The Cherry Orchard conflict of generations. The younger generation in the play by A.P.
With his play, the author poses the question - who is destined to be the creator of a new life. Neither the author nor life itself gives an answer to this question, but Chekhov emphasizes the readiness for the new in two heroes - Anya and Petya. Where Petya talks about instability old life and calls for a new life, the author sympathizes with him, for this is the thought of Chekhov himself. But in Petya’s reasoning there is no personal strength, no ability to implement what was said. Like all the klutzes in the play, he is awkward and powerless in the face of his new life, but the words of his speech can excite listeners, in particular Anya, in whose image youth and inexperience are emphasized above all. Anya is also ready to change her life and the foreboding of the coming revolution is maturing in society and finding a response in the souls of people like Anya.
Each character has its own significance for understanding the problems of the work: Semyonov Pishchik - based on his example, a different fate of a nobleman is given. His fate is not for sale yet, but his well-being rests on chance. In the image of Charlotte, fate is absurd and paradoxical, emphasizing the role of chance in a person’s life. Epikhodov is a man who does not live his own life. For him, who pretended to be educated and elevated in his feelings, fate had only 22 misfortunes in store for him. The character traits of the old masters of life are exaggerated in the images of the servants. Firs is heavenly devotion to masters and a forgotten personality, a manifestation of the remnants of the serfdom era. Firsa is the fault of owners who treat people as things. Main image play, its center is the Cherry Orchard. This image combines the concrete and the eternal (youth, memories, purity, happiness). The essay on the topic of the future of Russia is connected with this image. All the characters are located around the image of the Cherry Orchard and each of them has their own garden. It highlights the spiritual capabilities of each of the characters. The garden deepens philosophical problem plays - the loneliness of unloved characters in the eternal cycle of life.
In the play there is no traditional, pronounced confrontation between the parties and the clash of various life positions. The source of drama is not in the struggle for the Cherry Orchard, but in the subjective dissatisfaction with life that ALL the heroes experience. Life goes on awkwardly and awkwardly, bringing no joy or happiness to anyone, and therefore all the heroes have a sense of the temporary nature of their stay in the world.
Chekhov: “What I came out with was not a drama, but a comedy, sometimes even a farce.” Outwardly, the events are dramatic, but in Chekhov the sad turns out to be comical, sometimes farcical ( theatrical play light playful content with external comic effects).
It is interesting that Pavlovich Chekhov himself grew a garden in Melikhovo. In Crimea, the writer laid out a southern garden near his house on a high hill, which became his brainchild. He raised him according to a well-thought-out plan and created him as a work of art.
The Cherry Orchard in the play is the embodiment of everything beautiful, the personification of beauty and poetry. This is one of the heroes of the play. He appears in her constantly, as if reminding her of himself. Introduced into the characters' lines, the garden becomes a participant in the action.
Fabulous Chekhov's garden is connected in the play with the destinies of three generations: past, present and future. Thus, Chekhov very widely expands the time captured in his play. The garden itself embodies past culture and beauty. This is how Ranevskaya and Gaev perceive him. For them it is associated with childhood. According to Ranevskaya, “happiness woke up” with her every morning when she looked out the window at these trees.
For Lopakhin, the garden is wonderful only as a good “location”. According to him, “the only remarkable thing about this garden is that it is very large.” For him, this is a business commercial area. He believes that cherries “do not bring any income now”; a poppy field is another matter! He is going to cut down the old one, and now the threat hangs over the trees like the sword of Damocles.
Lopakhin feels like the master of life. “Come everyone and watch how Yermolai Lopakhin takes an ax to the cherry orchard and how the trees fall to the ground!” There is so much cynicism and courage in these words! “We’ll set up the dachas!” - he says. At the end of the play, the threat is put into action: the ax knocks, trees fall.
