"The Lottery Ticket" is a short story by Anton Chekhov, first published in Russia in the year 1887. Within the story, a man named Ivan Dmitritch, who has always been "very well satisfied with his lot" of being middle class, begins dreaming about all the possibilities that would come along with winning the lottery. Dmitritch and his wife, Masha, very quickly turn from daydreams of a wonderful new life together to anticipating the worst of each other if they did win the money, and find themselves looking upon each other with hatred. When it turns out that they haven't won after all, their grand dreams have put their average reality in a new perspective, and Ivan Dmitritch now sees that he lives a life he cannot be content with.
As he and his wife procrastinate finding out whether or not they have actually won the lottery, the first thing Ivan Dmitritch thinks of is buying "real property in the shape of an estate." Essentially, one could say that Ivan Dmitritch wants to spend his leisure time on that estate being leisurely. He pictures himself being "well-fed, serene, healthy," lying about and eating delicious food in hot weather. He could sleep all day, go for walks in the hayfields and pick mushrooms in the forest, watch peasants go fishing, and take long baths followed by "tea with cream and milk rolls." Before the daydream is ended by the dreary thought of how the estate would be during winter, Ivan Dmitritch gives us this vision of a day on his estate in autumn:
At that season he would have to take longer walks about the garden and beside the river, so as to get thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big glass of vodka and eat a salted mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then—drink another. . . . The children would come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth. . . . And then, he would lie stretched full length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his waistcoat, give himself up to slumber.
Monday, August 11, 2014
How does Ivan Dmitritch wish to spend his leisure time on the estate in “The Lottery Ticket” ?
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