Analysis of the image of Ranevskaya's cherry orchard. Characteristics of Ranevskaya
« The Cherry Orchard" - the last work of A.P. Chekhov, which completed his creative biography, his ideological and artistic quests. This play embodied the new stylistic principles developed by the writer, new techniques for plotting and composition.
Having started work on the play in March 1903, Chekhov sent it to the Art Theater in October, on whose stage the first performance of “The Cherry Orchard” took place on January 17, 1904. The premiere of the play coincided with the writer’s stay in Moscow, his name day and birthday, and the theater actors staged a solemn celebration of their favorite playwright.
Let's consider one of the main images of the play - the image of Ranevskaya.
The action of the play, as the author reports in the very first remark, takes place on the estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. This is real" Noble Nest", with a cherry orchard surrounded by poplars, with a long alley that "goes straight, like a stretched belt" and "glitters in moonlit nights».
The Cherry Orchard appears in the play symbolically. It unites very different heroes, each of which has their own idea of it. But the cherry garden will separate all the characters at the end of the play.
The Cherry Orchard as a wonderful home for Ranevskaya exists only in her wonderful past. The memory of childhood and youth is associated with it.
Ranevskaya appears in her house, where she has not been for five years. And this is her last, farewell visit to her homeland. The heroine comes from abroad, from a man who robbed her, but whom she still loves very much. At home, Ranevskaya thought to find peace. Nature itself in the play seems to remind her of the need for spiritual renewal, of beauty, of happiness human life.
Ranevskaya, devastated by love, returns to her estate in the spring. In the cherry orchard there are “white masses of flowers”, starlings are singing, the blue sky is shining above the garden. Nature is preparing for renewal - and hopes for a new, clean, bright life awaken in Ranevskaya’s soul: “All, all white! O my garden! After a dark, unhappy autumn and a cold winter, you are young again, full of happiness, the angels of heaven have not abandoned you. If only I could take the heavy stone off my chest and shoulders, if only I could forget my past!”
But the past does not allow itself to be forgotten, since Ranevskaya herself lives with a sense of the past. She is the creation of a noble culture, which before our eyes disappears from the present, remaining only in memories. In its place is a new class, new people - the emerging bourgeois, businessmen, ready to do anything for money. Both Ranevskaya and the garden are defenseless against the threat of death and ruin. When Lopakhin offers her the only real way to save the house, Ranevskaya replies: “Dachas and summer residents - it’s so vulgar, I’m sorry.”
It turns out that, on the one hand, Ranevskaya does not want to cut down the garden, since it is a symbol of her happy youth, her aspirations and hopes. Yes, besides, the garden in the spring is simply magnificent in its bloom - it would be a pity to cut down such beauty because of some dachas. But, on the other hand, the author shows us Ranevskaya’s indifference both to the fate of the cherry orchard and to the fate of loved ones. All her spiritual strength and energy were absorbed by love passion, which gradually enslaved the will of this woman and drowned out her natural responsiveness to the joys and troubles of the people around her.
Emphasizing Ranevskaya's feeling of indifference, Chekhov shows us the heroine's attitude towards telegrams from Paris. This attitude is directly dependent on the degree of threat hanging over the garden. In the first act, while they are only talking about the possibility of a sale, Ranevskaya “tears up the telegram without reading it.” In the second act, the buyer is already known - Ranevskaya reads and tears up the telegram. In the third act, an auction took place - she admits that she decided to go to Paris to the man who robbed her and abandoned her. In Paris, Ranevskaya is going to live on the money that her grandmother sent to buy the estate.
The heroine completely forgot all the insults caused to her by her former lover. In Russia, she leaves everyone to their fate. Varya, Ranevskaya's adopted daughter, is forced to become a housekeeper for the Ragulins. Lyubov Andreevna does not care at all about her fate, although she made an attempt to marry Varya to Lopakhin. But this attempt was unsuccessful.
Ranevskaya is impractical, selfish, careless. She forgets about Firs, the servant who worked for them all his life. She does not suit the life of her daughters - neither Anya nor Varya, forgetting about them in the heat of her passion. It is unknown on what whim Ranevskaya is throwing a ball while auctions are going on in the city, although she herself understands the inappropriateness of what is happening: “And the musicians came at the wrong time, and we started the ball at the wrong time... Well, nothing... (Sits down and quietly cries) "
But, at the same time, the heroine is kind, responsive, and her sense of beauty does not fade. She is ready to help everyone, ready to give her last money. So, Ranevskaya gives the last gold piece to the drunkard. But this also shows its impracticality. She knows that at home Varya feeds everyone with milk soup and the servants with peas. But this is the nature of this heroine.
