Gooseberries
By Anton Chekhov
From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead they could just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the right stretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and they knew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows, farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field as endless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like a crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calm weather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and beautiful the country was.
"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed," said Bourkin, "you were going to tell me a story."
"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."
Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his pipe before beginning his story, but just then the rain began to fall. And in about five minutes it came pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. Ivan Ivanich stopped and hesitated; the dogs, wet through, stood with their tails between their legs and looked at them mournfully.
"We ought to take shelter," said Bourkin. "Let us go to Aliokhin. It is close by."
"Very well."
They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then bore to the right, until they came to the road. Soon there appeared poplars, a garden, the red roofs of granaries; the river began to glimmer and they came to a wide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It was Sophino, where Aliokhin lived.
The mill was working, drowning the sound of the rain, and the dam shook. Round the carts stood wet horses, hanging their heads, and men were walking about with their heads covered with sacks. It was wet, muddy, and unpleasant, and the river looked cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin felt wet and uncomfortable through and through; their feet were tired with walking in the mud, and they walked past the dam to the barn in silence as though they were angry with each other.
In one of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out clouds of dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with mud and straw. His nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan Ivanich and was apparently very pleased.
"Please, gentlemen," he said, "go to the house. I'll be with you in a minute."
The house was large and two-storied. Aliokhin lived down-stairs in two vaulted rooms with little windows designed for the farm-hands; the farmhouse was plain, and the place smelled of rye bread and vodka, and leather. He rarely used the reception-rooms, only when guests arrived. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a pretty young woman that both of them stopped and exchanged glances.
"You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen," said Aliokhin, coming after them into the hall. "I never expected you. Pelagueya," he said to the maid, "give my friends a change of clothes. And I will change, too. But I must have a bath. I haven't had one since the spring. Wouldn't you like to come to the bathing-shed? And meanwhile our things will be got ready."
Pretty Pelagueya, dainty and sweet, brought towels and soap, and Aliokhin led his guests to the bathing-shed.
"Yes," he said, "it is a long time since I had a bath. My bathing-shed is all right, as you see. My father and I put it up, but somehow I have no time to bathe."
He sat down on the step and lathered his long hair and neck, and the water round him became brown.
"Yes. I see," said Ivan Ivanich heavily, looking at his head.
"It is a long time since I bathed," said Aliokhin shyly, as he soaped himself again, and the water round him became dark blue, like ink.
Ivan Ivanich came out of the shed, plunged into the water with a splash, and swam about in the rain, flapping his arms, and sending waves back, and on the waves tossed white lilies; he swam out to the middle of the pool and dived, and in a minute came up again in another place and kept on swimming and diving, trying to reach the bottom. "Ah! how delicious!" he shouted in his glee. "How delicious!" He swam to the mill, spoke to the peasants, and came back, and in the middle of the pool he lay on his back to let the rain fall on his face. Bourkin and Aliokin were already dressed and ready to go, but he kept on swimming and diving.
"Delicious," he said. "Too delicious!'
"You've had enough," shouted Bourkin.
They went to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the large drawing-room up-stairs, and Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and Aliokhin himself, washed and brushed, in a new frock coat, paced up and down evidently delighting in the warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes and slippers, and pretty Pelagueya, noiselessly tripping over the carpet and smiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam on a tray, only then did Ivan Ivanich begin his story, and it was as though he was being listened to not only by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and young ladies and the officer who looked down so staidly and tranquilly from the golden frames.
"We are two brothers," he began, "I, Ivan Ivanich, and Nicholai Ivanich, two years younger. I went in for study and became a veterinary surgeon, while Nicholai was at the Exchequer Court when he was nineteen. Our father, Tchimsha-Himalaysky, was a cantonist, but he died with an officer's rank and left us his title of nobility and a small estate. After his death the estate went to pay his debts. However, we spent our childhood there in the country. We were just like peasant's children, spent days and nights in the fields and the woods, minded the horses, barked the lime-trees, fished, and so on. . . And you know once a man has fished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village in the bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and to the day of his death he will be drawn to the country. My brother pined away in the Exchequer. Years passed and he sat in the same place, wrote out the same documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back to the country. And little by little his distress became a definite disorder, a fixed idea -- to buy a small farm somewhere by the bank of a river or a lake.
"He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathised with the desire to shut oneself up on one's own farm. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a man. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land and want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life -- it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the free spirit.
