One of the features of The Cherry Orchard is that all the characters are given in a dual, tragicomic lighting. There are purely comic characters in the play: Charlotte Ivanovna, Epikhodov, Yasha, Firs. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov laughs at Gaev, "who lived his fortune on candy", over the sentimental Ranevskaya, who is beyond her age, and her practical helplessness. Even over Petya Trofimov, who, it would seem, symbolizes the renewal of Russia, A.P. Chekhov is ironic, calling him "an eternal student." This attitude of the author Petya Trofimov deserved his verbosity, which A.P. Chekhov did not tolerate. Petya utters monologues about workers who "eat disgustingly, sleep without pillows", about the rich who "live in debt, at someone else's expense", about " proud man» . At the same time, he warns everyone that he is “afraid of serious conversations.” Petya Trofimov, doing nothing for five months, keeps telling others that "we need to work." And this is with the hardworking Varya and the businesslike Lopakhin! Trofimov does not study, because he cannot study and support himself at the same time. Petya Ranevskaya gives a very sharp but accurate description of Trofimov's "spirituality" and "tact": "... You don't have cleanliness, but you're just a neat person". A.P. Chekhov speaks with irony about his behavior in remarks. Trofimov now cries out "with horror," then, choking with indignation, cannot utter a word, then threatens to leave and cannot do so in any way.
A.P. Chekhov has certain sympathetic notes in the image of Lopakhin. He is doing everything possible to help Ranevskaya keep the estate. Lopakhin is sensitive and kind. But in double coverage, he is far from ideal: there is a business lack of wings in him, Lopakhin is not able to get carried away and love. In relations with Varya, he is comical and awkward. The short-term celebration associated with the purchase of a cherry orchard is quickly replaced by a feeling of despondency and sadness. Lopakhin utters a significant phrase with tears: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our clumsy, unhappy life would somehow change.” Here Lopakhin directly touches the main source of drama: he is not in the struggle for the cherry orchard, but in dissatisfaction with life, experienced differently by all the heroes of the story. Life is going ridiculous and clumsy, bringing neither joy nor happiness to anyone. This life is unhappy not only for the main characters, but also for Charlotte, lonely and useless, and for Epikhodov with his constant failures.
Defining the essence of the comic conflict, literary critics argue that it rests on the discrepancy between appearance and essence (comedy of positions, comedy of characters, etc.). In “the new comedy of A.P. Chekhov, the words, deeds and actions of the characters are in just such a discrepancy. The internal drama of each turns out to be more important than external events (the so-called "undercurrents"). Hence the “tearfulness” of the actors, persons, which does not have a tragic connotation at all. Monologues and remarks “through tears” most likely speak of excessive sentimentality, nervousness, sometimes even irritability of the characters. Hence the all-pervading Chekhov irony. It seems that the author, as it were, asks questions to both viewers, readers, and himself: why do people waste their lives so mediocrely? Why are people so careless about their loved ones? why so irresponsibly spend words and vitality, naively believing that they will live forever and there will be an opportunity to live life cleanly, anew? The heroes of the play deserve both pity and merciless "laughter through invisible to the world tears" .
Each work, one way or another, carries certain meaning and instruction to the reader. The play by A.P. Chekhov " The Cherry Orchard". She, despite the routine of events, is full of emotions and experiences. It is not for nothing that the play is called a warning. She sets an example real life people, clash of characters and desires.
In Chekhov's work, one can notice the contradiction of two worlds: dreams and reality. For example, Lyubov Andreevna is completely and completely immersed in the world of dreams. She is not interested in today's events, she wants to be in the world of memories, where she was happy. Her life has long been far from Paris, but her thoughts are still there. Even when, by the will of fate, she returned to native home, she was still in the world of dreams, she saw not the house that exists now, at this moment. She wanted to see the house that she remembers from her childhood.
Gaev is a man who lives, perhaps, in the most dangerous place, at the junction of two worlds. He belongs neither to the world of dreams nor to the world of reality. He rushes between them, unable to know even one for real. He is not a dreamer and does not accept his memories as reality. But he is not a mature man who clearly knows what he wants. They speak of him as a youth, although his age has already passed into the rank of respectful.
Lopakhin is the only character who understood the meaning of each of the worlds and was able to curb the dream. He is not perfect, he strives to transform his dreams into reality. He knows that the dreams that appear in his head encourage him to take action and realize them in his life.
