The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Interpretation: The moment his mother left him to be alone in
Taganrog, young Anton Chekhov felt trapped, as if he had been thrown
into prison. He would be forced to work as much as he could outside
his studies. He was now stuck in this hopelessly dull backwater with no
support system, living in the corner of a small room. Bitter thoughts
about his fate and about the childhood he had never had gnawed at
him in his few free moments. But as the weeks went by, he noticed
something very strange—he actually liked the work he did as a tutor,
even though the pay was meager and he was continually running
around town. His father had kept telling him he was lazy, and he had
believed it, but now he was not so sure. Each day represented a
challenge to find more work and put food on the table. He was
succeeding in this. He was not some miserable worm who needed a
beating. Besides, the work was a way to get outside himself and
immerse his mind in the problems of his students.
The books he read took him far away from Taganrog and filled him
with interesting thoughts that lingered in his mind for entire days.
Taganrog itself was not so bad. Each shop, each house contained the
oddest characters, supplying him endless material for stories. And that
corner of the room—that was his kingdom. Far from feeling trapped,
he now felt liberated. What had actually changed? Certainly not his
circumstances, or Taganrog, or the corner of the room. What had
changed was his attitude, which opened him up to new experiences
and possibilities. Once he felt this, he wanted to take it further. The
greatest remaining impediment to this sense of freedom was his father.
No matter what he tried, he couldn’t seem to get rid of deep feelings of
bitterness. It was as if he could still feel the beatings and hear the
endless pointed criticisms.

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As a last resort, he tried to analyze his father as if he were a
character in a story. This led him to think about his father’s father and
all the generations of Chekhovs. As he considered his father’s erratic
nature and his wild imagination, he could understand how he must
have felt trapped by his circumstances, and why he turned to drinking
and tyrannizing the family. He was helpless, more a victim than an
oppressor. This understanding of his father laid the groundwork for
the sudden rush of unconditional love he felt one day for his parents.
As he glowed with this new emotion, he finally felt completely liberated
from resentments and anger. The negative emotions from the past had
finally fallen away from him. His mind could now be completely open.
The sensation was so exhilarating that he had to share it with his
siblings and free them as well.
What had brought Chekhov to this point was the crisis he had faced
when left alone at such a young age. He experienced another such
crisis some thirteen years later, when he became depressed about the
pettiness of his fellow writers. His solution was to reproduce what had
happened in Taganrog, but in reverse—he would be the one to abandon
others and force himself to be alone and vulnerable. In this way he
could reexperience the freedom and empathy he had felt in Taganrog.
The early death sentence from tuberculosis was the last crisis. He
would let go of his fear of death, and the bitter feelings that came with
having his life cut short, by continuing to live at full tilt. This final and
ultimate freedom gave him a radiance that almost everyone who met
him in this period could feel.