Gurov, towards the end of the story, has changed from the beginning:
"He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjuction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth-- such, for instance, as his workin the bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with is wife at anniversary festivities-- all that was open." (pg. 5 of the handout)
In 1-2 paragraphs, respond to the follow questions:
Why has Gurov undergone this change and ultimately what does it mean for him? What does the ending mean, for him and Anna S?
Choose 1-2 quotes to incorporate into your response.
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Gurov underwent all these changes in his life and personality because his eyes werent opened to the true feeling of love. Unlike the relationship he holds with his wife, Gurov and Anna are bonded by something stronger. This realization led Gurov to do a complete 180 turn in his life. It all means that he has now changed in a way that will never allow him to return to his old self. Now that he knows he is capable of loving he cant undo the that knowledge attained. He will never be able to be happy in his old ways because he is aware of something so much better. The difficulties that separate the protagonists are many and the struggle will be tough to break free from those barriers. But both sides love each other enough that they hope one day that will be joined forever. So maybe the future holds possibilities for the two.
Gurov was one of those men that live a seemingly happy life, full of stability and harmony but what one usually does not expect is the lack of any passion, be it may for life, his wife or his job. He even realizes towards the end that everyone has one of these "secret lives" which compose the only "kernels" of their lives that revolve around happiness. His happened to be Anna. She was, like Michelle said, the one who showed him what he was missing out on. Just like innocence, once you take it away you cannot return to the same mindset you had before. After the events of Anna and her departure, Gurov starts to notice how "senseless nights, was uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for playing cards, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of your time, the better part of your strength, and in the end you are left with a life earthbound and curtailed, just rubbish, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though you were in a madhouse or penal servitude."
He lost all comfort he had in his seemingly happy, banal life. He wanted to have the thrill and joy he felt when he was with Anna. The ending just proves that people will do anything in their power to either preserve the feeling or try to forget so as to not live a miserable life, the latter choice belonging to pessimists who do not want to pursue what life has to offer. Gurov and Anna tried both approaches. When the first attempt to try and return to their "happy" lives by ignoring the existence of something better failed, they turned to the active approach of ensnaring the warmth of each other's presence for as long as possible.
Gurov lived a life which appeared to be full of joy and happiness. He was the kind of man who seemed to have it all, but in reality had nothing. His life was basically a sequence of routin-like events and some occassional moments of "entertainment". When Gurov met Anna S, he experienced a kind of permanent happiness he had never felt before. He understood that he was, in fact, capable of loving so he decided to seek this true happiness along Anna S.
Gurov realized that leading that prosaic life would never make him truly happy. Both Anna and Gurov feel so strongly about one another that thye changed their pessimis attitudes towards life, as this quote states:"They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, tehy forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both." The simple fact of being together influenced their outlook on life, and they acknowledge that returning to their old lives would make them extremely disconteted.
Gurov actually experienced changed with his "mistress" Anna. He learns that love is real and simply that women are equal as much as men just with the proof of Anna's existence. He started the story a typical man with rigid beliefs and mysogynistic ways ("...almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race"). The end is a revamped Gurov, one vulnerable and open enough to ruin everything for the one he loves. It's even stated that for Gurov to acknolwedge and appreciate the change, it is a process of time, maturity, and obstacles("And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love...").
The ending of the story concludes his personal change and starts with a new battle, him vs. humans (family, friends, social norm, etc.) because of the fact that he wants to make his love with Anna a real, non-secret love.
I don't understand how this is a realist story?
I feel like the ending is a little more ominous. Look at the last few lines:
"And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning." (pg. 5)
To me, the feel of the final lines of the story are more futile-- Anna and Gurov are trying to think of some way to be together ("How? How? How?" as he says) but they can't. The last lines, instead of giving us hope about relationship, warn us about the difficult time they will inevitably have. I found myself doubting that things would work out for various reasons: because of the way Gurov is and has been with the "lower race"; and because of Anna's self-hatred due to her involvement in the affair.
I guess that's what I meant by realism. What did everyone else think? Edgard's group must have agreed with me because their video doesn't end happily.
The main cause for Gurov’s change is Anna since in her he finds an escape to his life. A way to get away of the monotony of his existence in which he is unable to find happiness since he is stuck in a marriage that lacks love and passion, and leads a life in which every day repeats itself getting no more interesting or by any means “more enjoyable” than the last. But when he met Anna, he came to experience true love once again, a sense of happiness and so started this new life he kept in secret. The ending.. I believe.. is just the beginning of a whole new chapter in their lives.. a chapter that they would begin together and in which they would no longer hide their love!
Entering this new chapter along with experiencing new feelings of love change his life completely. It might be almost impossible for him to go back to his normal life with his wife. Those ending lines reassure us that he is completely willing to start a new life confronting the consequences and know that he experience this he is not going back to his past. He felt used to his wife and now he feels like he have found the true meaning of love. Even if he tries it can be almost impossible for him to keep with his old life now he feels this is the only way he will be happy trying to make a new life with someone that he actually truly loves.
