Doctor Zhigo letter to Tony analysis. Farewell letter to Doctor Zhivago from his wife Toni. I. Opening remarks
The play “The Cherry Orchard,” written by Chekhov in 1904, can rightfully be considered the writer’s creative testament. In it, the author raises a number of problems characteristic of Russian literature: the problem of the figure, fathers and children, love, suffering and others. All these problems are united in the theme of the past, present and future of Russia.
In Chekhov's last play there is one central image that determines the entire life of the characters. This is a cherry orchard. Ranevskaya has memories of her entire life associated with him: both bright and tragic. For her and her brother Gaev, this is a family nest. It would be more accurate to say that she is not the owner of the garden, but he is her owner. “After all, I was born here,” she says, “my father and mother, my grandfather lived here, I love this house, I don’t understand my life without the cherry orchard, and if you really need to sell, then sell me along with the orchard... “But for Ranevskaya and Gaev, the cherry orchard is a symbol of the past.
Another hero, Ermolai Lopakhin, looks at the garden from the point of view of the “circulation of business.” He busily invites Ranevskaya and Gaev to break up the estate into summer cottages, and cut down the garden. We can say that Ranevskaya is a garden in the past, Lopakhin is a garden in the present.
The garden in the future personifies the younger generation of the play: Petya Trofimov and Anya, Ranevskaya’s daughter. Petya Trofimov is the son of a pharmacist. Now he is a commoner student, making his way in life through honest work. Life is hard for him. He himself says that if it is winter, then he is hungry, anxious, poor. Varya calls Trofimov an eternal student who has already been fired from the university twice. Like many progressive people in Russia, Petya is smart, proud, and honest. He knows in what difficult situation the people live. Trofimov thinks that this situation can only be corrected by continuous work. He lives with faith in the bright future of his homeland. With delight, Trofimov exclaims: “Forward! We are moving uncontrollably towards the bright star that burns there in the distance! Forward! Don’t lag behind, friends!” His speech is oratorical, especially where he talks about the bright future of Russia. "All of Russia is our garden!" - he exclaims.
Anya is a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of Ranevskaya. Anya received an ordinary noble upbringing. Trofimov had a great influence on the formation of Anya’s worldview. Anya’s spiritual appearance is characterized by spontaneity, sincerity and beauty of feelings and moods. Anya’s character has a lot of half-childish spontaneity, she reports with childish joy: “And I’m in Paris for hot air balloon flew!" Trofimov awakens in Anya's soul a beautiful dream of a new wonderful life. The girl breaks ties with the past.
The girl breaks ties with the past. Anya decides to take her high school exams and start living in a new way. Anya’s speech is tender, sincere, filled with faith in the future.
The images of Anya and Trofimov evoke my sympathies. I really like spontaneity, sincerity, the beauty of feelings and moods, faith in the bright future of my Motherland.
It is with their lives that Chekhov connects the future of Russia; it is in their mouths that he puts words of hope, his own thoughts. Therefore, these heroes can also be perceived as reasoners - exponents of the ideas and thoughts of the author himself.
So, Anya says goodbye to the garden, that is, to her past life, easy, joyful. She is confident that, despite the sound of an ax being heard, that the estate will be sold for dachas, despite this, new people will come and plant new gardens that will be more beautiful than the previous ones. Chekhov himself believes in this along with her.
Chekhov gave his last play the subtitle “comedy.” But in the first production of the Moscow Art Theater, during the author’s lifetime, the play appeared as a heavy drama, even a tragedy. Who is right? It must be kept in mind that drama is literary work, designed for stage life. Only on stage will drama acquire a full-fledged existence, will reveal all the meanings inherent in it, including gaining genre definition, so the last word in answering the question posed will belong to the theater, directors and actors. At the same time, it is known that the innovative principles of Chekhov the playwright were perceived and assimilated by theaters with difficulty and not immediately.
Although the Moscow Art Theater, sanctified by the authority of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, the traditional interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” as a dramatic elegy was entrenched in the practice of domestic theaters, Chekhov managed to express dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction with “his” theater with their interpretation.
