46 pages • 1 hour read
Anton ChekhovThe Cherry Orchard
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1904A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Cherry Orchard
The titular cherry orchard is the play’s most important symbol. As it means different things to different characters, it symbolizes Russia’s complex past and the characters’ sometimes contradictory attitudes toward leaving that past behind.
The orchard is large, beautiful, and unproductive. It is a relic of a time when land ownership and wealth were concentrated within a small upper-class aristocracy. However, after emancipation, the country’s social makeup and economic structure are changing, and the orchard represents a beautiful but useless luxury that there is no longer room for in the country. As the middle class grows, land must be divided more equally and used more productively. Lopakhin understands this, which is why he suggests that Lubov can pay off her debts by chopping down the orchard and renting out the land to middle-class residents; Lubov, however, is shocked and offended by this suggestion.
To Lubov, the orchard symbolizes her supposedly idyllic childhood, and her obsession with its beauty represents her inability to see the past clearly. For Lopakhin, it is a symbol of his family’s oppression and forced labor as serfs. According to Trofimov, there is “something human look[ing] at you from every cherry in the orchard, every leaf and every stalk” (50), indicating that the orchard holds traumatic memories of serfdom. For as long as the orchard stands, the past holds power over the characters. Therefore, the destruction of the orchard represents the definitive movement toward modernization.
The Nursery
Act I of the play opens in the nursery in Lubov’s home. Unchanged for more than 50 years, the nursery is a symbol of the aristocracy’s effort to cling to the past. Although the play directions state that this room is “still called the nursery” (2), it hasn’t been used as one for a long time, as the family’s youngest member, Anya, is 17 years old. Nevertheless, the nursery remains untouched, symbolizing not only the past but also the family’s excess and privilege—they have so many rooms that they can afford to leave this one unchanged for years, just to preserve their memories. When Lubov returns from Paris, she cries when she recalls spending time in the very same room as a child, saying she was incredibly happy in those days, when she could stand at the nursery windows and admire the beautiful view of the cherry orchard.
Act IV of the play is once again set in the nursery, but this time, the changes in the room reflect the changes in Lubov’s situation. The estate has been sold to cover Lubov’s debts, and the family is being forced to move out of their ancestral home. The nursery is in a state of disrepair; all the old furniture has been carried out and the curtains have been taken down, revealing the window where Lubov used to stand and admire the cherry orchard when she was a child. From offstage comes the sound of these cherry trees being felled. In this way, the room illustrates that the old ways of life are being dismantled.
The Sound of String Breaking
The sound of string breaking appears twice in the play, during Act II and at the end of Act IV, just as the lights go down and the play ends. The sound represents breaking ties with old ways of life, suggesting that connections to the past are being cut.
In Act II, a group of people—including Lubov, Fiers, Anya, Varya, Gaev, Trofimov, and Lopakhin—all hear the sound and think that it is unpleasant. This highlights the idea of Social Change as a Powerful but Destabilizing Force, since these characters have different attitudes toward the fall of the old order, but they nevertheless all agree that the sound of the string breaking is unpleasant. When Gaev ventures a guess that a bird might have made the sound, Fiers says that he remembers an owl hooting even after the Emancipation Reform; in this way, he links the sound they heard to the event that has changed all their lives.
In the final act, the sound of string breaking is paired with the sound of an axe felling cherry trees at the very conclusion of the play. All the other characters have left, except for Fiers, who is lying down alone in the empty house and is presumably dead. Here, the sound represents the definitive severing of the estate’s connection to the past.
Related Titles
By Anton Chekhov
