Where Not to Be: Concepts of Home in 'The Cherry Orchard' and 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' Anonymous 12th Grade

In Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, both protagonists face difficult, if not deadly, circumstances. Liubóv Andréyevna Ranyévskaya, a self-indulgent member of the declining Russian landed gentry from The Cherry Orchard, is facing the auctioning away of her home. Santiago Nasar, a philandering member of the Columbian upper class from Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is accused of sleeping with Angela Vicario and is in danger of being murdered by her brothers. In trying to escape their circumstances, the two characters retreat to their homes for safety, but their homes end up being where they face and succumb to their troubles. Chekhov and García Márquez’s utilization of their protagonists’ homes as the setting of their ruin calls into question whether or not the home is a safe haven from individual strife.

Chekhov uses stage directions in Act III to describe Liubóv’s home as a lively and warm location and then a lonely, empty room to juxtapose her family’s losing of their estate due to their poor financial state. At the beginning of the act, Liubóv is hosting a dance to purchasing her estate back. The sitting room where Act III occurs is described as being “separated...