舞台の陰の主人公 : 桜の園
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概要
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This paper presents that the real hero of "The cherry orchard" is not human character, but the cherry orchard itself. Throughout the play, the cherry orchard is invisible to the audience except for several branches in the window. But the author leads the audience to speculate about the offstage hero through various teqniques. The analysis of the text shows that Chekhov regards the cherry orchard not as belongings of an aristocrat, but as a human cultural inheritance which was produced and has been maintained by human's labor and must be handed down to the future generations. Through the words of charactcrs he informs the audience of enchanting beauty and spirit of the cherry blossoms, and criticizes every character who can't see the real value of them. He describes critically the easy life of Mme Ranevcky and Gaev, depending on the labor of other persons, the abstract ideality of Trofimov seeing the embodiment of slavery in the cherry orchard and the smallness in scale of Lopahin's thought of dividing the cherry orchard into numerous tiny lots for summer cottages. In the second act Chekhov has Lopahin mention the giants as being worthy of the vast and boundless land of Russia. Only these giants who have not appeared yet, might be able to build a beautiful new life in Russia, not ruining old orchards. The favorite phrase of Firs "good-for-nothing" may be directed to all the characters in the light of the figure of giant. At the end of the play, Chekhov asks the question with the enigmatic sound of the breaking string "what should we do, when the beautiful inheritance of humans is going off in the surge of social change?" It's a general problem for all people who have their own cherry orchard.