About kids 

The main conflict of the cherry orchard. A play by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard"; features of the conflict, system of images, genre specificity, symbolic beginning. The Cherry Orchard and Chekhov's Dramaturgy in Literary Criticism. Among the heroes of the play "The Cherry Orchard" NO

A.P. Chekhov was primarily interested in the inner world of his characters. The standard composition with turbulent events did not suit him. “Let everything on the stage be as complicated and at the same time as simple as in life,” Chekhov said, “people dine, only dine, and at this time their happiness is built up and their lives are broken.” All the main events take place behind the scenes, and on the stage all attention is focused on the feelings and thoughts of the characters.

A special place among Chekhov's "plays of life" was occupied by "The Cherry Orchard". Before us appears the owner of the estate at the usual meal (tea), not knowing that the cherry orchard has already been sold. This main event happened, as it were, against the will of the main characters. Even Lopakhin buys the estate unexpectedly for himself. There is no conflict between Lopakhin and Ranevskaya on the issue of buying the estate. He is trying with all his heart to save this estate for his mistress. Moreover, since childhood, he has feelings for Ranevskaya that are unexpectedly touching for a businessman. He is looking forward to her return from Paris, looking forward to this meeting, which is so important for him. There is no social conflict in Chekhov's plays, as in Ostrovsky's. Yermolai Lopakhin's father and grandfather were "slaves on this estate", but between him and Lyubov Andreevna there is a barely noticeable thread of sympathy. He is spiritually closer to her than to Varya, whose soul does not soar above the roof of an old house. Lopakhin perceives the world more subtle. He admires the picture of the poppy planted by him. He utters beautiful words about Russia, which should be a country of "giants", and dreams of its future. He speaks tenderly of the estate, "there is nothing more beautiful in the world." Apparently, therefore, he is rather close to Petya Trofimov. Throughout the play, they exchange sharp words, but in the parting scene, Petya confesses his sympathy for Lopakhin: “After all, I still love you. You have thin, delicate fingers, like an artist, you have a thin, tender soul. Lopakhin, like no one else, is trying to connect everyone. He extends a helping hand to Petya. But he proudly rejects it: “I am a free man. And everything that you all, rich and poor, value so highly and dearly, has not the slightest power over me ... I can do without everyone, I can pass you by, I am strong and proud. Feeling himself morally superior to others, he thereby leaves people, and hence from the right path. He is closest to the truth, he understands that death is only the first stage, that, probably, only 5 out of 100 types of feelings are known to a person. Consequently, the meaning of life also changes. But he does not know the feeling of love. “We are above love,” he says of himself and Anya. He does not understand Ranevskaya's love for the "Parisian" who betrayed her. Petya does not know how to love or forgive.

Everyone realized only part of the truth. The internal rejection of someone else's truth prevents them from approaching the truth. It would seem that Anya should have more chances to find the right path, having inherited the delicate loving soul of Lyubov Andreevna and Petya's philosophy. But some unpleasant aftertaste at the end of the play remains. Anya was instructed to take care of Firs, she entrusted this to Yasha and calmed down. Firs is left alone in the boarded up old house.

Chekhov tried to show that the characters have much more in common than differences. But everyone is only busy with themselves. From the first scene, they seem to be talking about their own, not listening to the other. The opposition of internal positions prevents them not only from understanding each other, but also from improving their worldview. All external events are only consequences of the inner work that goes on or not in the soul of each. The Cherry Orchard, as a symbol of Russia, is lost to them. Lopakhin, the only one who tried to join forces and save the estate, failed. Maybe in desperation he acquires an estate, sees no other way. Internal alienation leads to collapse, no matter what ideals are behind it.

Behind everyday episodes and details, one can feel the movement of the “undercurrent” of the play, its second plan. Chekhov's theater is built on semitones, on reticence, on the "parallelism" of questions and answers without genuine communication. It has been noted that the main thing in Chekhov's dramas is hidden behind the words, concentrated in the famous pauses: in The Seagull, for example, there are 32 pauses, in Uncle Vanya - 43, in The Three Sisters - 60, in The Cherry Orchard - 32. There was no such "silent" dramaturgy before Chekhov. Pauses largely form the subtext of the play, its mood, create a feeling of intense expectation, listening to the underground rumble of impending upheavals.

