Philosophy Journal #3/ Machiavelli/ Virtù and the Herbivore Men

Virtù and the Herbivore Men

I dare assume that Machiavelli’s Il Prince can be summarized into one word: virtù. Virtù is a word that means “range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire in order to ‘maintain his state’ and to ‘achieve great things,’ the two standard markers of power for him,” according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Machiavelli accentuates this trait’s significance as an essential quality for a potential prince to acquire in order to face fortuna, which can be roughly translated as vicissitudes of life (and a state). He seems to identify the state with its ruler, so virtù is clearly a personal quality that influences the whole state. Those with the capability to withstand fortuna can overcome random and at times adverse circumstances and accomplish something great.

Machiavelli is pretty macho in explaining this term. While personifying fortuna as a mettlesome woman, he insists that a young, less cautious, more spirited, bolder man with virtù can “master” her by treating “aggressively” and “violently.” Though I do not think men (compared to the past) do not (and should not) mistreat women, maybe such masculinity can be ‘virtuous’ for individuals who seek to acquire what they want and change their communities by fighting off external influences. Period. Nothing more, nothing less.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. A Professor of Government at Harvard University Harvey Mansfield takes it even further by saying that men these days lack manliness, citing on the Machiavellian virtù. Following a Machiavellian line of thought, he does not wish to judge right or wrong of a man with virtù, for he is a man who wishes to change his community, including the value-judgment system. He elaborates on the concept of virtù by naming it manliness, a quality that makes heroic individuals say and act boldly to accomplish what they want, regardless of perils on its course. Although Professor Mansfield almost lost his job for being criticized as “chauvinistic” by feminist thinkers, I pretty much agree with him. And I think his remark on contemporary society as having less virtù or manliness is quite insightful.

In 1999 Blair administration initiated a term “NEET (Not currently engaged in Education, Employment or Training).” It designated unemployed young men who have no will to engage in advanced education or a stable employment. They instead work as part-timers in department stores, convenient stores, restaurants and etcetera.

Or we see “herbivore men” of Japan and Korea. A term coined by pop culture columnist Maki Fukusawa, the term “herbivore men” designates male that take up a 30% portion of Japanese male population who reject eagerly engaging into social movements or occupation but choose to enjoy hobbies like foot cosmetics and gardening. Fukusawa comments that their carnal instincts for rich, reputation, social change, and sex had been nearly castrated.

Some might say that these NEETs or herbivore men have adapted well to the Machiavellian fortuna by following the current of the “violent river” Machiavelli pointed out as a trait of fortuna. Nonetheless, they would be neglecting the latter part of Il Prince that mentions how a prince should treat goddess fortuna “violently” and “aggressively;” they are neglecting that Machiavelli supported an active adaptation to circumstance, not a passive. By ferociously fighting with vicissitudes, a prince might acquire dominance over state, whether it be literal or metaphorical. In a modern application, would NEETs who were excluded from the society due to depression be ever able to wiggle out of their cashiers and Buy The Way uniforms and initiate social change? I doubt it; until they acquire virtù for the guts for change, they will never be able to rule the state. 

Philosophy Journal #2/ Thomas More/ An Outsourcing State

An Outsourcing State

I once heard an interesting analogy on the comparison between Communist North Korea and Capitalist America. He would say that North Korea is a Darwinist competition society while America is a socialist one. His rationale was that North Koreans compete to climb mountains for tree barks and grass roots to eat and Americans wait in line for federal-issued free lunch boxes. This half-humorous half-sour joke gives something beyond poking fun at the ideological confusion in two countries; it seems to hint a Hegelian notion that in order for an idea to sustain, it must have its complementing (and at times binary) substance within. This can be signified by the white dot in yin and black dot in yang in the Taoist Taiji symbol.

Reading More’s Utopia gave me a similar impression of the anecdote above. In a place where ‘everyone’ is meant to be happy without any need for private property, people prepare gold to hire mercenaries that would fight for them, and although they think war should be avoided, they engage in it when they have to. In order to maintain a ‘clean’ ‘state,’ the utopia outsources uncleanliness that is essential to the sustenance of the state. Formal-logically speaking, utopia can never be a universal form of society, for it has to have a complementing part of the dystopian society for its sustenance.