The image of Ranevskaya is very contradictory; it is impossible to say whether she is good or bad. In the play, this image is not assessed unambiguously, since it is a living, complex and contradictory character.
Let's remember Chekhov's stories. Lyrical mood, piercing sadness and laughter... These are his plays too - unusual plays, and even more so that seemed strange to Chekhov's contemporaries. But it was in them that the “watercolor” nature of Chekhov’s colors, his soulful lyricism, his piercing accuracy and frankness were most clearly and deeply manifested.
Chekhov's dramaturgy has several plans, and what the characters say is by no means what the author himself hides behind their remarks. And what he is hiding may not be what he would like to convey to the viewer...
This diversity makes it difficult to define the genre. For example, a play
As we know from the very beginning, the estate is doomed; The heroes are also doomed - Ranevskaya, Gaev, Anya and Varya - they have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for. The solution proposed by Lopakhin is impossible for them. Everything for them symbolizes the past, some long-ago, wonderful life, when everything was easy and simple, and they even knew how to dry cherries and send them by cart to Moscow... But now the garden has grown old, fruitful years are rare, the method of preparing cherries has been forgotten... Constant trouble is felt behind all the words and actions of the heroes... And even the hopes for the future expressed by one of the most active heroes - Lopakhin - are unconvincing. Petya Trofimov’s words are also unconvincing: “Russia is our garden,” “we need to work.” After all, Trofimov himself is an eternal student who cannot begin any serious activity. The trouble is in the way the relationship between the characters develops (Lolakhin and Varya love each other, but for some reason they don’t get married), and in their conversations. Everyone talks about what interests them in this moment, and does not listen to others. Chekhov's heroes are characterized by a tragic "deafness", so the important and the small, the tragic and the stupid get in the way in the dialogues.
Indeed, in “The Cherry Orchard,” as in human life, tragic (material difficulties, inability of the heroes to act), dramatic (the life of any of the heroes) and comic (for example, Petya Trofimov’s fall from the stairs at the most tense moment) are mixed. Discord is visible everywhere, even in the fact that servants behave like masters. Firs says, comparing the past and present, that “everything is fragmented.” The existence of this person seems to remind the young that life began a long time ago, even before them. It is also characteristic that he is forgotten on the estate...
And the famous “sound of a breaking string” is also a symbol. If a stretched string means readiness, determination, efficiency, then a broken string means the end. True, there is still a vague hope, because the neighboring landowner Simeonov-Pishchik was lucky: he is no better than others, but they either found clay or had a railroad...
Life is both sad and funny. She is tragic, unpredictable - this is what Chekhov talks about in his plays. And that is why it is so difficult to determine their genre - because the author simultaneously shows all aspects of our life...
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, like other writers, was interested in writing on the theme of human happiness, love, harmony. In most of the writer’s works: “Ionych”, “Gooseberry”, “About Love” - the heroes fail in love. They cannot create their own happiness, let alone others. In the story “The Lady in a Dog” everything is different. When Gurov and Anna Sergeevna part, she returns to her city S., and he returns to Moscow. “A month would pass, and it seemed to him that Anna Sergeevna would be covered in a fog in his memory and only occasionally would he dream of her with a touching smile, as others did. But more than a month passed, a deep crisis set in, and everything was clear in his memory, as if he had broken up with Anna Sergeevna just yesterday. And the memories became more and more intense.” Here is a twist in the development of the plot. Is love not weakening? does not die from a collision with life, does not turn out to be insolvent. On the contrary, it evokes in Gurov a disgust for the drowsy, philistine prosperous existence, and a desire for a different, new life. Familiar surroundings evokes almost disgusting disgust in the hero. He clearly sees the hypocrisy and vulgarity of those around him. “- Dmitry Dmitrich! - What? - And just now you were right: the sturgeon is fragrant! These words, so ordinary, for some reason suddenly outraged Gurov and seemed humiliating and unclean to him. What wild customs, what faces! What stupid nights, what uninteresting days! Furious card playing, gluttony, drunkenness, constant conversations all about one thing... a short, wingless life... and you can’t leave, as if you were sitting in a madhouse or in a prison company.” What a storm and range of feelings love gives birth to in Gurov! Its cleansing