Time and Memory in The Cherry Orchard

Abstract

Characters are precisely aware of time in heterogeneous visions in Chekhov’s last play The Cherry Orchard in 1904. This play has an obvious flow of time sense of nostalgia, realistic practical mind and eager thrust for the future manifesting in assorted roles. The industrious characters Dunyasha, Varya and Lopakhin check their watches regularly, presenting their alertness to time in the industrial age's. The older characters weep for their age and witness the weather’s changes from May to October. Players value the same things in largely variant ways mostly according to the experience, age, class and gender ect.. Therefore, because of various personal aspirations, characters are living in their individual timelines as Lyubov’s yearning for the past, Dunyasha, Yasha and Trofimoff’s eager for the future, Firs’ nostalgia and imprisonment at the present and Lopakhin’s integrated past, current and future time view. Although characters have their particular time view, Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard embodies a prime time view that if the characters fail to come to terms with the nature of the flow of time, they would be living in fragmented visions and thus failed in fully experiencing the life.