The Cherry Orchard - Clayton A. Hubbs and Joanna T. Hubbs (essay date 1982)
Clayton A. Hubbs and Joanna T. Hubbs (essay date 1982)
[In the following essay, the critics study mythic and folkloric motifs in The Cherry Orchard.]
In the climactic scene of The Cherry Orchard, Gayev recites the following hymn to the Great Mother Goddess:
Oh, glorious Nature, shining with eternal light, so beautiful and yet so indifferent to our fate… you whom we call Mother, uniting in yourself both Life and Death, you live and you destroy.…
Gayev's speech is followed by an embarrassed silence "only broken by the subdued muttering of Feers. Suddenly a distant sound is heard, coming as if out of the sky, like the sound of a string snapping, slowly and sadly dying away." In the stage directions for the scene, the trees of the cherry orchard are contrasted to man-made trees, telegraph poles:
A road leads to Gayev's estate. On one side and at some distance away there is a...
[The entire page is 5423 words long]
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