And I see a modern-adaptation of this kind of community in one country: America. It is very indicative that More places in Amerigo Vespucci as the founder of such a place. Not to mention the outsourced manufacture of Nike shoes in African sweatshops, Blackwater private military company is a modern version of mercenaries. Completely multi-national and external to any sovereignty, there is practically nothing that could stop this company nominally other than UN Security Council in which its hirer holds the veto power. When Blackwater USA agents massacred a native town, US government was free from its prone criticisms. When more human rights and less collateral damage is expected from the sovereign government, it can simply outsource it. Same goes to tortures; we have an International Herald Tribune op/ed that asks for a stricter human rights measure for US government while demanding more torture for terrorists outside the borders. There has to be filth to keep the cleanliness, so we can just kick it out and leave it to barbaric states who are willing to this for, literally, ‘gold.’

More was somewhat very insightful in how the future would come, but not how it should have come. Outsourcing had surely induced better lives, or has it? Mega-corporations like Samsung outsource high-risk works by setting up a paper company and making manual laborers toil. When human rights issue or industrial accidents should take place, it is something that the employers of the paper company should be responsible of. More’s utopia is menacing because it not only functions as a state but as a corporate, or any group that needs some filth but is unwilling to be responsible for it. Thinkers and social philosophers other than More were busy how to solve the problem; More found a way to sweep it away. As a result, we now have a contradictory state where it discriminates between humans in and humans out of the community, which hardly bear any difference. A reason why EU is building up electric trenches against North African immigrants, and US builds immigrant blockade against Hispanics. But unless this outsourcing and filth-ing the outward societies doesn’t cease, such desperate immigration will not stop. And one day these utopias would have to pay the price for all the dust they swept underneath the carpet.

And here comes a million-dollar question: how could More even think of corrupting foreign political leaders with gold, when he thought it was such a corrupting, evil substance for the utopians to use as building material for toilets and handcuff chains? Or has nationality or race already become a major dividing line between entities of the Homo Sapiens Sapiens species by More’s era?

Philosophy Journal #1/ Spinoza / From Spinoza to Democracy

From Spinoza to Democracy

When I had presented that Spinoza was a pantheist philosopher who claimed that all that ends well is well, I was over-simplifying. I was probably confused on how any ethical discussion could be possible if everything was to be operated under god’s will. To me at that time, Spinoza said God was always logical and reasonable, so everything just had to be good. If everything was operating logically well, why think over what is right or wrong?

And precisely at that point, I had made a grave mistake in leaving out ‘myself’ from the godly operation of the world. If ‘everything’ were to operate under God’s logical, inevitable, and reasonable will, that would include me as well as many others. Moreover, since the operation was logical, I would have to contemplate, just as a reasonable God would, to make a logical, inevitable, and reasonable decision and an ensuing action.

This explanation may clarify how freedom is possible in Spinoza’s deterministic universe. With knowledge and reason, we can avoid unenlightened circumstances or external influences which would have been otherwise unavoidable. And when we do, we are not merely obeying something, even God, but becoming a more substantial part of it, the order of the universe. So in a sense, Spinoza’s philosophy is more than mere obedience to authority. It is actually closer to ascension of reasoned minds, where every mind is capable of reasoning regardless of social classes. This notion indicates freedom from ignorance and any authority other than a higher power. And even this higher power is strictly bound to inevitability and natural laws (as in rain falls downwards). No wonder the church had to excommunicate Spinoza, for there was no place for unnatural miracles and a mysterious church in his philosophy, not to mention unquestioned authority (for people who are not priests could also understand God’s will).

As Spinoza notes, a more complete comprehension of the world is indeed freedom within the worldly system. To people who still persist that there is no freedom in a determinist system, I would like to ask them whether they feel less freedom every time they realize the Earth spins around every 364.4 days. When we usually discuss freedom, it is freedom from other humans or social institutions, not natural circumstances that we already perceive as natural.

