The Cherry Orchard....

So we finished reading "The Cherry Orchard" this week, and we were asked to write what we felt the cherry orchard represented to Lyubov Andreevna, one of the central characters in the story. I felt that the cherry orchard itself represented home and happiness for Lyubov, with a sense of unchanging familiarity. This was all that she and her family knew, so she clings to the past and avoids the future because she knows that things are about to change--which they do, for her and her family. According to the commentary after the story, this is very symbolic of the changing aristocracy, of the old social order in Russia at the time of the revolution.

There were other things that struck me as symbolic, as well, such as the snapping of a rope in the distance; the dying of the family friend Firs; and the sound of a tree being chopped down in the distance. It symbolized, to me, a break with the old way of life and the introduction of a new way of life for all concerned. If this story were told today, it could definitely represent the society at large with the faltering economy and a changing way of life for many modern families.

I will admit that I found this story somewhat boring initially, but once I really understood the characters and what their hopes, dreams, and fears were, I realized that we all have a little bit of Lyubov in us--clinging to the past and the old way in order to avoid facing the future and the present realities of the situation we find ourselves in (even though they were high society, they were still apprehensive about the future).