Indifference to what is happening can be felt in the words of Petya Trofimov. To the eternal human value- beauty - he approaches from a narrow class position and begins to denigrate The Cherry Orchard, seeing for some reason behind every tree a tortured slave-serf. “The earth is great and beautiful, there are many wonderful places on it,” he reassures Anya.
Only Anya, bright, gentle and enthusiastic, focused on the future, is ready to plant new garden more beautiful than before. She alone is worthy of the beauty that lies in the cherry orchard.
The play presents, as it were, two worlds: the world of dreams and the world of reality. Ranevskaya and Lopakhin live in different worlds. That's why they don't hear each other. Lyubov Andreevna lives in dreams, she is all in her love, in her fantasies. It’s as if she’s not here: part of her remained in Paris, despite the fact that at first she doesn’t even read messages from there, and part of her returned to this house, to this garden, but not today, but to the one that she remembers from childhood . From her shell, filled with the pink ether of dreams, she sees life, but cannot experience it as it really is. Her phrase: “I know, they wrote to me,” referring to the death of the nanny, her attitude towards Varvara is not at all cruelty, not indifference. Ranevskaya is just not here, she is in her own world.
It is generally accepted that Gaev, Ranevskaya’s brother, is, as it were, a distorted image of her. There is an obvious “stretch” in this. He simply lies on the border of these two worlds. He is not an idle dreamer, but, apparently, his existence is not entirely real if at his age they talk about him as “young and green.”
But Lopakhin is, perhaps, the only person from reality. But it's not that simple. Lopakhin combines both reality and dream. But his “dreams” lead to action: the memory of all the good that Ranevskaya did for him forces him to look for a way out of the situation in which they found themselves. But the matter ends with the purchase of a cherry orchard.
The comparison of director Efros seems very accurate, who said, while working on this play at the Taganka Theater, that all the heroes of the play are children playing in a minefield, and only Lopakhin, a serious person, warns of the danger, but the children captivate him with their play, he is forgotten, but soon remembers again, as if waking up. Only he alone constantly remembers the danger. One Lopakhin.
The question of the relationship between dreams and reality in the play “The Cherry Orchard” was also reflected in debates about the genre. It is known that Chekhov himself called the play a comedy, but Stanislavsky staged it as a drama. Still, let’s listen to the author’s opinion. Chekhov's play “The Cherry Orchard” is more of a sad thought about the fate of Russia than a revolutionary call, as they sometimes try to present it.
There are no ways to reorganize life, no specific actions in the play. It is generally accepted that Chekhov saw the future of Russia in the images of Trofimov and Anya. But the owners of the garden are the hereditary nobles Gaev and Ranevskaya. This garden has belonged to their family for many, many years. And the author deeply likes these people, despite their idleness and idleness. And here the question arises about the ambiguity of the play.
Take, for example, the image of the owner of the garden herself, Ranevskaya. It is known that Chekhov worked on this role with great enthusiasm and intended it for the actress O. L. Knipper, his wife. This image has always caused controversy and has become one of Chekhov’s mysteries. In response to the question of how this image should be played, Chekhov replied: “Fingers, fingers in rings; she grabs onto everything, but everything falls out of her hands, and her head is empty.” This is the key to the image, proposed by the author himself.
Ranevskaya has such wonderful character traits as kindness and devotion to the feeling of love. She is busy with the arrangement of her adopted daughter Varya, takes pity on the servant Firs, and gives her wallet to the peasants who came to say goodbye to her. But sometimes this kindness is simply the result of the wealth that she possesses and which reveals itself in the sparkle of rings on her fingers. She herself admits to her extravagance: “I have always wasted money without restraint, like crazy.”
Ranevskaya does not take her care for people to its logical conclusion. Varya is left without a livelihood after the sale of her estate and is forced to go to strangers. Firs remains in a locked house because Lyubov Andreevna forgot to check whether he was sent to the hospital.
