# Who Was to Blame? explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Anton Chekhov.

## What happens

A comedic yet poignant story about a kitten whose natural instincts are thwarted by his owner's misguided training methods. The narrator reflects on how his uncle's harsh teaching of Latin similarly destroyed his own enthusiasm for classical literature, drawing a parallel between the kitten's fear of mice and the narrator's fear of classical works.

## Themes in this chapter

### Hypocrisy and Moral Failure

The uncle's attempt to 'train' the kitten is hypocritical; he blames the kitten for not catching mice but his own brutal methods cause the failure.

### Suffering and Compassion

The kitten suffers from the uncle's cruel training, and the narrator empathizes with the kitten's plight, drawing a parallel to his own suffering under the same uncle's teaching.

## Character check-ins

### Pyotr Demyanitch

The narrator's uncle, a lean, bilious Latin teacher who attempts to train a kitten to catch mice using a mousetrap, but his harsh methods only frighten the kitten.

### The Narrator

The first-person narrator who reflects on his own experience of being taught Latin by his uncle, comparing himself to the frightened kitten.

## Key lines

> Alas! sometimes I feel myself in the ludicrous position of the flying cat. Like the kitten, I had in my day the honour of being taught Latin by my uncle.

The narrator compares his own fear of classical literature to the kitten's fear of mice, both resulting from his uncle's harsh teaching methods.

_This paraphrase captures the central analogy of the story._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se/chapters/who-was-to-blame
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_5_se/chapters