power is beneficial. It never occurs to the writer to condemn the heroes for their “sinful feelings.” They are both married, breaking their vows. But the author’s idea is clear to the reader that life without love is even more sinful. Anna Sergeevna and Gurov love each other - this is their consolation, an incentive to live, because every person has the right to happiness. “Anna Sergeevna and he loved each other like very close, dear people... it seemed to them that fate itself had destined them for each other, and it was not clear why he was married, and she was married... And it seemed that a little - and a solution will be found, and then a new one will begin, wonderful Life; and it was clear to both that the end was still far away and that the most difficult and difficult thing was just beginning.” It's almost romantic story Chekhov the realist about love, its great power and purity. Reading the story, you understand that only with a loved one can you understand all the beauty of the world, feel the fullness of life, and that it is necessary to protect this
Ranevskaya in the system of images of Chekhov's heroines
The play “The Cherry Orchard” became A.P.’s swan song. Chekhov, occupying the stage of world theaters for many years. The success of this work was due not only to its themes, which are controversial to this day, but also to the images that Chekhov created. For him, the presence of women in his works was very important: “Without a woman, a story is like a car without steam,” he wrote to one of his friends. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the role of women in society began to change. The image of Ranevskaya in the play “The Cherry Orchard” became a vivid caricature of Anton Pavlovich’s emancipated contemporaries, whom he observed in large numbers in Monte Carlo.
Chekhov carefully worked out each female image: facial expressions, gestures, manners, speech, because through them he conveyed an idea of the character and feelings possessing the heroines. The appearance and name also contributed to this.
The image of Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna has become one of the most controversial, and this was largely due to the actresses playing this role. Chekhov himself wrote that: “It’s not difficult to play Ranevskaya, you just need to take the right tone from the very beginning...”.
Her image is complex, but there are no contradictions in it, since she is faithful to her internal logic of behavior.
Ranevskaya's life story
The description and characterization of Ranevskaya in the play “The Cherry Orchard” is given through her story about herself, from the words of other characters and the author’s remarks. Getting to know the central female character begins literally from the first lines, and Ranevskaya’s life story is revealed in the very first act. Lyubov Andreevna returned from Paris, where she lived for five years, and this return was caused by the urgent need to resolve the issue of the fate of the estate, which was put up for auction for debts.
Lyubov Andreevna married “a lawyer at law, a non-nobleman...”, “who only made debts,” and also “drank terribly” and “died from champagne.” Was she happy in this marriage? Unlikely. After the death of her husband, Ranevskaya “unfortunately” fell in love with another. But her passionate romance did not last long. Her young son died tragically, and feeling guilty, Lyubov Andreevna goes abroad forever. However, her lover followed her “ruthlessly, rudely,” and after several years of painful passions, “he robbed... abandoned, got in touch with someone else,” and she, in turn, tries to poison herself. Seventeen-year-old daughter Anya comes to Paris to pick up her mother. Oddly enough, this young girl partially understands her mother and feels sorry for her. Throughout the play, the daughter's sincere love and affection is visible. Having stayed in Russia for only five months, Ranevskaya, immediately after selling the estate, taking the money intended for Anya, returns to Paris to her lover.
Characteristics of Ranevskaya
On the one hand, Ranevskaya is beautiful woman, educated, with a subtle sense of beauty, kind and generous, who is loved by those around her, but her shortcomings border on vice and therefore are so noticeable. “She's a good person. Easy, simple,” says Lopakhin. He sincerely loves her, but his love is so unobtrusive that no one knows about it. Her brother says almost the same thing: “She is good, kind, nice...” but she is “vicious. You can feel it in her slightest movement.” Absolutely all the characters speak about her inability to manage money, and she herself understands this very well: “I have always wasted money without restraint, like crazy...”; “...she has nothing left. And mom doesn’t understand!” says Anya. “My sister is still used to wasting money,” Gaev echoes her. Ranevskaya is used to living without denying herself pleasures, and if her family is trying to reduce their expenses, then Lyubov Andreevna simply cannot do it, she is ready to give her last money to a random passer-by, although Varya has nothing to feed her household.
