Where do your sympathies lie? Part 4: A Symbolic Death

As the fourth, and last, post dealing with sympathies, audience, and Anton Chekov's play The Cherry Orchard, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the end of the play, wherein an image and a sound are powerfully juxtaposed. The image is of Firs (the old valet) dying, and the sound is the cherry trees being cut down. It seems simple enough, and yet this juxtaposition carries significant symbolic weight.

Firs has been a mainstay at Ranevsky's estate, and even fondly remembers the time before the emancipation of the serfs. After all, he had it pretty good as a valet, one of the head servants, and probably saw his fellow servants go their separate ways once they were emancipated and the estate grew too poor to keep them on. He rose to the highest position he could as a servant, misses the others after they have left, and his closing words, the words that close the play, are “I'm good for nothing.“

As for the felling of cherry trees, Lopahin has made no secret of his desire to do so. He had encouraged Ranevsky to save her land by felling the orchard and building estates. He had used his business savvy to know what would be the best thing to do financially, and will now do the same, making his investment work for himself. But he does so quickly, felling the trees even before the family has left so Ranevsky watches her beloved orchard fall as she leaves her family’s estate.

Ending a narrative is a daunting task: everything has to be carefully resolved, and a Russian play with its full cast is no exception. By this time the other characters have already left and Firs is alone. So the question is, why end the play on this note, with the sound of the ax and the death of an old valet?

The characters represent more than just themselves. Just as Lopahin represents the nouveau riche and Ranevsky the noblesse oblige, Firs represents an old generation, so rooted in its ways that even when emancipation came, he did not accept it and continues to live the same life he always had. Firs, by virtue of his position, his age, and his attitude about serfdom, represents an older way of life, even though he has few lines and little attention. He brings with him a lot of social and cultural baggage and he, ironically, is willing to carry it while the audience must decide how to sympathize with him and what he represents. Even as he dies, he complains that Gaev, Ranevsky's brother, probably left in an inadequate coat. Firs, as a former serf who stayed with the family and became the valet, is a strong representation of that time and that mentality. He's like the cherry trees: an old establishment representing a bygone era. Ranevsky assumed that since they always had been there, they always would be.

So what about when the character dies? All of that dies with him. When a character represents something, like a historical period, a certain mindset or occupation or lifestyle, dies, it means that, unless there's another character that also represents it, everything they symbolize dies as well.

And if they're killed? Firs' death is interesting because it has the sound of the cherry trees being chopped down. Firs stands old and symbolic, alongside the cherry trees, and the two are only further linked symbolically through the juxtapositions of their deaths. Lopahin is responsible for the cherry orchard's removal, just as how Ranevsky is responsible for having lost her money and the estate. Lopahin does not take the ax to Firs, but by felling the orchard, Lopahin symbolically brings about the death of an era, initiating a new world governed by hard work and business rather than estates and inheritances. It's a world that has no place for the old serf Firs. And so, there's nothing left for him.

We don't just sympathize with people. We sympathize with what they represent, and how we demonstrate that sympathy shows how we sympathize with their representations. To pity Firs' death is to pity an old lifestyle. Similarly, to lionize Lopahin would be to lionize all he represents. Characters and people cannot be separated from what they do and what they represent.

Where do your sympathies lie? Part 3: Reconsiderations and Cultural Distance

In a more modern world, particularly in America where I teach, it is easy to sympathize with Lopahin, unless a director manes him out to be a villain. Nevertheless, a close reading suggests he is more an entrepreneuring opportunist; a more capitalist character them a villainous one, frustrated by the inaction of his aristocratic friends.

Many of my students initially sympathize with Lopahin. In some ways, he embodies the American Dream. He started with nothing and rose through his own efforts, Lopahin brings with him middle class values and lower class dreams.

But he brings much more than the promise of economic possibilities. He brings the history of serfdom. It is at this point I ask my students about their own backgrounds, the lives of their parents and grandparents. I have yet to get a student openly claim to be as closely descended of slaves as Lopahin. None have claimed an ancestry or childhood like Lopahin's.

I ask my students to consider their lives. They have possessions, their parents are educated homeowners, and effective if there is debt - even if their family lost or losses everything - they will not be like Lopahin. Serfs. Slaves. As much a fixture of the landscape as the cherry trees and the bookcase Ranevsky fawns over while ignoring her aged servant, Firs. The very fact my students are students suggests they are better off than Lopahin's parents ever dreamed of. It’s actually rather hard for modern students to sympathize with Lopahin, even if they initially side with him.

That leaves Ranesky. My students generally dismiss Ranevsky as flighty and foolish, either frustrated or humored by her actions and demeanor. But think about her background. She was raised in a comfortable home by her parents, didn’t have to wonder what she would eat. She had leisure time. She had spending money. She could do something because she wanted to. She had parties, food, friends, fun, and family.

My students may not know the luxuries of turn-of-the-century Russian aristocrats, but I’d wager my students live lives much closer to those of Ranevsky than they do to Lopahin.

This makes sympathizing with the characters very tricky. It’s easy to write off Ranevsky as obnoxious and say that Lopahin was just being a good businessman, but there’s so much more social and cultural baggage we can understand on an intellectual level, but never on an emotional level.

When I was a child and I first learned about the concept of primogeniture, I asked my father if my oldest brother would get the house we all grew up in some day (the fact the house was once my grandfather’s certainly contributed). My father, however, said whoever pays for the house gets it. This is not something Ranevsky would have worried about; it had been her parents house and their parents house. The closest connection we can draw would be genetics; Ranesvky inherited the house and the fortune in a similar way to how I inherited my father’s stature and facial structure. It was just taken for granted because that’s the way it worked, and Lopahin’s ancestors were part of the house.

Identifying your sympathies is much harder than it seems. It can be easy to forget that we deal with different cultures and time periods in literature. Russia, serfdom, and aristocracy are concepts so foreign to modern day American students. Even the closest analog, Victorian Britain, never underwent such serious socio-cultural transformations as contemporary Russia did. This means that understanding literature means thinking long and hard about its cultural heritage and recognizing its differences from our own. It is a powerful learning opportunity to move from the historical facts to seeing the world in ways that others did, through their literature.