Now that we realize what freedom Spinoza has been trying to fight for, we must contemplate on how such freedom should be acquired in a political dimension. It is a famous anecdote that Spinoza had been excommunicated from his Jewish community, for he wrote that faith and philosophy (governance) should be separated. Offended, the Jewish community pushed him out of its circle. At this time, I would have no other choice but to support the church’s decision. I believe Spinoza articulated his theory in a misleading way, and that church nonetheless had interpreted it right and reacted appropriately.

Spinoza, while discussing on the concept of social contract, quotes Moses and the Jews as an ideal historical example. He cites the Hebrew state, and that upon people’s agreement Moses was able to rule with boundless authority. As implicitly shown in the example, what Spinoza meant by the separation of faith from philosophy was actually of faith from church. As reasonable persons, the Hebrew could respectively ‘choose’ a sovereign subject such as Moses. And their decision was a pretty good one. In short, religious faith is newly amalgamated to reason and logic, the persons themselves. Unlike what Spinoza had bluntly stated, it can be reversely interpreted that a Spinoza-n social contract is that of a democracy that places faith in themselves and their decision.

It was a long way from God’s will to democracy, but from the point that Spinoza made clear that his concept of God was not a human-like being but reason and logic attainable by any men if there were efforts, there is a way from a theocracy to democracy, while the theos is naturally converted into demos. As Spinoza puts it, all’s well that ends well; vox populi vox dei. 

World Literature#4/ The Dead/ Embracing the Other

Embracing the Other

             From a distance, James Joyce’s “The Dead” might appear as a rambling story filled with conflicts irrelevant to the protagonist or the main theme. After all, when characters such as Lily, Aunt Julia, Freddy, Miss Ivars, Aunt Kate and Mr. Browne come in and out consecutively, readers are lured to mistaken the characters’ names, forget who they were and  trivialize what they did. However, on the other hand, it seems oddly conspicuous that all these characters show hostility and expose alterity (otherness) to each other. Whenever a new character appears, a new conflict ensues.

             When Lily pops out in the earlier part of the short story, there is no description on why she reacts uncomfortably to Gabriel’s question on marriage. Although Gabriel “had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll,” he has not been in such intimate relationship with her for a time. He does not know whether Lily is “done schooling” or what love life she had experienced. Also, he does not expect Lily to react with slight hostility when he offers to give some coins. Does she have any bad memories from the past in receiving gifts? No one knows.

             Same goes for the conflict (although not blatant) between the Aunts and Freddy. Freddy Malins is not welcomed in the party. Aunt Kate makes Gabriel to “see if he’s all right, and [not] let him up [stairs] if he’s screwed.” She is “sure he’s screwed.” But contrary to Aunt Kate’s expectations, Freddy Malins does nothing misled, except that he makes loud jokes while “rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.” In fact, he appreciates the food and music that the Aunts provide with hospitality. Then why did the Aunts fear Freddy’s arrival? Did he do something despicable in the past? No one knows.

             “The Dead” is a story filled with small conflicts ensued by different persons. One discrepancy from ordinary clashes is that there is a lack of understanding on the people who are engaged in the conflicts. Was there a similar incident? Did the two parties ever fight before? No one knows. Nonetheless, there is one that explains itself and the people involved in it: the quarrel between Gabriel and Gretta. Unsurprisingly, it is the one that enables Gabriel to experience an epiphany. Gabriel abandons “his own foolish speech” and recognizes the past, the past that his wife had lived through, when she had a lover, a sentiment. Then he feels “a feeling [that] must be love” to his wife, not hostility as other persons had had in many conflicts.