Ranevskaya is characterized by frivolity and quick changes of feelings. So, she turns to God and begs to forgive her sins, but at the same time she offers to have a “party”. The duality of experiences also affects Russia. She tenderly treats her homeland, the cherry orchard, her old house with huge windows through which unruly branches climb. But this feeling is unstable. As soon as she receives a telegram from ex-lover who robbed her, she forgets the insult and is going to Paris. It seems that Ranevskaya is devoid of an inner core. Her frivolity and carelessness lead to the fact that the garden is sold and the estate goes into the wrong hands.
The future of Russia is represented by the images of Anya and Petya Trofimov.
Anya is 17 years old, she breaks with her past and convinces the crying Ranevskaya that there is more to come whole life: “We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this one, you will see it, you will understand it, and joy, quiet, deep joy will descend on your soul.” The future in the play is unclear, but it captivates and beckons purely emotionally, as youth is always attractive and promising. The image of a poetic cherry orchard, a young girl welcoming a new life - these are the dreams and hopes of the author himself for the transformation of Russia, for its transformation in the future into blooming garden. The garden is a symbol of eternal renewal of life: “It begins new life“Anya exclaims enthusiastically in the fourth act. Anya’s image is festive and joyful in the spring. "My sun! My spring,” Petya says about her. Anya condemns her mother for her lordly habit of wasting money, but she understands her mother’s tragedy better than others and sternly reprimands Gaev for saying bad things about his mother. Where did a seventeen year old girl get this life wisdom and tact, inaccessible to her far from young uncle?! Her determination and enthusiasm are attractive, but they threaten to turn into disappointment judging by how recklessly she believes Trofimov and his optimistic monologues.
At the end of the second act, Anya turns to Trofimov: “What have you done to me, Petya, why I no longer love the cherry orchard as before. I loved him so tenderly, it seemed to me that there was no one on earth better place like our garden."
Trofimov answers her: “All of Russia is our garden.”
Petya Trofimov, like Anya, represents young Russia. He former teacher the drowned seven-year-old son of Ranevskaya. His father was a pharmacist. He is 26 or 27 years old, he eternal student, who has not completed the course, wears glasses and argues that one should stop admiring oneself and “just work.” True, Chekhov clarified in his letters that Petya Trofimov did not graduate from the university not of his own free will: “After all, Trofimov is constantly in exile, he is constantly expelled from the university, but how do you portray these things.”
Petya most often speaks not on his own behalf - on behalf of the new generation of Russia. Today for him is “...dirt, vulgarity, Asianism,” the past is “serf owners who owned living souls.” “We are at least two hundred years behind, we still have absolutely nothing, no definite attitude towards the past, we only philosophize, complain about melancholy or drink vodka. It’s so clear, in order to begin to live in the present, we must first redeem our past, put an end to it, and we can redeem it only through suffering, only through extraordinary, continuous labor.”
Petya Trofimov - from Chekhov's intellectuals for whom things, tithes of land, jewelry, money do not represent highest value. Refusing Lopakhin's money, Petya Trofimov says that they do not have the slightest power over him, like fluff that floats in the air. He is “strong and proud” in that he is free from the power of everyday, material, materialized things. Where Trofimov talks about the unsettledness of the old life and calls for a new life, the author sympathizes with him.
Despite all the “positiveness” of the image of Petya Trofimov, he is questionable precisely as a positive, “author’s” hero: he is too literary, his phrases about the future are too beautiful, his calls to “work” are too general, etc. Chekhov's distrust of loud phrases and any exaggerated manifestation of feelings is known: he “could not stand phrase-mongers, scribes and Pharisees” (I.A. Bunin). Petya Trofimov is characterized by something that Chekhov himself avoided and which is manifested, for example, in the following monologue of the hero: “Humanity is moving towards the highest truth, towards the highest happiness that is possible on earth, and I am in the forefront!”; “To get around those small and illusory things that prevent you from being free and happy - this is the goal and meaning of our life. Forward! We are moving uncontrollably towards the bright star that burns there in the distance!
