'Write as much as you can!' Chekhov once advised a fellow author, 'Write, write, write, until your fingers break.' Although he died of TB when he was still only in his early forties, Chekhov left behind a large body of work. Plays like The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard made him the leading Russian dramatist of his day but he was, for many years, best known for his short stories, of which he wrote hundreds. In the finest of these, Chekhov presents, with sympathetic detachment, a portrait gallery of ordinary people, with all their everyday loves, losses and dreams of a better life. In 'The Lady with the Dog', a chance meeting on the seafront leads to a short affair and to an older man's realization that he is genuinely in love for the first time in his life. 'On Official Business' shows a young magistrate arriving in a remote village to conduct the inquest into a suicide and reflecting on the frustrations and drudgery of his own life. Chekhov can be more direct in his descriptions of human suffering. In 'Ward No. 6', for example, a savagely ironic tale of role reversals, Dr Rabin, a psychiatrist at a squalid provincial lunatic asylum, is drawn into an ambivalent friendship with one of the inmates. Rabin's own mental health comes under scrutiny and eventually he is tricked into becoming an inmate of his own asylum. However, the typical Chekhov story is restrained and undemonstrative, quietly opening a window on ordinary life and showing, with great subtlety and sophistication, the motives and feelings of his characters, often hidden from themselves as much as they are from other people. Chekhov's influence on the short story in the century since his death has been enormous, and writers as different as the American dirty realist Raymond Carver and the English author V.S. Pritchett acknowledged their debt to him.

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on Book Reports at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to Book Reports and other relevant topics.