“The Cherry Orchard” is the farewell of the now former owners to their ancestral noble nest. This topic was repeatedly raised in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, both tragically, dramatically, and comically. What are the features of Chekhov's embodiment of this theme?
In many ways, it is determined by Chekhov’s attitude towards the nobility, which is disappearing into social oblivion and the capital that is replacing it, which manifested itself in the images of Ranevskaya and Lopakhin. In both classes and their interaction, Chekhov saw the continuity of bearers of Russian culture. For Chekhov, the noble nest is, first of all, a center of culture. Of course, this is also a museum of serfdom, and this is mentioned in the play, but the playwright still sees the noble estate primarily as a historical place. Ranevskaya is his mistress, the soul of the house. That is why, despite all her frivolity and vices, people are drawn to her. The mistress returned, and the house came to life; the former inhabitants, who had apparently left it forever, began to flock into it.
Lopakhin matches her. This is a poetic nature, he has, as Petya Trofimov says, “thin, gentle fingers, like an artist... a subtle, gentle soul.” And in Ranevskaya he feels the same kindred spirit. The vulgarity of life comes at him from all sides, he acquires the features of a rakish merchant, begins to boast of his democratic origins and flaunt his lack of culture (and this was considered prestigious in the “advanced circles” of that time), but he is also waiting for Ranevskaya in order to cleanse himself and be reborn around her. This image of the capitalist was based on real facts, because many Russian merchants and capitalists helped Russian art. Mamontov, Morozov, Zimin maintained theaters, the Tretyakov brothers founded an art gallery in Moscow, the merchant son Alekseev, who took the stage name Stanislavsky, brought to the Art Theater not only creative ideas, but also his father’s wealth, and quite considerable.
Lopakhin is exactly like that. That is why his marriage to Vara did not work out; they are not a match for each other: the subtle, poetic nature of a rich merchant and the down-to-earth, everyday, everyday adopted daughter of Ranevskaya, completely immersed in the everyday life of life. And now comes another socio-historical turning point in Russian life. The nobles are thrown out of life, their place is taken by the bourgeoisie. How do the owners of the cherry orchard behave? In theory, you need to save yourself and the garden. How? To be socially reborn, to also become a bourgeois, which is what Lopakhin proposes. But for Gaev and Ranevskaya this means changing themselves, their habits, tastes, ideals, and life values. And so they silently reject the offer and fearlessly go towards their social and life collapse.
In this regard deep meaning carries the figure of a minor character - Charlotte Ivanovna. At the beginning of the second act, she says about herself: “I don’t have a real passport, I don’t know how old I am... where I come from and who I am, I don’t know... Who are my parents, maybe they didn’t get married... not I know. I want to talk so much, but with whom... I don’t have anyone... I’m all alone, alone, I don’t have anyone and... and who I am, why I am, is unknown.” Charlotte personifies the future of Ranevskaya - all this will soon await the owner of the estate. But both of them, in different ways, of course, show amazing courage and even maintain good spirits in others, because for all the characters in the play, with the death of the cherry orchard, one life will end, and whether there will be another is unknown.
The former owners and their entourage (that is, Ranevskaya, Varya, Gaev, Pischik, Charlotte, Dunyasha, Firs) behave funny, and in the light of the social oblivion approaching them, stupid and unreasonable. They pretend that everything is going on as before, nothing has changed and nothing will change. This is deception, self-deception and mutual deception. But this is the only way they can resist the inevitability of inevitable fate. Lopakhin sincerely grieves, he does not see class enemies in Ranevskaya and even in Gaev, who bullies him, for him these are dear, dear people.
The universal, humanistic approach to man dominates in the play over the class-class one. The struggle in Lopakhin’s soul is especially strong, as can be seen from his final monologue of the third act.
How are young people behaving at this time? Badly! Due to her young age, Anya has the most uncertain and at the same time rosy idea about the future awaiting her. She is delighted with Petya Trofimov’s chatter. The latter, although 26 or 27 years old, is considered young and seems to have turned his youth into a profession. There is no other way to explain his immaturity and, most surprisingly, the general recognition he enjoys. Ranevskaya cruelly but rightly scolded him, and in response he fell down the stairs. Only Anya believes his beautiful speeches, but her youth excuses her.
