Freedom in the Cherry Orchard

Freedom in the Cherry Orchard

Ronald Reagan once said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”  In the play The Cherry Orchard a Russian family struggles to understand the true meaning of freedom and are all often trying to find their own personal escape.  Within the network of family and friends there is a resounding theme of escape and freedom from the family farm.  To know freedom one must have an understanding of what it is to be enslaved to something or an idea.  

        Almost a century had passed when Ronald Reagan spoke about freedom than from the time when The Cherry Orchard was written.  It is truly remarkable to see how the Russian culture has almost come full circle, from aristocrats and serfs to a communistic society that forces many into poverty.  To understand what freedom meant to Russians during the time setting of the play, one must examine the situation in Russia during the 1860s.  Russia was going through a radical change under Tsar Alexander II during the early 1860s, it was a time of change from aristocratic ways to equality (Frede 561).  There were groups under the radar of the government whose purpose was to organize revolutionaries throughout Russia in expectation of a major peasant uprising, which had been expected in the spring of 1863, when the emancipation of the serfs was scheduled to take effect.  However most of these groups had dissolved by 1864.  In its revolutionary proclamations the group Land and Freedom pursued two key goals ”the immediate redistribution of land to the peasants and the creation of representative government at all levels, from the capital, to the regions, to the villages” (563).  With the emancipation of the serfs, Alexander II weakened the traditional sense of land owner superiority.  This lack of influence and a rise of a new social class in Russia led to land owners having to sell their property to new money merchants and professionals that had migrated to Russia during the population explosion that had been generated by a stage of rapid industrialization.  This is key to know for the play of The Cherry Orchard, so that the reader will understand why the family orchard is having to be sold.  

One character that a reader may identify the term freedom with initially is Firs, the family butler who is eighty seven years old.  Firs has been with the family his whole life and had known nothing but servitude his whole existence.  Firs explains why he stayed with the family even after being freed “By the time we got our freedom back, I was already head butler.  I had all the freedom I needed, so I stayed right here with the masters.  I remember everybody got all excited about it, but they never even knew what they were getting excited about” (867).  While firs is a butler and seems to be happy enough with the family, his only escape from a life of service is through death.  One can note that Firs foreshadows his morbid emancipation from one of the first times he speaks in the play when he says “Now I can die happy” (854).  Firs even begins to cry with joy in the moment’s thought.