Chekhov's "New People" - Anya and Petya Trofimov - are also polemical in relation to the tradition of Russian literature, just like Chekhov's images“little” people: the author refuses to recognize as unconditionally positive, to idealize “new” people just because they are “new”, because they act as denouncers of the old world. Time requires decisions and actions, but Petya Trofimov is not capable of them, and this brings him closer to Ranevskaya and Gaev. Moreover, on the way to the future we lost human qualities: “We are above love,” he joyfully and naively assures Anya.
Ranevskaya rightly reproaches Trofimov for not knowing life: “You boldly solve all the important issues, but tell me, my dear, is it because you are young, that you have not had time to suffer through any of your questions?..” But this is what makes them attractive. young heroes: hope and faith in a happy future. They are young, which means that everything is possible, there is a whole life ahead... Petya Trofimov and Anya are not exponents of a specific program of reconstruction future Russia, they symbolize hope for the revival of Russia-garden...
At the center of Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” is the question of saving the cherry orchard, the estate of the landowner Ranevskaya. It is important that the garden represents all of Russia. Thus, the playwright poses in his work the question of whether it is possible to save “old” Russia - a noble country, with its centuries-old way of life, culture, philosophy, and worldview.
We can say that throughout the entire comedy the role of savior is “tried on” to many heroes. We look especially closely at young characters, because who, if not the youth, should we rely on for the salvation of Russia?
First of all, Petya and his “follower” Anya attract attention - youngest daughter Ranevskaya. These heroes are young, full of strength and energy, but they are passionate about completely different ideas - to transform the whole world, to create a wonderful future for all humanity. What is the old cherry orchard to them! For Anya, he is a symbol of everything old and inert; she does not feel any warm feelings towards her mother’s estate. The girl thinks that Russian nobility guilty before common people and must atone for his guilt. This is exactly what Anya wants to devote her life to together with Petya Trofimov.
Trofimov scolds everything that slows down the development of Russia - “dirt, vulgarity, Asianism”, criticizes Russian intelligentsia, which does not search for anything and does not work. But the hero does not notice that he himself is bright representative such an intelligentsia: he speaks beautifully without doing anything. Petya’s characteristic phrase: “I’ll get there or show others the way to get there...” to “ higher truth" He also doesn’t care about the cherry orchard. Trofimov’s plans are much larger - to make all humanity happy!..
But, I think, these heroes will remain at the stage of words and will not get down to business. Petya spends too much energy on abstract plans, but he is not able to do anything concrete. Let us remember that Trofimov cannot even complete the course or receive a diploma. This is a sure sign that all his affairs will also “hang in the air” and end in “zilch.”
Maybe Anya will be stronger than her " ideological inspirer"and will be able to really participate in the transformation of Russia? The character of this girl allows me to think so, but... It seems to me that Anya is in love with Trofimov, in her eyes he is romantic hero, pronouncing beautiful words, to which the girl listens with delight. So now, I think, the ideas of transformation and salvation are her true, real interest. Perhaps in the future, having matured and become stronger, she will be able to contribute to a good cause, but not now.
The most likely candidate for the role of the savior of the cherry orchard in the play is, in my opinion, Lopakhin. From the very beginning, he appears before us as a man who deeply sympathizes with the ruined Ranevskaya, attached to her since childhood.
This hero is a merchant, a representative of the formation that becomes the “masters of life” in new Russia. Lopakhin came from the peasantry, he simple origin: “My father, it’s true, was a man, but here I am in a white vest and yellow shoes. With a pig's snout in a Kalash line... Only he's rich, he has a lot of money, but if you think about it and figure it out, he's a man..."
Thanks to his enterprise and acumen, Lopakhin was able to “make” himself a decent fortune. His rational brain is aimed primarily at obtaining benefits. Lopakhin does not understand any “sentiments, tenderness”, sublime feelings due to his make-up and level of education. He advises Ranevskaya to cut down the trees and rent out the garden to summer residents, dividing it into plots.
