Should the cherry orchard be saved? based on the play The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov A.)

Essay text:

The play The Cherry Orchard is the latest and, presumably, the most perfect dramatic work of A.P. Chekhov. It was written in 1904 shortly before his death. The author called the play a comedy, it is difficult for us to judge why, perhaps because in the ordinary life situation of the ruin of the nobility and the withering away of the old way of life, there really are many ridiculous inconsistencies. The main characters Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna and her brother Gaev Leonid Andreevich are hopelessly behind the times, they cannot comprehend reality, their actions are illogical, their plans are unrealistic. Lyubov Andreevna gives a random passer-by who asked for thirty kopecks, gold, at a time when people at home have nothing to eat. Leonid Andreevich offers three options for saving the cherry orchard, but not one of them is feasible. These heroes are close to the elderly servant Firs. Just as Ranevskaya and Gaev are unthinkable without Firs, so Firs is unthinkable without them. These are the types of outgoing Russia. The end of the play is very symbolic, the old owners of the cherry orchard leave and forget the dying Firs. So, the logical ending: inactive consumers, in the social sense, parasites, the servant who faithfully served them, in the social sense, lackey, the cherry orchard, all this is irretrievably a thing of the past. This is a comedy? Good comedy!
Does it give rise to optimistic expectations? But what's ahead?
New in the play is personified by three people: Petya Trofimov, Anya and Lopakhin. Moreover, the author clearly contrasts Petya and Anya with Lopakhin. Who are they, these people, and what to expect from them?
Petya is an eternal student who cannot complete his course in any way, he was expelled from the university twice. The author does not specify for what for poor progress or for politics. He is twenty-seven years old, he has neither an education nor a specialty, he lives (or rather takes root) in the Ranevskaya estate, where he once was a tutor for the mistress's son. He hasn't done anything in his life. His actions are words. He says to Anya: ...your grandfather, great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners who owned living souls, and do not human beings look at you from every cherry in the garden, from every leaf, from every trunk, do you really not hear voices. .. Anya, all aspiring to the future, she is only seventeen years old, shares the words of Petya, considers exploitation immoral, but she, and the accuser Petya, help the owners to live what was previously earned by the hard work of serfs.
Further in the same monologue, Petya says: It is so clear that in order to begin to live in the present, we must first redeem our past, put an end to it, and it can only be redeemed by suffering, only by extraordinary continuous labor. What does Petya mean by suffering? Perhaps this is the suffering that revolutions, civil wars bring? Most likely, he repeats without deep awareness the words that in those pre-revolutionary years were in great use in an intelligent and semi-intelligent environment. Destructive rhetoric sprouted destructive ideology. It seemed that one had only to put an end to the hated foundations of society, and all of Russia would become a garden. However, Petya, like, probably, Chekhov, does not have a positive program for the reorganization of life. He calls to work, but does not indicate the scope of work.
There is labor to collect stones (for building) and there is labor to scatter stones (destroying). Petya has already worked on Anya's consciousness. She, at seventeen, does not think about her human destiny, about love, about family, about the happiness of being a mother. But still, she has a healthy need for knowledge, before leaving the estate, she says to her mother: We will read in the autumn evenings, we will read many books, and a new, wonderful world will open before us ... Both Petya and Anya, of course, in varying degrees, do not accept the existing order of things and want to change it. With obvious inconsistency, their position is, of course, moral, they are sincere in their desire for good for people and are ready to work for this.
But there is a man who occupies a certain place in this order. This is the merchant Lopa-khin, a representative of the active part of society. The author's attitude towards such people is formulated by Petya Trofimov, who says to Lopakhin: I, Ermolai Nikolaevich, understand that you are a rich man, you will soon be a millionaire. That's how in the sense of metabolism you need a predatory beast that eats everything that gets in its way, so you are needed. Lopakhin is a man of action: ... I get up at five o'clock in the morning, I work from morning to evening, well, I always have my own money and other people's money ... His father was a serf with his grandfather and father Ranevskaya. He lacks education, culture. He says to Lyubov Andreevna: Your brother, here is Leonid Andreevich, say about me that I am a boor, I am a kulak... Only Lopakhin offers a real plan for saving the estate, but he make it a source of income. It is noteworthy that the garden still passes to Lopakhin.
So who is the future? For Petya and Anya or for Lopakhin? This question could have been purely rhetorical if history had not given Russia a second attempt to resolve it. Will the active Petya and Anya or the moral Lopakhin come along?
The comedy is over. The comedy continues, gentlemen!

