Anton Chekhov's The Seagull As a Realistic Play

Anton Chekhov is a cornerstone of modern realistic drama. He is also the

innovator of post-modern realism. He is simply seen as the best and most
believable realist author. Chekhov's approach to realism can be defined as a
minute portrayal of life as it is; his stories and plays are all dedicated to everyday
life. Chekhov wanted a theatre of truthfulness and resiliency. He was quite
certain that literary artists should depict life as it is. In the introduction to The
Cherry Orchard, Chekhov wrote, "let the things that happen on stage be just as
complex and yet as simple as they are in real life". Also in a letter to M. V.
Kiseleva, dated 14 January 1887, Chekhov defended the right and duty of the
literary artist to depict the seamier side of life; he enunciated the essence of his
artistic belief: "Literature is called artistic when it depicts life as it actually is. Its
purpose is truth, honest and indisputable" (Yarmolinsky, p.41). One of the most
famous examples of Chekhov's approach to realism is the fourth-act play The
.Seagull

The Seagull tells the story of Arkadina, an aging famous actress, self-
centered and demanding, arrives at the country estate of her brother Sorin with
her lover Trigorin, a famous writer. Her son Treplov, known also as Kostya, is an
aspiring playwright. Masha, the daughter of his uncle's neighbour, Dorn, loves
Treplov, but he doesn't. When Treplov stages his avant-garde work on the estate,
his mother ridicules it. She considers him a foolish rebel who wants to undermine
the settled canons of dramatic art; therefore, Treplovs performance never has any
chance for success. Appearing in Treplov's play is Nina, a young actress whom
Treplov loves. But she is seduced by Trigorin and runs off with him. Two years
later, she returns to her native place abandoned by Trigorin and losing her child.
Strengthened by the harsh realities she has had to face, Nina has changed
dramatically. She becomes a provincial actress on tour. Arkadina also returns, and
Trigorin is again with her. Treplov has made himself heard as a writer; he,
nevertheless, feels that life today has no place for him and his ideas. He still loves
Nina. He pleads with her to stay with him, to begin a new life, but it is too late.
Nina admits that she still loves Trigorin. Thus, Treplov goes into a backroom and
shoots himself.

Inspired by a real-life incident of the death of a seagull, Chekhov wrote his

classic drama The Seagull. The Seagull is a wonderful dramatic work, with a
central core of truth. Chekhov wrote the play in the style of realism, which means
that he strove to portray life as it really is. "Like the realists and naturalists,
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 Chekhov claims to represent the world as it is, without moral judgments" (Lewis,
p.185). The Seagull clearly illustrates Chekhov's dedication of depicting life as it
really is. Geoffrey Borny, in Interpreting Chekhov, describes The Seagull as "a
transitional play that only partially achieves his [Chekhov's] aim of showing 'life
as it is' in a realistic manner" (p.127). In The Seagull, Chekhov attempts to
approximate the reality of life as it is really lived. Muller points out that the play
is a more complete picture of life". He saw that this dramatic work seems almost
shapeless, much like life itself.
Like most of the realist plays, Chekhov's The Seagull is a faithfully
representation of life as it is. The lives of ordinary middle class people in real
houses and in real time are the stuff of this realistic drama. It deals with the social
issues of its time; Chekhov chooses his subjects from contemporary life.
Chekhov's work is more compatible with the realities of his age. Indeed, The
Seagull is a truthful depiction of the social conventions of the nineteenth century
Russian society. As in the actual Russian society at the time, the people in the
play talk of necessary change but prove ineffectual when it comes to affecting it.
For example, Treplov seeks for a change in the way of writing drama. He tries to
produce new invented symbolic plays. But, he seems to be unable to make his
.first play understandable and acceptable by his audience

