Oysters by Anton Chekhov. Short summary

5 seconds

A hungry boy screams that he wants to eat oysters. This amuses the rich people and they feed the child seafood.

1 minute

A man and his son arrived in the capital. For five months he had been looking for work without success.

The man and the boy are starving. The child’s father tries to beg, but can’t get a word out.

The boy sees a sign in an inn that reads «Oysters». The father explains to him that it is a sea animal. He thinks it is something between a fish and a crayfish.

He imagines how good this animal tastes when boiled and begins to chew, imagining he is eating it. The father tells the boy that oysters are eaten raw.

Then the boy imagines a slimy creature that looks like a frog. But out of hunger, he imagines eating it as well. The child shouts to his father that he wants oysters.

The two gentlemen hear this and, to amuse themselves, they feed the child the oysters.

In the evening, the boy cannot sleep because of heartburn, and his father laments that he did not ask the lords to feed him as well.