In Chekhov's work, dream and reality collide. And the more pages of the play are read, the sharper this contradiction becomes. The play suggests that very often people behave recklessly and stupidly. Sometimes a person does not give an account of his own actions and plays with fire, this is exactly what the author spoke about in his play "The Cherry Orchard". In my opinion, the author warns the reader about the danger of existence in only one of the worlds. The author hints that people should combine the world of dreams and reality, as Lopakhin does. Chekhov sought to rally all people, calling Russia a garden.
In each work there is a meaning and a certain lesson for the reader. The play created by A.P. Chekhov “The Cherry Orchard” was no exception. It describes everyday events, but while reading it, we are not left feeling overwhelmed with emotions and experiences. The play is called a warning for a reason. She is considered an example of real life people who possess different characters and dreams, and therefore there are conflicts and clashes between them.
Chekhov's work is built on the contradictions of two worlds: dream and reality. Entirely and completely Lyubov Andreevna exists in the world of dreams. She is not at all interested in current events, since her main desire was to be in the world of memories, because it was then that she experienced the happy moments of her life. Paris for her remained far in the past, however, mentally she is there. She had, at the behest of fate, to return to her home, but this did not become a reason for refusing to stay in the world of dreams. Before her eyes arose a house, not the one in which she was at that moment. Her wish was to see her house
childhood, which remained forever in the memory of the heroine.
Gaev's choice fell on, perhaps, the most dangerous place for human existence - the junction of two worlds. This character does not live in the world of dreams, and not in the world of reality. He tends to rush between them. He is unable to truly know even one of them. The image of the hero does not personify a dreamer or a realist living in his memories. In addition, this man is not considered mature, clearly representing what he wants. He is perceived as a youth, although he belongs to an age category that has passed into the rank of respectable.
Lopakhin, the only one of all the characters, managed to come to realize the meaning of the existence of each of the worlds. He managed to curb the dream. This hero is far from ideal, although he has a desire to transform his dreams into reality. Lopakhin understands that the dreams that appear in his head are able to induce him to action, respectively, he can realize them.
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However, the apparently central event - the struggle for the cherry orchard - is devoid of the significance that classic drama and what, it would seem, the very logic of the arrangement in the play requires actors. The conflict based on the confrontation of social forces is muted in Chekhov. Lopakhin, a Russian bourgeois, is devoid of predatory grip and aggressiveness towards the nobles Ranevskaya and Gaev, and the nobles do not resist him at all.
What is the main knot of the dramatic conflict? Probably not in the economic bankruptcy of Ranevskaya and Gaev. After all, at the very beginning lyrical comedy they have a wonderful option for economic prosperity, kindly offered by the same Lopakhin: rent out the garden for summer cottages. But the heroes refuse him. Why? Obviously, because the drama of their existence is deeper than elementary ruin, so deep that money cannot fix it and the will to live that is fading in the heroes cannot be returned.
On the other hand, the purchase of the cherry orchard by Lopakhin also does not eliminate the deeper conflict of this man with the world. Lopakhin's triumph is short-lived, it is quickly replaced by a feeling of despondency and sadness. This strange merchant turns to Ranevskaya with words of reproach and reproach: “Why, why didn’t you listen to me? My poor, good, you will not return now. And as if in unison with all the heroes of the play, Lopakhin utters a significant phrase with tears: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.”
Here Lopakhin directly touches on the hidden, but the main source of drama: it lies not in the struggle for the cherry orchard, but in the subjective dissatisfaction with life, equally, although in different ways, experienced by all the characters without exception.
"Cherry Orchard". The drama of life lies in the discord of its most essential, root foundations. And therefore, all the heroes of the play have a sense of the temporality of their stay in the world, a sense of the gradual exhaustion and death of those forms of life that once seemed unshakable and eternal. In the play, everyone lives in anticipation of the inevitable impending fateful end. The old foundations of life are disintegrating both outside and in the souls of people, and new ones are not yet born, at best they are vaguely anticipated, and not only by the young heroes of the drama. The same Lopakhin says: “Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: Lord, You gave us vast forests, vast fields, the deepest horizons, and living here, we ourselves should really be giants.” The future asks people a question to which they, in their own way, human weakness unable to give an answer. There is in the well-being of Chekhov's heroes a feeling of some kind of doom and illusory nature of their existence.
From the very beginning, we have people in front of us, anxiously listening to something inevitable that is coming ahead. This breath of the end is brought into the very beginning of the piece. It is not only in the fateful date known to all on August 22, when the cherry orchard will be sold for debts. There is another date on this date, symbolic meaning- the absolute end of the whole thousand-year way of Russian life. In the light of the absolute end, their conversations are ghostly, their relations are unstable and capriciously changeable. People are, as it were, turned off for a good half of their existence from the accelerating stream of life. They live and feel at half strength, they are hopelessly late, lagging behind.
