Short Fiction

Week Nine
Short Story Assignment

What is the symbolic significance of the wheel?

The symbolic significance of the wheel is of the man in having control over the wheel, thus, he has control over his own life and his own death. The wheel represents the man’s destiny and his inability to control it. The narrator states, “As the wheel increased its speed it seemed to draw him more and more into its power, as though it held his fate – He could not stop it now. So let it be” (231). He refuses to make a decision of when to let the button go because he doesn’t want to give up this moment of having some measure of free will. He has control over the wheel by holding down this button and once he lets it go, a decision is made and the control is lost. When the narrator states, “‘Well then, go on over there and watch me win like I want to. I ain’t going to hurt nobody,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you how to win. I mean to show the whole world how it’s got to be done” (232), the man is giving people almost hope of showing that people can have control. Yet the audience doesn’t know the secret of the wheel like he does. He knew that he had to keep the wheel going; he couldn’t lose the power because if he did, he would lose his wife Laura. However, the man is ripped away from his moment and soon the ending could be seen as a punishment in showing that a man like him shouldn’t have control over the wheel, his life, his destiny.
Does Ivan's final attitude toward what his life has been reconcile him to dying? Ivan’s final attitude toward what his life has been did reconcile him to dying because there was no point to holding on to a life that in the end didn’t make him happy. Throughout the story, Ivan’s view on happiness was of going by societies rules; getting married, maintaining a well-paid job and living in a beautiful home. Yet he married only to get married and was never really in love with Praskovya Fedorovna. The narrator gives facts of how Ivan felt about Praskovya when he writes, “To say that Ivan Ilych married because he fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that she sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect as to say that he married because his social circle approve of the match. He was swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates” (734). He makes money in a job that could come off as boring to others and he has children because that is what he is supposed to do. The only time Ivan seemed to be truly happy was in his childhood, when there wasn’t any form of pressure. When Ivan knew he was dying, in the beginning, he truly didn’t want to leave his life because he needed more time to make it better. The time he spent being sick gave him the opportunity to look back at how it was just not happy. He knew in his heart that his life was wrong. Ivan realized that his life, which seemed to be so good at one point, was actually false. He was only looking towards others in the recognition that his life was worthy to be happy. Ivan finally allows himself to believe that his life was wrong and he stops trying to fight death because his life really wasn’t worth living if he wasn’t happy. When Ivan’s death approaches quickly he soon allows death to take over and the fear of his death vanishes when he sees the light. “He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. ‘Where is it? What death?’ There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light” (764). Ivan was finally able to make himself happy by making his family happy and that happiness what brought on with his death and his capability of letting his family start to heal and not see him suffer anymore. Death in his eyes seemed to not be death, but a new door to life, maybe not his life but for his family’s.