Vanka

The turn-of-the-century Russian playwright, fiction writer, and Pushkin-Prize winner Anton Chekhov, widely considered one of the greatest writers of short fiction in history, wrote the short story “Vanka” in 1886. It was originally published in Peterburgskaya Gazeta on Christmas day in 1887 and was reprinted with minor revisions until 1901. Told through the perspective of orphaned nine-year-old Vanka and replete with symbolism, this brief read explores the tremendous power of hope in the midst of the darkest circumstances.

While his master and mistress are away, the story’s title character Vanka (a diminutive for Ivan) kneels down under the cloak of darkness on Christmas Eve night to pen a letter to his grandfather Konstantin Makarych who lives in a nearby village and works as a night watchman for a large estate. He uses the letter as an opportunity to recount the ills he faces while living with and working as an apprentice to Aliakhin, an apparently brutal shoemaker in Moscow. Constant beatings, malnourishment, and verbal abuse fill Vanka’s days, and he begs his grandfather to come to his rescue.

At some point in the recent past, Vanka’s mother, Pelageya, died, and for reasons never explored Vanka was not able to stay under his grandfather’s care at the village and ends up under the tutelage of Aliakhin. However, Vanka’s memories of his early life are filled with great affection toward his grandfather. He even remembers his grandfather’s dogs, Eel and Kashtanka, and expresses a longing to see them as well.



As he writes, Vanka cyclically recounts his fondness of his life in the village against his complete disgust with his life in Moscow. He remembers his grandfather’s laugh, his use of powdered snuff, and various occasions of great joy, especially his and his grandfather’s Christmas tradition of harvesting a Christmas tree, which Vanka and one of the servants named Olga would decorate. But in the next breath, he returns to the abuse he faces and particularly details at multiple points in the story how his master and mistress expect him to care for their baby whenever he or she cries at night, depriving Vanka of sleep and causing him to loathe the child. Eventually Vanka laments that if his circumstances don’t change soon, he might die.

Throughout the process of writing, Vanka on multiple occasions stops and sighs, the sigh once bubbling up into a sob following a description of his complete and utter desperation that his grandfather rescue him from his troubling circumstance.

After concluding the letter, Vanka folds it twice, places it in an envelope, and addresses it innocently: “to grandfather in the village.” After giving the address some more thought, he adds his grandfather’s name, Konstantin Makarych, to the address. Vanka recalls a conversation he had had with the butcher the day before about how letters must be dropped in a post-box and would then be delivered “all around the world.” Vanka eagerly runs to the nearest post-box, drops in the letter, and runs back to his master’s home before the family returns from the Christmas Eve service at a nearby church.



Within the hour, Vanka has fallen into a peaceful sleep. The story concludes with the boy dreaming about his grandfather sitting atop the stove at the estate, surrounded by the cooks and dogs from his memory, and reading the letter.

As is characteristic to Chekhovian fiction, “Vanka” is filled with symbolism. Having the story set on Christmas Eve helps to drive home the protagonist’s sense of hope. The boy’s letter itself can be viewed as the vehicle upon which Vanka’s hope relies, and even though the reader is privileged to see the futility in the letter’s delivery (it has neither a stamp nor a real address), Vanka finds himself overcome with the satisfaction of his faithful hope that his grandfather will come to his rescue.

The reader is also offered a privileged view of Vanka’s grandfather, who, despite Vanka’s fondness of him, is never cast in any real ethical or moral light but seems to wax outlandish and perhaps irresponsible. Readers may be left wondering why he never adopted Vanka in the first place, which creates even more of a sense of suspicion toward him. In fact, Chekhov includes the detail that Vanka, following his mother’s death, is initially transferred to work in the kitchen in order to be near his grandfather, but is then sent to the shoemaker in Moscow.



But Vanka isn’t aware of such nuances because of the spellbinding nostalgia he feels toward his pre-orphan life. Regardless of whether or not life with his grandfather would constitute an improvement from his current life, Vanka faithfully hopes such will be true, and if nothing else it at least allows Vanka to rest easy and happily on Christmas Eve night. Such is Chekhov’s resounding message in this piece of short fiction: blind, futile hope is still hope.