The motive of loneliness, misunderstanding, confusion is the leading motive of the play. He determines the mood, the attitude of all the characters, for example, Charlotte Ivanovna, who asks herself first of all: "Who am I, why am I unknown." Cannot find the “right direction” Epikhodov (“twenty-two misfortunes”): “... I just can’t understand the direction of what I really want, to live or shoot myself.” Firs understood the previous order, “and now everything is in disarray, you won’t understand anything.” And even the pragmatic Lopakhin only sometimes “seems” that he understands why he lives in the world.

The frequently quoted fragment of the second act of the play has become a textbook, in which the misunderstanding, the focus of each character in the play exclusively on their own experiences appear with particular clarity:

Lyubov Andreevna. Who is smoking disgusting cigars here...

Gaev. Here the railway was built, and it became convenient. We went to the city and had breakfast... yellow in the middle! I'd like to go to the house first, play one game...

Lopakhin. Only one word! (Pleading.) Give me an answer!

GAYEV (yawning). Whom?

LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA (looks in her purse). Yesterday there was a lot of money, and today there is very little ... "

There is no dialogue, replicas are random, the present seems unsteady, and the future is unclear and disturbing. A.P. Skaftymov comments: “Chekhov has many such “random” remarks, they are everywhere, and the dialogue is constantly torn, broken and confused in some apparently completely extraneous and unnecessary trifles. It is not the objective meaning that is important in them, but the well-being of life. Everyone speaks (or is silent, and silence becomes more eloquent than words) about his own, and this own turns out to be inaccessible to others.

For Ranevskaya and Gaev, Lopakhin’s proposal to give the estate for dachas, cutting down the old cherry orchard, seems basely “material”, vulgar: “Dachas and summer residents are so vulgar, sorry,” replies Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. Those 25 thousand annual income that Lopakhin promises them cannot compensate the owners of something very important - the memory of the dear past, the beauty of the garden. For them, demolishing a house and cutting down a garden means losing their property. According to A.P. Skaftymov, “all the faces of the play have something emotionally dear inside, and for all of them it is shown by Chekhov as equally inaccessible to everyone around.”

Each character has something that drowns out the pain of parting with the cherry orchard (or the joy of acquisition). After all, Ranevskaya and Gaev could easily avoid ruin, for this it was only worth renting out a cherry orchard. But they refuse. On the other hand, Lopakhin, after acquiring a cherry orchard, will not escape despondency and sadness. He suddenly addresses Ranevskaya with words of reproach: “Why, why didn’t you listen to me? My poor, good, you will not return now. And in tune with the whole course of the play, the moods of all the characters, Lopakhin utters his famous phrase: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.” The life of all the heroes is absurd and awkward.

The essence of the play's conflict lies not in the loss of the cherry orchard, not in the ruin of the owners of the noble estate (otherwise, the play would probably have had a different name, for example, "The Sale of the Estate"). The reason for the discord, the source of the conflict, is not in the struggle for the cherry orchard, but in the general dissatisfaction with life, according to A.P. Skaftymov: “Life goes on and quarrels in vain for everyone for a long time, day after day. The bitterness of the life of these people, their drama, therefore, does not consist in a special sad event, but precisely in this long, ordinary, gray, one-color, everyday everyday state.

But, unlike the classical drama of the 19th century, the culprit of suffering and failure in the play is not personified, not named, it is not one of the characters. And the reader turns his inquiring gaze beyond the limits of the stage - into the very device, the "addition" of life, in the face of which all the characters turn out to be powerless. The main conflict of Chekhov's plays - "bitter dissatisfaction with the very composition of life" - remains unresolved.

Chekhov, in his plays, and with the greatest force in The Cherry Orchard, expressed the moods of the turn of the era, when the rumble of impending historical cataclysms was clearly felt. It is symptomatic that in the same 1904, when The Cherry Orchard was staged, a poem by the symbolist poet Z. Gippius, close in emotional sensation to reality, was written, in which dissatisfaction with modernity and knowledge of the upcoming changes were extremely expressively expressed.