At first glance, Ranevskaya’s experiences are very deep, but if you pay attention to the author’s remarks, it becomes clear that this is only an appearance. For example, while excitedly waiting for her brother to return from the auction, she hums a lezginka song. And this is a vivid example of her entire being. She seems to distance herself from unpleasant moments, trying to fill them with actions that can bring positive emotions. The phrase characterizing Ranevskaya from “The Cherry Orchard”: “You shouldn’t deceive yourself, you need to look the truth straight in the eye at least once in your life,” suggests that Lyubov Andreevna is divorced from reality, stuck in her own world.
“Oh, my garden! After a dark, stormy autumn and a cold winter, you are young again, full of happiness, the heavenly angels have not abandoned you...” - with these words Ranevskaya greets the garden after a long separation, a garden without which she “does not understand her life,” with which she is inextricably her childhood and youth are connected. And it seems that Lyubov Andreevna loves her estate and cannot live without it, but she does not try to make any attempts to save it, thereby betraying him. For most of the play, Ranevskaya hopes that the issue with the estate will be resolved by itself, without her participation, although it is her decision that is the main one. Although Lopakhin's proposal is the most realistic way to save him. The merchant has a presentiment of the future, saying that it is quite possible that “the summer resident ... will take up farming, and then your cherry orchard will become happy, rich, luxurious,” because at the moment the garden is in a neglected state, and does not bring any benefit or profit to its owners .
For Ranevskaya, the cherry orchard meant her inextricable connection with the past and her ancestral attachment to the Motherland. She is a part of him, just as he is a part of her. She realizes that the sale of the garden is an inevitable payment for her past life, and this is evident in her monologue about sins, in which she realizes them and takes them upon herself, asking the Lord not to send great trials, and the sale of the estate becomes their kind of atonement: “My nerves better... I sleep well.”
Ranevskaya is an echo of a cultural past that is thinning literally before our eyes and disappearing from the present. Well aware of the destructiveness of her passion, realizing that this love is dragging her to the bottom, she returns to Paris, knowing that “this money will not last long.”
Against this background, love for daughters looks very strange. An adopted daughter, who dreams of joining a monastery, gets a job as a housekeeper for her neighbors, since she does not have at least a hundred rubles to donate, and her mother simply does not attach any importance to this. Her own daughter Anya, left at the age of twelve in the care of a careless uncle, is very worried about her mother’s future on the old estate and is saddened by the imminent separation. “...I will work, help you...” says a young girl who is not yet familiar with life.
The further fate of Ranevskaya is very unclear, although Chekhov himself said that: “Only death can calm down such a woman.”
Characteristics of the image and description of the life of the heroine of the play will be useful to 10th grade students when preparing an essay on the topic “The Image of Ranevskaya in the play “The Cherry Orchard” by Chekhov.”
Work test
“The Cherry Orchard” is the last work of A.P. Chekhov, which completed his creative biography, his ideological and artistic quest. This play embodied the new stylistic principles developed by the writer, new techniques for plotting and composition.
Having started work on the play in March 1903, Chekhov sent it to the Art Theater in October, on whose stage the first performance of “The Cherry Orchard” took place on January 17, 1904. The premiere of the play coincided with the writer’s stay in Moscow, his name day and birthday, and the theater actors staged a solemn celebration of their favorite playwright.
Let's consider one of the main images of the play - the image of Ranevskaya.
The action of the play, as the author reports in the very first remark, takes place on the estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. This is a real “noble nest”, with a cherry orchard surrounded by poplars, with a long alley that “goes straight, like a stretched belt” and “glitters on moonlit nights.”
The cherry orchard is a symbolic image in the play. It brings together very different characters, each of whom has their own idea of him. But the cherry garden will separate all the characters at the end of the play.
The Cherry Orchard as a wonderful home for Ranevskaya exists only in her wonderful past. The memory of childhood and youth is associated with it.
Ranevskaya appears in her house, where she has not been for five years. And this is her last, farewell visit to her homeland. The heroine comes from abroad, from a man who robbed her, but whom she still loves very much. At home, Ranevskaya thought to find peace. Nature itself in the play seems to remind her of the need for spiritual renewal, of beauty, of the happiness of human life.
Ranevskaya, devastated by love, returns to her estate in the spring. In the cherry orchard there are “white masses of flowers”, starlings are singing, the blue sky is shining above the garden. Nature is preparing for renewal - and hopes for a new, clean, bright life awaken in Ranevskaya’s soul: “All, all white! O my garden! After a dark, unhappy autumn and a cold winter, you are young again, full of happiness, the angels of heaven have not abandoned you. If only I could take the heavy stone off my chest and shoulders, if only I could forget my past!”