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The play "The Cherry Orchard" is the last work of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The writer was terminally ill and realized that he would die very soon. This is probably why the play is permeated with some special sadness, tenderness, lyricism. "The Cherry Orchard" strikes the reader with its metaphorical nature and the depth of its characters. Each scene here is multifaceted, ambiguous; every detail becomes the personification of the past, outgoing life, but still so dear and familiar.

The play seemed to meet three eras: past, present and future. Some heroes live in yesterday, cherishing warm memories of the past, others know the value of time, are busy with everyday affairs and are ready to benefit and benefit from any business, while others confidently look to tomorrow, looking into the future, still distant and unknown.

The artistic load placed on the landscape also makes an indelible impression. The backdrop against which the events of the play unfold is the cherry orchard. The garden is the embodiment of the inevitably passing past, the habitual, quiet, carefree life that has sunk into oblivion. Stanislavsky, in his memoirs of Chekhov, wrote that the writer in his work "... caressed the former beautiful, but now unnecessary life, which he destroyed with tears in his play."

The Cherry Orchard is a quiet family nest, an island of home peace and comfort, with which the heroes have firmly connected all the brightest and dearest that warms the soul. It is as if dreams and hopes, aspirations and memories of Ranevskaya and Gaev are collected here - representatives of the “past” generation, inert and indecisive people, those who are accustomed to an easy, carefree life, over which, it seemed to the heroes, time itself has no power. From year to year, the characters tenderly cherished the storehouse of their memories, not even thinking about the fact that the old order will soon sink into oblivion and the heroes will have to learn to live in a new world, where, as it turned out, there is no place for idle dreamers.

So is it necessary to save the cherry orchard? Is it necessary to save the old aristocratic Russia, the embodiment of which this “character” is (the image of the cherry orchard is so thought out, tangible that it can be safely called another “character” of the play)? Despite the fact that the cherry orchard is a symbol of the past, do fondly kept memories deserve to be destroyed just because the people of the "new era" do not realize their value, significance? No. The garden was and remains the same embodiment, albeit not come true, but still surprisingly good, bright and pure dreams and hopes; an echo of a happy and carefree past, dear to the heart of the main characters of the play.

So, the old way of life is changing under the onslaught of young, energetic, active people, but this does not mean at all that memories of the past should be destroyed, because memory is part of history and culture. That is why the cherry orchard "has the right to life" and is worthy of "salvation", because "it keeps in its blooming whiteness the poetry of the former aristocratic life."

In 1903, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote his last play, which he gave the amazingly accurate and affectionate name "The Cherry Orchard". If you hear this phrase, you will immediately want to immerse yourself in the warmth and comfort of the noble nest that adorned our land a century ago.

It was created by the labor and sweat of serfs for the life and joy of the generations of the Gaev family, something very similar to Oblomov. They are kind, intelligent, but inactive, like Ilya Ilyich, who has lain on the couch all his life.

They also had their own Zakhar, only they called him Firs. Now he is 87. Gaev has also grown old, remaining a big careless child with endless lollipops in his mouth. His sister managed to change her surname - now the mother of a seventeen-year-old girl. But until now, Ranevskaya's room is called the nursery - the power of memory and tradition.

"Oh my youth! O my freshness! exclaims Gogol in Dead Souls. We hear almost the same thing in Ranevskaya's remark, because not only hands, feet, but also the human soul is looking for support. The most reliable support is the parental home. That is why, after spending five years abroad, Ranevskaya returns to the estate at the most difficult moment - it has already been put up for auction.

The Cherry Orchard... It is both a living memory of the departed and a medicine for the soul. Ranevskaya loves her estate not for potatoes and tomatoes, but for memory and beauty. She won't save her estate, no matter what. But he tries to at least once again see his native nest.

Perhaps, for the sake of this meeting with Ranevskaya - a man, not a mistress - the old Firs kept his life - the emblem of the house, so merged with him that even now, four decades later, he perceives will as a misfortune. It was not for nothing that “the owl screamed and the samovar hummed endlessly” when serfdom was abolished.

Now other sounds are heard - a broken string and an orchestra (flute, double bass and four violins). Maybe it's a requiem? Not by private property in general, but by that piece of memory and beauty that belongs to you personally, without which a person cannot form spiritually.

Lopakhin offers a real option to save the cherry orchard - giving. But they will destroy everything, because this will mean the arrival of strangers in your house. “Dachi and summer residents are so vulgar,” says Ranevskaya, and Gaev supports her, although he cannot offer anything in return: he is not used to taking responsibility.

