Can money buy happiness? If money doesn’t make people happy then they probably are not spending it right. Being rich implies having responsibilities and obligations which people don’t want to deal with, whereas being happy implies how well people handle their inner selves. This is what we see in the mystic story “The Shoemaker and the Devil” by famous Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. He wanted his readers to see that money is not everything. He does not want people to be so obsessed with being rich that they would do anything to obtain it. Chekhov used humor and other stylistic devices to reveal his story.
The story focuses on Fyodor Nilov, a poor, envious and greedy shoemaker who, was prone to drink and wanted to become rich at any expense, since he thought that all his imagined benefits came with wealth. He contemplated: “How splendid it would be if the rich, little by little, changed into beggars having nothing, and he, a poor shoemaker, were to become rich, and were to lord it over some other poor shoemaker on Christmas Eve.” So he made a bargain with the devil (thinking that grass is always greener on the other side), became rich and the devil got his soul. Yet, he discovered something he was not prepared for. He had a new wife but he did not know how to behave with her. Not only does he constantly want more and more, but he also does not become a superior person. He believed that having more money and things would give him more happiness. But in reality, it was completely different. After realizing how little all of that meant, he was too late and it was time for him to pay.
Nevertheless, if people became rich in an instant – without truly earning it – they would feel just as unsatisfied as the shoemaker. “Carriages and sledges with bearskin rugs were dashing to and fro in the street; merchants, ladies, officers were walking along the pavement together with the humbler folk. . . . But Fyodor did not envy them nor repine at his lot. It seemed to him now that rich and poor were equally badly off. Some were able to drive in a carriage, and others to sing songs at the top of their voice and to play the concertina, but one and the same thing, the same grave, was awaiting all alike, and there was nothing in life for which one would give the devil even a tiny scrap of one’s soul,” Fyodor thought.
Բարի Գալուստ Նատալի Տագեսյանի Բլոգ 