"My brother Nicholai, sitting in his office, would dream of eating his own schi, with its savoury smell floating across the farmyard; and of eating out in the open air, and of sleeping in the sun, and of sitting for hours together on a seat by the gate and gazing at the fields and the forest. Books on agriculture and the hints in almanacs were his joy, his favourite spiritual food; and he liked reading newspapers, but only the advertisements of land to be sold, so many acres of arable and grass land, with a farmhouse, river, garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he would dream of garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond, don't you know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies of his used to vary according to the advertisements he found, but somehow there was always a gooseberry-bush in every one. Not a house, not a romantic spot could he imagine without its gooseberry-bush.
"'Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good. . . and there are gooseberries.'
"He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always the same things were shown on it: (a) Farmhouse, (b) cottage, (c) vegetable garden, (d) gooseberry-bush. He used to live meagrely and never had enough to eat and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a beggar, and always saved and put his money into the bank. He was terribly stingy. It used to hurt me to see him, and I used to give him money to go away for a holiday, but he would put that away, too. Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
"Years passed; he was transferred to another province. He completed his fortieth year and was still reading advertisements in the papers and saving up his money. Then I heard he was married. Still with the same idea of buying a farmhouse with a gooseberry-bush, he married an elderly, ugly widow, not out of any feeling for her, but because she had money. With her he still lived stingily, kept her half-starved, and put the money into the bank in his own name. She had been the wife of a postmaster and was used to good living, but with her second husband she did not even have enough black bread; she pined away in her new life, and in three years or so gave up her soul to God. And my brother never for a moment thought himself to blame for her death. Money, like vodka, can play queer tricks with a man. Once in our town a merchant lay dying. Before his death he asked for some honey, and he ate all his notes and scrip with the honey so that nobody should get it. Once I was examining a herd of cattle at a station and a horse-jobber fell under the engine, and his foot was cut off. We carried him into the waiting-room, with the blood pouring down -- a terrible business -- and all the while he kept asking anxiously for his foot; he had twenty-five roubles in his boot and did not want to lose them."
"Keep to your story," said Bourkin.
"After the death of his wife," Ivan Ivanich continued, after a long pause, "my brother began to look out for an estate. Of course you may search for five years, and even then buy a pig in a poke. Through an agent my brother Nicholai raised a mortgage and bought three hundred acres with a farmhouse, a cottage, and a park, but there was no orchard, no gooseberry-bush, no duck-pond; there was a river but the water in it was coffee-coloured because the estate lay between a brick-yard and a gelatine factory. But my brother Nicholai was not worried about that; he ordered twenty gooseberry-bushes and settled down to a country life.
"Last year I paid him a visit. I thought I'd go and see how things were with him. In his letters my brother called his estate Tchimbarshov Corner, or Himalayskoe. I arrived at Himalayskoe in the afternoon. It was hot. There were ditches, fences, hedges, rows of young fir-trees, trees everywhere, and there was no telling how to cross the yard or where to put your horse. I went to the house and was met by a red-haired dog, as fat as a pig. He tried to bark but felt too lazy. Out of the kitchen came the cook, barefooted, and also as fat as a pig, and said that the master was having his afternoon rest. I went in to my brother and found him sitting on his bed with his knees covered with a blanket; he looked old, stout, flabby; his cheeks, nose, and lips were pendulous. I half expected him to grunt like a pig.
"We embraced and shed a tear of joy and also of sadness to think that we had once been young, but were now both going grey and nearing death. He dressed and took me to see his estate.
"'Well? How are you getting on?' I asked.
"'All right, thank God. I am doing very well.'
"He was no longer the poor, tired official, but a real landowner and a person of consequence. He had got used to the place and liked it, ate a great deal, took Russian baths, was growing fat, had already gone to law with the parish and the two factories, and was much offended if the peasants did not call him 'Your Lordship.' And, like a good landowner, he looked after his soul and did good works pompously, never simply. What good works? He cured the peasants of all kinds of diseases with soda and castor-oil, and on his birthday he would have a thanksgiving service held in the middle of the village, and would treat the peasants to half a bucket of vodka, which he thought the right thing to do. Ah! These horrible buckets of vodka. One day a greasy landowner will drag the peasants before the Zembro Court for trespass, and the next, if it's a holiday, he will give them a bucket of vodka, and they drink and shout Hooray! and lick his boots in their drunkenness. A change to good eating and idleness always fills a Russian with the most preposterous self-conceit. Nicholai Ivanich who, when he was in the Exchequer, was terrified to have an opinion of his own, now imagined that what he said was law. 'Education is necessary for the masses, but they are not fit for it.' 'Corporal punishment is generally harmful, but in certain cases it is useful and indispensable.'
