In The Cherry Orchard, language is hardly shared by the characters. The merchant Lopakhin explains what the family must do in order to save their estate, but they cannot understand him. As the catastrophe nears, they expend themselves in useless dialogue calculated to distract them from reality. Even the student Trofimov, who expresses … Chekhov's own hopes for an ideal future, is an "eternal student" who knows nothing of life and whose high-sounding words are perhaps ludicrous. He says of his relationship with Anya:
Peter Trofimov is a contradictory fellow. He attacks the depressing habits of Russian life and prophesies happiness to come. Articulate and idealistic, he expresses what lies beyond the felling of the cherry orchard. But he also takes a condescending tone towards others, quite convinced of his superiority. Priggish and insensitive, he exhibits a ludicrous obliviousness to primary human concerns. The Soviet critic, Vladimir Yermilov, considers him "good for nothing." Admittedly Peter has a positive side, for he does help Anya to face the future, but he himself does not "belong to the progressive fighters for future happiness" Yermilov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. [In The Breaking String] Maurice Valency eschews such doctrinaire judgment. For him Trofimov is "lovable, believable, and a little ridiculous … [yet not] altogether healthy." "For all his earnestness, [he is] merely another passionate drifter in the universities, a member of that intelligentsia which he himself derides … for its laziness and lack of purpose."
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