“Really, of all my pieces, my favorite story is ‘The Student.””
—Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov consistently ranks as one of the greatest short story writers in the world, with an output, in a brief span of years, of hundreds of stories. Of all his short stories, his favorite was “The Student.” He called this brief story, only a few pages in length, a “manifesto for optimism.”[1] If Chekhov valued this story so highly, if it is indeed a manifesto for optimism, then might there not be something vital to be gleaned from it—something positive, something optimistic, something consistent with Chekhov’s own values, something consonant with the title itself? What makes this story so significant among his countless narratives?
The following account is not meant as a definitive answer, only an essay, an attempt to witness meaning unfolding from the action and empathy of the characters within Chekhov’s brief masterpiece. At the outset, the hypothesis might be mapped in these words: Radical transformation, from bleak pessimism to “mysterious happiness,” can come through strategic empathy that leads to regard and action for others. And further, stories of unexpected grace and goodness, chief among them the gospel itself, have mimetic, redemptive, healing power to move and inspire listeners. Simply put, among its many accomplishments, the story portrays the power and moral imperative of empathy, along with the revelatory narratives that enable it.
There are many levels of empathy within the story, and there are many actors engaged in empathy. To begin with, the title character is a young seminary student bearing the very common, almost everyman (in Russian), name Ivan. On his way home from hunting on Good Friday he happens to meet two widows sitting by a fire by their garden a few miles outside their village. The weather has turned bleak and cold, and Ivan’s thoughts are also bleak and cold and despairing, imagining that it is evil and misery that endure forever, defining human existence and imprisoning fallen human reality.
But then he meets the widows and speaks with them. And he recounts a story. And through their shared experience, the student arrives at an unexpected destination—an epiphany yielding “mysterious happiness,” “enchant[ment],” and “lofty meaning.”
What empathy and what story led to that outcome? Ivan recounts the story of Peter’s denial of Christ on the night before Good Friday, in the cold, by a fire, roughly two thousand years ago. One is tempted to think that Ivan told that story simply because the time of year and the setting reminded him of it. And that is partly true, no doubt. Chekhov constructed the story to parallel and contrast with the fireside denial of Christ by Peter.
But there are reasons to believe that empathy is employed strategically and deliberately by the student here. He knows the widows. He knows how they have suffered, and how Lukerya has been abused by her former husband. And he knows, though he never comments on it, that the widows may feel guilty for neglecting the Orthodox tradition of fasting on Good Friday (as he observed that they had just finished eating). Knowing all this, the student doesn’t just launch abruptly into this story of Peter and Jesus, without time for reflection. Rather, Chekhov says with typical understatement that before he retells that story, “They talked.” The student spends time with them. He could have left sooner but he did not. Then, he continues talking, and it seems that he deliberately chooses to recount this Biblical story that presumably would have been well known to the two women. As he does so, the student expresses empathy for Christ’s suffering and for Peter’s sorrow upon denying Christ. He calls him “poor Peter,” comments on the cold that they too suffered, and gently describes Peter’s hidden, muffled sobbing, identifying and empathizing with the inconstant disciple. In this empathy, he emulates Jesus. Jesus, too, within the Biblical narrative within the story, soon extends empathy and compassion and forgiveness to Peter, though Peter denied even knowing him. Chekhov’s story, and the story chosen by the student in the story, vicariously unite the student and the widows in a common empathetic experience of suffering, motivated by compassionate love, that is ultimately transcended by the hope, love, and restoration of Easter, just a few days away. While the widows may have felt guilty for neglecting the tradition on Good Friday, the Biblical story narrated by the student highlights the paradigmatic restoration offered to anyone who neglects others. Ultimately, the student stays with the widows for a while, narrates a story of darkness that leads to hope, and helps bring community back to the widows who seem to live almost forgotten lives on the edge of society.
The layers of empathy at work in this story are astonishing: Chekhov tells a story with characteristic empathy for his suffering characters—empathy for the inexperienced and inconstant student; for the student’s sick father; for the widows who have suffered loss and pain and isolation. The student eventually recounts the story of Peter’s denial of Christ, partly out of empathy for the widows and partly expressing empathy for both Peter and Christ. In that narrative, Jesus suffers for Peter and all his followers who fled. Jesus’s suffering causes Peter to experience empathy and repentance and, later, hope. And this strategic empathy touches all the characters. Gently, it seems, they’re gathered and graced and moved in the embrace of divine humaneness and love. The student’s listeners, in turn, watch “what was passing in Peter’s soul,” as the narrator says—the movement of Peter’s soul and their own souls. We, in turn, watch the movement of the student’s soul, as it rises from despair to hope.
In short, as the ultimate audience, we witness Chekhov’s empathy for the characters, the student’s empathy for the widows, Jesus’s empathy for Peter, Peter’s empathy for Jesus, and our own incipient empathy in response.
Moreover, the power of the empathetic narrative (and participating thereby in the suffering of others) is evident in its transformative impact on the characters in Chekhov’s story. Others have observed this effect too. The famous film critic Roger Ebert once commented that it is not necessarily the saddest tales, objectively speaking, that make audiences cry, but (in his experience) the stories where empathy moves a common person to perform an act of uncommon goodness.[2] He called film, successful films at least, “a machine that generates empathy.” Perhaps the same could be said for effective literature.[3]
Of course, the abiding power of empathy depends on reflection, on remembering. And Chekhov aptly deploys the word “remembered” repeatedly in this story. In one key passage, “Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the words He had said to him in the evening. . . . He remembered, he came to himself, went out of the yard and wept bitterly — bitterly.” It’s this memory that facilitates unfolding transformation later.