She is taken by Lopakhin, the son and grandson of the peasants who worked here. Apparently, these two clans of Lopakhins and Gaevs coexisted quite peacefully, living in parallel social worlds on the same “lordly” land. So he offers to loan money, but there is nothing to give, and decent people in such a situation do not borrow. material from the site

Other decent people do not leave this sinking ship until the last minute, which floats from the past to the hopeless present. Servants live in it on pea soup and Charlotte, who does not know her relatives and homeland. Here is Ranevskaya's adopted daughter Varya. The clerk Simeonov-Pishchik knocks with the knuckles of the accounts and rustles the papers of the accounts - “twenty-two misfortunes”, like the whole estate. She is like a sinking ship. Lopakhin is trying to save him - a new man of a new era, in a white vest, standing firmly on the ground. But all in vain, and at the end of the drama we hear the sound of an ax - it is cut down to the roots of cherry trees. Together with the garden, to the sound of an ax, the faithful Firs, a symbol of the past “lordly” life, disappears into oblivion. In the hustle and bustle, everyone forgot about him. There was no one to take personal responsibility for the fate of the old man.

Ranevskaya returned to Russia, but ended up, as it were, in another dimension - the era of the primitive accumulation of capital, which has long passed in the West. But not only the train - they were all late. The train of life has gone in the direction of capitalization, that is, squeezing "cash" and "non-cash" out of everything from which they can only be squeezed out. Including from defenseless beauty. But giving up her and the past is like giving up your own mother. This is what Yasha, who dreams of going abroad, is doing, the most disgusting character in the play. Not so much by position, but by psychology. He is a slave. And slaves do not need spiritual memory.

A person, a state, history simply cannot do without it.

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• November 17th, 2014
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Reflections on the topic: Should the cherry orchard be saved?

Time moves inexorably forward, one era replaces another, and the question inevitably arises: is it necessary to part with the past?

"The Cherry Orchard" is the last work of A.P. Chekhov, his "swan song". This play is called "the most Chekhovian" of all the writer's plays. Stanislavsky, who highly appreciated it, noted that Chekhov was one of the first "to cut down a beautiful flowering cherry orchard, realizing that his time had passed, that the old life was irrevocably condemned to be scrapped." Showing the historical change of social structures, Chekhov tries to solve the question: is it necessary to save the cherry orchard? His whole play is woven from premonitions and expectations, it feels the proximity of renewal. The time of cherry orchards with their delicate beauty is coming to an end; The owners of the cherry orchard, the landlords Ranevskaya and Gaev, are unable to resist decisive, assertive, practical entrepreneurs, because they are too passive and not adapted to a life that requires struggle. They fail, and one of the main reasons is that their time has run out.

Our whole life testifies to the fact that society in one way or another obeys the dictates of history, and each person takes into account historical laws more than with his own feelings, whether he wants it or not. In place of Ranevskaya comes Lopakhin, whom, by the way, she does not blame for anything. And he, in turn, feels sincere affection for this woman. “My father was a serf with your grandfather and father, but you, in fact, you once did so much for me that I forgot everything and love you like my own…” he says. Another character, Petya Trofimov, proclaims the time for a new life and delivers impassioned speeches against historical injustice. But this young man also treats the mistress of the estate with tenderness and on the night of her arrival at the family nest says: “I will only bow to you and leave immediately.” Nevertheless, everything has long been clear to everyone: the atmosphere of universal disposition and sympathy can no longer change anything, because the laws of history are inexorable. Therefore, when, leaving the estate forever, Ranevskaya and Gaev are left alone for a minute, they throw themselves on each other's necks and sob ... In this scene there is a breath of tragedy, a feeling of harsh and inevitable changes. The era of Lopakhin is coming, the cherry orchard is cracking under his axe. Lopakhin cannot but rejoice at the fact that he became the owner of the estate, where his father, being a forced man, served the masters. And, admittedly, his feelings are understandable. There is even some historical justice in Lopakhin's triumph. At the same time, he also understands that his triumph will not bring drastic changes. He cannot but realize that new people will come to replace him, and this will be the next step in history, which Petya Trofimov enthusiastically declares: “All of Russia is our garden”, and these words, permeated with vigor and confidence, set the tone for the whole play. .

Of course, the achievement of high goals is still far away, first we have to go through the Lopakhin era, but “humanity is moving towards the highest truth”, life, which, it would seem, has frozen in place, has begun to move. The dreamy and dreary expectation of change has been replaced by the conviction that a brighter future is near. People can already hear his footsteps. The Cherry Orchard does not need to be saved! The salvation of society lies in the renewal of life.