Varieties of nothing: understatement and anticlimax in Chekhov, Hemingway, and Carver

Abstract

Critics often note the similarity between the short stories of Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver, citing their uneventful plots, fragmented character portraits, and lack of epiphanies and other narrative tools of compensating for their understated representation and anticlimactic endings. Some even regard them as stories about nothing-too sparse and open ended to be well-rounded literary narratives. This study compares the use of understatement and anticlimax by Chekhov, Hemingway, and Carver. It argues that each writer develops a unique version of understated and anticlimactic storytelling that endows the purported nullity of his stories with a distinctive meaning by accentuating his created literary world. These worlds and how they are produced form a countertradition to that of modernist so-called "impressionist" tales.