             In this sense, James Joyce seems to imply where hostility stems from. Why do characters jostle over small matters, such as where one spends vacation (Miss Ivors and Gabriel) and who sings for the church (Aunt Kate and Mary Jane)? Is the fact that Gabriel does not mention his true thoughts (“literature is above politics”) or tell Miss Ivors from what grounds he refuses to spend his vacation in his homeland related to why Miss Ivors leaves abruptly? The past is absent in all dialogues that is engendered from unresolved conflicts. Then what should we do to fight less and feel “a feeling [that] must be love?” Simple. We talk more with each other: about our respective histories, the past.

[Personal Epiphany] Brown, Sturdy Tree, After Struggle, Dies

(This is a story that I wrote for another class; but I would still like to share it as my personal epiphany. It’s a short story that explains my personal thoughts, but I couldn’t write it as an essay or a prose; it would just get too cheesy. I would gladly accept any deduction in score for not presenting a work solely for this assignment.)

“I have lived a shameful life.”

“Why, M? What are you starting all over again? Did hiking make you all somber and tired?”

          My friend Y and I, we would often go to mountains, carrying factory-made axes in our backpacks. When we got in deep enough so that nobody would see us, we would chop down randomly selected large trees. When wood chips were flying about, each time the edge of ax hit the trunk, we would suddenly be relieved. I would talk, my friend would chop.

“Well, uh, it seems like my, uh, life is filled with heaps of large mistakes, failures, and uh, uselessness. I feel helpless. I feel, uh, this void. Things used to make me, uh, angry, but now, I’m not even angry. Lethargy clings on my back, and I am powerless against……I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but it’s pressing me hard. When I was angry, uh, at least I was angry. But now, when I realize, uh, how weak I am against this……I don’t know what it is, but it’s made me not even angry, just, uh, just tired.”

          All trees would resist foolhardily when the axes bit off its chunks. The tree would shake in agony, spitting out blood-like sap. Yet it still resisted, only until the ax passed through the center of the tree. Because when it did, no matter how large, the wood swung less frequently, and just waited to be snap off on itself. The tree we were chopping would then begin to comply with its fate, swaying less, spitting less, and resisting less.

“Yeah, M. But it’s something that we all face. You talk as if you’re the only one having that issue.”

“But still. If everyone feels the same thing, then why does everyone just go through the same process? We get angry, we try to, uh, resist, and we get…….castrated. A bit odd, uh, you know, that word castration. But I guess that’s the right way to put it. I can’t do, uh, anything.”

          Silence. As soon as I stopped talking, he put down his ax. Mine was already on the ground. He sat down on a flat rock, so did I. The tree was almost chopped down, and it would snap itself anytime. He opened his mouth and slurred, 

“I think I know the reason why we sneak out of school every day and wander around in the mountains. Before, mountains used to be a place to be conquered by men. Nowadays, it’s where the conquered hide.”

“Hide from what?”

“Hide from…….something. I don’t know.”

          My friend was a muscular guy. Wearing brown, sturdy muscles and short hair, he was an athlete-type of kid. Nonetheless, he was a smart kid too. He read philosophy, literature and history books since a young age, without preparing to get the good numbers in school report cards. A deep kid, he was, but numbers never liked him. Numbers on his math test never liked him, numbers on his school report card never liked him, and numbers on the standardized tests never liked him.

          But I liked him. His friends thought he was a cool, yet deep kid. Teachers thought he was thoughtful. Classmates who didn’t know him very well admired him. But Seoul National University didn’t value him as highly as people did. It seemed that companies like Samsung wouldn’t like him in a close future. He would have to work at a place where they hire him even when the company doesn’t value him so highly. A queer thing was that I can always draw my friends, the people in my head, but I can never picture these colleges, these companies. It was like when I was trying hard to figure out what KMLA was, although I could easily imagine KMLA students or KMLA teachers. 
          
He opened his mouth and blurted:

“I actually agree to what you said about that castration. But what point is there to be angry about it? You don’t even know what’s pressing you down. How can you be angry at it? It’s pointless, fighting against it. Just do what they say. No, what it says. Don’t be angry, yeah, don’t be angry at it.”

It wasn’t like him, talking so much. He usually maintained his sturdy, silent figure. Then this boy wearing brown, sturdy muscles sighed and went on.