Gurov at the beginning of the story talks bad about women, he refers to them as the "lower race", but he also assured he felt a lot more comfortable when surrounded by women. He didn't know what "love" meant before because he was only used to being with women, but not actually "loving" them. When he met Anna S, he understood and experienced for the first time what did true love really mean. To him it means a drastic change in his life because he know has experienced what it feels like to really love someone and once you know what that feels like, you cant go back to what you were before. They cant be together without hiding themselves for obvious reasons and in the ending we can see how there is so much of that relationship ahead and that someday they will be able to be happy together freely. "He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna?"
i believe he changes because he relaizes that the life he was having was actually a fake and superficial life. he was living pretending to be happy and to be someone he really wasn't. when he discovered what he really liked and what gave hm the happiness he was looking for he decided to change. this is normal in every human being. the fact that he searches for this girl so much means that he has found in her something no one else could offer her.
the ending means that it is not going to be easy to be able to be happy together because of the different paths each one of them has but that they have to fight for it. no good things come easily in life and i believe this is like a message that the story leaves us.
In my opinion, the change that Dmitris’s life undergoes once he meets Anna S is because he is not happy at all with his actual marriage and he is struggling to find someone that can make him happy and once he sees Anna he feels he can actually forget all the bad things and live the affair with her. I think that for him it means that he has found a happiness he had not been able to find next to his wife, maybe the love he was missing from his wife he could find it in Anna. Anna. She feels happy and good to be next to Dmitri, but at the same time she feels she is a bad person who cheats on her husband, she continues regretting every second what her wishes make her do. We can see a perfect example with this quote. "God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's awful."
The ending seems to be in a way a good one for both because they are together, but both of them have their own sufferings each one needs to overcome. "Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's enough. . . . Let us talk now, let us think of some plan." Here we can see Anna was happy next to Dmitri but she would also suffer from the lie she was living, from the lie his life became. On the other hand, Dmitri is happy and fulfilled, he has actually found real love for the first time.
Guroc is tired of his life and he goes through a big change in his life because he believe he cant have this life anymore. I personally think that if Anna had appear before when he wasnt marry he wouldnt have like it, he just likes ana because he is unhappy and is looking for a way out and Anna has something that caught his attention that is different from the rest but yet that doesnt make her special.
I think that at the end, Gurov is going to get tired of Anna, the same that happened to him with his wife, he doesnt know what he is looking for, and Anna is just her mistress, eventually he is going to take her out of the picture. it is not really love what he is feeling for Anna is a projection of oppressed feeling that he wants himself to be capable of feeling.
Gurov was not happy with his "false" life, but it was until he lived what he did with Anna that he realized he needed and wanted more. To be in a relationship with Anna would mean to have a chance for happiness that of which they both longed for. "and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them" The ending doesnt necesarily mean they will end up seeing each other in secrecy for the rest of their lives, it just shows that they would try to take advantage of their time together and figure out how to be together. They do realize after everything that they are "as though they were a pair of birds of passsage, caught and forced to live in diff. cages."
Gurov undergoes such change due to love. Love, in his perspective, used to be confused with passion and taking the risk of having affairs outside his marriage. In his life, he had been with many women, whom he addressed as the "lower race" and to him, every woman was no different. However, this lady with the dog is different, because he finds love with her rather than a short romance. He finds out she is that important to him when they are separated, and experiences for the first time love. Since his feelings for her are too strong, he finally decides to live for their love and leave everything behind. This love becomes his meaning of life. The ending is being realist in the sense that people like Gurov and Anne actually exist, people who live fake lives and the thing they cherished most in life has to be lived in secrecy in order to keep a balance in their lives and to make it just more interesting to live. For Gurov, he had seen him true person, a guy who's getting old, hates his life, and wishes to live the impossible. To Anne, she's a woman, and she can't bear running off from her marriage and living with it, due to how women were displayed in society, and the fact she wished it so bad, but could not have it is the reason to why she acts as she does at the end.
Gurov underwent this transformation simply because he had finally found meaning to his life. After meeting Anna, he experiences love, as he can respect this "lower race" once again. For him to finally come to this conclusion signals that he will have to struggle with all the past conceptions of him, and he will have to struggle to change his image, and finally, he will have to struggle directly with society, like Basia pointed out, since he is doing something that is not acceptable at all. Even so, the ending means but one thing: Hope. Gurov is able to feel change, and that leads to him feeling hopeful that the future, even if he has to fight his way, will be a bright one when it finally comes, sitting beside his Anna.
I Dont think gurov went any type of change, he was freed and encaged ast the same time. He is still was the same person. Ithink he was freed because he finally found love, something that he did not have in his life before, and even though it was forviden love it was the true thing. The other thing thing he was encaged. Because he found love to late he is now living a double life, a double life in which he pretends to be happily married but truly is inprisioned by this mirrage of happines because it does not enable him to be with his true love, that and the fact that anna is also married. Gurov wasnt the one that changed, the circumstances around him did, focing him to live a double mask life.
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