THE DUEL

The Duel
"So it is in life . . . In the search for truth man makes two steps forward and one step back." Chekhov explains at  the end of The Duel what the theme of the story is. After more than one hundred and seventy pages of twists and turns -- I was sort of wondering what was going on and I thank Chekhov for clarifying his intentions.

I must confess that although the story is rich with crisp dialogue and interesting characters and some excellent descriptive writing -- I felt it was too long and something just wasn't working for me. Maybe the characters -- especially the lead character Laevsky -- a man who has escaped to the Caucasus with a married woman and who throughout the story is utterly miserable and tortured was a bit too much and I didn't really understand him -- was he Hamlet-like (as Chekhov alludes) unable to make a decision? or just weak?  confused? all of the above? -- and the married woman Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was also very remote --Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is alluded to -- but since the focus of the story is more Laevsky than Nadyezhda Fyodorovna -- we never get very deep with her -- which is too bad because I wanted to know more about her.  Frankly, the story seemed overly stuffed with a lot of discussion about politics -- Nietzche Superman philosophy --life in the Caucasus as opposed to life in Petersburg -- and plenty of outright melodrama. Coming towards the end of  the story -- the duel itself also seemed relatively anti-climatic. 

All in all, I felt as the reader somewhat disconnected in this story and I wonder -- is it me? Should I read it again? Perhaps one day -- but with so many other stories to read I will march forward.