MOTIF/ARCHETYPE THE OLD MAN IN THREE SHORT STORIES OF ANTON CHEKHOV, ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND NAM CAO

Abstract

Basing on poetics, structure of works and motif / archetype of the Wise Old Man, the paper examines and compares the image of the Old Man in three short stories: Tocka by Anton Chekhov (Russian), A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway (American) and Lao Hac by Nam Cao (Vietnamese). In each short story, the old man leads a lonely life. Their loneliness can’t sometimes be shared or isn’t shared such as the case of Iona Potapov, in Tocka of Anton Chekhov, who just lost his son last week; of the Old Man, in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place of Ernest Hemingway who suffered from loneliness in his old age; and of Lao Hac, in Nam Cao’s work of the same title, who, with hopelessness, has gone away to work in plantation for three years because his poor son couldn’t afford to get married. If the impact of rural elements in the process of social development from agriculture to industry is taken into consideration, we can put these three short stories in the following sequence: Lao Hac (1943) of Nam Cao, Tocka (1871) of Anton Chekhov, and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933) of Ernest Hemingway. It seems that the more the society is urbanized, the more loneliness can’t be wiped out. Now, the deeply rooted characters of the archetype of the Wise Old Man (according to Jung) are expressed in only three points: how to best bahave in loneliness.