The theme of fidelity in the play The Cherry Orchard. BUT

The Cherry Orchard is the pinnacle of Russian drama at the beginning of the 20th century, a lyrical comedy, a play that marked the beginning of a new era in the development of the Russian theater.

The main theme of the play is autobiographical - a bankrupt family of noblemen is selling their family estate at auction. The author, as a person who has gone through a similar life situation, describes with subtle psychologism the state of mind of people who are forced to leave their homes soon. The novelty of the play is the lack of division of heroes into positive and negative, into main and secondary. All of them fall into three categories:

• people of the past - aristocratic nobles (Ranevskaya, Gaev and their footman Firs);
• people of the present - their bright representative merchant-entrepreneur Lopakhin;
• the people of the future are the progressive youth of that time (Pyotr Trofimov and Anya).

History of creation

Chekhov began work on the play in 1901. Due to serious health problems, the writing process was rather difficult, but nevertheless, in 1903 the work was completed. The first theatrical production of the play took place a year later on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, becoming the pinnacle of Chekhov's work as a playwright and a textbook classic of the theatrical repertoire.

Analysis of the play

Description of the artwork

The action takes place in the family estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, who returned from France with her young daughter Anya. They are met at the railway station by Gaev (Ranevskaya's brother) and Varya (her adopted daughter).

The financial situation of the Ranevsky family is nearing complete collapse. Entrepreneur Lopakhin offers his own version of the solution to the problem - to divide the land into shares and give them for use to summer residents for a certain fee. The lady is weighed down by this proposal, because for this she will have to say goodbye to her beloved cherry orchard, with which many warm memories of her youth are associated. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that her beloved son Grisha died in this garden. Gaev, imbued with the experiences of his sister, reassures her with a promise that their family estate will not be put up for sale.

The action of the second part takes place on the street, in the courtyard of the estate. Lopakhin, with his characteristic pragmatism, continues to insist on his plan to save the estate, but no one pays attention to him. Everyone switches to the appeared teacher Peter Trofimov. He gives an excited speech dedicated to the fate of Russia, its future and touches on the topic of happiness in a philosophical context. The materialist Lopakhin is skeptical about the young teacher, and it turns out that only Anya is able to imbue his lofty ideas.

The third act begins with the fact that Ranevskaya invites an orchestra with the last money and arranges a dance evening. Gaev and Lopakhin are absent at the same time - they left for the city for auction, where the Ranevsky estate should go under the hammer. After a long wait, Lyubov Andreevna finds out that her estate was bought at the auction by Lopakhin, who does not hide his joy from his acquisition. The Ranevsky family is in despair.

The finale is entirely devoted to the departure of the Ranevsky family from their home. The parting scene is shown with all the deep psychologism inherent in Chekhov. The play ends with a remarkably deep monologue by Firs, which the owners in a hurry forgot in the estate. The final chord is the sound of an axe. They cut down the cherry orchard.

main characters

Sentimental person, owner of the estate. Having lived abroad for several years, she has become accustomed to a luxurious life and, by inertia, continues to allow herself a lot that, in the deplorable state of her finances, according to the logic of common sense, should be inaccessible to her. Being a frivolous person, very helpless in everyday matters, Ranevskaya does not want to change anything in herself, while she is fully aware of her weaknesses and shortcomings.

A successful merchant, he owes a lot to the Ranevsky family. His image is ambiguous - it combines diligence, prudence, enterprise and rudeness, a "muzhik" beginning. In the finale of the play, Lopakhin does not share the feelings of Ranevskaya, he is happy that, despite his peasant origin, he was able to afford to buy the estate of the owners of his late father.

Like his sister, he is very sensitive and sentimental. Being an idealist and a romantic, to console Ranevskaya, he comes up with fantastic plans to save the family estate. He is emotional, verbose, but completely inactive.

Petya Trofimov

Eternal student, nihilist, eloquent representative of the Russian intelligentsia, advocating for the development of Russia only in words. In pursuit of the "higher truth", he denies love, considering it a petty and illusory feeling, which greatly upsets his daughter Ranevskaya Anya, who is in love with him.

