page_title: Children (short story)
section_title: Plot summary
hierarchical_section_title: Children (short story) / Plot summary
context_page_description: "Children" is an 1886 short story by Anton Chekhov.
context_section_description: The children, Grisha, Anya, Alyosha and Sonya, as well as Andrey, the son of a cook, stay up late, taking advantage of the adults' being absent, and play lotto. Quite different things motivate them.
  Grisha, a nine-year-old, is the most ardent of the contestants; greedy and highly anxious, he plays only for the money. His younger sister Anya is an equally avid and smart player, but the kopecks hold no interest for her, it is the excitement of the game that she is after. Sonya, aged six, is passionate too, but totally selfless: "whoever wins, she happily laughs and applauds." The youngest one, Alyosha is quite thankful for the very fact that the others do not order him away. Seemingly phlegmatic, he is indifferent for the game as such, but deep inside is quite a sport, and gets thrilled with every bit of even the smallest scandal. Andrey, a detached and sickly boy, is indifferent to the financial side of the event. It is the game's "arithmetic and simple philosophy" that leave him entranced and perplexed.
  The game, marred with all sorts of incidents, but full of excitement, attracts even the oldest brother, Vasya, a teenage gymnasium student, even if a suspicious servant refuses to break his ruble into kopecks. Sonya agrees to lend him one, but then Grisha accidentally drops his coin. After an eventful and, in the long run, successful search, the children return to the table where they find Sonya fast asleep. All together, they carry her to their mother's bed... There and then they all fall victim to the fatigue. In five minutes' time, all five are upon it, bundled up in a heap, sound asleep, their coins scattered around, "having lost their value, up until the next game."
caption: The Game of Lotto, by Charles Joshua Chaplin, 1865
exif: {}