“It’s really nothing, ultimately. You see? I don’t think there is a valuable meaning to it. But nonetheless, it is strong. It pressures me.”

“You sound like, uh, someone like Bukowski.”

“Charles Bukowski might not have suffered from school or career, but I hardly doubt that it would have been something so different from what we know of now. But I think Osamu Dazai would be a better comparison: disqualified from a functioning human. No Longer Human.”

“Nay, I, uh, won’t become one of those, uh, Dazai characters in his novellas. You know, maybe we could get, uh, good scores and uh, do stuff, and some day we can, uh, succeed. Whatever, uh, success is. Maybe it could someday like us too, just like other kids.”

“Maybe you can write about this. Like Dazai, like Bukowski. Saying cool stuff about life, pain and etcetera.”

“This isn’t cool; this is so common and loser-like thing. Even if I wrote a story, it will be only read by people like…..us!”

          We both laughed loudly. Then we treaded back to school. We had to hurry; or we might have gotten caught for wandering around outside school during school hours.

          A month later, I revisited our lumbering site, alone. All was same, except for the tree we left in the process of chopping. The tree snapped on its own; it snapped itself. It was disintegrating into the ground. Fungi were growing on the tree’s brown, sturdy trunk.

          So I changed my mind and decided to write an observation of the trees, a story for the trees. Isn’t it a common thing for axes chop, and trees chopped? The place we flee to becomes our grave. At the end of the day, we all die, just like that. And live on.

World Literature#3/ Araby/ Part of Darkness

Part of Darkness

             The Homer epics and King Arthur legends have protagonists who overcome difficulties and succeed in becoming a complete manly figure. Initially weak, flawed figures improve themselves by winning over adversary and fully maturing. However, modern day readers cannot sympathize or feel for those characters, at least less than how we used to. Why? Because we know that maturity comes not from victories, but from failures that make us realize how small we are….

             In such sense, classifying “Araby” as a modernist literature is quite appropriate. Unlike conventional novels or heroic epics that portray unrealistic victories, it carefully delineates the slow process of realization that a boy goes through. Through the course of action, the young protagonist experiences a slow yet painful death of its innocence and fantasy. While despising the world of adults, he notices that he is not much different from those adults, and that he is actually similar to them. Instead of the expected en—“light”—enment, he witnesses a fading of the light.

             The protagonist explains his love as something holy and divine. He sings her name as “strange prayers and praises which” he himself does not understand. His “body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon wires.” This imagery conjures a striking contrast with the description of streets he live in that is filled with “barrels of pigs’ cheeks” and “the nasal chanting of street-singers.” The protagonist admits that “[h]er image accompanied” him “even in places the most hostile to romance,” indicating the notion that his environments and other people were a mismatch with his seemingly pure romance.

             But a close reader can realize a discrepancy between the protagonist’s opinion on his own love and the reality of his sexual desire. The narrative description from the protagonist’s point of view is rather sexual. It follows the order of seeing a woman’s body by a typical man. The protagonist sees the silver bracelet go “round and round her wrist,” catches his breath when he sees the “white curve of neck” and notices “the white border of a petticoat.” The part in which “the white border of a petticoat” appears is self-explanatorily sexual. The concentrated depiction of joints such as neck or wrist indicates that he is not looking at the girl as a whole; he is displaying a fetishistic sexual desire of the girl’s body. As psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan notes, true love of an individual is constituted of the observation of the lover as a connected whole, not a fetishistic sum of hip, breast, waist and lips. The sexual description by the boy raises doubt upon his “romance.”

             The adventure of bringing something from Araby is hardly epic. The protagonist realizes that he does not have any source of income, so that he has to rely on his drunkard uncle for a florin. This realization is evident when he intentionally makes noise with coins to indicate that he has money towards the cashiers. Also, he has to ride “alone in the bare carriage” beside an “improvised platform.” There is nothing grand or special in the ride. Most importantly, he sees “a young lady……laughing with two young gentlemen.” It is heavily suggested that they are flirting, just like how the boy intended to do with his crush. It is possible that he realizes the absence of difference between them and himself.