"'I know the people and I know how to treat them,' he would say. 'The people love me. I have only to raise my finger and they will do as I wish.'
"And all this, mark you, was said with a kindly smile of wisdom. He was constantly saying: 'We noblemen,' or 'I, as a nobleman.' Apparently he had forgotten that our grandfather was a peasant and our father a common soldier. Even our family name, Tchimacha-Himalaysky, which is really an absurd one, seemed to him full-sounding, distinguished, and very pleasing.
"But my point does not concern him so much as myself. I want to tell you what a change took place in me in those few hours while I was in his house. In the evening, while we were having tea, the cook laid a plateful of gooseberries on the table. They had not been bought, but were his own gooseberries, plucked for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nicholai Ivanich laughed with joy and for a minute or two he looked in silence at the gooseberries with tears in his eyes. He could not speak for excitement, then put one into his mouth, glanced at me in triumph, like a child at last being given its favourite toy, and said:
"'How good they are!'
"He went on eating greedily, and saying all the while:
"'How good they are! Do try one!'
"It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself. In my idea of human life there is always some alloy of sadness, but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled with something like despair. And at night it grew on me. A bed was made up for me in the room near my brother's and I could hear him, unable to sleep, going again and again to the plate of gooseberries. I thought: 'After all, what a lot of contented, happy people there must be! What an overwhelming power that means! I look at this life and see the arrogance and the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood. . . . Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to the market for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talk nonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery; one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation. . . . And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him -- illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind -- and everything is all right.'
"That night I was able to understand how I, too, had been content and happy," Ivan Ivanich went on, getting up. "I, too, at meals or out hunting, used to lay down the law about living, and religion, and governing the masses. I, too, used to say that teaching is light, that education is necessary, but that for simple folk reading and writing is enough for the present. Freedom is a boon, I used to say, as essential as the air we breathe, but we must wait. Yes -- I used to say so, but now I ask: 'Why do we wait?'" Ivan Ivanich glanced angrily at Bourkin. "Why do we wait, I ask you? What considerations keep us fast? I am told that we cannot have everything at once, and that every idea is realised in time. But who says so? Where is the proof that it is so? You refer me to the natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but is there order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could jump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait? Wait, when we have no strength to live, and yet must live and are full of the desire to live!
"I left my brother early the next morning, and from that time on I found it impossible to live in town. The peace and quiet of it oppress me. I dare not look in at the windows, for nothing is more dreadful to see than the sight of a happy family, sitting round a table, having tea. I am an old man now and am no good for the struggle. I commenced late. I can only grieve within my soul, and fret and sulk. At night my head buzzes with the rush of my thoughts and I cannot sleep. . . . Ah! If I were young!"
Ivan Ivanich walked excitedly up and down the room and repeated:
"If I were young."
He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him first by one hand and then by the other.
"Pavel Koustantinich," he said in a voice of entreaty, "don't be satisfied, don't let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!"
Ivan Ivanich said this with a piteous supplicating smile, as though he were asking a personal favour.
Then they all three sat in different corners of the drawing-room and were silent. Ivan Ivanich's story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor Aliokhin. With the generals and ladies looking down from their gilt frames, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to hear the story of a miserable official who ate gooseberries. . . . Somehow they had a longing to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And the mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything -- the lamp with its coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet -- told how the very people who now looked down at them from their frames once walked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueya was near -- was much better than any story.
Aliokhin wanted very much to go to bed; he had to get up for his work very early, about two in the morning, and now his eyes were closing, but he was afraid of his guests saying something interesting without his hearing it, so he would not go. He did not trouble to think whether what Ivan Ivanich had been saying was clever or right; his guests were talking of neither groats, nor hay, nor tar, but of something which had no bearing on his life, and he liked it and wanted them to go on. . . .
"However, it's time to go to bed," said Bourkin, getting up. "I will wish you good night."
Aliokhin said good night and went down-stairs, and left his guests. Each had a large room with an old wooden bed and carved ornaments; in the corner was an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by pretty Pelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen.
Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down.
"God forgive me, a wicked sinner," he murmured, as he drew the clothes over his head.
A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table, and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.
The rain beat against the windows all night long.
