Analysis Of Joyce Carol Oates The Lady With The Pet Dog

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“The Lady with the Pet Dog” is a novella written by Joyce Carol Oates in 1972. It is based on Anton Chekhov’s short story of the same title. In addition to moving the plot from late nineteenth century Russia to 1970’s United States, two different interpretations change the meaning of the story. Chekhov’s novella arranges the same basic plot elements in chronological order and his novella is about a man who hates women and who finds his true love for the first time but Oates’ novella does not have typical chronological structure, it is divided in three parts. It shares name with Chekov’s novella and both stories have the same theme – unhappily married people and they behavior. However Oates’ story is written in some kind of a modern way, even though it was written over forty years ago and was influenced by Chekov’s story.
The beginning of this story is very confusing because you find yourself in middle of the story, not understanding anything or knowing anything about the characters so it is very mysterious. Because it is a third person narrative story we can see what Anna feels and her point of viewing of all the things but we are not able to see her husband’s feelings or her lovers feelings. It would be much more interesting to see what they all feel but maybe than the story would not have entirely same meaning. The narrator manages to intrigue us and let us guessing what will happen next. In the first part the encounter between Anna and her lover passes unnoticed by everyone else but the interesting thing is that she seems like she had imagined him. Her husband noticed that she did not feel well and he decided to take her home where they made love clumsily as a sign of their failed marriage. Later on Anna reveals her confused and conflicted

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