Critical readers may well ask why the student’s optimistic view at the end should be considered truer or more reliable than his despairing view at the beginning. And why the act of empathy should prompt an optimistic turn. Some readers remain agnostic, finding neither perspective more credible than the other. However, in this case, there is internal and external evidence that may tip the scales toward the student’s concluding epiphany. Notably, as indicated earlier, Chekhov called this story a manifesto for optimism. But it wouldn’t be a manifesto for optimism, and Chekhov wouldn’t believe it to be such, if the optimistic ending had no foundation.
Consider, too, the likely significance of the event for the student. The student had gone hunting earlier in the day, as Peter had gone back to fishing after Christ’s crucifixion. Like Peter, he had caught nothing. But now, as he narrates a pastoral story, he catches his hearers’ hearts. Like Peter, the student seems to be invited to become a fisher of men. It’s as if Chekhov has provided the student with a confirmation of his pastoral calling and with a confirmation of the power of participation in the story he narrates. Just as Jesus had confirmed symbolically to Peter, the paradigmatic pastor figure, after his denial and sorrow and suffering, “Feed my sheep.”
Arguably, this account of the significance of the story finds corroboration in Chekhov’s own life and philosophy. Chekhov had suffered severely the disturbing effects of tuberculosis earlier that spring in 1894 when he wrote and published this story. In a letter at the time, he humorously relates his mortification at the possibility of dying in front of his guests from the sickness that would later claim his life.[4] Given this near death experience and his Orthodox upbringing, it’s not surprising that he would employ religious reflection, centering on the pivotal moments of Good Friday and Easter, in his writing at the time, contemplating (or even embracing) possibilities of empathy and hope and resurrection.
Philosophically speaking, too, this story seems to manifest, perform, and affirm Chekhov’s own belief in the imperative of empathy. Chekhov worked as a doctor, of course, caring for people’s physical needs. He was the grandson of a former serf, beginning life as a charity case in a family of limited financial resources. After gaining fame and additional income through writing, he gave generously to those in financial need, donating to schools and hospitals and churches. In this and other ways, he practiced Jesus’s mandate in the golden rule, treating others as he wished to be treated, treating others with empathy. As someone who knew the value of freedom, he sought to extend the utmost freedom to others, “the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, whatever form they may take.”[5]
Considering the force of his favorite story, the ramifications of Chekhov’s writing may run deeper than expected. There may be spiritual and ethical implications. But also communal and governmental implications. Chekhov’s student serves, borrowing the author’s own words, as a manifesto of optimism and empathy and love for one’s neighbors. A manifesto that challenges and confounds the forces of “violence and lies” in our present world. Chekhov’s manifesto may thus serve as inspiration for readers as well as indictment of those violent forces manipulating us and others, forces purveying unjust wars (indeed, Russia’s war against Ukraine fails to follow Chekhov or Christ)[6] and totalitarian systems infringing basic freedoms. Chekhov’s narratives of empathy teach and entice us to come to our senses, consider others’ needs, and liberate ourselves from societal systems of might-makes-right subservience and extraction, replacing preventable war and heartless oppression with strategic empathy that constructs communities of hope, healing, optimism, and freedom. As the Chekhovian diagnosis suggests, our happiness, our freedom, and our lives may depend on it.
[1] From a letter to his brother Alexander. See “The Student (short story),” Wikipedia (accessed Feb. 3, 2026) (citing Jefferson Hunter, “Three Versions of Peter’s Denial,” The Hudson Review (Spring 1980), p. 56).
[2] See, e.g., Roger Ebert, “I Feel Good! I Knew That I Would!” (available at https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-feel-good-i-knew-that-i-would) (stating, in part, “I never cry during sad moments in the movies, only during moments about goodness”).
[3] The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote similarly of the power of empathetic narrative participation: “Therefore it is not a mere ‘pious exercise’ when, in spirit, I put myself beside this woman [at the well in Samaria in John ch. 4] and enter into her role. Not only may I play this part: I must play it, for I have long been involved in this dialogue without being consulted. I am this dried-up soul, running after the earthly water every day because it has lost its grasp of the heavenly water it is really seeking.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer (Ignatius Press, 1986) (tr. Graham Harrison), ch. 1.
[4] Letter to A.S. Suvorin, April 21, 189: “The other day I almost fell down and I fancied for a minute that I was dying. I was walking along the avenue with the prince, our neighbour, and was talking when all at once something seemed to break in my chest, I had a feeling of warmth and suffocation, there was a singing in my ears, I remembered that I had been having palpitations for a long time and thought—“they must have meant something then.” I went rapidly towards the verandah on which visitors were sitting, and had one thought—that it would be awkward to fall down and die before strangers. . . .”
[5] Letter to A.N. Pleshtcheyev, October, 1889. Long ago, Confucius’s analysis of reciprocity (shu) helped explain the relationship between freedom and reciprocity or empathy: “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.” Analects 15:24 (Lau translation).
[6] Just war traditionally requires just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, and proportionality. (See, e.g., “Just War,” Carnegie Council website, available here, https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/explore-engage/key-terms/just-war.) Russia’s current war against Ukraine seems to have failed on every level. As to cause, the shifting explanations for the war represent just one indication of dishonesty and injustice. As to authority, the prevalence of lies and censorship of truth undermines the authority behind the war. As to intention, there are strong indications the war was waged as a land grab for reasons of economic gain, restoration of power or prestige, and retribution against the West. As to last resort, the war was launched secretly, precipitously, without real diplomacy (again indicating wrong intent). As to proportionality and cost/benefit, even if some Russians believed that a handful of, or a few hundred, Russian speakers near the border with Russia suffered some discrimination or mistreatment, it’s obvious that could not justify the war, one which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Moreover, going back to the questions of cause and intent, modern Russia has a nuclear deterrent and thus no real fear of invasion itself, refuting its unsupported fear-based rhetoric.
