Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860 in Taganrog, Russia, the third of six children. His father, Pavel, was a grocer and his mother, Yevgeniya, was the daughter of a cloth merchant. In1875 Pavel's business failed and, threatened with imprisonment, he fled to Moscow. Yevgeniya remained behind with Anton and his younger siblings, but soon lost the house to a local bureaucrat. At this point, she joined Pavel in Moscow taking all the children, with the exception of Anton whom she left behind to attend school and support himself.
             After completing his early studies, Anton received a scholarship to study medicine at the Moscow University and at this point reunited with his family. During this time, the family continued to be plagued by financial hardship. In an effort to help support them, Anton began to write humorous short stories for comic magazine. As time went by, Chekhov developed a love of writing, preferring this to the practice of medicine, and devoted himself to his craft. After 1880, his work shifted toward more serious subject matter and is filled with realistic views of the suffering of the poor, no doubt in memory of the struggles his own family had endured.
             An Upheaval is classified as a short story, but does not follow the traditional short story structure as defined by Freytag's Triangle. The story begins in medias res as Mashenka enters a household already in turmoil. Rather than at the beginning, the exposition takes place throughout the story as Mashenka's thoughts and actions reveal her background and place within the household. At the end of the story, the reader is left without resolution. This abrupt end to the action without an resolving the conflict is known as a zero ending.
             The story An Upheaval is a slice-of-life narrative. Chekhov offers a dispassionate observation of life within an upper-class household. There
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