Summary
Chekhov's story is about a man who had a dream. This man wanted to live in the country, and have a nice quiet peaceful life. This man made the common mistake that people have made over and over again; they set their goals and dreams so high that they are one ladder rung away from being attainable. This man worked very hard during his early years, and he saved almost all his money. He lived under extremely meager conditions so not to have to spend much money. People would view his situation and think he was having hard times, so they would give him little donations. Rather than spend this money on the new clothes or some extra food, which he really needed, he would put it away. Finally, he felt he had enough money to accomplish his dream(it lacked the gooseberry bushes he yearned for so badly). This was everything he wanted, because he planted his own bushes, but yet he still was not happy. His life was more stressful than ever before and this was supposed be his stress relieving time.
The man was so worried about money that he only hired the absolute minimum number of people he needed to help him. He had to do the rest of the work, and this is one factor that leads to his high stress problem. He was constantly worrying over his precious gooseberries, that he never really got to look around and enjoy his country living. That is not any way to release the stress that built up over all those years; doing back-breaking labor and constantly worrying about little things will not lower ones blood pressure. If this man had set a more reasonable goal, or perhaps waited until he was more ready financially, he may have been able to relax and truly revel in the fact of attaining his true dream.
The relevance of this story is not just out in the open. The man who lived with his precious gooseberries is the brother of the narrator of this story. The narrator only tells this story because he and a friend were out in the rain and the only shelter was in a place similar to that of the gooseberry man. When they see the owner of this land, he is covered in pure filth. The man even talks of not having bathed in many days, and is complaining of reeking like a pig. Living under such conditions can not be good for ones stress level; greeting your guests in dirty clothes and an even dirtier self. The man was also just coming from the fields and doing some hard laborious work. No one would want to spend their stress release time like that. This man, and his dirtiness, are a key point to the story. The reader thinks about the brothers way of life, and think that they would never allow their dreams to become that stressful. Then, this man and his filth show up and the reader realizes that he has turned out the same way. This poses a question for the reader; "if they turned out this way, and they knew what they wanted, who is to say that I cannot?" These men all thought that they were ready to relax and just watch the stress fly away like a bird. This story proves that people can get more stressed out living their dreams than working for them.
Dreams are meant to be the thoughts that get people through their mundane and almost trivial jobs. Dreams are supposed to be relaxing, fun, and stress free. Goals are what people spend their lives trying to reach, and when they are finally attained the person feels born again. They have already conquered their biggest obstacle, and felt total relief from stress. Once they reach these goals, people can start all over again, totally relaxed and ready to stir up more life. People might see this story as pointless when they look at it on the surface, but deep down it rings a bell and people know that the clock is ticking.
Summary
The sky is overcast with heavy clouds, but it does not rain. Two old men—Ivan, a vet, and Burkin, a teacher—walk across the fields. Ivan prepares to tell his friend a story and lights his pipe in preparation. At this point a storm breaks and the men run to shelter at their friend Aliokhin's estate. They find the forty year-old standing in one of his barns near a winnowing machine. Aliokhin is dirty from his work, and he invites his friends into the main house to bathe. A beautiful young girl named Pelageia brings the men towels and some soap, and all three start to wash. Ivan and Burkin are shocked when the water around Aliokhin turns brown, but Aliokhin makes the excuse that he has not washed for a long while. Unexpectedly, Ivan rushes outside and flings himself into the wide expanse of water in front of the house, flinging his arms around and asking god for mercy.
The men return to the house, and the "lovely Pelageia" serves them tea. Ivan recounts the story he had intended to tell Burkin. He explains how he and his younger brother Nikolai spent their childhood "running wild in the country" after their dead father's estate was liquidated to pay debts and legal bills. Nikolai hated his job as a government official, which he found too restrictive, and yearned to buy himself a country estate. He then became "fearfully avaricious" and married a rich widow whom he did not love in order to raise capital. Nothing deterred the young man from his ambition to buy a townhouse where he could grow gooseberries. Following the widow's death, Nikolai purchased an estate where he planted twenty gooseberry bushes. On a visit to see his brother some years later, Ivan found that Nikolai had become insufferably supercilious. The vet comments that even his fresh gooseberries tasted "sour and unripe." Ivan remembers growing steadily depressed, because he identified in his brother's smug self-satisfaction the "insolence and idleness of the strong." He recalls wishing that a man could stand with a hammer "at the door of every happy, contented man … reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people." The vet ends his tale by examining his own sense of happiness and personal fulfillment. He concludes that he used to be as complacent as any other wealthy individual, believing that all men would one day become free. Sadly, Ivan admits that he is now too "old and unfit for the struggle," and he implores Aliokhin to do something.