A romantic 17-year-old young lady who fell under the influence of the populist Peter Trofimov. Recklessly believing in a better life after the sale of her parental estate, Anya is ready for any difficulties for the sake of joint happiness next to her lover.

An 87-year-old man, a footman in the Ranevskys' house. Type of servant of the old time, surrounds with paternal care of his masters. He remained to serve his masters even after the abolition of serfdom.

A young footman, with contempt for Russia, dreaming of going abroad. A cynical and cruel person, rude to old Firs, disrespectful even to his own mother.

The structure of the work

The structure of the play is quite simple - 4 acts without division into separate scenes. The duration of action is several months, from late spring to mid-autumn. In the first act there is an exposition and a plot, in the second - an increase in tension, in the third - a climax (sale of the estate), in the fourth - a denouement. A characteristic feature of the play is the absence of genuine external conflict, dynamism, and unpredictable twists in the storyline. The author's remarks, monologues, pauses and some understatement give the play a unique atmosphere of exquisite lyricism. The artistic realism of the play is achieved through the alternation of dramatic and comic scenes.

(Scene from a contemporary production)

The play is dominated by the development of the emotional and psychological plan, the main engine of action is the inner experiences of the characters. The author expands the artistic space of the work by introducing a large number of characters who never appear on stage. Also, the effect of expanding the spatial boundaries is given by the symmetrically emerging theme of France, which gives arched form to the play.

Final conclusion

Chekhov's last play can be said to be his "swan song". The novelty of her dramatic language is a direct expression of a special Chekhovian life concept, which is characterized by extraordinary attention to small, at first glance, insignificant details, focusing on the inner experiences of the characters.

In the play The Cherry Orchard, the author captured the state of critical disunity of the Russian society of his time, this sad factor is often present in scenes where the characters hear only themselves, creating only the appearance of interaction.

The Cherry Orchard as the central image of the play

The action of the last work of A.P. Chekhov takes place on the estate of Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna, which in a few months will be sold at auction for debts, and it is the image of the garden in the play The Cherry Orchard that occupies a central place. However, from the very beginning, the presence of such a huge garden is puzzling. This circumstance was subjected to rather harsh criticism by I.A. Bunin, a hereditary nobleman and landowner. He wondered how one could extol the cherry trees, which are not particularly beautiful, have gnarled trunks and small flowers. Bunin also drew attention to the fact that gardens of only one direction are never found in manor estates, as a rule, they were mixed. If you count, the garden covers an area of ​​​​about five hundred hectares! To care for such a garden, a very large number of people are needed. It is obvious that before the abolition of serfdom, the garden was kept in order, and it is quite possible that the harvest brought profit to its owners. But after 1860, the garden began to fall into disrepair, as the owners had no money or desire to hire workers. And it’s scary to imagine what impassable jungle the garden has become in 40 years, since the action of the play takes place at the turn of the century, as evidenced by the walk of the owners and servants not through beautiful bushes, but across the field.

All this shows that the play did not intend a specific everyday meaning of the image of the cherry orchard. Lopakhin singled out only its main advantage: "The remarkable thing about this garden is that it is large." But it is precisely the image of the cherry orchard in the play that Chekhov renders as a reflection of the ideal meaning of the object of artistic space, built from the words of the characters who, throughout the entire stage history, idealize and embellish the old garden. For the playwright, the blooming garden has become a symbol of ideal, but receding beauty. And this transient and destructible charm of the past, contained in thoughts, feelings and actions, is attractive both for the playwright and for the audience. Linking the fate of the estate with the characters, Chekhov connected nature with social significance by contrasting them, thereby revealing the thoughts and actions of his characters. He tries to remind what is the true purpose of people, what spiritual renewal is necessary for, what is the beauty and happiness of being.

Cherry Orchard - a means of revealing the characters' characters

The image of the cherry orchard in the plot development of the play is of great importance. It is through the attitude towards him that one gets acquainted with the attitude of the heroes: it becomes clear their place in the historical changes that have befallen Russia. The viewer's acquaintance with the garden takes place in May, at a wonderful time of flowering, and its aroma fills the surrounding space. The mistress of the garden, who had been absent for a long time, returns from abroad. However, in the years she traveled, nothing had changed in the house. Even the nursery, in which there has not been a single child for a long time, bears the former name. What does a garden mean to Ranevskaya?

