Chekhov often wrote about students–but not, generally, the children of the nobility. Rather, the typical student in his stories bears a fairly strong resemblance to the student Chekhov himself had been: striving, passionate, sometimes dissolute, and often short on cash–a son of the emerging middle class, not the rich.
In “The Post,” a postmaster imposes upon a postman to take the postmaster’s nephew, a student, to another town. It’s against the rules for the student to ride along with the mail, but he postman apparently has no choice because his superior has ordered it.
The nephew/student, meanwhile, is oblivious to the dynamic, and chatters away as they drive along the rough road. The postman is irritable; he rebuffs the student’s attempts at small talk.
In the end, though, he drives the student all the way, never really understanding his irritation.
This isn’t much of a story. The student is well-meaning if naive. The postman, having been put in a difficult position, is cranky. But there’s nothing more there. There’s a subtlety to it, for sure: the student is not a coddled, spoiled brat; the postman is not a monster. But we’re left to guess if this might represent a hairline crack between the classes, or simply is meant to be an amusing trifle for the readers of Moscow’s popular magazines.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
For a portrait of a dissolute student, see the painful “Anyuta.” For a portrait of the striving student seeking to move beyond his middle-class roots, try “Difficult People.”
A Chekhov Circus 