The Analysis of
“The Man in a Case”
The Man in a Case
 The function of The Dialogue
 To reminisce: In this play, there is dialogue that remind
the reader to something in the real world. In this case
Varinka says something to Byelinkov.
Varinka: “My sweetest dancing bear with galoshes, my little stale
babka. "
Byelinkov: “a stale babka”?
Varinka: I am not Pushkin
From the dialogue Varinka shows her feeling that she adores or likes
him as if byelinkov is her stale babka (a kind of cake), of course the
man surprises, how could she resembles him with a cake. Varinka
knows that she can’t compose some better words or romantic
expressions like a poet. That’s why she says “I am not Pushkin” which
mean she is not a poet like Pushkin.
The Man in a Case
 The function of The Dialogue: To characterize
 The function of language to characterize means to highlight
the characterization of a character or some characters. For
example I will highlight Varinka in which she is a kind of
expressible woman, slight agresive and demanded one. This
characterization could be portrayed from the following
dialogue
Varinka: Will you remember me.
Byelinkov:….
Varinka: I love you
 expressible and agresive
Byelinkov: You are a girl
Varinka: I am thirty
Byelinkov: But you think like a girl…
Varinka: Do you love me?
 demanded
The Man in a Case
 The function of The Dialogue: To characterize
 In another dialogue we also can see how demanding
woman Varinka is
VARINKA. “Dance with me!”
BYELINKOV. “You are a demanding woman.”
The Man in a Case
Conflicts:
 Personality problem between two couples; Byelinkov
and varinka.
 Internal Conflict: each of them has internal
problem which has already become their own
personality that is a smart but introvert personality i.e
Byelinkov and a talkative and expressible/extrovert
personality i.e Varinka
 The two contrast personality of the couple create two
different views in searching their world or their
future.
 External Conflict: the different personality is
shown through their view or opinion which contrast
each other.
The Man in a Case
Setting:
 The scene of the one act play is in a small garden in the
village of Mironitch in 1898.
 The function of the setting in “The Man in a Case” is as
the background. The conflict of the Play doesn’t have a
significant relationship with the setting for it is about
the problem between a man and his fiancé. Since there
is no significant relation between the setting and the
story (look at the conflict session) the function of the
setting is as the background.
The Characters:
Exploring…
 1. Byelinkov:
He is a young intellectual teacher. He is a sort of
realistic person, but rather conservative in
thinking. In social life he is a little passive man and
he always doesn’t care to what people said or at
least pay a little attention to what people think
about him or his relationship with his fiancée.
Actually, he has tried to escape from the shadow of
his girl but he fails.
The kinds of Character:
 1. Byelinkov: From the personality and the way of
thinking Byelinkov is an interesting character. He
is intelligent that make him know everything in
the world but to face his fiancée, he can’t do
anything, he gives up. He cannot face his problem
or cannot learn something from a sort of repeated
behavior of his girl. For this capacity we can
categorize this character as a Flat one. He is too
afraid to make up his mind, scare to “rock the boat”
(take a risk).
The kinds of Character:
 1. Byelinkov: He is a static one for he has failed to
change his opinion and his behavior toward Varinka
even thought he has tried to but he gives up at the end
by taking back the tear up paper of their agreement
that he has thrown before.
The kinds of Character:
Exploring…
 2. Varinka:
 She is a young nice girl which is very optimistic in
thinking. She is charm, attractive, aggressive and
always happy, but a sort of naïf in deciding or giving
an opinion. Most of all she always shows her
capability to motivate her fiancée that make him
happy when they are together.
 However, her personality is too dominant over her
fiancée that make her as a demanded girl and as a
result she always make him speechless before her.
The kinds of Character:
 2. Varinka: For another different reason we also can
categorize this character as a flat. She is a charm
and attractive girl, but with a little consciousness
she only forces her opinion to somebody else; her
fiancée. She just looks at the world from her own
perspective and she refuses to consider byelinkov.
Those are some reasons why she is a sort of flat
character.
The kinds of Character:
 2. Varinka:
This character is also static one. She almost stick for
every issues that they make. All the matters are for her
fiancée and that should be followed by him. All the
world seem to be the matters by her that automatically
should be the concern of byelinkov. That is the character
of Varinka from the beginning until the end
The Theme
 Before stating the theme of this story we should
consider that this play portrayed a contradiction of two
people which are about to married. The contrast
personality as well as behavior between them could
not be solved by their discussion in the garden. The
man which his own characterization and the woman
with hers. Here the writer wants to show us, and this is
probably as the theme of this play, that “sometime
people are stick to what they are”. Even an institution
like “marriage” which will unite two different people to
becoming one, can not make these two characters
having the same opinion about the world.
The Theme
 In another case, we can ask a question about the title,
“The Man in a Case”. What’s the meaning of the man
in a case? What case is it?
 From the story of the play we consider that the man
here is Byelinkov is about to have “a case” if he marry
her finace Varinka who is aggressive and too
expressible woman.
 The case here probably also derived from him self in
which he can’t ‘tame’ the woman; Varinka.
 Another probably theme of this play could be, “The
man with no strong personality would may have
problems to handle his marriage/woman”