Despite Ivan's impassioned sermonizing, Aliokhin and Burkin remain "unsatisfied" by his tale. Aliokhin feels sleepy but delays going to bed in order to see if the conversation becomes more interesting. He is intrigued by something that the two men discuss, but it is not revealed what this is. The three men soon go to bed, where Burkin is kept awake by the smell of Ivan's pipe. The tale ends with a comment that the rain lashed against the windows all night.
Analysis
Gooseberries was written towards the end of Chekhov's life and was first published as the middle story of The Little Trilogy in 1898. We see that the author examines two of his favorite themes within this tale: social injustice and the quest for fulfillment. Ostensibly, this story deals with the hypocrisy of landowners who ignore the suffering of those less fortunate than themselves. But Chekhov also raises a subtler issue than class divides, as we see when Ivan asserts the hollowness of personal achievement. Ivan believes that successful people are blind to reality because they believe they are insulated from misfortune. Ivan thus despairs at his own happiness as he recognizes that "life will show him her claws sooner or later." By this stroke, which comes like a sting in the tail of his text, Chekhov jolts his readers out of complacent objectivity. We are forced to question whether life is something to be sailed through without the expectation of encountering problems or setbacks, or whether it provides us with an opportunity to grasp "something greater and more rational" than happiness. Chekhov takes his opportunity to answer Tolstoy's philosophical query, "How much land does a man need?", when Ivan asserts that man requires only the freedom to roam the globe, where he can "have room to display all the qualities and peculiarities of his free spirit."
Looking at Ivan's grand theorizing, we see that Chekhov raises more questions than he answers. In Gooseberries, we are encouraged to use our own intellect and imagination to understand what motivates the characters and, additionally, to guess at the meaning behind events. But this only makes the episodes and characters depicted seem more realistic—in "real life" we also have to hypothesize about what drives people's actions. The means by which Chekhov dramatizes his narrative—the devices he uses to evoke atmosphere and create characters that feel genuine—also create an impression of a place filled with real people, living real lives. The author does not force the petty frustrations of human existence into the background of his text. In fact, he highlights such foibles in order to flesh out the personalities of his characters. For instance, we read that the "oppressive smell" of "stale tobacco" emanating from Ivan's pipe prevents Burkin from falling asleep. Similarly, we are shown how the water around Aliokhin turns brown because he has not washed in a long time. Very little escapes Chekhov's attention or fails to capture his interest; the smallest detail is used to vindicate the humanity as well as the frailty of his characters. However, although Chekhov's work is rich in important (yet seemingly inconsequential) detail, he does not force us to appreciate these wonderful touches. As the critic Maurice Baring noted in Landmarks of Russian Literature, Chekhov "never underlines his effects, he never nudges the reader's elbow." It is left to us to pick up on the minutiae and appreciate the finer subtleties of his text.
Analysis of Chekhov's "Gooseberries"
By Phil Stanwick
Some people view stress and pressure as a bad thing while other people think that pressure and stress can actually be highly beneficial. Stress is seen as being bad because it does cause some health problems, and it can be socially destructive. The health problems can range anywhere from heart problems to high blood pressure, from migraine headaches to cramps and ulcers. Socially it makes a person highly irritable and not very friendly, thus causing strains in every type of relationship: family, business, and personal. On the other hand, stress and pressure can be beneficial because it drives a person to do the absolute best job they can. At the work place for instance, a person under pressure tries their hardest to get tasks accomplished because that leads to promotions, raises, and other little perks that come with moving up the success ladder. The people that climb this ladder can go on to live highly productive and enriched lives if they can deal with the malicious effects of stress and pressure. With every different person their is a different way of dealing with stress. Some people to a nice long drive to soothe their sky-rocketing pulse rate. Others enjoy certain leisure activities such as swimming, bike riding, and walking or jogging. Some people look to relieve stress by doing more stress related activities such as weight lifting, karate, and racquetball. Some other look toward nature to lower their blood pressure. Perhaps a little fishing, gardening, or bird watching is their answer. Still, other types of people want to be left alone in peace and quiet to ponder ideas. What happens when your supposed relief from stress buildup actually augments to the stress that the person already has? Anton Chekhov discussed this idea in his story titled "Gooseberries." "Gooseberries" deals with the every day stress and the plans that people make to counter them. Chekhov proves that the supposed stress-free events prove to be more trouble than they appear to be