But the past does not allow itself to be forgotten, since Ranevskaya herself lives with a sense of the past. She is the creation of a noble culture, which before our eyes disappears from the present, remaining only in memories. In its place is a new class, new people - the emerging bourgeois, businessmen, ready to do anything for money. Both Ranevskaya and the garden are defenseless against the threat of death and ruin. When Lopakhin offers her the only real way to save the house, Ranevskaya replies: “Dachas and summer residents - it’s so vulgar, I’m sorry.”
It turns out that, on the one hand, Ranevskaya does not want to cut down the garden, since it is a symbol of her happy youth, her aspirations and hopes. Yes, besides, the garden in the spring is simply magnificent in its bloom - it would be a pity to cut down such beauty because of some dachas. But, on the other hand, the author shows us Ranevskaya’s indifference both to the fate of the cherry orchard and to the fate of loved ones. All her spiritual strength and energy were absorbed by love passion, which gradually enslaved the will of this woman and drowned out her natural responsiveness to the joys and troubles of the people around her.
Emphasizing Ranevskaya's feeling of indifference, Chekhov shows us the heroine's attitude towards telegrams from Paris. This attitude is directly dependent on the degree of threat hanging over the garden. In the first act, while they are only talking about the possibility of a sale, Ranevskaya “tears up the telegram without reading it.” In the second act, the buyer is already known - Ranevskaya reads and tears up the telegram. In the third act, an auction took place - she admits that she decided to go to Paris to the man who robbed her and abandoned her. In Paris, Ranevskaya is going to live on the money that her grandmother sent to buy the estate.
The heroine completely forgot all the insults caused to her by her former lover. In Russia, she leaves everyone to their fate. Varya, Ranevskaya's adopted daughter, is forced to become a housekeeper for the Ragulins. Lyubov Andreevna does not care at all about her fate, although she made an attempt to marry Varya to Lopakhin. But this attempt was unsuccessful.
Ranevskaya is impractical, selfish, careless. She forgets about Firs, the servant who worked for them all his life. She does not suit the life of her daughters - neither Anya nor Varya, forgetting about them in the heat of her passion. It is unknown on what whim Ranevskaya is throwing a ball while auctions are going on in the city, although she herself understands the inappropriateness of what is happening: “And the musicians came at the wrong time, and we started the ball at the wrong time... Well, nothing... (Sits down and quietly cries) "
But, at the same time, the heroine is kind, responsive, and her sense of beauty does not fade. She is ready to help everyone, ready to give her last money. So, Ranevskaya gives the last gold piece to the drunkard. But this also shows its impracticality. She knows that at home Varya feeds everyone with milk soup and the servants with peas. But this is the nature of this heroine.
The image of Ranevskaya is very contradictory; it is impossible to say whether she is good or bad. In the play, this image is not assessed unambiguously, since it is a living, complex and contradictory character.
Before us is a play with the prosaic title “The Cherry Orchard”. I wonder what the author meant by a cherry orchard? “All of Russia is our garden,” says one of the characters in the play, Petya Trofimov.
It is interesting that Anton 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 piece 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 replicas characters, the garden becomes a participant in the action.
The magnificent 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,” but a poppy field is another matter! He is going to cut down the old cherry orchard, 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 Ermolai Lopakhin will hit the cherry orchard with an ax and how the trees will 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. He approaches the eternal human value - beauty - from a narrow class position and begins to discredit the cherry orchard, seeing for some reason a tortured slave-serf behind every tree. “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 say about him “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.
Will Lopakhin become the new owner? It is clear that before us is a representative of a new class, and this class is displacing the family nobles from Russian life. Lopakhin both attracts and frightens Chekhov. The writer makes it clear that Lopakhin is only a temporary master of life. He introduces himself to Ranevskaya as a grateful friend, and he himself begins to cut down the garden even before her departure. No, he is not the owner of the cherry orchard, but only its temporary owner
“The Cherry Orchard” is the last play in Chekhov’s work, his “swan song”. In the play, the cherry orchard united all the main characters and became a symbol of the beautiful, unchanging and indestructible. He became a symbol of the country. Russia. True, the writer’s dream for all of Russia to be a garden has not yet come true. But it depends on us whether this will remain a dream or come true.