Summary of the lesson 'Vanka'

 

Vanka (Anton Chekhov)   Vanka- a nine year old orphan boy, was apprenticed to the shoemaker Alyakhin. It was only three months since he reached the shoemaker’s house in Moscow. The master Alyakhin, the mistress and other senior apprentices treated him cruelly. Vanka wanted his grandfather Konstantin Makarich to come and save him from the cruel master.   He decided to write a letter secretly to his grandpa explaining his miseries and requesting him to come and save him. Without going to bed on the Christmas eve, Vanka waited till the master and others had gone to church.  Then he took from the cupboard a bottle of ink, a pen with a rusty nib and a crumpled sheet of paper to write a letter. He was very much afraid and looked many times anxiously at the door and window before started to write the letter to make sure that no one was watching him. Vanka’s grandfather Konstantin Makarich was a night watchman at Zhivarev’s estate.   He was  a small, lean, old man about sixty-five years, and made company with cooks and kitchen maids.  He had two dogs named Kashtanka  and Eel. He sent Vanka to Moscow after Vanka’s mother Pelageya’s death to teach him shoemaking. But his life in Moscow at the shoemaker’s house was worse than a dog’s. He didn’t get enough food or time to sleep. Once the master beat Vanka with a stirrup-strap because by mistake he slept while he was rocking their baby. The mistress once rubbed the head of a herring on his face. The other apprentices made fun of him, sent him to tavern to buy vodka and forced him to steal the master’s cucumber.   Moscow was a big town, Vanka saw children selling fishing hooks there, shops selling all sorts of guns and butcheries selling meat of hunted birds and animals. While writing Vanka thought about cutting and decorating the Christmas tree and other celebrations in his village. He remembered the happy days when he was with his mother and his favourite Olga Ignatyevna, who taught him to read, write, count to a hundred and to dance the quadrille.   Vanka begged his grandpa to come and save him from the miseries; he offered to help him and pray for him. He finished writing the letter and wrote the address ‘To Konstantin Makarich’ ‘Grandfather in the Village’ and dropped it in the letter box. He slept in the rosy hopes of his grandpa coming and taking him back home to the village. He dreamed of his grandpa reading the letter to the cooks, sitting on a stove-ledge.