In the play, everyone lives in anticipation of an inevitable impending catastrophe: parting not with a cherry orchard, but with a whole thousand-year era - a thousand-year way of Russian life. And no one knows yet, but already has a presentiment that under the ax of Lopakhin not only the garden will die, but also much of what is dear to both Ranevskaya and Lopakhin, and to those who believed that “everything will be different” - Anya and Petya Trofimov. Before such a future, the plot conflict of The Cherry Orchard turns out to be illusory.

Chekhov's work is rightly called an encyclopedia of the spiritual quests of its time, in which there was no general idea. In one of his letters, Chekhov wrote about his epoch of timelessness: “We have neither immediate nor distant goals, and in our soul there is even a rolling ball. We have no politics, we do not believe in revolution, there is no God, we are not afraid of ghosts, and I personally am not even afraid of death and blindness ... has its own good goals hidden from us and was not sent without reason ... "

At the lessons of literature, we read and analyzed the play by A.P. Chekhov “The Cherry Orchard”. The external plot of The Cherry Orchard is the change of owners of the house and garden, the sale of the estate for debts. At first, it seems that the opposing forces are clearly marked in the play, reflecting the different periods of life in Russia at that time: the past (Ranevskaya and Gaev), the present (Lopakhin), the future (Petya and Anya). It seems that the clash of these forces should give rise to the main conflict of the play. The characters are focused on the most important event in their lives - the sale of the cherry orchard

Peculiarity

The conflict lies in the absence of open confrontation. Each character has their own internal conflict.

For Ranevskaya and Gaev, representatives of the past, the cherry orchard is the only place on earth where they can still feel at home. In Chekhov's play, the ghost of the deceased mother is seen only by Ranevskaya. Only she is able to catch something familiar in a white cherry tree, reminiscent of maternal affection, unique childhood, beauty and poetry. Despite her kindness, love for beauty, she is a frivolous woman who squanders money, carefree and indifferent to the fate of Russia, Precisely Ranevskaya

And she spent on her lover all the money that should have gone to pay interest. She gives the last money to a passerby when the house itself has nothing and lends - “Give it to him. He needs it, he will return it.”

Moreover, Ranevskaya is now taking to Paris all the money sent by her grandmother for Anya. “Long live grandma!” - this exclamation does not paint Lyubov Andreevna, it is heard not only despair, but also open cynicism. Gaev, on the other hand, is a childishly careless person, he also loves beautiful phrases, kind. But his words are at odds with deeds, he is squeamish of the people. Servants left him - they do not understand him. Also, they do not understand the course of his thoughts and the meaning of his sayings in the tavern, to which he talks about art.

Lopakhin Ermolai Alekseevich is characterized by an internal conflict between internal self-esteem and external well-being. On the one hand, he is a merchant who could afford to buy a cherry orchard and an estate in which his father and grandfather worked all his life, on the other hand, he unflatteringly fixes himself from the inside. This testifies to the precarious position between his essence and external rule. “My dad was a man, an idiot. he didn’t understand anything, he didn’t teach me, but only beat me while drunk, and all with a stick. In fact, I'm the same blockhead and idiot. I didn’t learn anything, my handwriting is bad, I write in such a way that people are ashamed of me, like a pig. “

Also, Petya Trofimov, the teacher of the late son of Ranevskaya, has an internal conflict in himself. It lies in the discrepancy between the words and actions of the character. He scolds everything that hinders the development of Russia. criticizes the intelligentsia, which does not seek anything and does not work. But Trofimov does not notice that he himself is a bright representative of such an intelligentsia: beautiful words are different from his actions. Peter denies love, considering it to be something “small and illusory”, he only encourages Anya to believe him, as he anticipates happiness. Ranevskaya reproaches T. for coldness, when he says that there is no difference, the estate was sold. At the end of the play, T. searches for forgotten galoshes, which become a symbol of his worthless, albeit illuminated by beautiful words, life.

This is the peculiarity of the conflict - there is no single confrontation, and each hero is deepened in solving his own internal conflict.

