I found The Cherry Orchard to be a difficult play to fully understand, mostly due to the large number of characters (and Russian names) that were introduced. Because of this, I found myself trying to focus in on each character in an attempt at understanding their relationships and interactions with other characters throughout the play.
The character that I found myself paying close attention to was Firs, the old manservant. I felt a sense of empathy for this character because of the fact that he was belittled frequently and cruelly spoken to. An example of this is when Firs is telling a story about “the old days” and Yasha responds by telling him that he “is getting boring” and that it was time for him “to crawl off and die” (Chekhov, p.300). They ignore the things he says and don’t really seem to care about him until the end of the play when he falls ill.
I found Firs as a character to correlate with the idea of the cherry orchard. In each case, when things were going normally and neither of them seemed to be in any sort of threat, they were not overly noticed; they just existed on a daily basis.
· When it was found out that the orchard would be auctioned off, however, it becomes a popular topic of conversation and many people throughout the play spend their time contemplating its fate and hoping the situation has a good turnout.
· Similarly, when Firs becomes ill, the other characters in the play seemed to pay more attention to him and treat him with more respect.
Because of these similarities, I felt it was appropriate for the cherry orchard to be bought and chopped down as well as Firs to pass away at the end of the play.
I see the correlation you are talking about between the cherry orchard and Firs. I think this is a great observation and brings up an interesting theme of the play. I think Checkhov is trying to communicate to his audience that important things are often neglected until we are in danger of losing them.
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