Who was to blame? :: Four levels

Summary :

This story is an incomplete list of stories sketched by ‘Anton Checkov.’ This story deals with a mental person humors. In the story the narrator compares his life with a little kitten. The writer of the story has made his uncle and little kitten as the main character and Parsakova, the maid as a female character. The story begins with training the kitten to kill the rats as they used to disturb the uncle sometimes by nibbling the top of hat and sometimes by nibbling the corner of the grammar book. In course of training, the kitten was unable to catch the mice as it was difficult for it to match with the speed of little mice. The kitten was under strict environment of rules and regulation of narrator uncles. Being several times failed in the uncle test and experiment, the uncle threw the little kitten away. Years passed, the thin frail kitten had turned into a solid and sagacious tom cat. On the way to his house, one day he saw the same cat which was still fail in its mission which made uncle realize his wastage of his precious time that he spent on training it. So does the narrator in the story never learn the Latin English grammar as it was beyond his interest.

Interpretation :

The central idea of the story is that a creature cannot be trained forcefully. It is against their will to learn. To learn anything, a person must have keen interest and early eagerness. In course of time, it automatically get adjusted with the environment and be practical to their duties and responsibility. No creature can adjust in a strict environment as in the story too the little kitten was forced to catch the mice, which was beyond its mental and physical ability. So, as the narrator in the story also couldn’t learn the Latin grammar as it was beyond his interest.

Critical thinking: 

This story reveals the fact that no one can be trained forcefully. It is a good and a knowledgeable story but I am unsatisfied with some parts of it. Do any cars runs away when they see a rat in reality? Is keeping a cat only the way to get rid of rat? How can a teacher not understand the feeling of cat? It is possible to raise such question for the reader like me.

Assimilation :

Before reading this story I used to think that a person can be trained with good skills, physically and mentally. But after reading this story I came to know that nobody can go beyond one’s interest. There are so many such things that creature adopt themselves in the change of time from the nature. Such things are not to be taught by anyone.

- By Sujan Rijal