             He is dismissed and disregarded by the flirting group of men and woman. The cashier’s “tone of……voice was not encouraging,” for it seemed that she has “spoken to me out of a sense of duty.” He is not considered a sexual equal by the cashier; he is just a little kid. He manages to “murmur[ed]” that he does not need help, when he actually needed one. His sense of failure and sexual subjugation make his “eyes burn[ed] with anguish and anger.” The interesting part here is that what the boy despises is actually what he is. Therefore, he does not feel sudden en—light—enment, but identifies himself as a part of darkness that he hates so much. Therefore the light goes off, telling the boy that he too is a part of the darkness, no different.



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From a distance, James Joyce’s “Araby” might appear as a short story depicting a child’s pure love. After all, when the nameless narrator depicts the protagonist as an innocent boy trying to buy something for his lover, the readers may expect to see a stereotypical praise of true love. This notion is especially suggested when the boy describes his lover as a holy being as he hears “strange prayers” because of his love. However, on the other hand, the narrator shows instances of the boy looking at the girl as a sexual object. A reader can realize a discrepancy between the protagonist’s opinion on his own love and the reality of his sexual desire. The narrative description from the protagonist’s point of view is rather sexual. It follows the order of seeing a woman’s body by a typical man. The protagonist sees the silver bracelet go “round and round her wrist,” catches his breath when he sees the “white curve of neck” and notices “the white border of a petticoat.” The part in which “the white border of a petticoat” appears is self-explanatorily sexual. The concentrated depiction of joints such as neck or wrist indicates that he is not looking at the girl as a whole; he is displaying a fetishistic sexual desire of the girl’s body. Not only that, His “all…senses seemed to desire to veil themselves” indicates that he had desire for the girl. The sexual description by the boy raises doubt upon his pure “romance.” Therefore, Araby shows how there are no such thing as pure, romantic love even within a young child. Joyce shatters the idealist image of pure love by diminishing it even from a young child.

World Literature#2/ The Lady and the Dog/ Morality of Love

The Morality of Love

           Two points constitute the significance that short story “Lady and the Dog” bears. Sergeyeyna’s husband is not directly described as a villain, and the story is written from the perspective of the two adulteresses.

          Of course, this is not the first story in human history that deals with the theme of adultery. The Bible has stories of adultery, whether mistaken or unintentional. Shakespeare deals with adultery in his plays and poems. However, there are significant differences that set this story apart from any other of these stories. Chekhov’s characters are serious; they live in real world where adultery is considered as a sin a crime, while Shakespeare’s characters in comedies live in fantasy world where one or two day’s bed switch was considered as the most humorous thing at that time. Also, the characters adulterate in intention; they do not mistakenly sleep together as Noah or Shakespearean characters would do in deceivable situations. Most importantly, the husband of Sergeyeyna is not vilified although the protagonists are willing to justify and enjoy their espionage.

          The discussion on Chekhov’s realism had been rampaging here and there, but what seems to be more important is the significance of the realism, not whether the story is a realistic one or not. The characters in Chekhov’s “The Lady and the Dog” are not gods and goddesses in Greek Myth. They do not have superhuman powers or classical atmosphere that makes adultery somehow justified and accepted as Zeus would. Instead, the affair goes on in a very real place—Yalta—where we can find the city on a map. The description is real: the dog eats the bone, the grass is mowed, and the adulterers’ wife and husband are real. It is as if they are people who could be existent any minute during the late 19^th century.

            Nonetheless, there is less hostility towards the couple to be found in this story. This couple intentionally engages into immorality, yet they enjoy the umbrella held by Chekhov to protect themselves from moral criticism. Not only are those, the couple’s counterparts, the faithful wife and husband not depicted as villains. Of course, the protagonists had some dissatisfaction with their spouses. However, the level of dissatisfaction is very low: calling her husband a “flunkey” is not much of a slander, while characterizing one’s wife as “boring” is something universal. They are not villains. The “flunkey” husband even lets his wife freely travel to Yalta and to Moscow whenever she wants to.

