“Three Sisters” by Anton Chekov

The Extraordinarily Mundane.

Chekov. A name that fills English majors with equal measures of dread and excitement. Chekov is a behemoth of dramatic literature, right up there with Ibsen and Beckett. Chekov’s most popular work is by far “The Cherry Orchard,” but the work of Chekov that is most near and dear to my heart is “Three Sisters.”

“Three Sisters” is the first work by Chekov that I’ve ever read, and I’ll admit it; my first time through, I was bored. The action of the characters felt stilted and halting, the dialogue overlapped and interrupted in ways that made no sense, and nothing really HAPPENED in the play.

At least, that’s what I thought my first time through.

Chekov is clearly a brilliant man, well-loved by all fans of dramatic literature, so I wondered: what am I missing? Am I missing the Chekov-gene? Am I missing some great symbol that explains the entire work? I needed answers, so I dove back into the text for a second time, and I ended up doing some research along the way.

In “Chekov’s Three Sisters: A Proto-Poststructuralist Experiment” by Sarah Wyman, the first line of the article reads, “In Anton Chekov’s ‘Three Sisters’, the domestic scene may appear estranged, both static and understated, but it becomes increasingly familiar the longer one looks.” Wyman was absolutely right. My second time through “Three Sisters,” I began to see the play the way it was meant to be seen.

In modern media, we have become used to constant action, perfectly timed and witty dialogue, and world-shattering events that can only fall under the fantasy and sci-fi umbrellas. “Three Sisters,” however, is work grounded in kitchen sink realism; it’s so much like reality, we have a hard time reconciling it as a form of entertainment. In real life, people often stand apart, zone out, talk over one another, monologue without realizing, and events that seem small to others can take on enormous gravity to those in the thick of it. This is the world that Chekov has made. As readers or an audience, we are not necessarily supposed to like Olga, Masha, and Irina, but we are meant to root for them because we can see ourselves in them.

So what do these titular three sisters want out of life? It’s fairly simple– they want to live it. They all have dreams, dreams of having successful careers, falling in love, and returning home to Moscow. However, by the end of a play that takes place roughly over four years, the sisters are right back where they started, only with harder hearts. What is it the sisters have to hold onto in the end? Ibsen called it “the life-lie.”

I think I’d prefer to call it hope.

Italo Calvino came up with the idea of lightness, and in her book “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write,” playwright Sarah Ruhl describes lightness as, “a philosophical choice to temper reality with strangeness, to temper intellect with emotion, and to temper emotion with humor.” Lightness is a victory over heaviness, in that way. Chekov’s play could be read as an extremely heavy work. Olga realizes she has missed her window to fall in love and marry, Masha falls for a man who isn’t her husband whom she must inevitably lose, and Irina’s fiancé dies in the final pages of the play. An audience could leave the theater or a reader could shut the book and think, “My god, how depressing!”

But that is not Chekov’s point.

Olga says, in one of the last lines of play, “Oh, dear sisters, this life of ours is not over yet.” That, in the end, is Chekov’s message. Everyday life can sometimes be crippling, and we are often left at a fork in the road, wondering how we can even begin to lift our feet and take another step. But we live, regardless. Whether for ourselves, for others, or for those yet to come, we do live. Chekov’s “Three Sisters” is a play about the beauty and power to be found in reality, and about the lightness of life– through humor, grace, and hope, I’d say we can do just about anything.

“Watchmen” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Heroes of a Different Breed.

As a longtime fan of superhero stories, the name “Watchmen” had long floated in my head without any idea of who it referred to. I only decided to pick up the comic in earnest after an interaction with one of my best friends.

Abigail is an enigmatic soul with a house full of plants and animals. We were in the process of making sunflower-butter sandwiches (yes, really, and I think it tastes better than peanut butter) when I noticed she had gotten a new fish.

I asked what his name was, and she replied, “Rorschach.”

I replied, “Like the ink-blot test?”

“Yes and no,” she answered. “I actually named him after the ‘Watchmen’ character.”

She then proceeded to tell me about a world where a “hero” can attempt rape and still be looked at favorably by many, the line between good and bad is entirely skewed, and a kingdom of glass can be built on a faraway planet. I was hooked, and she handed me her “Watchmen” comic only moments later.

I have a degree of familiarity with comics, but not enough to say I’m an avid comic reader. I’m guilty of speeding through comics to understand only the main action, paying more attention to the graphics as opposed to the million tiny bubbles of text. But I wanted to be able to dedicate myself to this comic, so around nine in the morning, when I had downtime at work– I started to read. I finished the book in two days.

The world built by Moore and Gibbons is complex, spanning generations of heroes and villains. Readers get to see a golden age of heroism, watch as that age dies off, and bear witness to a new, present world that seems to be in desperate need of heroes yet again. The art is stunning, especially on Jon’s planet that he sculpts as his own world. The art can also be particularly gruesome, making me wrinkle up my nose as I watch a bruise on a character’s cheek fade from black, to blue, to sickly green. Pain-staking details can be found in every panel.

The characters, however, are what really invested me in this story, and I feel that’s the most important thing literature can do. If a story has a brilliant world and an exciting plot, that’s great; but what does it matter if there aren’t characters for you to care about?

Edward “Eddie” Blake (The Comedian) is instantly dislikeable, especially due to his heinous actions against women throughout the story, but he also has a perspective of the world that many can sympathize with. Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl) is the clean cut “good guy” with a bit of a middle-aged belly on him; but boy, is it exciting when he dons his superhero mantle again. Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) is a surprising but understandable villain, not dissimilar from the recently popular Thanos from Marvel comics and cinema. Laurel “Laurie” Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre) is a beautiful and vivacious female character with a zest for life and love, and while Jonathan “Jon” Osterman (Doctor Manhattan) has become almost entirely alien, he has moments where all of the sudden, he seems the most human.

But the stand-out character of the entire story is Walter Kovacs, or as he is truly known, Rorschach. Rorschach serves as a grimy guide to the world of “Watchmen.” Readers spend much of the story in his head and his journal, trying to understand the world through his mask-covered eyes. He is clearly human but also completely alien. He is off-putting, at times even repulsive, but he is also the most justice-driven character in the story. He doesn’t just believe that good should be done, he believes that good MUST be done. No crime, even minor drug possession, should go unpunished. He takes his discipline of crimes to the extreme, but all for what he sees as the greater good; and once the audience is given sight into his past, Rorschach becomes a hero you ache for. Can only the broken truly feel the need for good in the world? It’s a scary question, but one that the story makes you ponder.

The “anti-hero” angle has become more and more popular in storytelling. People are beginning to be drawn to the heroes who toe the line, living in the grey area between “hero” and “villain.” Characters such as Jason Todd (DC Comics), Roland Deschain (The Dark Tower series), and Satan (Paradise Lost) are characters you hate to love and love to hate. How do you condone a murderer who kills murderers? How do you accept a man who is willing to kill a child in order to fulfill his destiny? How can you sympathize with Lucifer himself?

The answer seems to be: quite easily.

“Watchmen” is a beautiful story with fascinating layers, from the stories of the heroes and villains themselves, to the everyday lives that circle around a newspaper stand. The art is gorgeously gory, the plot builds without ever losing traction, and the characters are wonderfully flawed. My friend Adrian said that “Watchmen” is “a great piece of American literature.” At the time, I had to do a double-take at his face to make sure he wasn’t joking. Now, however, I can say that I agree with him. “Watchmen” is innovation in the realm of not only comics but storytelling, and it is a work of literature that will confuse, sicken, and inspire generations of readers to come.