In the short story “A Lady with a Dog” by Anton Chekhov, the protagonist Dmitri Gurov takes an interest in the new vacationer in Yalta, Anna Sergeyevna. At first Gurov is only interested in Anna for his own sexual pleasures but as the story progresses the reader notices that he is actually falling for Anna. Anna becomes the perfect target for him to escape his loveless marriage and enter a new romance. The reader soon finds out that Anna is also in a loveless marriage. When Gurov goes to Anna’s hometown to express how he feels, he sees a “long grey fence adorned with nails” (3) surrounding her house. The fence was a symbol of how confined Anna was by her marriage. The fence lets the reader know that there was no escaping her marriage. The climax of this story would be when Gurov falls in love with Anna and decides to go visit her to confess his love to her. They eventually make arrangements to meet up together to continue their romance. The conflict in this story is internal because Gurov had been confined to a loveless marriage for years and looks outside of his marriage for comfort. He is a direct character because the reader always knows how he is feeling. Whether he is bored, sad, enticed, or happy. Gurov is also dynamic character because at first he just wants Anna for his own sexual pleasures. He never truly cares to understand the person she truly is but then he slowly starts falling for her. His feelings for her went from lust to love. And Anna is a FOIL character because when Gurov first meets her all he wants is to have his way with her but the experience these characters had with each other changed how Gurov felt about Anna and opened his eyes up to reality.
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