The merchant is, of course, right; this is exactly what should have been done in the current situation with economic point vision. But... in this case, the old cherry orchard, that is, the old Russia, will fade into oblivion and sink into oblivion. This is what happens in the finale. And Lopakhin even rejoices at the departure of old Russia.
Indeed, what good did he see under serfdom? His father and grandfather were slaves there, and the same fate awaited him. And in new country Lopakhin rose to prominence, became a respected man, and even gained power over his former masters. Therefore, this hero will not save the old Russia. But will he save the new one? I think yes. From history we know that before the events of 1917, Russia was one of the world leaders in economic and cultural development. The country was gradually rebuilt, preserving old traditions, but, of course, introducing new trends into it. And only October Revolution 1917 radically changed everything.
Thus, there are several young heroes in the play, but among them there is no character capable of saving the old, former Russia. But there is a hero who is the future. In my opinion, this is businessman Lopakhin.
In the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", it would seem, is not bright expressed conflict. There are no open quarrels or clashes between the heroes. And yet, behind their usual remarks one senses the presence of a hidden (internal) confrontation.
From my point of view, the main conflict of the play is the discrepancy between times, the discrepancy between a person and the era in which he lives. The play contains three time planes: past, present and future. At first glance, the personification of the past is Gaev and Ranevskaya, the hero today- Lopakhin, and the people of the future are Anya and Petya Trofimov. But is it?
Indeed, Gaev and Ranevskaya carefully preserve the memory of the past, they love their home, the cherry orchard, which in the work is both a specific garden and an image symbolizing something beautiful, as well as Russia. The whole play is permeated with a sad feeling of witnessing death. cherry orchard, the death of beauty. Gaev and Ranevskaya, on the one hand, have a sense of beauty, they seem to be graceful, sophisticated people, radiating love for others. On the other hand, in fact, it was Ranevskaya who led her estate to collapse, and Gaev “ate his fortune on candy.” In fact, both of them turn out to be people who live only in memories of the past. The present does not suit them, and they don’t even want to think about the future. That’s why both Gaev and Ranevskaya so diligently avoid talking about the real plan to save the cherry orchard and do not take Lopakhin’s sensible proposals seriously - in other words, they hope for a miracle and do not try to change anything.
In a person's life, the past is the roots. Therefore, it is necessary to remember about it. But those who, living in the past, do not think about the present and the future, come into conflict with time. At the same time, a person who has forgotten about the past has no future - this, it seems to me, is the main idea of the author. This is precisely the kind of person who appears in Chekhov’s play as the new “master of life” - Lopakhin.
He is completely immersed in the present - the past does not concern him. The cherry orchard interests him only insofar as profit can be made from it. He, of course, does not think about the fact that a blooming garden symbolizes the connection between the past and the present, and this is his main mistake. Thus, Lopakhin also has no future: having forgotten about the past, he came into conflict with time, although for a different reason than Gaev and Ranevskaya.
Finally, there are young people left - Anya and Petya Trofimov. Can we call them people of the future? Don't think. Both have abandoned both their past and their present, they live only in dreams of the future - the conflict of times is obvious. What do they have besides faith? Anya doesn’t feel sorry for the garden - in her opinion, she has a whole life ahead, full of joyful work for the common good: “We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this.” However, neither the “eternal student” Petya, nor the very young Anya know true life, look at everything too superficially, try to reorganize the world on the basis of ideas alone and, of course, have no idea how much work it takes to grow in reality (in fact , and not in words) a real cherry orchard.
Can Anya and Petya be trusted with the future they talk about so beautifully and constantly? In my opinion, this would be reckless. I think that the author is not on their side. Petya doesn’t even try to save the cherry orchard, but this is precisely the problem that worries the author.