Moreover, Chekhov was a realist who examined the foibles of individuals

rather than society as a whole. He focused on the everyday crises and defects of
more believably real people. He wrote a play that can lie in the daily life and the
ordinary experiences of common people. It is clear that Chekhov, as a realist, is
mainly interested in the common lives of unexceptional people and the
cumulative tragedy of their daily life. Chekhovs play is inhabited by ordinary
people doing ordinary things and suffering in ordinary real ways. The Seagull
plunges the audience into the frightening lives of people who suffer for their
passions as they struggle to define themselves in an uncompromising world. All
of the emotions and situations are realistic to real life. They are suitable for his
.realistic depictions of psychological and social problems

Throughout his dramatic works, Chekhov wrote about, in his own words,
"gray, everyday life". The Seagull is a fundamentally realistic portrait of
unrealized dreams and ambitions. In addition, in The Seagull Chekhov, as a
realist, places individual suffering in a similar position to the real person.
Throughout the play, everyone is unhappy because they want what they dont
have, or they have a misplaced sense of value. Sorin owns the estate, but he is an

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older man in poor health. He longs for the vigor of his youth. His sister,
Arkadina, is a self-absorbed actress who hungers for fame and attention while
overlooking true fulfillment borne from self-discovery and artistic creation. Her
son, Treplov, is a struggling playwright who hungers for recognition and success.
Masha is in love with Treplov but he does not exchange her same feelings, at last
she marries the poor schoolteacher, Medvedenko. Treplov is in love with Nina,
his lead actress. Nina does not love Treplov, but is infatuated with the older
famous writer, Trigorin, whom she thinks will help her career. Though Trigorin
has fame and love from Arkadina, he feels cheated. Having sacrificed his youth
to build his career as an author, he feels he missed his chance at blissful innocent
love. He shows the frustration and unhappiness felt by most of the characters,
especially Treplov, Nina, Masha, and Pauline, who are all disappointed in love.
Like most of Chekhovs work, The Seagull is about people who long for
happiness and want to lead useful and meaningful lives but are constantly
.thwarted by circumstance, their own personalities and the desires of others

In his dramatic works Chekhov sought to convey the texture of everyday

life, moving away from traditional ideas of plot and conventions of dramatic
speech. Dialogue in his plays is not smooth or continuous: characters interrupt
each other, several different conversations often take place at the same time, and
lengthy pauses occur when no one speaks at all. His plays commonly feature the
struggle of a sensitive individual to maintain his integrity against the temptations
of worldly success. Chekhov's realism derives from his portraits of his characters'
lives in their entire daily minute details. Chekhov believed that the audience
should feel that what is performed on stage looks like what he lives and
experiences in his daily life. Chekhov saw that "a play ought to be written in
which the people should come and go, dine, talk of the weather, or play cards, not
because the author wants but because that is what happens in real life" (Corrigan,
p. 146). The kind of theatre Chekhov envisioned restores the fundamental
.humanity of characters and emphasizes the relationships between them

In order to achieve his views, Chekhov used what is known as "indirect

action", which means that the main actions take place offstage, and the audience
knows from the speech of the characters what is happened. What takes place on
stage is just conversation and common incidents from real life. Indirect action
technique is an attempt to more faithfully represent actual life. Chekhov once
:said

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 Let the things that happen on the stage be as complex and yet just as
simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal at the
table, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being
created, or their lives are being smashed up" (Fen, p. 19).

The cards game is clear evidence that Chekhov tries to portray life as it is. It
looks like an ordinary group of people passing their evening with a game of lotto.
It may seem strange scene for a play, but it was one of Chekhov's methods to
depict a real part of the characters' life.

Susan Steinberg explains the realistic trend of Chekhov, showing his

insistence on the minutest details of his characters' lives, and taking The Seagull
as an example. In her review in The Independent on November 20, 2008, she
wrote "Chekhov's insistence on reality meant that even the most trivial, repetitive
human activities had to be shown in minute detail. It is against these daily rituals
that the most wrenching personal dramas occur. In "Seagull," for example, the
steady reading of members in a simple after-supper lotto game becomes like the
tolling of a death-knell for an off-stage tragedy. Or, as Chekhov put it, "People
eat a meal and at the same time their happiness is made or their lives are ruined"
(p.9). Thus, we find that "most of the climactic action in his work takes place
offstage. What takes center stage is conversation" (Lewis, p.186). Chekhov
resorts to the offstage incidents in The Seagull in order to make the environment
more realistic, and in order "not to disturb the gentle flow of everyday life"
(Borny, p.83).

