How we cite our quotes: (Act.Line)
Quote #1
Irina: Brother of course will be a scientist; he certainly can't go on living here. (1.10)
As the only brother in the family, Andrey carries the burden of all their hopes for family success. That was the way it broke down gender-wise in the late nineteenth century.
Quote #2
Irina: Why do I feel so happy today! I feel as if I had sails flying in the wind, and the sky over me was bright blue and full of white birds. (1.23)
With these images of freedom in her mind—sails, blue sky, birds (symbolism alert!)—Irina wakes up full of hope on her birthday. This is about as dreamy as dreams can get.
Quote #3
Vershinin: In two or three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astonishing. (1.143)
Vershinin doesn't have many illusions about happiness in his own life, but holds out hope for generations to come. In The Cherry Orchard, Trofimov has a very similar speech. What's Chekhov telling us about the present day if we've gotta wait 200 years for things to get better?
Quote #4
Andrey: Me, I'm a member of the local County Council, and every night I dream I'm a professor at the University of Moscow, a famous scientist, the pride of Russia! (2.20)
Poor Andrey. All his ambitions are thwarted by settling down with the wrong girl.
Quote #5
Irina: I've got to find another job; this one is all wrong for me. Whatever it was that I wanted or was dreaming of, this is definitely not it. It's work, but there's no poetry in it, no meaning in it… (2.58)
Reality smacks Irina in the face once she starts working. The telegraph office is not even close to the noble, soul-feeding place she imagined in Act I. We understand—it'd be hard to find satisfaction working with the nineteenth-century version of tweets. It's just less fun without the hashtags.
Quote #6
Irina: (Alone, longing). I want to go to Moscow! Moscow! Moscow! (2.224)
Having discovered that work isn't all it's cracked up to be, Irina fixates almost hopelessly on Moscow instead. This is the pipe dream they all cling to throughout the play.
Quote #7
Irina: I kept waiting for us to move to Moscow. I knew I'd meet my true love there; I used to dream about him. But it was all a lot of nonsense. (3.103)
Romantic by nature, Irina has been holding out for a fairy tale. But there are no princes in shining armor in her little town—only barons in brick factory uniforms.
Quote #8
Irina: The baron and I are getting married tomorrow, and then we go away to the brick factory, and the day after, I start teaching, and that's when our new life begins. (4.40)
The eternal optimist is about to get schooled by life (again).
Quote #9
Chebutykin: I'll stay right here, left behind like a migrating bird that's too old to fly. You fly, sweetheart, you fly! (4.42)
Chekhov's kind of into bird metaphors. You've heard of a little play called The Seagull? Here, at least, we see the doc having hopes for someone—even if those, too, come to nothing.