Essays on topics:

  1. Genre diversity of creativity of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky is an undoubted evidence of his talent. He is a bright poet, created the dramatic works "Bug" and "Bath", ...
  2. The play by N.V. Gogol "Marriage" was written in 1842. Immediately upon its release, it became the subject of numerous discussions and ...
  3. The connection between the world of nature and the world of human feelings in Fet's poem is metonymic. The lyrical hero and his beloved are silent, they ...
  4. The poem "Garden" by Anna Akhmatova is an unusually expressive work, where a whole philosophy is revealed in four stanzas. It refers to early poetry...

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Classic of world literature. Doctor by profession. Honorary Academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature (1900-1902). One of the most famous playwrights in the world. His works have been translated into over 100 languages. His plays, especially The Seagull, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, have been staged in many theaters around the world for over 100 years.

Over 25 years of creativity, Chekhov created more than 300 different works (short humorous stories, serious stories, plays), many of which have become classics of world literature.


The Cherry Orchard

A lyrical play in four acts by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the genre of which the author himself defined as a comedy. The play was written in 1903 and first staged on January 17, 1904 at the Moscow Art Theatre. One of the most famous works of Chekhov and one of the most famous Russian plays written at that time.


Critics called the play "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov a drama, and the writer himself believed that there was nothing dramatic in it, and, first of all, it was a comedy.

History of creation

The Cherry Orchard is Chekhov's last play, completed on the threshold of the first Russian revolution, a year before his early death. The idea for the play came from Chekhov in early 1901. The play was completed on September 26, 1903.



Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky

in his memoirs about Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“Look, I found a wonderful title for the play. Wonderful!” he announced, looking straight at me. "Which?" I got excited. “The Cherry Orchard,” and he rolled with joyful laughter. I did not understand the reason for his joy and did not find anything special in the title. However, in order not to upset Anton Pavlovich, I had to pretend that his discovery made an impression on me ... Instead of explaining, Anton Pavlovich began to repeat in different ways, with all sorts of intonations and sound coloring: “The Cherry Orchard. Look, it's a wonderful name! The Cherry Orchard. Cherry!”… Several days or a week passed after this meeting… Once, during a performance, he came into my dressing room and sat down at my table with a solemn smile. Chekhov liked to watch us prepare for the performance. He followed our make-up so closely that you could guess from his face whether you successfully or unsuccessfully put paint on your face. “Listen, not the Cherry, but the Cherry Orchard,” he announced and burst into laughter. At first I did not even understand what it was about, but Anton Pavlovich continued to savor the title of the play, emphasizing the gentle sound yo in the word "Cherry", as if trying with its help to caress the former beautiful, but now unnecessary life, which he destroyed with tears in his play. This time I understood the subtlety: "The Cherry Orchard" is a business, commercial garden that generates income. Such a garden is needed now. But the "Cherry Orchard" does not bring income, it keeps in itself and in its blooming whiteness the poetry of the former aristocratic life. Such a garden grows and blooms for a whim, for the eyes of spoiled aesthetes. It is a pity to destroy it, but it is necessary, since the process of the country's economic development requires it.



Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya - landowner

Anya - her daughter, 17 years old

Varya - her adopted daughter, 24

Leonid Andreevich Gaev - brother Ranevskaya

Ermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin - merchant

Pyotr Sergeevich Trofimov - student

Boris Borisovich Simeonov-Pishchik - landowner

Charlotte Ivanovna - governess

Semyon Panteleevich Epikhodov - clerk

Dunyasha - housemaid

Firs - footman, old man 87 years old

Yasha - young footman

drunk passerby

stationmaster

postal official

guests

servant



The action begins in the spring at the estate of Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, who, after several years of living in France, returns to Russia with her seventeen-year-old daughter Anya. Gaev, Ranevskaya's brother, and Varya, her adopted daughter, are already waiting for them at the station.