             Then what is the significance of these characterizations done by Chekhov? Why are the characters depicted as engaging in an intentional and unreasonable adultery? Do they have a reason to do so?

The striking significance is that there is no such grand reason, there is no such justification. Things we call “immorality” can be an unfair denomination of what are just consequences of random emotions. In the past, loving one another than the wife was considered a sin. There had to be a justification that either the spouses were evil or it was unintentional. However, as restrictions go loose, there is no such need. What, should love be restricted in the upcoming 20^th century? 

World Literature #1/ The Student/ Night after the Crucifixion

Night after the Crucifixion

It has been agreed that Anton Chekhov’s The Student is a realist short story, depicting the everyday life of Russians. I think differently. The constant Biblical allusions dictate that the subtext beneath the seemingly realist story endows much meaning to the story. In order to trace the clues that Chekhov laid for the readers to follow, one should notice the straightforwardly spoken generalization in the conclusion of the story.

Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some relation to her. . . .

He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present -- to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul.

The excerpt above gives two useful guides in interpreting this short story. (1) It explicitly suggests that the story of Vasilisa and her daughter bears a relationship with the Twelve Gospels (referred to as “which had happened nineteen centuries ago” in the excerpt above). (2) The concept of past and present had played an important role in the story. Therefore, in this essay, I will show (1) how related the two stories are and (2) what the timeline linked from past and present foreshadows future events.

The description of timeline in the story is something to note. The narrator, Ivan Velikopolky, conjectures that during “the days of Rurik” and “in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter,” there would have been “same desperate poverty and hunger” as it is right now. He compares such status to the atmosphere with “cold penetrating wind” and “needles of ice.” However, he states that in a closer past (“[a]t first”), “the weather was fine and still,” there even was a “gay, resounding note in the spring air.” To sum up, “same darkness, the same feeling of oppression” has been existent for a very long time, but with a small aberration in the distant past.

Another notion to take in regard is that the time setting in the story is Good Friday, when “nothing has[d] been cooked.” Good Friday is a Christian holiday that commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. In memoir of his sacrifice, Christians fast during the day Christ had been in pain. For a long time, the Jews had been under foreign oppression until Jesus has come to enlighten them and lessen their burdens. However, on Good Friday, he was caught by Roman and dissident rabies and later crucified. The atmosphere changing from the super pastàdistant pastà present in the story pretty much matches with the Bible.

But of course, this coinciding change of atmosphere is not sufficient enough to show a link between the short story and the biblical tale. Nonetheless, the concatenation of events and their settings in The Student are identical with that in the Gospels.

The characteristics of Vasilisa and her daughter Lukerya links to the tale of Peter and Jesus. When Jesus was dragged off by the Jewish dissidents, Peter warmed himself by the fire after having slept. Similarly, Vasilisa stands by “the fire” and has spent time “with the gentry” and could express “herself in refinement” while Lukerya was “beaten by her husband” as a village peasant. The expression that Lukerya was “beaten” is noteworthy. Chekhov uses the same word (“beat”) when describing the ordeal Jesus had to go through, hence “beat Him” and “…He was beaten.” Also, it is suggestive that Vasilisa and Lukerya had “just had supper” by the time Velikopolsky arrives to the campfire. When he tells the tale that Peter wept bitterly after the crow crowed, Vasilisa starts making “big tears” flow “freely down her cheeks.”

By now, it is reasonable to assume that Lukerya is being compared to Jesus while Vasilisa to Peter. However, there is one doubt that lingers in the story; Velikopolsky describes Lukerya as “a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face.” Not only that, Peter, though finding meaning of life, does not “feel as though Easter would be the day after to-morrow.” It is absurd that Peter is joyful when the widows are either weeping or in “enduring intense pain.” The sudden lesson at the end of the story hints that there might be a deviation from the original ending in the Gospel, resurrection.