The cherry orchard, Tchekhov

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• LOPAKHIN: he can be seen as the central role of the play. Chekhov strongly fought against the reduction of this character to a type of rude, coarse person. The author describes him as “a decent person in every sense. His behavior must be entirely proper, cultivated and free of pettiness or clowning”. Many aspects of his complex personality are exposed in the play: he suffers from an important inferiority complex due to what his family used to be: serfs. Because of that he keeps devaluating himself (“here I’ve been reading this book, but I understood nothing. I read and fell asleep”; “My father was a peasant, an idiot, he understood nothing, he didn't teach me, he was always drunk, and always used a stick on me. In point of fact, I'm a fool and an idiot too. I've never learned anything, my handwriting is bad, I write so that I'm quite ashamed before people, like a pig!”). Not only himself, but also others keep bringing him back to this serf status his ancestors used to have. Gayev for instance when hearing Lopakhin’s plan about the cherry orchard: “Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me but you don’t understand anything at all”. Like Chekhov, despite being from the 3rd generation after the Emancipation Manifesto, he is still spiteful towards Ranevsky, her family, and mostly what they represent. But at the same time, he still sees in her that woman that once helped him when he was still a child with this one sentence “don’t cry little man”. He is torn between his own feelings and Ranevsky, despite what she represents to him, illustrates how complex Lopakhin’s personality and feelings are.

Chekhov built this character in a way that he goes through an entire arc of emotions, achieving a climax with his monologue, right after purchasing the estate. He first proposed a way to solve Ranevsky’s issue with the estate. His idea being rejected, he becomes frustrated. He ends up buying the cherry orchard: it represents a revenge on all of what his family went through under serfdom. It is a very important symbol because of the reversal of the situation: the nobility is having money issue, and due to that has to sell their estate to a farmer peasant, who is now the one solving the situation, He now owns that estate to which his family used to be tied, and meticulously plans on getting rid of it. The destruction of the cherry orchard creates a real fracture with the past and this serf condition.

• RANEVSKY: like all of Chekhov’s characters, Ranevsky cannot be read in a unique way. She is presented at first as a frivolous and unconscious woman: “I’ve never met (…) anybody so unbusinesslike and peculiar”. Her relation with money is very odd and unreasonable: she behaves in a way that contradicts her financial situation; she doesn’t have any money, but still behave as if she was wealthy. She doesn’t really seem to have an idea of its value; as if, since it wasn’t an issue when she was younger, it still isn’t one now that she is an adult. Nothing should change, and in her mind nothing has changed. But one cannot simply reduce her to that. She is more than just frivolous: she is very generous, even Lopakhin remembers that; she gives a huge importance to love, importance illustrated by her relationship with her lover. Despite what he did to her, she feels the need to go back to him, because he needs her and she loves him. On top of all of that, she has a very emotional nature. Letting go of the past is not something she is willing or even able to do. Chekhov illustrates this character trait through the bond she has with the cherry orchard. Going back home, in her child home and to that cherry orchard seems to make her believe that it will bring her back to her happy childhood where everything was so simple, unlike now. Being back at home is a way for her to hold on to that genuine happiness that she felt as a child. Having to let go of that by selling the orchard because of money issue is for her unconceivable. Cutting those roots seems impossible. It means that she would have to grow up, and most of all to face whatever reality she has been running away from. She would have to move on once the cherry orchard is gone, because nothing would attaches her to that happy past. Here, the silent character that is the cherry orchard

The entire play is based on this twist of situation due to change: the new Russia is rising; Lopakhin represents this new generation of self made men, and Ranevsky represents what nobility is reduced to.

A page is definitely and irreversibly turned: Firs, who embodies what Russia used to be and this complete rejection of change, is left behind and dies. He never evolved in his way of thinking: “Firs, if the estate is sold, where will you go? – Wherever you tell me to go”.