Picking Anton Chekov out of an Orchard of Playwrights

Anton Chekov was born in Taganrog, a port town in Rostov Oblast, Southern Russia on January 29, 1860. He was the third child born to Yevgenia Yakovlevna Morozov and Pavel Yegorovitch. Chekov grew up in a loving environment along with his five other siblings despite facing financial difficulties. Chekov and his siblings worked vigorously to help their father run his shop. However, the children still managed to enjoy their childhood by participating in social activities such as fishing, tennis as well as visiting their grandfather in the country. He attended the University of Moscow in 1879 to study medicine and graduated in 1884. He practiced medicine throughout the rest of his lifespan as well as picked up a career in writing and a well-developed social life. In the words of Anton Chekov he described his careers as “Medicine is [his] lawful wife and literature is [his] mistress. When [he] gets tired of one [he] spends the night with the other”. He continued to work to tend to the sick and support his family until the insidious disease of tuberculosis ended his life on July 15, 1904.
Chekov’s family, childhood experiences, and acquaintances he met while growing up became great influences within his future writing career. Chekov managed to utilize his positive as well as negative experiences to develop more natural, realistic plotlines for his characters to follow. For example, his grandfather was a serf whom worked on Vladimir Grigorievitch Tchertokov’s estate before purchasing his freedom from servitude in the year 1841. Serf characters can be seen in his production of The Cherry Orchard. His father was a grocer whom had to close his store due to financial ruin in the year 1867. Furthermore, the Yegorovitch family’s home and hous...

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...chase and come into ownership of the entire estate.
It can be assumed an actor would come to love Chekov because his plays turned away from the traditional plot concepts of good vs. evil to produce more natural, complex, relatable stories. After examining the life of Mr. Anton Chekov and reading The Cherry Orchard, it becomes apparent how easy it is to become attached to, as well as understand the point-of-views from all his characters. Chekov mastered the usage of mood, inaction as well as current national headlining-news to reveal his characters’ internal psychology. His plays did not seek to offend or impose moral judgment on attending audience members, rather he used his plays to demonstrate the present-day struggles existing within social, political and personal contexts which must be overcome to successfully move forward to a better and more positive future.