Usually, the genre of a work is quite easy to determine when reading. Difficulties arise when the author himself gives his creation an assessment that does not fit the impression made on the reader. An example is the play by A. P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", which the author called a comedy.
Can The Cherry Orchard be called a tragedy?
Most of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's contemporaries perceived The Cherry Orchard as a tragic work. How, then, should one understand the words of the author of the play himself, who called this work a comedy and even a farce? Can it be unambiguously asserted that the play that was sensational in its time can be unambiguously attributed to a certain genre?
The answer can be found in the definitions of different genres of literature. It is believed that the tragedy can be characterized by the following features: it is distinguished by a special state of the situation and the inner world of the heroes, it is characterized by torment and an insoluble conflict between the protagonist and the world around him. Very often a tragedy is crowned with a deplorable end, for example, the tragic death of a hero or the complete collapse of his ideals.
In this sense, Chekhov's play cannot be considered a pure tragedy. The heroes of the work are not suitable for the role of tragic characters, although their inner world is complex and contradictory. However, in the play, when describing the heroes, their thoughts and actions, there is a slight irony with which Chekhov refers to their shortcomings. The general state of the world in which the characters of the play are, of course, can be called a turning point, but there is nothing truly tragic in it.
Comedy with a touch of drama
Researchers of Chekhov's work agree that most of his comedies are notable for their ambiguity and originality. For example, the play "The Seagull", which the author also attributed to comedies, is more reminiscent of a drama, which deals with the broken lives of people. Sometimes one gets the feeling that Chekhov is deliberately misleading his reader.
It can be assumed that the writer, calling his plays comedies, put a different meaning into this content of this genre. It may be about an ironic attitude to the course of human destinies, which is filled with a desire not to make the audience laugh, but to make it think. As a result, the reader and viewer could themselves determine their position in relation to the action of the play, which at times contradicted the declared genre.
From this point of view, "The Cherry Orchard" is a work with a "double bottom". It can be called a play with a two-sided emotional connotation. Memories of the tragic pages from the lives of the heroes are intertwined here with pronounced farcical scenes, for example, with Epikhodov's annoying blunders or Gaev's inappropriate remarks, which indeed look comical against the background of the drama unfolding around the cherry orchard, which has become a symbol of noble Russia that is fading into the past.
