Part II: Ryann, Karen, Lauren

Lauren:
When you go through and read everyone’s response, it’s clear that we all agree that the universal theme is misery. Everything in the piece, all of the descriptions, relate back to misery.

Ryann:
One thing that I thought was interesting when I was reading Nick’s response, was the he talked about how he wasn’t sure whether or not Iona was lonely before or after his son’s death.

Karen:
I liked that about Nick’s response too and Kyle talked about that as well. I found myself after thinking about when they brought it up, feeling like it was more that he just wanted someone to talk to, not necessarily that he was sad that his son died.

Ryann:
Like how Kyle said, “I'm not sure if the misery referred to by Chekhov is the misery the man feels over losing his son or the misery of not being able to share it with anyone.” You could argue that it could be more about the misery of him not being able to talk to anyone about his son, because like I mentioned that there’s a gap. Why didn’t they tell you more about how the son died? Maybe it’s just about him grieving and not having anyone to talk to.

Lauren:
I liked Ryann’s quote. I thought that it really showed how Iona felt. “Iona was so desperate to alleviate his grief and loneliness, that he even enjoyed the company of the three rude and abusive men in his cab.” And then as well from your piece, your comparison to “The Fly,” how they are about how both men lost their son and the ways in which they dealt with it and how they grieve.

Karen:
I also enjoyed how you compared those two things and how you related the story back to May’s book.

Ryann:
I liked how Lauren talked about what the snow symbolized because I never thought about the snow as a symbol. It made me look at the story a lot different when you talked about how the snow covers everything and how it even covered Iona.

Karen:
Yeah, I didn’t think about that either.

Lauren:
There’s a lack of life and it’s a time where organisms die. And when you think of snow you just think of cold death.

Ryann:
I talked about how the setting reflected how Iona felt and Jay said that it could be considered aesthetic patterning. It unifies the story through the repeated pattern described in the setting and how Iona feels.

Lauren:
Yeah, Jay said that, “These emotions were conveyed through powerful imagery and metaphors, and descriptions of the scene also added to this effect. This makes the emotions that are hidden deep within the character tangible and prominent in the environment. This story was very thought-provoking due to its succinct sentences and its powerful imagery and vivid scenes also caused me to feel very deeply for the character.”

Karen:
I like how she said that it had lots of imagery, but I think we need to give more examples.

Lauren:
Everything in this piece relates back to misery, all of the descriptions, the setting, and the descriptions of the characters. It’s very profound.

Ryann:
I looked over the story again and realized that just like in “The Fly” all of the characters kept calling Iona old and old names like “old plague” and “old dragon.” Then they talk about the old man and the young man on the next page.

Lauren:
I felt as though it was like that because it was the wrong order of things. Iona was supposed to die and not Iona’s son. It was so tragic because it was the wrong order and it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. He should have been the one to die.

Ryann:
I didn’t know if it was sad or alleviating that he found the mare to talk to. I didn’t know if he was going to feel better after talking to the mare. Is Iona really going to get long-term satisfaction from just talking to the mare who can’t even respond or really even hear or understand what Iona is saying?

Lauren:
I think so. It was weird to me that everyone thought it was tragic. I was sad for the character because he lost his son but I wasn’t sad at the end of the story because I was glad that at the end of the day even though people were mean to him, he had his mare and he had some form of companionship.

Ryann:
All of these people wouldn’t even take a few minutes to listen to him, but it something so simple he needs that even a mare could do it.

Karen:
The whole time they are going from point A to point B, how hard would it be for them to listen?

Ryann:
I thought it made some comment on society and how sometimes people don’t care about anybody else. As long as they are okay and they are going where they want to go, they don’t want to hear about anyone else’s sob story.

Karen:
I thought that was a very Chekovian thing to do. It’s very similar to “Gooseberries.” People are physically close to each other but mentally so far apart.

Lauren:
I don’t think that the people in the story who weren’t listening to Iona were meant to be villains in the story. I thought they were present to illustrate how Iona didn’t deserve the treatment from the people around him and that he didn’t deserve to lose his son. There’s just a lack of human compassion.

I also think I responded very differently to the mare being compared to Iona. On page 13 it says that the mare was lost in thought and I like how it humanizes the mare’s characteristics.

Karen:
They are both lost in their own thoughts and their misery. She’s miserable because she was taken from the country into the city and he’s miserable because he can’t find anyone to talk to about the loss of his son.

Lauren:
And they are both overlooked. He overlooks the mare and he’s overlooked by society and all the while what he was looking for was right there.

Karen:
There was also the line where Iona says it would be better to talk to women.

Lauren:
And Iona is surrounded by all of these men and the mare is the only female. That was foreshadowing for me. That’s why I wasn’t feeling sad at the end. This is his perfect companion.

Karen:
After you said that it also made me feel better that he had the mare to talk to in the end.

Ryann:
Do you think it’s socially acceptable for Iona to be pushing his misery on people he barely even knows? I don’t think that the people should have been as unsympathetic as they were, but I still don’t know if it was appropriate for Iona to start talking about his son’s death to those people.

Karen:
While it’s cruel of them not to want to listen, could you really blame them for not wanting to listen?

Lauren:
I think those characters were strategically placed in the story to relate back to the title. They were there to show how unfair it was for Iona’s son to die.