Morality can be defined as a society’s set of values and beliefs. This, in turn, moulds the subject position of the members belonging to this society and defines what they perceive as right and wrong, thus giving birth to moral relativism. Moral...

Anton Chekhov fought with the famed Stanislavsky over staging his play The Cherry Orchard as a tragedy. According to Chekhov, the play about a well-to-do family forced to surrender its home and orchard to a man who began life as a mere serf on...

A notoriously psychological composer of satire and comedy, Anton Chekhov employs The Cherry Orchard as a case study of an ensemble of ludicrous characters united in their inability to transform their behaviors or identities. Each character appears...

When Anton Chekhov began his play The Cherry Orchard in December 1902, he intended it to be a farce in four acts. Having written it during a particularly awful bout with emphysema, it took almost a year for him to send it out to Stanislavski and...

When one imagines Russian theatre around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, a barrel of laughs is likely not the first clichéd metaphor to spring to mind. This was a contradiction as Russia as it made its way towards...

Anton Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” is labeled a comedy, however, it has a handful of meaningful lessons that can be learned from the characters featured in the play. These character’s debacles and actions act almost as a social commentary...

The Cherry Orchard, a classic of modern theater by Anton Chekhov, portrays the coming of age in a Russian society that is beginning to witness a rising middle class upon freeing the serfs. The characters of Firs (the manservant to Gayef) and...

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...

The works of Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, and Moliere are quite distinct from one another, each author being primarily concerned with critiquing the specific society of his own country at the time in which he lived. Their plays, however, share many...

We often attribute power, when not wielded properly, to destruction and downfall. The concept of power plays an essential role in both Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, but each author portrays...

Chekhov’s stories often describe the little intricate moments in Russian life, focusing in on one character’s experience of a normal event and in doing so commenting on the character themselves. Agafya is one of Chekhov’s longer short stories, and...

When one imagines Russian theatre around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, a barrel of laughs is likely not the first clichéd metaphor to spring to mind. This was a contradiction as Russia as it made its way towards...

Many of Chekov’s characters in The Seagull resolve to hopelessly love people who do not love them. This tendency presents a clear flaw that Chekov makes fun of, as these fixations inevitably lead to nothing. The hopeless romantics do not end up...

Anton Chekhov might look like a hedgehog when he returns time and again to the theme of universal humanity and its future path. But Chekhov as ‘the humanist writer’ does not really work towards a unified concept of mankind’s ultimate fate. Rather,...

The Seagull is a typical Chekhovian drama, part of a sub-genre which could be referred to as an "undramatic drama". It has little plot, and most of the plot's place is taken up by psychological portraits, lyricism, and a certain, truly ungraspable...

“Three Sisters” is Anton Chekhov’s only true tragedy, featuring a large ensemble cast of characters facing a downward succession of horrible events. Of all of the characters in the play, Natasha is the only one who seems to gain power by the end....

The works of Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, and Moliere are quite distinct from one another, each author being primarily concerned with critiquing the specific society of his own country at the time in which he lived. Their plays, however, share many...

We often attribute power, when not wielded properly, to destruction and downfall. The concept of power plays an essential role in both Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, but each author portrays...

Written by master realist Anton Chekhov, "Misery" is the story of an old man’s grief for having lost his son. He keeps looking for somebody with whom to talk about the death of his child. Throughout, the use of the old man's narrative perspective...

In 1899, Anton Chekhov published a short story of two lovers’ clandestine affair called “The Lady with the Dog”. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, the story’s main character, sees a young woman walking a dog on the sea-front in Yalta. It is said that...

Would you accept the offer of two million dollars in exchange for fifteen years of your life? Despite what you may think, some people would accept the offer without thinking twice. The short story "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov perfectly demonstrates...

Through scenes of indirect action involving comically forlorn and hopeless characters, Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya addresses three predominant themes: work, love, and misery. The two central male characters in the play, Vanya and Astroff,...

Anton Chekhov might look like a hedgehog when he returns time and again to the theme of universal humanity and its future path. But Chekhov as ‘the humanist writer’ does not really work towards a unified concept of mankind’s ultimate fate. Rather,...

Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya portrays complicated relationships between several characters with rather distinct personalities. Staged at the nineteenth century, Chekhov's drama of everyday life stresses conflict amongst his characters through...