Anton Chekhov - The Cherry Orchard
Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard' is
set in Russia at a time of great political and social change. Thus, it might be a more
than useful text for consideration when choosing a text for CAT1 (Views and Values).
Chekhov might be seen as giving us a portrait of a society at a particular and decisive
moment in history. On the other hand, many critics believe the lasting value of Chekhov's
work might be in what he writes about people that transcends an historical moment.
You might like to think about the two key elements for Chekhov for CAT1 as being; what does the play illustrate about Chekhov's view of Russian society at the turn of the century? and what does the play tell us about Chekhov's own values? Who is given an approving treatment by Chekhov in this play? Liubov gets some good lines but is her self-indulgent posturing finally rejectet by Chekhov in favour of the plain speaking of Lopakhin?
This page contains:
Natalia and Melanie talk about Feers
Essay Questions on 'The Cherry Orchard'
Books in the Toorak Library about this Play
1. What does the orchard represent to each of the characters?
2. What does Chekhov assume people are like? How do they behave towards each other in this play?
3. Can we tell what Chekhov values? Are there key moments in the play when we sense greater intensity or feeling than others? Are these reliable guides to Chekhov?
4. What assumptions does Chekhov make about the way society works?
5. Each character speaks differently, speaks of different and distinctive things in a different and distinctive way. Try to identify these differences and then mimic them in a new piece of writing.
6. Has Chekhov a favourite character? A least favourite character? Give reasons for your answer.
7. The play is so well put together that no other ending would seem right. Any extra moments would need to come before the end. Do you agree?
8. Is there something about the historical period the play is set in that adds to the play? Would the play work in a modern setting and context? Why?
9. Chekhov wanted to write a play where people come and go and have dinner etc. Has he succeeded? In what ways is this play more than a ‘slice of life’?
Melanie and Natalias' Ideas about Feers
We believe that Feers is a device used by Chekhov to illustrate the past and the traditional way of doing things
Full name: Feers Nikolayevich
Age: 87
Occupation: A man-servant
Description: A doddering, mumbling relic of the past who gives us flashes of insight into the traditions and the system of class in 19th century Russia.
Good Quotes
They knew how to do it then…they had a recipe.
Forgotten, no one can remember it.
The peasants belonged to the gentry, and the gentry belonged to the peasants, but now everything is separate, and you can’t understand anything.
Feers: It was the same before the misfortune: the owl hooted and the samovar kept singing.
Gayev: What misfortune?
Feers: Before they gave us Freedom.
Cool Ideas That We Had
If Feers symbolizes the past, the fact that the other characters leave him behind at the end shows how each of Chekhov’s characters leaves the past behind when they leave the cherry orchard.
They forgot about me.
Feers represents the certainty and security of serfdom in 19th century Russia, and as a result, the other characters speak affectionately of Feers as they do of their own pasts.
Liubov: Feers, thank you, my dear old friend. I am so glad I found you still alive.
- The orchard serves a different purpose for all of the characters (just as the characters interpret the snapping string differently. It’s as if the language they express themselves in isn’t enough unless there is a shared perception of the orchard in the first place.
- Liubov sees orchard as symbol of the old order and her innocent, uncorrupted childhood (contrasted with her worldy life in Paris) She feels she must lose the orchard as a penance for her sins. (P. 347-8 - are people actually communicating until Trofimov appears?)
- Trofimov sees the orchard in social and political terms. Memento of corruption and exploitation. Must be cut down to atone for the past and sounds rhetorical and ‘stagey’. Can’t see that Lopakhin is the real future?
- Lopakhin - ex-serf (didn’t do well in big waves) Can be rude and crass, but also kindly and even sensitive. A positive expression of the new world?
- Strong compulsion in the play for the characters to ‘confess’ to each other - though they rarely seem to express any genuine self-knowledge, even avoiding truth.
- What fascinates Chekhov is people, their oddities and their attempts at communication.
- People are always revealing their thoughts to Ania - she’s like a listening post somehow.
