Trofimov – Façade of an Insecure Young Intellectual

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Trofimov – Façade of an Insecure Young Intellectual Anton Chekhov’s play, The Cherry Orchard, is a typical account of one Russian family of nobility in the tumultuous days leading up to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. Like Adam and Eve before them, Madame Ranyevskaya and her family were forced to turn their backs on an idyllic orchard and gentrified way of life that ended when the sins of serfdom were addressed by the 1861 emancipation that turned the old world order in Russia on its head. As the central character to this play, Madame Ranyevskaya is a woman who cannot face the reality of her new impoverishment. We come to know Madame Ranyevskaya and the plight of her class through her interactions with those characters who represent the opposing side to her experience. One of those characters is Peter Trofimov, a young idealistic intellectual whose many claims include a modern and superior approach to life that puts him above such things as love. As a foil to Madame Ranyevskaya, the character Trofimov is condescending in his idealism, and would lead everyone to believe that he is a force for change, when in fact, he is nothing more than just another of the play’s drifters who is incapable of seizing the moment and making good on his endless speechifying in favour of a new Russia. Our first real sense of Trofimov takes place during the second act when he is attempting to help Madame Ranyevskaya’s daughter, Anya, come to terms with the loss of the orchard when he states the following: “. . . all your forebears – they were masters of serfs. They owned living souls . . . you’re living on credit . . . at the expense of people you don’t allow past the front hall . . . we have to break with it” (36). Clearly, he is on the right side of history and his comments resonate with the plight of the serfs when he further begs Anya to “see the human faces,
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