Comparing James Joyce between Anton Chekov

     During February and March, we in the World Literature class read some short stories written by Anton Chekhov and James Joyce. "The Student", "The Lady With the Dog", and "Gooseberries" were written by Anton Chekov and "The Sisters", "Araby", and "Eveline" were written by James Joyce. All of the 6 short stories were very interesting and having significant value, but there's some contrastive points which were seen through the difference between authors.

    The characteristics of Anton Chekov's writing is very ambivalent. He weaves humor with pathos to magnify the inconsequential details of people's lives-helped redefine the short story genre. His writing style has influenced many modern writers. Chekov was interested in writing about the ordinary people lives and their interests in rural Russia, therefore, most of his story's background is based on Russia and Russian History. According to some other analysis, Chekhov has employed a number of techniques in his work. These include words and their pacing that portray the images in a reader's mind, the creation of round characters and their moods, etc. He built a new literary form which many of his contemporaries called impressionistically. 

Some impressive points, I felt during reading Chekhov's story is ①his stories is usually too dark and gloomy, and ②most of his story is based on Russian History, therefore if we don't know the Russian history, we can't fully understand the story.

    Next, the characteristics of James Joyce's writing is very experimental. He used experimental language and exploration of new literary methods, including interior monologue, use of a complex network of symbolic parallels, and invented words, puns, and allusions in his novel. And his style includes experimentation with structure, dialogue and characterization. And in his short story series 'Dubliners', we could find some Easter eggs that implies the symbols, and next story.

I like James Joyce better than Anton Chekhov because James Joyce's story has much friendly theme and finding some symbols inside the story is very fun.