- When talk falters, violence and farce take over. We need to talk.
- Chekhov described the play as ‘optimistic’. ‘The next play I write will be definitely funny, very funny, at least in concept’ (Chekhov to his wife - 7/3/1901)
- Much of the action of the play is in what’s not said. It is a play of pauses, unfinished sentences, the language of instinctive gesture.
- ‘All the inhabitants of The Cherry Orchard are children and their behaviour is childish’ (Critic - A.R. Kugel)
- Close to the ‘symbolist sense of human beings trapped in the involuntary processes of time, their own mortality insignificant within the broader current ¼ it also bestows on The Cherry Orchard its oddly free-floating nature, the sense of persons suspended for the nonce. The present barely exists, elbowed aside by memory and nostalgia, on the one hand, and by expectation and hope on the other’ (Critic-Laurence Senerlick)
- ‘The inhabitants of The Cherry Orchard live, as if half asleep, spectrally on the border-line of the real and the mystical.’ (Critic - A.R. Kugel)
- The pause after the snapping sound - ‘The moment is punctuated by those pauses evoke the gaps in existence that Bely claimed were horrifying and that Beckett was to characterise as the transitional zone in which being made itself heard’ (Senerlick)
- About the party scene in Act III with its intermingling of symbol and surface reality one critic saw it this way: In the foreground room a domestic drama is taking place, while, at the back, candle-lit, the masks of terror are dancing rapturously; there’s the postal clerk waltzing with some girl - or is he a scarecrow? Perhaps he is a mask fastened to a walking-stick or a uniform hung on a clothes tre. What about the stationmaster? Where are they from, what are they for? It is all an incarnation of fatal chaos. There they dance and simper as the dometic calamity comes to pass.
- There is something terrifying in this ‘nightmarish dance of puppets in a farce ¼ in Chekhov’s new mystical drama’ (Meyerhold - contemporary theatre director of Chekhovs)
- One of the major concerns of the play could be the sheer lack of meaning to be found in anything - if Chekhov is stating anything dogmatically, it may be that any attitude to life may be just as valid as anyone else’s.’ (Nowra-Viewpoints-1976)
Essay Questions on 'The Cherry Orchard'
Helpful for formulating your ideas about the play; try planning a couple of these old style questions
1. Chekhov shows us a society out of touch with itself, of people out of touch with each other and out of touch with themselves. Nothing connects. Discuss.
2. "Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans’ (John Lennon?) In ‘The Cherry Orchard’ Chekhov shows us how people retreat all the time from meaning: retreat into a mythical past or some ideal future. All the while though, even though they are unaware of it, the present is happening to them. Do you agree?
3. Self-knowledge. Communication. Truth. Chekhov must value these things because they are utterly absent form the play.
4. Chekhov must think that life is both crushing and baffling, for all the characters we see live in the past or future, misfits and children, crushed by life. Do you agree?
5. ‘The next play I write will definitely be funny, very funny, at least in concept’ (Chekhov to his wife - 7/3/1901)
‘My play ¼ hasn’t turned out to be a drama, but as a comedy, at times almost a farce’ (15/9/1903)
Chekhov’s intentions here and in the play, are clear, to illustrate the farcical nature of people as they operate in society. Discuss.
Toorak College Library Resources
Jackson, Robert (ed), 'Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays', Spectrum, 891.723 CHE2
Styan, J.L., 'Chekhov in Performance, A Commentary on the Major Plays', Cambridge, 891.723 CHE (STY)
Valency, Maurice, 'The Breaking String; The Plays of Anton Chekhov', Galaxy, 891.723 VAL
The Anton Chekhov Page - THE Chekhov site. This one is worth spending some time looking through. Just when you doubted the internet...
The Chekhov Page from the Nebraska Centre for Writers is also a very good site. In fact, if you're looking for good things about writers and writing in general, try the Nebraska Centre. Its page of links about various writers alone makes it a worthwhile site.
