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.

Where do your sympathies lie? Part 2: Performativity and Protagonists

At the risk of oversimplification, tragedy occurs when the disrupted status quo, at the start of the narrative, cannot be regained and the characters end in a worse situation than they began. The opposite is comedy, where there is a disrupted status quo, but the status quo is either regained or a better situation replaces the old.

In short, either things end poorly or things end well.

Lopahin and Ranevsky follow different dramatic trajectories. Lopahin's is comedic. He may not get married or start a family, but he begins the play as a successful merchant and ends as a property owner, with a sizable estate his ancestors had been legally tied to as serfs, and he can use to increase his wealth.

Ranevsky's is tragic. She begins the play returning from France where she has squandered her wealth on a lover. She's in debt, but either refuses or is unable to acknowledge it. She longs to see her ancestral home and pines for tradition and is glad to have her home. She ends, however, ousted from her ancestral home to pay her debts. Her home, her heritage, her tradition, all lost.

And then there's the fact we're dealing with a play. Unlike poems and stories, plays are a public affair, with actors, a live audiences, and carefully designed sets and stages. A play is a communal experience in a large room filled with people. Even film was like this until the advent of television, VHS, and home entertainment.

People who have time and money attend the theater. Even today if you're going to see a professional play, you're going to spend upwards of a hundred dollars. Compare this to a feudal society where being a serf (like Lopahin's ancestors) belonged to the land and no land belonged to them. The lower classes never had the means to go see a play. It wouldn't be until serfdom was illegal and social mobility possible that someone other than the upper class, like the landowning gentry Ranevsky, could go attend the theater. While I can't confirm it, I like to think the audience of this pre-revolutionary play were mixed. Some traditional gentry on their way out, and some up and coming middle class. Those who had lived their lives with the theater and others whose parents had never had the chance to sit and watch actors and actresses play their parts.

Which characters, then, would this diverse audience have sympathized with? The distinction is hopefully an easy one to make:

The rising middle class would have sympathized with Lopahin, feeling for his rise from poverty, ingenuity, and his success in securing an estate. For them, the play is a comedy as they would have empathized with his personal struggles and successes, seeing a version of themselves and their own aspirations embodied in him.

The old aristocracy would have sympathized with Ranvesky. They would have seen the noblesse oblige embodied by Ranevsky in her parties and charities, and feeling for her as they see her succumb to the loss of her estate, which they would have all considered a tragic loss.

Whether or not Chekov intended it, and whether or not directors structure it accordingly, The Cherry Orchard can be a divisive play as it sends its characters in different trajectories. The play shows the delicate balance between comedy and tragedy with the play looking one way and then another as Ranevsky and Lopahin engage with one another, their situations, and the rest of the cast. It has the potential to remind us that happy endings are not so clean cut as we like them to be, and that our happy ending may be someone's sad ending.

But there’s another side to this issue. The play and its themes are deeply rooted in a different time and place from modern audiences. As a teacher, it is interesting not just to discuss where the sympathies of contemporaries would have been, but also to deconstruct our own reactions to this play charged with social commentary.

Where do your sympathies lie? Part 1: Tragedy and Comedy in Chekov's The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekov, Russian author and playwright, worked at a time of social change in Russia. Karl Marx was dead, his philosophies taking root, and signs of the Bolshevik revolution were starting to appear. Serfdom had been outlawed, and a middle class was rising. His play The Cherry Orchard finds itself at a cultural crossroads, a time when the old was on its way out, being replaced by new ideas still finding their footing.

During this time Chekov wanted to write a comedy. His director made it a tragedy.

A century later, it still proves an interesting read. It shows the breakdown of an old social hierarchy through a Russian aristocratic family that loses their land to the son of former serfs turned successful merchant. It literally depicts the tearing down of the old and replacing it with the new. This social change makes the comedy-tragedy distinction a very interesting one, especially with a cast of characters who, true to the expectations of Russian literature, don’t rely on a single protagonist. The question is then a matter of where one's sympathies lie: which character do you associate with?

