The motif of \u201cdreams\u201d and \u201cdreaming\u201d is consistent throughout \u201cThe Cherry Orchard.\u201d In just a cursory once-over of the play, I counted that those words appear six times, mostly concentrated in the very beginning and the very end of the work. The most interesting parallel use of this word occurs in its use surrounding the ownership of the cherry orchard. In the beginning of the play, when Lyubov Andreevna first returns to the orchard for the first time in years, she exclaims, \u201cIs this really me sitting here?\u2026But what if I\u2019m only dreaming? Dear God, how I love my country how I cherish it!\u201d (202). Lyubov Andreevna is so overcome with joy at returning to her family\u2019s estate that she cannot even believe that it is real. When Lopakhin purchases the orchard to buy out Lyubov Andreevna\u2019s debts, he proclaims similarly, \u201cGood God in heaven, the cherry orchard is mine! Tell me I\u2019m drunk, out of my mind. Tell me it\u2019s only a dream\u201d (238). Lopakhin\u2019s elation stems from the fact that his father and grandfather worked as serfs for Lyubov Andreevna\u2019s family on this orchard before him, and now Lopakhin has turned the tables. Although the two characters have different core reasons for why they love the cherry orchard, their invocations of God and their self questionings of whether or not they are dreaming indicate the common significance of the orchard. In these parallels, Chekov is emphasizing to the reader the weight of land ownership to Russians. It is self-identity and place in society. For Lyubov Andreevna, it is her seemingly charmed childhood as the daughter of a serf-owning landowner, and for Lopakhin, it is his transformation into a landowner himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The motif of \u201cdreams\u201d and \u201cdreaming\u201d is consistent throughout \u201cThe Cherry Orchard.\u201d In just a cursory once-over of the play, I counted that those words appear six times, mostly concentrated in the very beginning and the very end of the work. The most interesting parallel use of this word occurs in its use surrounding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-8-russian-revival-social-critique"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}