“You can’t ever go back to the past” is one of the most important quotes in Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard because it summarizes what most of the characters are dealing with throughout the four acts. The main character, Liubov Ranyevskaya, comes home after being away for years and she is astounded by how similar it looks from when she remembers it. Memories rush back immediately and throughout the whole play all she can talk about is how everything has been left the same, and how she remember all of the good times her family used to have. As a mother, she is supposed to be nostalgic about her family, but Liubov is overly reminiscent towards the house and she doesn’t really act too reminiscent about her family who she hadn’t seen in forever. I don’t have too much sympathy for Liubov for most of the play because she doesn’t do anything to help save her orchard, but I have even less sympathy for her seeing her care more about her house than her family. The past appeals to Liubov because it was when life wasn’t complicated and everything seemed to make sense. Before she lost her husband, her child, and before she began the destructive relationship with the guy from Paris.
Another character that is reminiscent of the past is the family’s butler Firs. At first, Firs seems like just one of the many comedic character because it is described as being blind and all he does is spout out nonsensical comments. But once the play starts rolling you realize that he keeps talking about the old days when slavery was legal and how much he respected his master and how he wants to go back. Firs wants to go back to the days of slavery because that is all her knows. Everyone is nostalgic about the past and Firs is not exception. The last scene where everyone forgets about Firs and he spends his last moment’s alive sitting alone wondering where everyone is. That is why he wants to go back to the past, because in the past he was needed, he was possibly respected, and he knew what he was supposed to do.
The need to go back to the past may seem the most important to the readers who read these themes and connect them to their own lives. That is what separates classic works from an every day story, something that connects with readers for generations after it is written. Chekhov must have known that the theme of remembering the past would be universal because that was probably just as huge of a theme in his day then it is in today’s drama.
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