The play becomes a subtle social battlefield. Madame Ranevsky versus Yermolay Alexeyevitch.

Madame Ranevsky represents the old aristocracy. She is a landowner and it is her beloved cherry orchard that gives the play its name. She is popular, and generous, almost, or perhaps intentionally, to the point of being cartoonish. She has wasted her money abroad, having spent the last few years in France, and does not accept help where it is offered. She is sentimental, wishing to keep her home, and her beloved cherry orchard, the way she remembers it. Only when it is too late does she face the fact that, to pay off her debts, her beloved cherry orchard is to be auctioned off right from under her.

Yermolay Alexeyevitch, or Lopahin, represents the rising middle class. He is a merchant descended of serfs, a self-made man with money enough he can enjoy comforts that were unknown to his parents. And he too is generous: he offers to help Madame Ranevsky, suggesting she replace the orchard with cottages to be rented out to supplement their income and pay off her debts. He is well off, successful, but not represented as greedy; he is supportive and friendly. He is frustrated by his unheeded advice, and ultimately takes his own advice, buys the estate, and chops down the cherry orchard.

There are, of course, a range of other characters: servants, a governess, and other aristocrats, collapsing the social strata so everyone interacts with everyone else while each character is keenly aware of their status and situation. There is some griping from the aristocracy about the days when they had generals and dignitaries at their parties, but there is no conflict over the mixing of the clearly defined social spheres. The conflict itself revolves around the fate of the cherry orchard. A conflict Lopahin, juggling the roles of businessman and friend, knows all too well, while Ranevsky doesn’t even acknowledge, let alone, face it.

But there's still the issue of comedy and tragedy. Chekov wrote a comedy, and yet his director made something else. When you consider the public, performative nature of drama, you can see how the thin line between comedy and tragedy can be, and how easily it can be crossed based on which character you sympathize with. In the case of The Cherry Orchard, do you sympathize with Lopahin, the self made man who is rising up from a difficult past by virtue of his own wit, intelligence, and skill? Or Madame Ranevsky, whose way of life, heritage, family land, and culture are being threatened and ultimately taken from her?

As we’ll see in future posts, this isn’t as simple of a question as it seems.

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Works Cited

Chekov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 2066-2104. Print.

Themes and Motifs - What’s the Difference?

The terms “theme” and “motif” are related concepts, so related that they frequently get lumped together. I don't like to do that. The way I see it, while they are certainly related and similar, even co-dependent concepts, they are not the same.

When we read a story, we deal with something that doesn't exist but we imagine it as if it were: characters are like real people, imaginary worlds are as real as our own, and we measure them in ways similar to how we measure real people and the real world. This means we engage with stories as if they are genuine, if not possible. This is the level of reading that says...

• Elizabeth Bennett misinterpreted Mr. Darcy.
• Intelligent raccoons and trees can be partners in crime.
• Firemen burn books.
• And a long time ago, there was a galaxy far far away...

We tend to refer to this as the “story world”; we conceptualize a world wherein these people, places, and events exist and interact.

But literature is able to operate in more than just making something that didn't or couldn’t happen seem as if it could. In addition to the story world, there's also the thematic or symbolic level of a text. This is where, as readers, we recognize patterns in a story and across other stories so we can identify the themes. If something appears multiple times and in different forms in a story, it probably has some thematic significance. Themes don't exist within a story world any more than they exist in real life, but an author will focus on specific details and describe them to highlight these themes.

So, there's the story world, and then there's themes. The two are separate, and it's motifs that bring them together. Motifs are the parts of the story world that generate themes. Similar to symbolism, motifs and themes unite the concrete with the abstract.