The circular composition of the play is also symbolic, connected with the motive of being late, first to the arrival and then to the departure of the train. Chekhov's heroes are deaf in relation to each other, not because they are selfish, but because in their situation full-blooded communication is simply impossible. They would be happy to reach out to each other, but something constantly "revokes" them. The characters are too immersed in the experience inner drama looking back sadly and looking ahead with timid hopes. The present remains outside the sphere of their main attention, and therefore they simply do not have enough strength for complete mutual “submissiveness”. In the face of impending changes, Lopakhin’s victory is a conditional victory, just like Ranevskaya’s defeat is a conditional defeat. Time is running out for both. There is something in The Cherry Orchard from Chekhov's instinctive premonitions of the fatal end approaching him: balloon". This motif of escaping time stretches throughout the play. Once upon a time, you and I, sister, slept in this very room, and now I am already fifty-one years old, oddly enough, ”says Gaev. “Yes, time is running out,” Lopakhin echoes him.
Time is running! But who is destined to be the creator of a new life, who will plant new garden? Life does not yet give an answer to this question. Petya and Anya seem to be ready. And where Trofimov speaks of the disorder of the old life and calls for a new life, the author definitely sympathizes with him. But there is no personal power in Petya's reasoning, they contain many words that look like spells, and sometimes some empty talkativeness slips through, akin to Gaev's talkativeness. Besides, he eternal student”,“ shabby gentleman. It is not such people who master life and become creators and masters of it. On the contrary, life itself pretty patted Petya. Like all the klutzes in the play, he is clumsy and powerless before her. Youth, inexperience and unsuitability for life are also emphasized in Ana. It is no coincidence that Chekhov warned M.P. Lilina: "Anya, first of all, is a child, cheerful, who does not fully know life."
So, Russia, as Chekhov saw it at the turn of two centuries, had not yet worked out in itself an effective ideal of man. Premonitions of the coming coup are ripening in it, but people are not yet ready for it. There are rays of truth, humanity and beauty in each of the heroes of The Cherry Orchard. But they are so scattered and fragmented that they are unable to illuminate the coming day. Good secretly shines everywhere, but there is no sun - cloudy, diffused lighting, the light source is not focused. At the end of the play, there is a feeling that life ends for everyone, and this is not accidental. The people of the Cherry Orchard have not risen to the heights required of them by the coming test.
Plunging into a state of deep religious crisis, they lost control over life, and it slipped away from them to the lackeys Yash, to the unfortunate Epikhodovs. Planting a new garden, as Chekhov foresaw, they, of course, failed. And Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard on the eve of the 1905 revolution. This was his last drama. In the spring of 1904, the writer's health deteriorated sharply, forebodings did not deceive him. On the advice of doctors, he went for treatment to the German resort town of Badenweiler. Here, on July 2 (15), 1904, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov died suddenly at the age of forty-five.
Even at the very beginning of work on new play Chekhov calls "The Cherry Orchard" a comedy, and "in some places even a farce." Why did the author himself give such a definition to his latest work? Comedy is theatrical genre, which excites the laughter of the viewer, exposing the negative social and human aspects of life. However, this particular genre is the most controversial in all art. For achievement comic effect You can use a wide variety of techniques: exaggeration or understatement, parody, convergence of opposite phenomena. The main goal of any comedy play make the viewer look at familiar phenomena from the other side, allowing them to activate their emotions and thoughts through contextual meaning. Comic characters are often not what they pretend to be.
Signs of comedy in the play "The Cherry Orchard"
In his latest work Anton Pavlovich used artistic techniques and means characteristic of the comedy genre, which is why The Cherry Orchard is a comedy. The play very clearly shows the opposites in the person of Lopakhin and Ranevskaya. Merchant and aristocrat. He thinks in numbers, sees the benefit in every decision, he has no education, and he calls himself a "man", but other characters characterize him as a person with a subtle and artistic soul. She is a frivolous, addicting nature, a wonderful representative of the outgoing era of the nobility. Presence funny situations and comic heroes (Gaev's conversations with the closet, the clumsy Epikhodov, Charlotte Ivanovna's circus tricks, Petya's fall from the stairs) indicate that comedy play. Among other things, the author himself said that the experiences of his characters are superficial and that they are simply not capable of deep feelings in general, therefore, all their experiences for the most part contrived and therefore funny. Everyone tries to show themselves to be completely different people who they really are. This is especially evident when looking at Dunyasha and Yasha. And these are only a small part of the genre features.
