Representatives of the younger generation in the play The Cherry Orchard. The Cherry Orchard, a debate between generations

Anya is 17 years old, she breaks with her past and convinces the crying Ranevskaya that there is a whole life ahead: “We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this, you will see it, you will understand, 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 turning it into a blooming garden in the future. The garden is a symbol of the eternal renewal of life: “A new life begins,” Anya exclaims enthusiastically in the fourth act. Anya’s image is festive and joyful in the spring. “My sunshine! 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 does a seventeen-year-old girl get this wisdom and tact in life, which is not available 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 better place on earth than our garden.”

Trofimov answers her: “All of Russia is our garden.”

Petya Trofimov, like Anya, represents young Russia. He is the former teacher of Ranevskaya’s drowned seven-year-old son. His father was a pharmacist. He is 26 or 27 years old, he is an eternal student who has not completed his course, wears glasses and argues that he should stop admiring himself 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 that 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 is one of Chekhov's intellectuals for whom things, tithes of land, jewelry, money do not represent the 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 raises doubts 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 is well known, to any exaggerated manifestation of feelings: 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, as are Chekhov’s images of “little” people: the author refuses to recognize as unconditionally positive, to idealize “new” people only for being “new”, for that 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 path to the future, human qualities are lost: “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 some specific program for the reconstruction of the future Russia, they symbolize the hope for the revival of Garden Russia...

>Essays on the work The Cherry Orchard

Dispute between generations

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's play “The Cherry Orchard” is unusual and amazing. Unlike other works of the playwright, it places not a person at the center of all events, but the lyrical image of a beautiful cherry orchard. He is like the personification of the beauty of Russia of old times. Several generations are intertwined in the work and, accordingly, the problem of differences in thinking and perception of reality arises. The Cherry Orchard plays a fundamental role. It becomes a meeting place for the past, present and future of a country that is on the verge of tremendous change.

This drama is a completely new phenomenon in Russian art. There are no acute social conflicts in it, none of the main characters enters into an open dispute, and yet the conflict exists. What is it connected with? In my opinion, this is a dispute between generations who do not hear or do not want to hear each other. The past appears before us in the form of Ranevskaya and Gaev. These are inveterate nobles who are unable to change their habits even to save the estate that belonged to their parents and ancestors. Ranevskaya has long squandered her fortune and continues to waste money. Gaev hopes to receive an inheritance from a rich aunt living in Yaroslavl.

Will such people be able to keep their property - the family estate and the luxurious cherry orchard? Judging by this characteristic, no. One of the most prudent characters in the play is the representative of the current generation Ermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin. This is the son and grandson of serfs, who suddenly became rich and became a wealthy merchant. This hero achieved everything himself, with his work and perseverance, and therefore deserves respect. Unfortunately, he cannot be considered a happy person, since he himself is not happy about the opportunity to buy out Ranevskaya’s beloved cherry orchard. For this reason, at the very beginning of the play, he recommends that she divide it into plots and rent it out to summer residents, but the frivolous bourgeoisie do not want to hear about this.

The third generation, the so-called “future” of the country, is represented by Ranevskaya’s seventeen-year-old daughter and her son’s former teacher. Anya and Petya are fighters for a “new life”, and therefore they are little concerned about the fate of the cherry orchard. They believe that they can plant a new garden better than the previous one. Trofimov is a talented student, but, alas, he talks more than he does, and therefore the future with such young people frightens the older generation. Anya appears to us as the brightest and most unclouded character. She adopted the best traits from the nobility and continued to confidently keep up with the times towards change. The confidence in a positive outcome never left her. It is through her that the author expresses his hopes for a bright future.

