The Three Sisters Chekhov Analysis

DEATH OF THE ROMANTIC IN THE THREE SISTERS

Death has a very particular role in Anton Pavlov Chekhov’s play, The Three Sisters. Although for the first read the play may not be taken for a comedy, it was intended to be one. The play is full of comic elements and dark humour, and the characters’ melodramatic dialogues and generally nostalgic approach to life create an atmosphere where death cannot be taken as a tragedy. Their almost humorous hatred of life allows death to become comic relief between episodes of boredom, since boredom in this play is something that makes even death desirable. This culminates in all three sisters, who seem to almost morbidly indulge in the boredom, and in a way the idea of dying. The play’s main plot revolves around the Prosorov

And only one desire grows and gains in strength . . .” She describes herself as an old, dying person, hoping for relief. She leaves the sentence unfinished, which Irina continues and suggests they “sell the house, dropping everything (…) and go.” This, again, can be interpreted as leaving earthly values and goods behind, a cry-out for death. It intensifies throughout the play, and it is Irina, who eventually breaks and admits in act 3 that “there is no relief of any sort”, continuing that she can’t “understand how it is that [she is] still alive, [and] hasn’t haven’t killed [herself]”, yet at the end of the act she continues the Moscow-mantra. Her optimism that she has a hope for a new life (ask later on expressed in act 4) is yet another comic element of the play. Masha, the middle sister, is a young woman in her twenties, who is present from the first scene of the play, wearing black. She is awfully theatrical, engaging in literature and music, an aristocrat through-and-through whose big tragedy is being married to a civilian. She is a very strong visual representation of death, of