The Kiss As a Narrative Detail in the Short Stories “To Reach Japan” by Alice Munro and Anton P. Chekhov’s “The Kiss”

Abstract

This analysis proposes a contrastive approach between two short stories, The Kiss by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov and To Reach Japan, written by Alice Munro. The word Chekhovian is remarked to refer to Chekhov’s short-story narrative and, according to such allusions, to establish a textual dialogue with Canadian writer Alice Munro. The analysisis based upon the relevance of the detail in both short-story narratives. The detail is an intensively brief element in the text that refers to daily life and determines the evolution of story characters. It is tied to daily-life events and both writers’ narrations imply the surge of an exceptional daily-life.  In these stories by Munro and Chekhov, the detail is represented by a kiss. From the instant of the kiss onwards, its remembrance chronogically structures both texts. It conditions the characters’ identities and perceptions of others’ emotions. The detail of the kiss is to be narrated though it is an indicative of the lack of significant words. The kiss instants are located in places alien to daily residence so intimacies in movement are conformed in the characters of both stories. In consequence, the narrative detail is the criterion to analyze those arguments and to establish links between short-story narratives of Anton Chekhov and Alice Munro.