I think that the most interesting part of The Cherry Orchard is the debate over whether or not it is a comedy or a tragedy. Not many plays are so complex that they can be classified on both ends of the spectrum. While reading the play, I was under the impression that it was a comedy. I simply could not take the characters seriously. There were so many times when I felt as though the characters were being so ridiculous that there was no way that they themselves were even affected by the tragic events that were unfolding. For example when Pischik is talking to Liubov about Lopakhin and also asking her for money, he falls asleep for a second in mid-conversation. Also the character Gayev was very comical. I don’t believe that they ever mentioned his age but it is assumed that he is rather old, and yet throughout the play he acts as if he is a child. The way he is treated by and responds to the butler Firs makes the reader believe that he is still a young boy living in his parents’ home. There is even a part where his own nieces have to scold him about his behavior. These comic elements took the focus away from the more serious events that were occurring in the play. I think that Anton Chekhov could have possibly done this on purpose to send a message to the audience to not take life so seriously. He wants the audience to see the tragedy but ultimately feel a sense of lightheartedness.
I would agree with what you said. I thought the play was a comedy instead of a tragedy. I found too many things that made me laugh throughout the play, especially a lot of the words used. Flibbertigibbet was an an example of this, who would put a word like that into a play that is not a comedy?
ReplyDeleteI went to an all boys school and at 14 with a still treble voice I played the role of Anya the younger daughter in this. I did not think this play a comedy at any point. It was about the Upper classes trying to swim against the tide and carry on as if the impending convulsion was nothing to do with them. Peter her tutor, boyfriend and trotskyite I suspect, led Anya to see that things would change whatever happened, and Gayev's endearing childlike state left him irrelevent, hopelessly unprepared and unable to face what was coming, He was not alone in this tragedy. The comedy moments lightened the mood some but also showed the family trying to carry on as normal as their world crumbled around them
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