Happiness, Suffering, and Meaning Theme Analysis

In “Gooseberries,” Ivan Ivanych is highly skeptical of those who pursue happy, comfortable lives—he believes that suffering is the precursor to a meaningful life, and that chasing happiness is the wrong path because it leads to stagnation and complacency. Most of the story is a frame tale (a story within a story) in which Ivan and tells his friends Alekhin and Burkin about his brother Nikolai, who spent decades of his life saving up for a country estate where he could live an easy, comfortable lifestyle. Ivan, however, thinks that settling into a happy life in this way is selfish and delusional, since it merely insulates a person from the realities of the outside world. Instead, he argues that one should embrace suffering and pursue the most meaningful life possible. But, in the end, Ivan is the one who is unhappy, suggesting that the key to a fulfilling life is actually subjective—and perhaps even impossible to define.

Ivan thinks that Nikolai’s version of happiness is selfish, misguided, and delusional. For Nikolai, ultimate happiness means owning a secluded estate in the countryside. When Nikolai finally achieves this decades-long dream, Ivan goes to visit him—and although his brother is clearly happy, Ivan doesn’t believe that this happiness is genuine. He tells his friends Burkin and Alekhin, “To leave town, quit the struggle and noise of life, go and hide in your country place, isn’t life, it's egoism, laziness, it's a sort of monasticism, but a monasticism without spiritual endeavor.” In other words, he doesn’t think that Nikolai’s new lifestyle is conducive to genuine happiness—it merely insulates him from “the struggle and noise of life,” which Ivan seems to think is the root of meaningful, spiritually fulfilling life. When Ivan goes to visit Nikolai, the two brothers eat gooseberries that Nikolai has grown on his land—the ability to grow and eat gooseberries has, over the course of Nikolai’s adulthood, symbolized his dream of becoming a landowner. Nikolai delights in how delicious they are, whereas Ivan find them “tough and sour.” He thinks of writer Alexander Pushkin’s quote, “Dearer to us than a host of truths is an exalting illusion,” implying that Nikolai’s happiness and fulfillment is an illusion (represented by his enjoyment of the bitter gooseberries). Again, Ivan thinks that the comfortable lifestyle Nikolai enjoys is nothing but stagnation and self-delusion. According to him, happy people are only able to stay contented because unhappy people (like the peasants who live near Nikolai’s estate) suffer in silence. Ivan believes that “At the door of every contented, happy man somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist,” emphasizing his disdain for people who sacrifice a life full of meaningful ups and downs for a life that’s always comfortable.

But Ivan is the one who’s dissatisfied with his life, suggesting that the definition of a meaningful life is more subjective than he’d like to admit. Both Nikolai and Ivan’s friend Alekhin are well-off landowners who lead the very lifestyle that Ivan condemns, yet they seem fulfilled—whether this fulfillment is illusory or not. Nikolai “had attained his goal in life, had gotten what he wanted, who was content with his fate and with himself,” and Alekhin seems similarly at peace and content in his role as a wealthy farmer. Their achievements and lifestyles are certainly meaningful to them, even if they don’t seem that way to Ivan. Ivan, meanwhile, says that he’s miserable in the city, which he previously claimed was where the meaningful “struggle and noise of life” happens. What’s more, he admits to Alekhin and Burkin that he, too, enjoys a comfortable lifestyle while lecturing others about patiently enduring their suffering. Ivan, in other words, is somewhat hypocritical: he claims to know what constitutes a meaningful life, yet he seems to think that he’s wasted his own, lamenting over his old age and exclaiming, “If only I were young!” He also tells Alekhin to “Do good!”—that is, to avoid wasting his own youth and energy, and to pursue “something more intelligent and great” than a peaceful country life. Yet, crucially, Ivan never gives a solid definition of what that “something” is. He clearly views suffering and immersing oneself in a wide variety of experiences as more meaningful than pursuing wealth and stability—yet he doesn’t seem to find meaning in his own suffering or his own life in the city. This suggests that Ivan is perhaps just as misguided as he believes Nikolai is, and that meaning and happiness aren’t mutually exclusive.

At the end of the story, Ivan and Burkin go to bed in Alekhin’s guest bedroom for the night. Before falling asleep, Ivan leaves his pipe on the nightstand; from the other bed, Burkin lies awake, wondering where the strong smell of stale tobacco is coming from. That the story ends with Ivan fast asleep, blissfully unaware of this “heavy odor” of staleness at his bedside, conveys the sense that Ivan himself emanates a stale and unpleasant quality to those around him. Rather than inspiring his friends to embrace suffering and pursue meaningful lives, he has aired his own misery out into the open, leaving readers questioning whether Ivan’s rejection of an idyllic country life is rooted not in genuine concern but in resentment of other people’s happiness. Further, the story seems to suggest through the character of Alekhin—who primarily thinks about working on his farm and doesn’t understand what Ivan is talking about through his long rant—that it is the focus on “practical matters” rather than ideals or illusions that offers real contentment, though one might argue that even that sort of contentment is focused narrowly and could therefore itself be construed as somewhat insular and selfish. Ultimately, the story offers no conclusion about what does offer a meaningful, happy life—the story captures the mystery and tragedy of the search for meaning and happiness, rather than offer easy answers.