Much more than what he says, Petya characterizes his galoshes, “dirty, old.”
But for us, who know about the bloody social cataclysms that shook Russia in the 20th century and began literally immediately after the applause died down at the premiere of the play and its creator died, Petya’s words, his dreams of a new life, Anya’s desire to plant another garden - we are all this should lead to more serious conclusions about the essence of Petit’s image. Chekhov was always indifferent to politics; both the revolutionary movement and the fight against it passed him by. Stupid girl Anya believes these words. Other characters chuckle and sneer: this Petya is too big of a klutz to be afraid of him. And it was not he who cut down the garden, but a merchant who wanted to build summer cottages on this site. Chekhov did not live to see the other dachas built in the vast expanses of his and our long-suffering homeland by the successors of Petya Trofimov’s work. Fortunately, most of the characters in “The Cherry Orchard” did not have to “live in this wonderful time.”
Chekhov is characterized by an objective manner of narration; in his prose the author’s voice is not heard. It is generally impossible to hear it in drama. And yet, is “The Cherry Orchard” a comedy, drama or tragedy? Knowing how much Chekhov did not like certainty and, therefore, incomplete coverage of a life phenomenon with all its complexities, one should carefully answer: everything at once. The theater will have the last word on this issue.
(482 words) “The Cherry Orchard” is the last play by A.P. Chekhov. It was written by him in 1903, shortly before the 1905 revolution. The country then stood at a crossroads, and in the work the author skillfully conveyed the atmosphere of that time through events, characters, their characters and actions. The Cherry Orchard is the embodiment of pre-revolutionary Russia, and heroes of different ages are the personification of the past, present and future of the country.
Ranevskaya and Gaev represent earlier times. They live in memories and do not want to solve the problems of the present at all. Their house is under threat, but instead of making any attempts to save it, they in every possible way avoid conversations with Lopakhin on this topic. Lyubov Andreevna constantly wastes money that could be used to buy out a house. In the second act, she first complains: “Oh, my sins... I’ve always wasted money without restraint, like crazy...” - and literally a minute later, having heard the Jewish orchestra, she suggests “inviting him somehow, having an evening.” There is a feeling that before us are not adult, experienced, educated heroes, but foolish children who are unable to exist independently. They hope that their problem will be solved miraculously, but they themselves do not take any action, leaving everything to the mercy of fate. In the end, they are deprived of the entire past that they treasured so much.
The present time is personified by the merchant Ermolai Lopakhin. He is a representative of the growing class in Russia - the bourgeoisie. Unlike Ranevskaya and Gaev, he is not childish, but very hardworking and enterprising. It is these qualities that help him eventually buy the estate. He grew up in a family of serfs who used to serve the Gaevs, so he is very proud of himself: “... beaten, illiterate Ermolai... bought an estate where his grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen.” For Yermolai, the garden is not a memory of past years; for him, the plot is only a means for making money. He cuts it down without any doubt, thereby destroying the old, but at the same time not creating anything new.
Anya and Petya Trofimov are heroes of the future. They both talk about the future as something absolutely bright and beautiful. But in reality, for the two of them it is quite vague. Petya talks a lot, but does little. At 26, he still hasn't graduated from university, earning him the nickname "the eternal student." He criticizes the nobility and supports the bourgeoisie, calling people to work, but he himself is not capable of anything. Of all the characters in the play, only Anya supports him. She is still a 17-year-old girl who represents the personification of youth, inexhaustible strength and the desire to do good. Her future is also unknown, but it is she who reassures her mother: “We will plant new garden, more luxurious than this." She has no doubt that the loss of an estate is not the worst tragedy and that you can plant a new garden, just as you can start new life. Although the author does not claim anything, perhaps Anya is the true future of Russia.
A.P. Chekhov showed readers heroes of different generations, classes and views on life of that time, but was never able to give a definite answer as to who the future of the country lay behind. But still, he sincerely believed that Russia’s future would certainly be bright and beautiful, like a blooming cherry orchard.