This is her childhood, she even imagines her mother, her youth and not very successful marriage to a man, like her, a frivolous spender; the love passion that arose after the death of her husband, burning her; death of younger son. From all this, she fled to France, leaving everything, hoping that the escape would help her forget. But she did not find peace and happiness abroad either. And now she has to decide the fate of the estate. Lopakhin offers her the only way out - to cut down the garden, which does not bring any benefit and is very neglected, and give the vacated land for summer cottages. But for Ranevskaya, who was brought up in the best aristocratic traditions, everything that is replaced by money and measured by it is gone. Rejecting Lopakhin's offer, she again and again asks for his advice, hoping that it is possible to save the garden without destroying it: “What should we do? Learn what?" Lyubov Andreevna does not dare to step over her convictions, and the loss of the garden becomes a bitter loss for her. However, she admitted that her hands were untied with the sale of the estate, and without much thought, leaving her daughters and brother, she was again going to leave her homeland.

Gaev goes over ways to save the estate, but all of them are futile and too fantastic: get an inheritance, marry Anya to a rich man, ask a rich aunt for money, or re-borrow from someone. However, he guesses about it: "... I have a lot of money ... that means ... not a single one." He is also bitter about the loss of the family nest, but his feelings are not as deep as he would like to show it. After the auction, his sadness is dispelled as soon as he hears the sounds of the billiards he loves so much.

For Ranevskaya and Gaev, the cherry orchard is a link to the past, where there was no place for thoughts about the financial side of life. This is a happy carefree time when there was no need to decide anything, no shocks happened, and they were the owners.

Anya loves the garden as the only bright thing that was in her life “I'm at home! Tomorrow morning I'll get up and run to the garden... She sincerely worries, but cannot do anything to save the estate, relying on the decisions of her older relatives. Although in fact, she is much more reasonable than her mother and uncle. In many ways, under the influence of Petya Trofimov, the garden ceases to mean the same for Anya as it does for the older generation of the family. She outgrows this somewhat painful attachment to her native land, and later she herself is perplexed that she has fallen out of love with the garden: “Why do I no longer love the cherry orchard, as before ... it seemed to me that there is no better place on earth than our garden.” And in the final scenes, she is the only one of the inhabitants of the sold estate who looks to the future with optimism: "... We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this, you will see it, you will understand ..."

For Petya Trofimov, the garden is a living monument to serfdom. It is Trofimov who says that the Ranevskaya family is still living in the past, in which they were the owners of "living souls", and this imprint of slavery on them: "... you ... no longer notice that you live in debt, at someone else's expense ...", and openly declares that Ranevskaya and Gaev are simply afraid of real life.

The only person who is fully aware of the value of the cherry orchard is the "new Russian" Lopakhin. He sincerely admires him, calling the place "more beautiful than which there is nothing in the world." He dreams of clearing the territory of trees as soon as possible, but not for the purpose of destruction, but in order to transfer this land into a new hypostasis, which "grandchildren and great-grandchildren" will see. He sincerely tried to help Ranevskaya save the estate and pities her, but now the garden belongs to him, and unbridled jubilation is strangely mixed with compassion for Lyubov Andreevna.

Symbolic image of the cherry orchard

Written at the turn of the epochs, the play "The Cherry Orchard" became a reflection of the changes taking place in the country. The old is already gone, and it is being replaced by an unknown future. For each of the participants in the play, the garden is its own, but the symbolic image of the cherry orchard is the same for everyone except Lopakhin and Trofimov. “The earth is great and beautiful, there are many wonderful places on it,” says Petya, thereby showing that the people of the new era, to whom he belongs, are not characterized by attachment to their roots, and this is alarming. People who loved the garden easily abandoned it, and this is frightening, because if “All Russia is our garden,” as Petya Trofimov says, what will happen if everyone gives up on the future of Russia? And remembering history, we see: just over 10 years later, such upheavals began to occur in Russia that the country really became a ruthlessly destroyed cherry orchard. Therefore, we can make an unambiguous conclusion: the main image of the play has become a true symbol of Russia.

