The Cherry Orchard Themes

Class instability is the driving circumstance in The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov portrays Russia after in the freeing of the serfs, in a moment of flux. While the society used to be well-stratified, n...

Because The Cherry Orchard depicts a changing society, the characters spend a lot of time thinking about how now compares to then. How characters relate to the past determines their investment in t...

For a play about social change, The Cherry Orchard abounds in love. There are love triangles. There is unrequited love. There's physical love. There's spiritual love. Maternal love. Platonic love....

There's a good amount of death in The Cherry Orchard. It is mentioned over and over. The memory of a dead son and husband haunt the main character, Lubov. The clown threatens to kill himself. Depar...

The Cherry Orchard begins with a homecoming. The main character Lubov believes that, in returning home, she can restore her life to a state of innocence. Ever heard that saying, "You can never go h...

"Time," says Lopakhin the businessman, "does go" (1.83). Profound? Not so much – but a strong undercurrent in The Cherry Orchard. Characters are acutely aware of the passage of time. The indu...

When it comes to money, nobody's neutral in The Cherry Orchard. Characters are begging for it, borrowing it, planning to make more of it, or proudly declaring their independence from it. An aristoc...

Many of the characters in The Cherry Orchard pinball between "there" and "here" in futile efforts of escape. Lubov runs from her unhappy relationship in Paris, believing that Russia will offer her...