A motif is an element of a story world that recurs in the same story and in other stories. We are able to recognize motifs because we encounter them frequently. In a way, stories are merely collections of motifs. The more motifs we encounter, the clearer the pattern they develop becomes, and the clearer the themes of the story become. The theme is the abstract concept invoked by the motifs.

For example, in my post on “Babylon Revisited” I referenced the “ghosts” and old friends who reappear and cause conflict in the narrative. These old friends, aided by Fitzgerald’s florid style, bring the theme of a regrettable past to the front. Similarly, in my post on “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the details that suggest the narrator is imprisoned are motifs for this theme: the locked door, the bars on the windows, the room being a former nursery, etc. And even though the bars are the only bars in the narrative, they reappear whenever the narrator tells us they are there.

One of the powerful traits that themes have, though, is that they go beyond individual narratives. I addressed this in my introduction to theme, discussing how Robinson Crusoe and Life of Pi are both narratives that are very different but they share the same theme of survival. It’s their differences and how they treat this theme that makes them interesting. The relationship between themes and motifs is still quite complicated, because while different stories will share themes, they will still present them with different motifs, treat the themes differently, and will juxtapose different themes. Robinson Crusoe has themes about middle-class pride and industry absent from Life of Pi, which takes a more dour look at a more dangerous situation.

Looking for themes can be one of the first exercises undertaken when analyzing a story or a poem. It gives the piece unity and meaning. It helps us make otherwise incomprehensible pieces fascinating and pieces that are centuries or millennia old significant and relevant. It helps us understand how stories are similar and different. If, when reading a narrative and anything recurs, odds are, the author is trying to invoke a certain theme. Themes and motifs are quite distinct, but one begets the other. They are inseparable.

Consider paisley. Paisley is a pattern, recognizable by its droplet or leaf-like patterns and intricate designs. Not every instance of paisley will be the same, but we can recognize it. The elements, its designs and shape, that make it recognizable can be considered its motifs: the shape, the intricate designs. Remove the designs, and it won't be paisley. Make it a square instead of a droplet but keep the designs, it won't be paisley. The theme? The fact that we can name and categorize it as such gives it its theme: its theme is paisley. The same themes will reappear, but every instance will be unique.

Culture in Closed Spaces: Symbolic Setting in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of those stories that is inevitable in anthologies and literature classes as an example of American women's writing at the turn of the century. Truth be told, few of were published. I'm not interested in a discussion of the history of gender politics, but it's hard not to discuss them when dealing with “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

The story was published in 1892 after Gilman herself had been prescribed the rest cure, a.k.a. confinement and the patient is allowed minimal physical movement in the hopes of calming the patient's nerves. Yes, this was a thing. While Gilman's story was a criticism of this practice, it has remained a significant piece of feminist literature to this day because it is so telling of the culture surrounding women at the time, and Gilman beautifully and eerily encapsulates it inside a single room.

The story is set in a former nursery, with the eponymous yellow wallpaper, where the wife of a physician is taking her rest cure: she is not allowed to leave the room. This lone room has a mounted bed and sits at the top of the house, with views of the entire state. Through barred windows. And she keeps seeing the image of a woman creeping in the wallpaper.

The bars make for some easy setting-symbolism: it’s a prison. But the bars are only one part of this setting’s symbolism. The narrator suggests the room is a former nursery. By being placed and kept inside, this woman – a new mother – is actually being infantilized. The rest cure basically prescribes she stay in bed around the clock. She's like a baby, kept inside, with bars on the windows meaning not just a prison, but even the bars on a crib. Even the wallpaper itself is confining, with its obtuse patterns and the woman inside the wallpaper likewise trapped. It isn't much of a stretch to draw parallels between the creeping woman in the wallpaper and the woman in the room.

At the time of the story's publication, 1892, women didn't really have a voice in American culture; this is part of the reason the same stories by women at this time period reappear in literature courses and anthologies. Universal Women's suffrage in the US was 28 years away, and World War II, the first major move of women from the domestic sphere to the workplace was about 50 years away. The Victorian era notion of “the Angel in the Home,” that a woman's role was to stay in the home and turn it into a bastion of goodness for her husband to come home to was the predominant ideal.

