Title: The Dependents
Date Read: 23rd November 2010
Briefly: Old, grumpy, poor and lonely, Mihail Petrovitch Zotov has taken to blaming the only two companions close to him – a ‘big, mangy, decrepit-looking, white yard-dog’ called Lyska, and an equally decrepit looking horse. In the hope of finding some comfort elsewhere – in what is a day that has been prophesied to be a bad one – Zotov heads off to see his shopkeeper friend, Mark Ivanitch.
Afterthoughts: This is a sad, glum and unhappy story but it’s one which shows clearly, in all of its greyness, one of the key literary talents that the great Russian writer is renowned for. Chekhov has this incredible ability to inject a sense of profound melancholy into his reader, and this story demonstrates this superbly. From the opening sentence which hints at the gloom ahead, to the story’s teary close (quite literally), this is a story definitely not to be read when one is feeling a little down in the dumps.
Notable Quote: “I am not obliged to feed you, you loafers! I am not some millionaire for you to eat me out of house and home! I have nothing to eat myself, you cursed carcases, the cholera take you! I get no pleasure or profit out of you; nothing but trouble and ruin, Why don’t you give up the ghost? Are you such personages that even death won’t take you? You can live, damn you! but I don’t want to feed you! I have had enough of you! I don’t want to!
Rating: 
*Story read as part of my Checkin’ Off The Chekhov Shorts reading challenge.
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