As for style, it is obvious that The Seagull is realist in style. The Seagull is
realistic and natural in tone; the tone is a matter of fact. The setting is familiar; it
is a portrayal of a provincial Russian village. The scenery is rural estate
surrounded by the tranquil countryside with a view over a lake. The plot is
complex; it has more than one story. And like life itself, the plot of Chekhovs
play lacks resolution. By the end of the play, the characters have no solution for
their suffering. Treplov commited suicide and the rest characters complete their
lives in the same way they used to live.

For the characterization, Chekhovs plays move away from the focus on a
central heroic figure. Rarely is a character heroic or villainous. Instead of heroes or
villains, his later plays tend to feature ensemble casts of characters who are neither
particularly good nor particularly bad. In his plays, Chekhov presents a slice of

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life in order to give faithful picture of real human existence. Like the realistic
plays, there is no protagonist in The Seagull. The characters simply exist. The
Seagull is about realistic, flawed people who mess up their lives.

In The Seagull, the characters consist of a well-rounded group of people, all

of whom are faced with the real despair of having wasted their lives or experienced
unrequited love. Treplov is an aspiring young writer destroyed in spirit by his
mother, deprived of his great love, unsuccessful in his work, and finally desperate
enough to shoot himself. Nina, a young actress whom Treplov is in love with, is a
hopeless romantic who longs for a stage career. Her pursuit of Trigorin's heart
reveals her overestimated innocence by those around her and her ambitious side.
Sorin, Treplov's uncle is is disappointed with his life's decisions and its outcome;
he once wished to find love and be a successful writer and never acquired either
wish. Masha, the daughter of Shamrayev and Polina, always wears black, and is, as
the play opens, "in mourning for her life". She is in love with Treplov, but
eventually marries Medvedenko. Their marriage seems destined for unhappiness.

The characters are believable human beings who actually resemble true
life. The characters of the Chekhovian play drink, commit adultery, marry out of
necessity, work at meaningless jobs, and spend countless hours reading
newspapers. We observe them in a chain of small, apparently insignificant events
but which reveal all the same the depth and complexity of human life. In a
conversation to McCarter Literary Manager, Carrie Hughes, the Adapter/director
Emily Mann, who just directs her own free adaptation, A Seagull in the
Hamptons reflects that every single one of these characters is someone I know.
The older actress, her troubled son, the young writer who is really, really full of
himself and isnt quite as good as he wants to be and cant quite commit to a
womanI know them all too well. The young girl who wants to be an actress
and falls madly, insanely in love with the older man who uses her and throws her
awaythese beautiful, simple, completely true and real charactersthey were
true then; theyre true now. Wherever or whenever you set this play, you will find
the truth in it, because that was Chekhovs genius.

Realistic drama featured dialogue that was not embellished or exaggerated.

Playwrights used well-rounded ensembles of people who discussed their situation
using the same types of realistic dialogue that an audience member might use in
his or her own life. Chekhov used language to create believable characters in

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realistic, universal and timeless situations. Chekhov creates a realistic dialogue
and believable conversations that an audience member might use in his or her
own life. He intends to focus on conversations and stories unfold in the normal
course of life. Chekhov's mastery of everyday, natural dialog is the real power
and life of his work. In Chekhovs play, there are many short speeches and many
long silences. Broken speech patterns, pauses, mannerisms, dialects, and
inarticulate responses are used because they exhibit natural vocal manners.
Moreover, the pauses, broken off thoughts or statements, small talk and attempts
at being polite that mark the bulk of everyday social interaction.