While Gilman specifically said she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a response to her atrocious experience with the rest cure, it can also be read as a criticism of this Victorian era mentality – perceiving women as fragile, needing to be put away and relegated to the domestic sphere. The physical space of the room where all the action takes place represents the condition of women at this point in time: confined. Gilman just used the physical space of a claustrophobic room to symbolize it.

Take this symbolic parallel a step further and think about what it means when the narrator tries to move the bed and sets about tearing down the wallpaper. After all, settings aren't simply backdrops the characters never interact with: it's important to consider how characters interact with their settings. She doesn't to go Bertha Mason and resort to arson, but she sets about tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped inside. It's a story about a woman driven mad by the cultural pressures that keep her inside and her lone battle against it, to free herself and women in general.

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Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. ###-###. Print.

Just Where Is It? An Overview of Setting

Setting is an important part of a story, but it can be helpful to break it down in order to better identify what it is and how and why it appears. In my post on “Volar” I alluded to the nuances that Setting can take. Specifically, Setting can be described in four different but related ways:

• Spatial: This parameter deals with the physical setting, ranging from natural and rural settings like: mountains, forests, deserts, and even man made features like buildings, rooms, roads, etc.
• Political: Cities, states, nations. This is when a setting is bounded by a man-specified, but not necessarily man-made boundary. This includes countries, cities, counties, etc.
• Temporal: When does the story take place, and how long it takes.
• Cultural: When peoples or groups share a common heritage that, despite spatial or political differences, brings them together. The easiest way to think of this is in terms of religion. If you attend a religious service in one country and the same one in a different country, you can expect there to be some similarities.

A story like Robert Galbraith's Cuckoo's Calling has a clear political setting: London. But this also means it has distinct spatial settings as well, as London is a major urban area. Cultural setting gets trickier, especially as the spatial setting gets larger and the political setting gets a greater population density. For example, Cuckoo's Calling follows a private detective as he has to deal with people from a few distinct subcultures: the fashion industry, law offices, and half-way homes. The sequel, The Silkworm, still largely takes place in London, but deals with the publishing industry juxtaposed against a different class of lower income than that found in Cuckoo’s Calling. Any given spatial or political location will have different cultural settings, only some of which the author will use.

The next distinction to bear in mind for setting is scope. Some settings will be large and vast and others small, and most stories maneuver from one setting to another. Cuckoo's Calling doesn't leave the city proper of London, but contrast this with any fantasy epic, like The Hobbit where the characters traverse caves, forests, mountains, towns, and cities: they never stay in any one place for long. But even a city can be a large setting to deal with, while others, like “Volar” are confined to an apartment or a room, like Raskolnikov's apartment in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, or Gregor Samsa's room in Kafka's “The Metamorphosis”.

It can be difficult to separate one setting from another, especially when dealing with the scope of temporal and cultural settings. A story with a temporal setting of 1930 and a political setting of the United States of America will be very unusual if it does not have something to do with the Great Depression, i.e., The Grapes of Wrath, which will greatly shape the Cultural setting. Other settings will be more allegorical, like the film and TV show M*A*S*H, which took place during the Korean War, but were more about the Vietnam War. Other settings will be more flexible; a good example of this would be most police procedural shows.

Setting is an important part of understanding a narrative because it, quite literally, gives a backdrop to the story. It is the first way to contextualize and understand just what is going on and why it is significant. Setting, literally, grounds a narrative in a time and a place, even if they are imagined, and give us an opportunity to better understand the characters, events, and themes of a story as we better understand the world they interact with.

So, whatever you're reading, pay attention to the setting. If the author has something, a simple event or the entire story, take place somewhere or someplace specific, it's probably for a reason.