“We don’ t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”This quotation mark by Anais Nin expresses an indispensable point of position for this treatment about the symbolic significance of inanimate objects, since it is our personality and our memories, which determine our character and significance.
Our feelings towards certain objects are single, as everyone associates different things in a different mode. Insofar, “we see them as we are”, since they can mirror our yesteryear, strivings, hopes and our ideals. Therefore they become more than merely an object, but a symbol for a certain portion of person’ s feelings and life. This is besides the instance in “The Cherry Orchard”: objects as the baby’s room, the bookcase and the red orchard return on their ain symbolic life. They all portion one thing in common: each one reveals something of the characters’ personalities, feelings and ideals. These inanimate objects are a contemplation of the characters’ interior provinces of being. The significance of these inanimate objects are altering analogously with the characters’ alteration of temper, position and province of head. Therefore one gets the feeling that the objects are more like individuals, since it is merely the characters’ life, which makes and keeps them alive. The nursery room may be for an outstanding individual without any implicit significance, but for Lopakhin and Liuba it is a symbol for their childhood, background and yesteryear. The nursery room reminds Lopakhin of his beginnings. It makes him aware that he is “merely a peasent”; no affair how rich he has become or how elegant he might be dressed, his societal background still remains seeable for other people. After all, one “can’t make a silk bag out of a sow’ s ear”, as his beginnings will be for good a portion of his individuality. For Liuba the baby’s room symbolizes her “guiltless childhood”. Bing in this room, in which “she used to kip when she was small”seems to convey her dorsum to experience a portion of that secure, unworried life and makes her experience “small once more”. The bookcase has the same consequence on her ; all her problems seem to be far off and she feels pure “felicity”. Gayevs’ ‘ relationship’ to the bookcase is less personal, as he doesn’t tie in a peculiar personal memory with it. He considers it instead as an object, which has its ain personality ; hence, though it is “an inanimate object, true, but still? a bookcase”! The manner he sees it is evocative of a hero, as it has for already hundred old ages “devoted itself to the highest ideals of goodness an justness” and has ne’er deceived anyone. Being invariably an determinedly true to its ‘ rules’, it was a beginning, from which “several coevals of their household” have drawn bravery and hope “in a better hereafter”. In the class of clip a batch of things have changed: some people are dead, Gayev and Liuba got adolescent, and the estate is likely traveling to be sold. However, the bookcase non being capable to any regulations or alterations, therefore becomes for Gayev a symbol of consistence and security.
The cardinal symbol of “The Cherry Orchard”, as the rubric might propose, is the cherry orchard itself. The red grove does non merely represent an inanimate object, but it is the centre of the characters’ universe. Their lives could be divided into the epoch “before the cherry grove was sold” and into the epoch after it. With this alteration the symbolic significance of the red grove before and after the sale besides changes. The cherry grove ‘ before the sale’ plays a portion in each of the characters’ yesteryear; but it seems foremost to be part of Liuba’s head, through which the cherry grove takes on his ain symbolic life, as its symbolic significance alterations with the alterations in her head. She “can’ t conceive to populate without the cherry grove”, as about her whole yesteryear and memories are connected to it. Looking at it seems to resuscitate the memories of her “happy childhood” and makes clip base still, as if “nil has changed”in her life. In those years her attitude towards life was guiltless and “bold”, as she wasn’t yet “able to anticipate or anticipate anything awful”. She felt like the cherry grove, “after the dark, stormy fall and the cold winter, immature and joyous once more”; but now, she seems to hold lost this “power of vision” and her naif position of life. That’s might be the ground for her to see the red grove in such an illusive visible radiation.
It had become a refugee topographic point, where she hides to get away from world, her “jobs” and “wickednesss”. The cherry grove for her embodies a sort of Eden, into which her ‘ unhappy past’ does non enter, but merely her ‘ happy past’ . She doesn’t want to allow travel the cherry grove, because she doesn’t want to allow travel her ‘ happy past’. Equally long as the cherry grove exists, her childhood feelings seem to go on to still be for existent.
To sale the cherry grove would intend to wipe out that beloved portion of her life and therefore sell her, excessively. However, the sarcasm is that she escapes from her ‘ unhappy past’ to a topographic point merely like the cherry grove, which magic merely lives through the past itself. In every bit much as the cherry grove represents a sort of ‘ Garden Eden’ for her, it at the same clip besides is a “load”, which rests on her shoulders. Equally long as she continues to lodge to the grove, she won’ t “bury her yesteryear” and won’t, therefore, be able to make a new hereafter. “To get down to populate in the present, one must first atone for his yesteryear and be finished with it”. Unlike Liuba, her girl, Ania, already reached that decision and is willing to “go forth” this load behind her; her “love” for the cherry grove has vanished, as it is portion of her past life and has hence nil to make any longer with her present and future. ‘ The cherry grove after the sale’ therefore becomes a symbol for reclamation and a new beginning for the life of each character in the drama: Lopakhin buying the estate got able to acquire rid of his beginnings.
“Homosexual with life and wealth”, he has freed himself from being merely the grandson and boy of helot, who used to work on this estate. Now he has go the proprietor of that topographic point and with the cutting down of the cherry grove, he is traveling to go forth his yesteryear and beginnings behind him, making a “new life universe”. Besides Liuba’ s “load” of the yesteryear seems now to hold become lighter; “her nervousness are better” and she is traveling to go forth for Paris, since she might hold recognized that it’s finished long ago and that there is no turning back”. Gayev has eventually “calmed down”, excessively and is traveling to be an employee of a bank. Varia is traveling to go forth for a new occupation, and Ania and Trofimov are lief stepping towards their “new life”. Besides the remainder of the characters have to get down a new life in a new topographic point. When they leave there won’t be a psyche in this topographic point”any longer. Possibly non in this topographic point, that’s true, but for certain in another topographic point, since there are in the universe “many, many fantastic topographic points”, on which one can “works a new grove”.
