"The Kiss" revolves around an awkward young officer, Ryabovich. Setting up camp at a village, he and his fellow officers are invited to dinner at the home of the local landowner. While the others engage in drink and merriment, Ryabovich wanders the house and drifts into a dark room where a young lady, suspecting he is someone else, briefly kisses him and then flees. The mysterious kiss intoxicates Ryabovich, and over the following days he finds himself lost in daydreams. He eventually shares the story with fellow officers, and the magic of his daydreams is punctured. He realizes it took only a minute to tell this story that had for days filled his soul: "and he was shocked to find that the story required so little time." Here Chekhov seems to say that some things will always elude communication.
"Misery" is another look at the limits of communication. Iona Potapov, an aging horse-and-buggy cab driver, has recently lost his son to illness, but has no one to talk to about it. As he seeks a few meager fares on a cold snowy night, he tries to share his grief with his passengers, but one after another they turn a deaf ear. "If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out," Chekhov writes, "it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen." The story ends with Iona spilling his heart to his mare. What could be a sentimental story in lesser hands is a melancholy meditation on unshared grief.
"The Lady with the Dog" follows a tentative love affair between a married man and woman. Dmitri and Anna meet at a resort, and from the start, Chekhov presents most of their conversation in summary, the most important moments marked by silence. The dialogue that is recorded appears to be inconsequential. They begin carrying on a furtive, guilty affair. The story closes with a beautiful scene in which the two realize they will never want to stop seeing one another. Again, Chekhov carefully chooses to summarize all but the most pedestrian dialogue. Dmitri, who has all his life comforted himself with logic and language, yields finally to what lies beyond language. In the story's final spoken words, language comes to a halt as Dmitri tries to figure out how they can stay together. "'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. 'How?'" Though their future is uncertain, the two have accepted the mystery of one another, a mystery words cannot capture.
Chekhov was a true innovator in the area of the short story. He is notable for writing quiet, at times seemingly plotless stories that eschew obvious dramatic cause and effect and the build-up to a clear climax. But neither are his stories mere slice-of-life vignettes. With Chekhov, the pivotal moment or insight of a story can come at any time, with or without the knowledge of the story's characters.