The image of the garden, an analysis of its meaning in the play and a description of the attitude of the main characters towards it will help 10th grade students in preparing an essay on the topic “The image of the garden in the play “The Cherry Orchard” by Chekhov”.

Artwork test

A.P. Chekhov, as a Russian writer and Russian intellectual, was worried about the fate of the Motherland on the eve of social changes felt by society. The figurative system of the play "The Cherry Orchard" reflects the writer's view of the past, present and future of Russia.

Figurative system "Cherry Orchard"- copyright features

It is, in particular, that in his works it is practically impossible to single out one main character. important for understanding the questions the playwright raises in the play.

So, the images of the heroes in The Cherry Orchard represent,

• on the one hand, the social strata of Russia on the eve of the turning point (nobility, merchants, raznochintsy intelligentsia, partly the peasantry),
• on the other hand, these groups uniquely reflect the past, present and future of the country.

Russia itself is represented by the image of a large garden, to which all the characters treat with tender love.

Images of the heroes of the past

The personification of the past are the heroes of Ranevskaya and Gaev. This is the past of noble nests leaving the historical arena. There is no mercenary calculation in Gaev and Ranevskaya: the idea of ​​​​selling a cherry orchard underground to summer residents is so completely alien to them. They subtly feel the beauty of nature

(“To the right, at the turn of the gazebo, a white tree leaned like a woman” ...).

They are characterized by some childish perception: Ranevskaya treats money like a child, does not count them. But this is not only childishness, but also the habit of living without regard for expenses. Both Gaev and Ranevskaya are kind. Lopakhin remembers how, in ancient times, Ranevskaya took pity on him. Pity Ranevskaya and Petya Trofimov with his disorder, and Anya, who was left without a dowry, and a passerby.

But the time of the Gaevs and Ranevskys has passed. Their intelligence, inability to live, carelessness turn into callousness and selfishness.

Ranevskaya squanders her fortune, leaving her daughter in the care of her adopted daughter Varya, leaves for Paris with her lover, having received money from the Yaroslavl grandmother intended for Anya, she decides to return to Paris to the man who practically robbed her, while she does not think how it will turn out Anna's life is on. She shows concern for the sick Firs, asking if he was sent to the hospital, but she cannot and does not want to check this (Ranevskaya is a man of his word, but not of deeds) - Firs remains in a boarded up house.

The result of the life of the nobles is the result of a life in debt, a life based on the oppression of others.

Images of the future

New Russia is Yermolai Lopakhin, a merchant. In it, the author emphasizes the active principle: he gets up at five in the morning and works until the evening, labor brings him not capital, but also joy. Yermolai Lopakhin is a self-made man (his grandfather was a serf, his father was a shopkeeper). In Lopakhin's activity, a practical calculation is visible: he sowed the fields with poppies - both profit and beautiful. Lopakhin offers a way to save the cherry orchard, which should bring benefits. Lopakhin appreciates and remembers kindness, such is his touching attitude towards Ranevskaya. He has a "thin, tender soul," according to Petya Trofimov. But the subtlety of feelings is combined in him with the benefit of the owner. Lopakhin could not resist and bought a cherry orchard at an auction. He repents before Ranevskaya consoles her and immediately declares:

"The new owner of the cherry orchard is coming!"

But even in Lopakhin there is some kind of anguish, otherwise where would the longing for another life come from. At the end of the play he says:

“I would rather change ... our awkward, unhappy life!”

Images of the future - Petya Trofimov and Anya. Petya Trofimov is an eternal student, he is full of optimism, in his speeches there is a conviction that he, it is he who knows how to make life beautiful

(Humanity is moving towards the highest truth, towards the highest happiness possible on earth, and I am in the forefront!”).

It is he who says to Anna:

“All Russia is our garden!”