A.P. Chekhov called his work “The Cherry Orchard” a comedy. Having read the play, we attribute it more to tragedy than to comedy. The images of Gaev and Ranevskaya seem tragic to us, and their fates are tragic. We sympathize and empathize with them. At first we cannot understand why Anton Pavlovich classified his play as a comedy. But re-reading the work, understanding it, we still find the behavior of such characters as Gaev, Ranevskaya, Epikhodov somewhat comical. We already believe that they themselves are to blame for their troubles, and perhaps we condemn them for this. What genre does A.P. Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” belong to – comedy or tragedy? In the play “The Cherry Orchard” we do not see a clear conflict; everything, it would seem, flows as usual. The characters in the play behave calmly, there are no open quarrels or clashes between them. And yet we feel the existence of a conflict, but not open, but internal, hidden in the quiet, at first glance, peaceful atmosphere of the play. We see them behind the ordinary conversations of the heroes of the work, behind their calm attitude towards each other. internal misunderstanding of others. We often hear lines from characters that are out of place; We often see their distant looks, as if they don’t hear those around them. But the main conflict of the play “The Cherry Orchard” lies in the misunderstanding of generation by generation. It seems as if three times intersected in the play: past, present and future. These three generations dream of their time, but they only talk and cannot do anything to change their lives. The previous generation includes Gaev, Ranevskaya, Firs; to the present - Lopakhin, and representatives of the future generation are Petya Trofimov and Dnya. Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, a representative of the old nobility, constantly talks about her best young years spent in the old house, in the beautiful and luxurious cherry orchard. She lives only with these memories of the past, she is not satisfied with the present, and she does not want to think about the future. And we find her infantilism funny. And the entire old generation in this play thinks the same way. None of them are trying to change anything. They talk about the “beautiful” old life, but they themselves seem to resign themselves to the present, let everything take its course, and give in without fighting for their ideas. And therefore Chekhov condemns them for this. Lopakhin is a representative of the bourgeoisie, a hero of the present. He lives for today. We can't help but notice that his ideas are smart and practical. He has lively conversations about how to change life for the better, and seems to know what to do. But all these are just words. In fact, Lopakhin is not the ideal hero of the play. We feel his lack of self-confidence. And at the end of the Work, his hands seem to give up, and he exclaims: “If only our awkward, unhappy life would change!” It would seem that Anya and Petya Trofimov are the author’s hope for the future. But can a person like Petya Trofimov, an “eternal student” and a “shabby gentleman” change this life? After all, only smart, energetic, self-confident people, active people, can put forward new ideas, enter the future and lead others. And Petya, like other characters in the play, talks more than he acts; He generally behaves somehow ridiculously. And Anya is still too young, she doesn’t know life yet to change it. So, the main tragedy of the play lies not only in the sale of the garden and estate in which people spent their youth, with which their best memories are associated, but also in the inability of the same people to change anything to improve their situation. We, of course, sympathize with Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, but we cannot help but notice her infantile, sometimes ridiculous behavior. We constantly feel the absurdity of the events taking place in the play. Ranevskaya and Kaev look ridiculous with their attachments to old objects, Epikhodov is ridiculous, and Charlotte herself is the personification of uselessness in this life. The main conflict of the work is the conflict of times, the misunderstanding of one generation by another. There is no connection between times in the play; the gap between them is heard in the sound of a broken string. And yet the author expresses his hopes for the future. No wonder the sound of an ax symbolizes the transition from the past to the present. And when the new generation plants a new garden, the future will come. A.P. Chekhov wrote the play “The Cherry Orchard” before the 1905 revolution. Therefore, the garden itself is the personification of Russia at that time. In this work, Anton Pavlovich reflected the problems of the passing nobility, the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary future. At the same time, Chekhov portrayed the main conflict of the work in a new way. The conflict is not openly shown in the work, but we feel the internal conflict occurring between the characters of the play. Tragedy and comedy run inextricably through the entire work. We simultaneously sympathize with the characters and condemn them for their inaction.

In the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", it would seem, there is no pronounced 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 of today is Lopakhin, and the people of the future are Anya and Petya Trofimov. But is this true?

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 from seeing the death of the 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 practical 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 - like in Shakespeare, “the connection of times has been 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.

