considered to be his masterpiece. It was first produced on January 17, 1904 by the Moscow Arts Theater, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his career. The Cherry Orchard then was established as a classic in the 1950’s. It was recognized as a new type of drama due to the controversy of whether it was a comedy or drama.Anton Chekhov conceived The Cherry Orchard as a comedy but had trouble persuading people it was not a drama. The play fulfills all the conventional requirements of a classical and of a realist drama. It aligns the action with time, from hopeful spring to despairing autumn. It has a crux to the plot that remains unresolved until the end of the third act - Will the estate be sold or saved? It has couples who seem destined to be married, servants who fail to serve a heroine with both grave flaws and charisma. The Cherry Orchard can be read in many ways, as a conflict between hope and despair, between conflicting illusions, or nature and mankind. Above all, it can be read as an evocation of honest pessimism about the outcome of all these conflicts, with only a glimmer of hope and no false consolations. This idea is seen throughout the views of the major characters.All of Russia is our garden. The earth is great and beautiful; it is full of wonderful places. Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls. Do not human spirits look at you from every tree in the orchard, form every leaf and every stem? Do you not hear human voices? Oh! It is terrible. Your orchard frightens me.One can invision the personality of Peter. As the “perpetual student”, he views the orchard as nothing but an image of slavery and repression. Trophimof also experiences the loss of the orchard as a privileged class being demoted to the whole Russia people. The views that each of the characters have are separated by generation, sex, and birth and class.By age, the new g...