But his image is ambiguous. Petya Trofimov in the play is also a man of words rather than deeds. In practical life, he is a klutz, like the rest of the characters in the play. The image of Anya is perhaps the only image of the play in which there is a lot of a sense of light. Anya looks like Turgenev's girls who are ready to leave for a new life and give themselves to her completely, so Anya does not regret the loss of the cherry orchard.

secondary images

The secondary characters of the play set off the fate of Gaev and Ranevskaya. Simeono-Pishchik is a landowner who is ready to adapt to life, which is how he differs from Ranevskaya and Gaev. But he also lives almost in debt. The image of Charlotte emphasizes the disorder, the practical homelessness of Ranevskaya.

The patriarchal peasantry is represented by the images of servants. This is Firs, which retained the main feature of the old servants - devotion to the master. As a small child, Firs takes care of Gaev. His fate is tragic and symbolic: he is forgotten, in general, abandoned by those who spoke so much about love for him and did so little for him. Dunyasha and Yasha are servants of the new generation. Dunyasha repeats the "subtlety of feelings", exaggerating her mistress. Yasha absorbed the egoism of the masters.

image of a cherry orchard

As already mentioned, the role of the cherry orchard in the figurative system of the play is enormous. It is around the cherry orchard that an external conflict is tied up, all the heroes of the play express their attitude to the garden. Therefore, the viewer and the reader feel his fate tragically as a human being:

"... and only one can hear how far in the garden they knock on wood with an ax."

Both Chekhov and the writer are characterized by a sensitive listening to the beat of everyday life, the ability to find the most important social problems in this life and build their work in such a way that these problems become the property of compatriots.

The end of Chekhov's life came at the beginning of a new century, a new era, new moods, aspirations and ideas. Such is the inexorable law of life: what was once young and full of strength becomes old and decrepit, giving way to a new - young and strong life ... Death and dying are followed by the birth of a new one, disappointment in life is replaced by hopes, the expectation of change . Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" reflects just such a turning point - the time when the old has already died, and the new has not yet been born, and now life stopped for a moment, calmed down ... Who knows, maybe this is the calm before the storm ? No one knows the answer, but everyone is waiting for something ... In the same way, he waited, peering into the unknown, and Chekhov, anticipating the end of his life, was waiting for the entire Russian society, suffering from uncertainty and being at a loss.

One thing was clear: the old life had irretrievably gone, and another was coming to replace it... What would it be like, this new life? The characters in the play belong to two generations. With the poetry of sad memories of the past brilliant life, forever noisy, the kingdom of cherry orchards ends. An era of action and change is about to begin. All the heroes of the play anticipate the onset of a new life, but some are waiting for it with apprehension and uncertainty, while others - with faith and hope. Chekhov's heroes do not live in the present; the meaning of their life lies for them either in their idealized past, or in an equally idealized bright future.

What is happening "here and now" does not seem to bother them, and the tragedy of their situation is that everyone sees the purpose of their existence outside of life, outside the "cherry orchard", which personifies life itself. The Cherry Orchard is the eternal Present, which binds together the past and the future in the eternal movement of life. The ancestors of the Ranevskys worked in this garden, whose faces look at Petya and Anya "from every leaf, from every branch in the garden."

The garden is something that has always existed, even before the birth of Firs, Lopakhin, Ranevskaya, it embodies the highest truth of life, which Chekhov's heroes cannot find in any way. In the spring the garden blooms, by autumn it bears fruit; dead branches give new fresh shoots, the garden is filled with the smells of herbs and flowers, birdsong, life is in full swing here! On the contrary, the life of its owners stands still, nothing happens to them. There is no action in the play, and the characters only do what they spend the precious time of their lives in conversations that do not change anything in it ... "Eternal student" Petya Trofimov mercilessly falls on human vices - idleness, laziness, passivity - and calls to activity, to work, preaching the “higher truth”.

He claims that he will certainly find for himself and show others "the way how to reach" it, to this highest truth. But in life he does not go beyond words and in fact turns out to be a "stupid" who cannot complete the course and who everyone makes fun of because of his absent-mindedness. Anya, whose soul sincerely opened up to Petya's free aspirations, enthusiastically exclaims: "We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this." She easily renounces the past and happily leaves her home, because she has a “bright future” ahead of her.

But this new life, which Petya and Anya are so waiting for, is too illusory and uncertain, and they, without realizing it, pay a high price for it! Full of vague and unclear hopes and Ranevskaya.