Ranevskaya had practically no money left, and the estate with its beautiful cherry orchard could soon be sold for debts. The familiar merchant Lopakhin tells the landowner his solution to the problem: he proposes to break the land into plots and lease them to summer residents. Lyubov Andreevna is very surprised by such a proposal: she cannot imagine how it is possible to cut down a cherry orchard and rent out her estate, where she grew up, where her young life passed and where her son Grisha died, to summer residents. Gaev and Varya are also trying to find some way out of the current situation: Gaev reassures everyone and swears that the estate will not be sold: he plans to borrow some money from a rich Yaroslavl aunt, who, however, does not like Ranevskaya.



In the third act, Gaev and Lopakhin leave for the city, where the auction is to take place, and in the meantime, dances are held on the estate. Governess Charlotte Ivanovna entertains guests with her tricks with ventriloquism. Each of the characters is busy with their own problems. Lyubov Andreevna worries about why her brother does not return for so long. When Gaev nevertheless appears, he informs his sister, full of unfounded hopes, that the estate has been sold, and Lopakhin has become its buyer. Lopakhin is happy, he feels his victory and asks the musicians to play something funny, he does not care about the sadness and despair of Ranevsky and Gaev.

The final act is devoted to the departure of Ranevskaya, her brother, daughters and servants from the estate. They leave the place that meant so much to them and start a new life. Lopakhin's plan came true: now, as he wanted, he will cut down the garden and lease the land to summer residents. Everyone leaves, and only the old footman Firs, abandoned by everyone, delivers the final monologue, after which the sound of an ax banging on wood is heard.




The play begins as a comedy, but at the end you can see the author's characteristic combination of comic and tragic.

Unusually, dialogues are built in the play: most often, the replicas are not a consistent answer to a question asked before, but reproduce a disorderly conversation. This is connected not only with Chekhov's desire to bring the conversation in the play closer to conversations that happen in real life, but also an indicator that the characters do not hear and do not listen to each other.

The main distinguishing feature of the work is a special Chekhovian symbolism. The “main, central character” of the work is not a character, but the image of a cherry orchard - a symbol of noble Russia. In the play, the garden is cut down, but in life the nests of the nobility disintegrate, the old Russia, the Russia of the Ranevskys and Gaevs, is becoming obsolete. There is also an element of Chekhov's foresight of subsequent events, which he was no longer able to see. The symbolism in the play uses a variety of artistic means: semantic (the main topic of conversations) and external (style of clothing), leitmotifs, demeanor, actions.



  • The play "The Cherry Orchard", written in 1903,

became for Chekhov:

  • His debut work
  • The last in creativity, the result of reflections on the fate of Russia
  • A means to pay card debts made by a writer
  • The opportunity to bring your wife to the stage

for which the play was written

2. Among the heroes of the play "The Cherry Orchard" NO:

  • Lyubov Andreevna and Yermolay Alekseevich
  • Vari and Gaeva
  • Petya and Anya
  • Uncle Vanya and Ionych

3. Why and why does Lopakhin buy a cherry orchard?

Lopakhin buys a cherry orchard (as part of the Ranevskaya estate), because the site is in a great location. An estate with a cherry orchard can bring a good income. Lopakhin is also pleased to become the owner of the estate, in which his father and grandfather were serfs.

4. Lopakhin's father was:

  • Landowner, friend of Ranevskaya's father.
  • A simple man.
  • He came from a noble family hostile to Lopakhin.
  • French ambassador.

5. What exactly threatens Ranevskaya's cherry orchard?

  • Cutting down by poachers.
  • A fire that broke out due to drought.
  • Petya, who wants to marry Anya and take possession of all the property of Ranevskaya.
  • Sale by auction for debts.

6. What exactly is Lopakhin Ranevskaya's solution to the problem with the cherry orchard?

  • Lease the territory of the garden for summer cottages and make a profit from it.
  • Marry him, Lopakhin, and use his money to cover the debt.
  • Run away to Paris in the hope that creditors will not be able to find Ranevskaya there and forget about the debt.
  • Get your daughters married to wealthy suitors as soon as possible and more successfully.

