Dissecting ‘Oysters’ by Anton Chekhov

Little silly

You can’t talk about short stories without talking about Anton Chekhov. He is revered as one of the great masters of the form.

Raymond Carver (who we’ll get to also), said it better than I could ever say:

‘Chekhov's stories are as wonderful (and necessary) now as when they first appeared. It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.’

I could’ve chosen any number of tales to dive into, but I’ve gone with Oysters as I believe it shows Chekhov at his best.

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Here at Short Story Club, we read the very best short stories from the past, and the ones from the present that deserve more kudos. I’ll provide links to all stories for free, and then we get together to analyse what made them so effective (from a reader and writer point of view).

A journey through the tale

One of the things I like to do when dissecting a tale, is to read it very slowly, stopping to pause at each section to evaluate where the story is taking me. It’s a good way to reflect on things, and is also a good way to take stock of where we think the story is going, as the mind naturally likes to race ahead.

So, we open up the tale with an introduction of a son standing on the streets of Moscow, being overcome by a strange illness. He is severely weakened to the point of fainting away. As readers, we naturally want to know what has happened to this boy/man (we don’t know his young age till later).

The next two paragraphs really bring Chekhov’s power to light. This boy adores his father so much and loves him the more warmly the more ragged and dirty his summer coat became. We are made to feel for the father here. This is the first day where they’ve had to beg on the streets for food. They are in a truly desperate situation.

Chris Power, writing for The Guardian, wrote of Chekhov, ‘there is perhaps no other body of work in which the border between reading an opening line and becoming immersed is so slight.’

This is on full show here (and is something of a running theme in any of the stories we’ve covered so far). There is no room for fluff in a short story. The best writers place the reader into a clear, meaningful situation straight off the bat. Dilly-dally too long and you’ve lost them.

The rumble of the carriages began to seem like thunder, in the stench of the street I distinguished a thousand smells.

So, we’re on the street, outside a restaurant with an eight-year-old who is suffering from sensory overload due to his weakened condition. Everything is too bright, too noisy. He’s really suffering and we know he needs fed, quick.

And in his addled condition, he focuses on a sign he can’t quite make out from the inside of the restaurant. Eventually, he comes to read the word oysters and asks his dad ‘what does oysters mean?’

We get a picture of a very anxious father who is scoping the crowd, trying to screw up the courage to beg for food or money, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. When he does stand and go to someone, he chickens out halfway through, apologising to the stranger and returning to his son.

When the son asks about oysters again, he tells him shortly that an oyster is an animal that lives in the sea.

Not a very clear description. Already, we feel the shame dripping off this man. Does he also not know what an oyster is?

The boy drifts off into his imagination, picturing some weird creature midway between a fish and a crab. He daydreams about it, going further and further into his thoughts of what they would do with an oyster. Make soup? What sauce would they put on it? What would they serve it with?

I vividly imagined it being brought from the market, quickly cleaned, quickly put in the pot, quickly, quickly, for everyone was hungry... awfully hungry!

Here is another example of Chekhov’s excellence. A lesser writer would have the character themselves simply say that the character is hungry, ever so hungry, and be tempted into overwriting the whole thing. But here, the boy imagines that the oysters (whatever the hell they are) need to be delivered quickly, quickly, because everyone is so very hungry. This serves well as a reflection of his own turmoil, but he doesn’t seem to know himself why he is feeling the way he is.

As he imagines deeper, as the smells of the restaurant wash over him, he begins to chew. He imagines this marine animal in his mouth. More questions are asked, and the father gives more confusing answers, saying oysters are in shells like tortoises, but... in two halves.

The boy says this is nasty and his delicious fantasy of tucking into something tasty vanishes. He starts imagining a frog-like monstrosity.

The grown-ups would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its eyes, its teeth, its legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips....

And yet, although his mind is turning over with disgust at this vile thing that he imagines grown-ups horridly tucking into, his mouth still chews. He is ravenous and imagines eating all of his imaginary plate, and knows that nothing but eating would take away my illness. His imaginary eating spree even includes the tablecloth, the plate, his father’s goloshes, everything.

This is where he loses himself. He must have oysters, and he must have oysters now. He cries out, Give me some oysters and his dad joins in the begging.

We feel the fever of the two of them at this point. The hunger is unbearable. The father’s anguish at not being able to provide is equally unbearable. We want them fed. We want them to be okay.

They both beg and two gentlemen in top hats (an accessory of upper class if there ever was one) answer their pleas, although we feel them sneering and finding the whole thing amusing from the start. Are they going to help, or laugh them away?

The boy is dragged into the restaurant. A plate of oysters is placed in front of him. The dining room seems to fall silent as they watch what will happen.

‘Little silly, do you suppose you can eat that?’

He eats. He keeps his eyes closed and he eats. He doesn’t want to face the imaginary disgusting creature he’s built in his mind. He crunches something hard, and the gentlemen laugh at the fact he’s eating the shells.

We get no more of the restaurant. We are back in their home where the boy is suffering a terrible thirst and his dad is beating himself up about not asking the gentlemen for money. He watched as his son tucked into oysters and got laughed at, and is only now realising that he should’ve begged for money instead.

And then the boy falls asleep to dreams of his oyster-frog creature, wakes up, and his dad is still pacing around muttering to himself.

Will it be better tomorrow? This is what I find myself asking at the end of the tale.

How to make us feel sorry for someone

I’m not sure who I feel more sorry for in this tale – the starving boy or the father who can’t catch a break.

Chekhov is well known for not giving us a clear person to root for in his stories. The human condition is what it is, he says. He is merely presenting it to us for us to make up our own minds. He is the gold standard in ‘show don’t tell’. We are left to make our own judgements.

None of the characters have any ‘woe is me’ moments. In fact, there’s a lot of love in the story, and the son continues to adore his dad, even though we feel his dad doesn’t think highly of himself (his pacing at the end of the story still gets me every time).

The formula here (if I may be so clinical about it) is to find a heart-breaking situation and simply reveal it to your reader for them to make up their own mind. The story’s power will lie in the reflecting you make a reader do.

It’s a story about class

Above all, this tale is talking about class. Here we have a boy and his dad, purely trying to survive, only to be mocked by those who can afford to dine at the restaurant.

This poor boy doesn’t even know what oysters are. Coming from a working-class family, I can tell you I didn’t see an oyster until I was in my thirties. These are things that are taken for granted by those who simply can’t understand what it’s like to be poor.

Will this family be okay? What are we to take from the story? Don’t eat oysters so quickly or it’ll make you ill?

For me, I have hope for the father. I want him to toughen up and do what needs to be done. And he’ll get there, I hope. With help from his adoring son, they’ll make it if they push through. They’ve taken the big step in begging for the first time. Maybe they’ll catch a break, maybe they won’t. Obviously, we don’t know, but the resonance of this tale lies in the fact that we think about what could happen next for them.

So, what did you think of the tale? Did it make you want to eat oysters? Let me know in the comments below. And feel free to disagree with me or point out anything that I might have missed.