The title of the play is symbolic. “All of Russia is our garden,” Chekhov said. This last play was written by Chekhov at the cost of enormous physical effort, and simply rewriting the play was an act of the greatest difficulty. Chekhov finished “The Cherry Orchard” on the eve of the first Russian revolution, in the year of his early death (1904).
Thinking about the death of the cherry orchard, about the fate of the inhabitants of the ruined estate, he mentally imagined all of Russia at the turn of the era.
On the eve of grandiose revolutions, as if feeling the steps of a formidable reality near him, Chekhov comprehended the present from the standpoint of the past and future. The far-reaching perspective imbued the play with the air of history and imparted a special extent to its time and space. In the play “The Cherry Orchard” there is no acute conflict, everything seems to go on as usual and there are no open quarrels or clashes between the characters in the play. And yet the conflict exists, but not openly, but internally, deeply hidden in the seemingly peaceful setting of the play. The conflict lies in the misunderstanding of a generation by a generation. It seems as if three times intersected in the play: past, present and future. And each of the three generations dreams of its own time.
The play begins with Ranevskaya’s arrival at her old family estate, with a return to the cherry orchard, which stands outside the windows all in bloom, to people and things familiar from childhood. A special atmosphere of awakened poetry and humanity arises. As if for the last time this living life on the verge of dying flashes brightly - like a memory. Nature is preparing for renewal - and hopes for a new, pure life awaken in Ranevskaya’s soul.
For the merchant Lopakhin, who is going to purchase the Ranevskaya estate, the cherry orchard also means something more than just the object of a commercial transaction.
In the play, representatives of three generations pass before us: the past - Gaev, Ranevskaya and Firs, the present - Lopakhin and representatives of the future generation - Petya Trofimov and Anya, Ranevskaya’s daughter. Chekhov not only created images of people whose lives occurred at a turning point, but captured Time itself in its movement. The heroes of “The Cherry Orchard” turn out to be victims not of private circumstances and their own lack of will, but of the global laws of history - the active and energetic Lopakhin is as much a hostage of time as the passive Gaev. The play is built on a unique situation that has become a favorite for 20th-century drama - the situation of the “threshold”. Nothing like this is happening yet, but there is a feeling of an edge, an abyss into which a person must fall.
Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya - a representative of the old nobility - is an impractical and selfish woman, naive in her love interest, but she is kind and sympathetic, and her sense of beauty does not fade, which Chekhov especially emphasizes. Ranevskaya constantly recalls her best young years spent in an old house, in a beautiful and luxurious cherry orchard. She lives with these memories of the past, she is not satisfied with the present, and she doesn’t even want to think about the future. Her immaturity seems funny. But it turns out that the entire old generation in this play thinks the same way. None of them are trying to change anything. They talk about the wonderful old life, but they themselves seem to resign themselves to the present, letting everything take its course and giving in without a fight.
Lopakhin is a representative of the bourgeoisie, a hero of the present time. This is how Chekhov himself defined his role in the play: “Lopakhin’s role is central. After all, this is not a merchant in the vulgar sense of the word... he is a gentle man... a decent man in every sense...” But this gentle man is a predator, he lives for today, so his ideas are smart and practical. The combination of a selfless love for beauty and a merchant's spirit, peasant simplicity and a subtle artistic soul merged together in the image of Lopakhin. He has lively conversations about how to change life for the better, and seems to know what to do. But in fact, he is not the ideal hero of the play. We feel his lack of self-confidence.
The play intertwines several storylines. A dying garden and failed, even unnoticed love are two cross-cutting, internally connected themes of the play. The line of the failed romance between Lopakhin and Varya ends before anyone else. It is built on Chekhov’s favorite technique: they talk most and most willingly about what does not exist, discuss details, argue about the little things that do not exist, without noticing or deliberately hushing up what exists and is essential. Varya is waiting for a simple and logical course of life: since Lopakhin often visits a house where there are unmarried girls, of whom only she is suitable for him. Varya, therefore, must get married. Varya doesn’t even have the idea to look at the situation differently, to think whether Lopakhin loves her, is she interesting to him? All Varina’s expectations are based on idle gossip that this marriage would be successful!
It would seem that Anya and Petya Trofimov are the author’s hope for the future. The romantic plan of the play is grouped around Petya Trofimov. His monologues have much in common with the thoughts of Chekhov's best heroes. On the one hand, Chekhov does nothing but put Petya in ridiculous positions, constantly compromising him, reducing his image to the extremely unheroic - “eternal student” and “shabby gentleman”, whom Lopakhin constantly stops with his ironic remarks. On the other hand, Petya Trofimov’s thoughts and dreams are close to Chekhov’s own state of mind. Petya Trofimov does not know specific historical paths to a good life, and his advice to Anya, who shares his dreams and premonitions, is naive, to say the least. “If you have the keys to the farm, then throw them into the well and leave. Be free like the wind." But a radical change has ripened in life, which Chekhov foresees, and it is not the character of Petya, the degree of maturity of his worldview, but the doom of the old that determines the inevitability.
But can a person like Petya Trofimov change this life? After all, only smart, energetic, self-confident people, active people, can put forward new ideas, enter the future and lead others. And Petya, like other heroes of the play, talks more than he acts, he generally behaves somehow ridiculously. Anya is still too young. She will never understand her mother’s drama, and Lyubov Andreevna herself will never understand her passion for Petya’s ideas. Anya still doesn’t know enough about life to change it. But Chekhov saw the strength of youth precisely in freedom from prejudice, from the narrowness of thoughts and feelings. Anya becomes like-minded with Petya, and this strengthens the motif of a future wonderful life that sounds in the play.
On the day of the sale of the estate, Ranevskaya throws a ball that is completely inappropriate from the point of view of common sense. Why does she need him? For the living Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, who is now fiddling with a wet handkerchief in her hands, waiting for her brother to return from the auction, this ridiculous ball is important in itself - as a challenge to everyday life. She snatches a holiday from everyday life, snatches from life that moment that can stretch a thread to eternity.
The property has been sold. “I bought it!” - the new owner triumphs, rattling the keys. Ermolai Lopakhin bought an estate where his grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen. He is ready to take an ax to the cherry orchard. But at the highest moment of triumph, this “intelligent merchant” unexpectedly feels the shame and bitterness of what has happened: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.” And it becomes clear that for yesterday’s plebeian, a person with a gentle soul and thin fingers, the purchase of a cherry orchard is, in essence, an “unnecessary victory.”
Ultimately, Lopakhin is the only one who offers a real plan to save the cherry orchard. And this plan is realistic, first of all, because Lopakhin understands: the garden cannot be preserved in its previous form, its time has passed, and now the garden can be preserved only by rearranging it in accordance with the requirements of the new era. But a new life means, first of all, the death of the past, and the executioner turns out to be the one who sees the beauty of the dying world most clearly.
So, the main tragedy of the work lies not only in the external action of the play - the sale of the garden and estate, where many of the characters spent their youth, with which their best memories are associated, but also in the internal contradiction - the inability of the same people to change anything for improving your situation.