7. What is the mistress of the estate Ranevskaya doing during the auction?

  • Packing up, preparing to leave for Paris
  • Participates in the auction together with Lopakhin
  • Arranges a ball on the estate
  • Travels around acquaintances, trying to borrow money to pay interest
  • drama
  • tragedy
  • comedy

10. What is the maiden name of Ranevskaya.

  • Gaeva
  • Trofimova
  • Lopakhin
  • Epikhodova

Interesting Facts:

It was in honor of Lyubov Ranevskaya from The Cherry Orchard that she took the pseudonym Faina Feldman.

Faina is a Soviet actress of Belarusian-Jewish origin. Ranevskaya is also memorable for her sayings, many of which have become winged.

The peculiarity of the conflict
In the play by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard"

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote the play " The Cherry Orchard in 1903. She is still controversial. The author himself noted that in the theater it is played as a drama, and he called it a comedy. In his dramaturgy, Chekhov continued the traditions of Russian realistic comedy, laid down in the works of Gogol, Griboyedov, Ostrovsky.

In the play "The Cherry Orchard" there is no division of characters into positive and negative, and for classic comedies such a division of heroes is necessary. Each character in Chekhov's plays combines both positive and negative qualities. For example, in Ranevskaya we see both selfishness, and laziness, and lack of will, and nobility, but at the same time, Ranevskaya is sincere, kind, and to some extent smart.
All the characters in the play are funny, comical (with the exception of Anya), of course, in their own way. Gaev - with billiard terms and his stupid habit of answering any question: "Who?". Ranevskaya - with her absent-mindedness and manner of expressing herself, Petya Trofimov - with her "negligence", Varya with excessive housekeeping and tearfulness.

The play " The Cherry Orchard can rightly be called a "comedy of characters". But along with the comical behavior, we also see the dramatic nature of the characters' experiences. Ranevskaya, complaining about her life, remembering the past, evokes in us a feeling of pity for her, sympathy.

The peculiarity of the conflict in the play by A. P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard" embodied in the system of images and characters. Of course, the central image of the play is the cherry orchard. All problems, experiences are built around him. All thoughts, memories of the heroes are connected with him. The revealing feature of the plot is the absence of a pronounced conflict, the action is not through, but internal. All events take place in the same estate with permanent characters. The external conflict in the play is replaced by the drama of the characters' experiences. The absence of an external stimulus in the play suggests that Chekhov wants to show us the inevitability and naturalness of the change of times and generations. The old world of serf Russia is personified by the images of Gaev, Ranevskaya, Vari, Firs. The world of today, the world of the business bourgeoisie, is personified by Lopakhin, the world of undecided tendencies of the future is personified by Anya and Petya Trofimov. The confrontation between the past and the present, between Ranevskaya and Lopakhin, in general, is absent. Lopakhin wants to help Ranevskaya, gives advice on saving the estate, he even offers to take on the chores of arranging affairs, but Ranevskaya refuses.

Strengthening the psychologism of the play is achieved by Chekhov due to the "undercurrent" (Stanislavsky's term). The essence of this technique is that Chekhov takes out of the scene the main event - the sale of the estate at auction. The fact that the estate has been sold, that the buyer is Lopakhin, we learn only from individual remarks of the characters. Chekhov shows the main thing through the prism of particulars, trifles, through "nonsense". So, we can judge the psychological state of the characters by their emotionally colored speech. At the beginning of the play, everyone’s mood is upbeat, joyful, then anxiety for the estate gradually increases, the situation “heats up”, and after the sale of the estate, everyone’s feeling of anxiety disappears and a feeling of expectation of a new, bright feeling appears.

An important role in the play is played by the artistic detail. With the help of a symbolic detail, Chekhov conveys the emotional state, shows the author's position. Examples of a symbolic detail are the sound of a broken string, a city that is visible only in clear weather, a casual passer-by. With the help of such a detail as the knock of an ax, the felling of a cherry orchard, Chekhov shows the change of eras: the garden is cut down, the past makes room for the future.

The combination of the comic and the lyrical in the behavior of the characters, the inner drama of experiences and feelings create that unique genre of comedy that Chekhov the playwright created - the genre of lyrical comedy. The skillful use of "undercurrent" and artistic detail raised the "low" genre of comedy to an unattainable height. And this is the great merit of Chekhov.