A good example is the conversation between Nina and Treplov at the

beginning of the play, when Treplov proclaims his love for Nina saying I love
you, to which Nina replies Shh Ninas quick dismissal of Treplovs love
could hint that she is scared of her feelings for him and does not want her
relationship with Treplov develop or possibly that she does not love him back.
The style of the conversation between Nina and Treplov is very realistic, there are
short, incomplete sentences spoken, with the use of ellipses which is used
throughout the play Nina: Hes a famous writerIs he young? Treplov: Yes, he
is The use of ellipses break up the speech of this otherwise flowing play. The
dialogue sounds like everyday speech rather than emotional.

The critics and artists admired the realistic depiction of life in The Seagull
which makes it timeless and universal. When the director, Konstantin
Stanislavski, wanted to set up his Moscow Art Theatre, his intention is to present
realistic works that deals with real issues from the real life. He was regarded as
the dreat exponent of Moscow Art Theatre aim of showing life as it is. He chose
The Seagull to be the first performance on his theatre. This performance is the
one which gives Chekhov's play its great suddess. Also, in the Theatre Journal
review on a later performance of The Seagull, in May 1999, Rosette C. Lamont
writes, "Chekhov's multi-layered dramaturgy in The Seagull shapes a total reality,
for more complex than that of the realistic mode." In addition, Jeff Cohen, a
director of new adaptations of Chekhov's plays, is a great admirer of Chekhov's
realism. He directed two contemporary adaptations of Chekhov. The first set The
Seagull in the Hamptons with the unwieldy title of The Seagull: The Hamptons,
1990s, and the second put Uncle Vanya in West Virginia and it is called Uncle
Jack. In a conversation conducted by Michael Criscuolo in October 2006, Jeff

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 Cohen comments on his admire to Chekhov's realism in his two plays, The
Seagull and Uncle Vanya. He said:

What was revolutionary about Chekhovs plays was their slice-of-life

quality. For the first time, a playwright wrote about real people in real
relationships having real conversations. And the result was that
Chekhov had an absolutely unique relationship with his audience.
They were able to look up on stage and actually see characters that
reminded them of themselves or folks they knew. I understand that
his dialogue in Russian was extraordinarily close to the way people of
the time actually spoke, as opposed to the more poetic syntax of the
ages more classical dramas. And his depiction of fractured families
and the crisis of ordinary life resonated with his audiences in a way
that they had never seen before (Denton, 2006).
In conclusion, The Seagull is a delicate and difficult play. It is realistic in
its depiction of ordinary people going about their day-to-day tasks and dealing
with the not very unusual problems of life. . It focuses on the everyday life of
ordinary people, especially the middle-class people. The believable portrayal of
the characters is an indispensable aspect. The characters are ordinary human
beings struggling with life's problems and conflicts. Chekhov's realistic play is
also characterized with complex plot, familiar setting, and plausible events. In
addition, Chekhov used language to create believable characters in realistic
manner. He intended to focus on the conversation and the characters. So, he uses
everyday language, without any poetic language. This results in a common
.dialogue

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 Works Cited

Borny, Geoffrey. Interpreting Chekhov. Australia: Australian National University

E Press, 2006.

Corrigan, R. 'The Plays of Chekhov', in The Context and Craft of Drama by

Robert Corrigan and James Rosenberg eds. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing
Company, 1964.

Denton, Martin (ed.). "Uncle Jack / Jeff Cohen" in Playing With Canons. 6th ed.
New York: The New York Theatre Experience, Inc., 2006.

Fen, Elisaveta (trans.). Plays by Anton Chekhov. London: Penguin, 1954.

Lamont, Rosette C. "The Sea Gull by Anton Chekhov; Pam Gems," in Theatre
Journal. Vol. 51, No. 2. The Johns Hopkins University Press, May 1999, pp. 202-
203.

Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism. Cambridge

University Press, 2007.

Muller, Herbert J. The Spirit of Tragedy. New York: Square Press, 1965.

Yarmolinsky, A., Letters of Anton Chekhov. New York: The Viking Press, 1973.