekhov’s stories, such as “Ionych”, “The Man in a Case”, “Darling”, will take place in small provincial towns of Russia, but the main theme of his work will not change: human social life.
The action of the story “Melancholy” takes place in winter: thick snow covers everything around, and a person with his grief becomes as if ghostly and unreal. Winter has come in the heart of coachman Jonah: the death of his son made his life meaningless and took away hope in his old age. Jonah's world turned upside down. “It’s a wonderful thing, death has shown itself as a door... Instead of going to me, it goes to my son...” says Jonah. The coachman is trying to talk to someone, talk about his grief, because “he can’t think about his son when he’s alone,” because “it’s unbearably creepy to think and draw his image for yourself...”.
However, it turns out that a person’s hopeless grief does not touch anyone, they do not even listen to him or hear him. Not finding a living soul, a human listener, Jonah talks about the death of his son in the stable of his horse. Chekhov emphasized the loneliness of the coachman Jonah by calling him after the biblical Jonah, who found himself cut off from the world in the belly of a whale. The meaning of the story is reflected in the epigraph to the work: “To whom shall we tell my sadness?..” In the words of the epigraph, a person’s complaint about his endless loneliness and passionate desire to be heard bitterly sounds.
Source: Moskvin G.V. Literature: 7th grade: in 2 hours. Part 1 / G.V. Moskvin, N.N. Puryaeva, E.L. Erokhin. — M.: Ventana-Graf, 2015
Author's aphorisms
“...Whoever was torn from the plow, from the usual gray pictures and thrown here into this pool, full of monstrous lights, restless crackling and running people, cannot help but think...”
“...Whether it’s a ruble or a nickel, it doesn’t matter to him now, if only there were riders...”
“...Now I have one wife - damp earth...”
“...A man who knows his business... who is well-fed, and his horse is well-fed, is always at peace...”
“...And talking to women is even better. Even though they are fools, they roar at just two words..."
“...let’s say you have a foal, and you are this foal’s own mother... And suddenly, let’s say, this same foal ordered to live a long time... Isn’t it a pity?..”
Interpretation of unclear words
Cab driver - coachman of a hired carriage or cart.
Goats are the front of a horse-drawn carriage on which the coachman sits.
Initiation is the beginning of any type of activity.
An overcoat is an element of uniform for persons performing public service, a uniform coat with folds on the back and a strap holding them folded.
A carriage is a closed passenger carriage with springs.
The master is a man from the upper classes, sir.
Galoshes are waterproof (usually rubber) pads worn on shoes.
Two-griven is a Russian coin with a face value of 20 kopecks.