Thus, in Chekhov's play there is a classic conflict - as in Shakespeare, “the connection of times is broken,” which is symbolically expressed in the sound of a broken string. The author does not yet see in Russian life a hero who could become the real owner of the cherry orchard, the guardian of its beauty.
In Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard, Anya and Petya are not the main characters. They are not directly connected to the garden like others characters, for them it does not play such a significant role, which is why they, in some way, fall out of common system characters. However, in the work of a playwright of Chekhov's stature there is no room for accidents; therefore, it is no coincidence that Petya and Anya are isolated. Let's take a closer look at these two heroes.
Among critics, there is a widespread interpretation of the images of Anya and Petya depicted in the play “The Cherry Orchard” as a symbol younger generation Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century; generation, which is replacing the long-outdated “Ranevskys” and “Gayevs”, as well as the “Lopakhins”, creatures of a turning point. In Soviet criticism, this statement was considered undeniable, since the play itself was usually viewed in a strictly defined manner - based on the year of writing (1903), critics associated its creation with social changes and the brewing revolution of 1905. Accordingly, the understanding of the cherry orchard as a symbol of the “old” was affirmed. pre-revolutionary Russia, Ranevskaya and Gaev as images of the “dying” noble class, Lopakhin - the emerging bourgeoisie, Trofimov - the various intelligentsia. From this point of view, the play was seen as a work about the search for a “savior” for Russia, in which inevitable changes are brewing. Lopakhin, as the bourgeois master of the country, should be replaced by the commoner Petya, full of transformative ideas and aimed at a bright future; the bourgeoisie must be replaced by the intelligentsia, which, in turn, will carry out a social revolution. Anya here symbolizes the “repentant” nobility, which accepts Active participation in these transformations.
Such a “class approach,” inherited from ancient times, reveals its inconsistency in the fact that many characters do not fit into this scheme: Varya, Charlotte, Epikhodov. We do not find any “class” subtext in their images. In addition, Chekhov was never known as a propagandist, and most likely would not have written such a clearly decipherable play. We should not forget that the author himself defined the genre of “The Cherry Orchard” as a comedy and even a farce - not the most successful form for demonstrating high ideals...
Based on all of the above, it is impossible to consider Anya and Petya in the play “The Cherry Orchard” solely as an image of the younger generation. Such an interpretation would be too superficial. Who are they for the author? What role do they play in his plan?
It can be assumed that the author deliberately brought out two characters not directly related to the main conflict as “outside observers.” They have no vested interest in the auction and the garden, and there is no clear symbolism associated with it. For Anya and Petya Trofimov, the cherry orchard is not a painful attachment. It is the lack of attachment that helps them survive in general atmosphere devastation, emptiness and meaninglessness, so subtly conveyed in the play.
The general characterization of Anya and Petya in The Cherry Orchard inevitably includes a love line between the two heroes. The author outlined it implicitly, half-hintly, and it is difficult to say for what purposes he needed this move. Perhaps this is a way to show a collision in the same situation of two qualitatively different characters We see young, naive, enthusiastic Anya, who has not yet seen life and at the same time full of strength and readiness for any changes. And we see Petya, full of courage, revolutionary ideas, an inspired speaker, a sincere and enthusiastic person, moreover, absolutely inactive, complete internal contradictions, therefore absurd and sometimes funny. It can be said that love line brings two extremes together: Anya - force without a vector, and Petya - a vector without force. Anya's energy and determination are useless without a guide; Petya's passion and ideological spirit inner strength dead.
In conclusion, it can be noted that the images of these two heroes in the play today, unfortunately, are still viewed in a traditional “Soviet” way. There is reason to believe that a fundamentally different approach to the system of characters and Chekhov’s play as a whole will allow us to see many more shades of meaning and will reveal a lot interesting moments. In the meantime, the images of Anya and Petya are waiting for their unbiased critic.
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