The Student, By Anton Chekhov (1894) - Epiphany and the Hero’s Journey

The Student, By Anton Chekhov (1894)

Rating: 7/10



I want to focus on the epiphany of Ivan through the story. I have first learned what epiphany is from the short story “Araby” by James Joyce. In Araby, the boy realizes his limit due to poverty at the bazaar and his eyes burn with anguish and anger after realizing it. The epiphany of The Student is similar to it in the aspect that they both have a clear event which is the cause of the epiphany. However, they are different in the aspect of the protagonist’s emotions. In Araby, the boy was full of love but realizes the cold reality(which means that his emotion was positive but became negative), but in The Student, Ivan’s epiphany about the past’s link to the present makes his emotion positively.


We can also find the stages of the hero’s journey in The Student. About the fourth stage, which is meeting with the mentor, I thought that the mentor of Ivan is two widows. The widow’s reactions have caused Ivan to change his view of the past and present, which means that they did the role of mentor in the hero’s journey of Ivan. (190 words)




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