She weeps at the sight of the nursery, utters pompous monologues about her love for her country, but nevertheless sells the garden and leaves for Paris to the man who, according to her, robbed and abandoned her. The garden, of course, is dear to her, but only as a symbol of her withered youth and beauty. She, like all the other heroes of the play, cannot understand that no myth that a person creates for himself in order to overcome the fear of emptiness and chaos - no myth will fill life with true meaning. The sale of the garden is only a visible solution to problems, and there is no doubt that the rushing soul of Ranevskaya will not find peace in Paris, and the dreams of Petya and Anya will not come true. “All of Russia is “our garden,” says Petya Trofimov, but if he so easily refuses what connects him with the past, if he is not able to see beauty and meaning in the present and does not fulfill his bright dream here and now, in this garden, then later, in the future, he is unlikely to find meaning and happiness.Lopakhin, who lives according to the laws of practicality and profit, also dreams of the end of "an awkward unhappy life."

He sees a way out of the situation in buying a garden, but, acquiring it, he appreciates in it “only that it is big” and is going to cut it down in order to build summer cottages on this place. The Cherry Orchard is the semantic and spiritual center of the play, it is the only stable and unchanging living organism true to itself, in which everything is subject to the strict order of nature, life. Cutting down the garden, the ax falls on the most sacred thing left for Chekhov's heroes, on their only support, on that which connected them with each other. For Chekhov, the most terrible thing in life was to lose this connection - the connection with ancestors and descendants, with humanity, with Truth.

Who knows, perhaps the Garden of Eden served as a prototype of the cherry garden, which was also abandoned by a person who was seduced by deceptive promises and dreams? Studying Chekhov's work "The Cherry Orchard", I would like to note one feature of his heroes: they are all ordinary people, and not one of them can be called a hero of his time, although almost every one of them is a symbol of the time. The landowner Ranevskaya and her brother Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik and Firs can be called a symbol of the past. They are weighed down by the legacy of serfdom, in which they grew up and were brought up, these are the types of the outgoing Russia. They cannot imagine any other life, just like Firs, who cannot imagine life without masters. Firs considers the liberation of the peasants a misfortune - "the peasants are with the masters, the gentlemen with the peasants, and now everything is scattered, you won't understand anything."

The symbol of the present is associated with the image of Lopakhin, in which two principles are fighting. On the one hand, he is a man of action, his ideal is to make the earth rich and happy. On the other hand, there is no spirituality in it, and in the end the thirst for profit takes over. The symbol of the future was Anya - the daughter of Ranevskaya and the eternal student of Trofimov. They are young and the future belongs to them. They are obsessed with the idea of ​​creative work and liberation from slavery.

Petya calls to quit everything and be free like the wind. So who is the future? For Petya?

For Anya? For Lopakhin? This question could be rhetorical if history did not give Russia a second attempt to solve it.

The end of the play is very symbolic - the old owners leave and forget the dying Firs. So, the logical finale: inactive consumers in the social sense, the servant - lackey, who served them all his life, and the cherry orchard - all this irrevocably goes into the past, to which there is no way back.

History cannot be returned. I would like to note the cherry orchard as the main symbol in the play. Trofimov's monologue reveals the symbolism of the garden in the play: “All of Russia is our garden. The land of the giant is beautiful, there are many wonderful places on it. Think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners who owned living souls, and is it possible that from every cherry in the garden, from every leaf, from every trunk, human beings do not look at you, do you really not hear voices ... Own living souls, because it has reborn all of you who lived before and are now living, so that your mother, you, uncle no longer notice that you live on credit at someone else's expense, at the expense of those people whom you do not let further than the front .. .” All the action takes place around the garden, the characters of the heroes and their destinies are highlighted on its problems.

It is also symbolic that the ax brought over the garden caused a conflict between the heroes and in the souls of most heroes the conflict is not resolved, just as the problem is not solved after cutting down the garden. The Cherry Orchard is on stage for about three hours. The characters live for five months during this time. And the action of the play covers a more significant period of time, which includes the past, present and future of Russia.