February 19, 2020
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in 2020
It’s been years since I’ve read Chekhov’s short stories, though one of my all-time favorites is “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” I used to teach that every semester in 1102. It’s been even longer since reading his plays—so long, in fact, I didn’t really remember The Cherry Orchard at all, though I obviously read it in 1999. And that’s truly a shame. I enjoyed my reading of TOC so much, I didn’t want it to end. In fact, even though I taught it today (one out of two days we’ll look at it), I still have about two pages left to finish. It’s such a delight. Such an enigma. The characters resonate powerfully, even more so today. It resists simple attempts to analyze it. It really is Chekhov at his finest.
As critic Harvey Pitcher points out, “there are no unsympathetic characters at all” in TOC.[1] Other than the vile valet Vásha, each character is truly likable in some way. Likewise, each is also unlikable to a certain extent.
Citations
- ↑ Pitcher 1984, p. 75.
Bibliography
- Chekhov, Anton (2017) [1903]. "The Cherry Orchard". In Gainor, J. Ellen; Garner Jr., Stanton B.; Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of Drama. Volume 2 (Third ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Pitcher, Harvey (1984). "The Chekhov Play". In Wellek, René; Wellek, Nonna D. Chekhov: New Perspectives. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. pp. 168–82.
