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The Cherry Orchard Essay

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The Cherry Orchard The Misunderstood Comedy When the first production of The Cherry Orchard was performed on stage in Moscow, there was a significant difference of opinion between the author and directors. Chekhov strongly faulted the directors interpretation that the play should be preformed as a tragedy and insisted that what he had written was a comedy. The famous philosopher Aristotle defined a comedy as "an imitation of characters of a lower type who are not bad in themselves but whose faults possess something ludicrous in them." The misinterpretation of The Cherry Orchard could be mainly due to a misunderstanding of the comic character. A "comic" character is generally supposed to …show more content…

It is this that forms the ludicrous or comic essence of Lyubov's character. True, Lyubov’s character does have her tragic moments. At the end of act four, Ania refers to her mother as to having been crying all morning. Lyubov also expresses a lot of stress from not having money, even though her actions do not show it. The main theme of the play can be generally taken to be the passing of the old order of Russian society, symbolized by the sale of the cherry orchard. Since Chekhov did not belong to the ranks of the Ranevsky family, unlike other authors who had written plays on the same theme, Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard without becoming personally involved. He was able to see the the comedy of the whole situation and give it an artistic form of a play full of comic characters. Nothing was further form Chekhov's thoughts then that his characters should spread a feeling of gloom or depression on his audience. Therefore the symbolism of the cherry orchard had nothing to do with it's sale. All it expresses is one of the common reoccurring

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