Haider 1

Sakina Haider

1415130

Zeeshan Haider

Play Analysis

26th march 2015

The Three Sisters: Act III, from “Chebutykin enters” ... Analysis

Three sisters is a journey of unrequited ambitions, dreams and visions for a happy life.

From the start of the play, every character has hopes about their life ahead. But as the play

progresses the audience witnesses the wearing down of those dreams, those ambitions of

every character, to a point where their past becomes their only salvation, or so they

thought.

Act III takes place in the bedroom of Prozorov sisters, where interlopers are present

throughout the act due to the fire in the neighborhood. In this particular act, Chekov has

given extreme importance to time, he keeps on making the audience aware of the exact

time period when something or the other is going on. Now as act III takes place in an

intimate setting of the sisters bedroom, where intruders keep passing, and that too in the

middle of the night, means that the people in the play has simply no sense of privacy and

that they don’t care about time at all.1

1
At start of the act Tuzenbach says, “It’s already after three….” It means that it is the middle of the night and is
about to dawn.
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As the act continues, audience gets to know some details related to time and how much the

time has passed by since the play started and how it is affecting the lives of each character

in the play. Through Irina’s dialogue“… I’m almost twenty four,” audience gets to know that

now she is twenty four years old and is still frustrated with her life like she was before. Not

only Irina but Chebutykin is disappointed with his life as well; “maybe I knew something

twenty five years ago, but now, I can’t remember a thing,” This further points out that as

the time passes the characters in the play see time as a threat to their memories even

though , their memories are quite intact. In act I- Olga’s and masha’s conversation with

Vershinin in which he explains how he knew their mother and remember their faces tells

the audience that he is not affected by time but masha’s reply that she doesn’t remember

his face tells that she does have some fear of forgetting her past. Being forgotten and

forgetting something because of time, ends up being the fear among the sisters till the end.

Even when Tuzenbach dies, Irina’s dialogue; “… People will forget all about us, they’ll forget

what we looked like...” states that there is a fear of being forgotten as the time passes and

they don’t want that. The characters in the play are in the state of inertia and they don’t

want changes that the time brings.

Now as to why past is to be remembered? As stated above that maybe they don’t want

changes that the time brings and their past (Moscow) is a place where they see their

happiness in.2 so why are they not going there? They are wealthy enough and throughout

the play there is no such thing which points out as something which is making them stay in

this town and not to go back to Moscow. That’s probably because “Moscow” is a figment of

their imagination. It is a place for them to find happiness as they want to run away from

their present. They are stuck in a place where whatever they do is useless and as

mentioned many times in the play, “what difference does it make?” they think that what

they do or do not do wouldn’t make a difference. And because of this they are degraded by

life, find disappointments with every decision they take and all their hopes are cut off by

the end of the play.3 The only thing which remains at the end is “hope” for a better

tomorrow.

2
According to constant mentioning about Irina’s desire to go back to Moscow at times of difficulty and
distress explains that irina sees Moscow as her only solace. Moscow can be considered as a metaphoric name
for her past as she has left it behind and came to live where she is now with her family.
3
Hopes which disappoint them at the end were not really their hopes but their means to find happiness in
life. They thought that through them they can survive life and achieve what they want but “hope” without the
existence of those “hopes” wasn’t present in their lives as an emotion.
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In this particular act, everything is happening in the sisters room and should create

confusion because of the commotion taking place, but the author smoothly demonstrate his

control over the situation by giving us a series of different crisis through different events

and finding a solution to each at the end. At first, Chebutykin enters in his drunken state

complaining about him being a disappointment as a doctor- which not so surprisingly goes

unnoticed by the sisters who exits the room; it’s not so surprising because throughout the

play, author has used a technique of single figure of thought without anyone listening and

sometimes addressing no one in particular. Through this and his use of broken language, he

might be trying to explain how no one in the play seems interested in another’s life as they

are too occupied with themselves and their crisis. The scene continues with the entry of

Vershinin, Irina, Tuzenbach and Kulygin. Through some dialogues and their reactions the

audience gets to learn how Kulygin keeps talking about Masha and how much he adores

her as a wife, but here we see him clearly breaking a conversation that was going on about

benefit concert between Vershinin, Tuzenbach and Irina. He again interrupts a really

serious conversation between Andre, Olga and Irina and even then his talks leads us to

notice how much he is in love with Masha and is obsessed with her. Author used this

interruption to break the intense scene and conversation going on, which in turns break

the tension and calms the audience as well.

During the course of this act we also learn how bored Masha is with her marriage with

Kulygin and wants to end it. But her being bored is not the only reason for her acting rude

towards her husband. As Chekov has indirectly established an attraction between

Vershinin and Masha, audience knows that this might be leading her to act like this with

Kulygin. This also reiterates the idea that even Masha is disappointed with her life and her

only way to find happiness is through Vershinin, but knowing that he is married, there is no

“hope” for her to find happiness. 4

Moving forward as the act progresses, Chebutykin’s love for the sister’s mother is revealed.

As he drops the mother’s ancient clock and it breaks, it metaphorically tells us how time

has broken his heart and tells us about his frustration with life and his inability to move on

as he is stuck in the past with a broken heart. And to make atmosphere a little light, author

comically through Chebutykin’s nervous state of drunkenness reveals an important secret

which everybody ignores because they are too involved with themselves to notice. He

reveals about Natasha’s affair with Protopopov. Maybe to distract everyone from giving

attention to whatever Chebutykin has revealed, Vershinin starts blabbering, saying nothing

in particular but his blabbering gives some insight to his personality. He talks about past

and the future and being optimistic he says “… whole world will change because of you…”

which means that unlike others who think they are wasting their lives right now and their

lives doesn’t make a difference, Vershinin thinks otherwise. He thinks that whole world will

change because of them, all of them. And maybe that is why he is like a candle in darkness

for Masha, because he is the only optimistic one in a house full of pessimists.

4
Refer to footnote #3.
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Personality of every character is playing a very important throughout the play. Solyony is a

soldier, a captain that is, and is in love with Irina, who is irritated by him when he acts all

poetic but Irina doesn’t mind when Tuzenbach does so, despite him not being in the service

anymore. 5 This irks Solyony, and this is proved by the author through his dialogue, when

Irina stops him from entering her room at night, and he says, “…now I find that extremely

funny that the baron can come in here and I can’t.” Irina is frustrated with everything in her

life and hence Olga being the matriarchal figure suggests her to marry Tuzenbach but Olga

doesn’t want to talk to Masha when she needs advice for her current predicament, i.e, her

love for Vershinin. This tells the audience that Olga probably is against Masha having extra

marital affair with Vershinin, which makes her a moralistic lady. Tuzenbach said in the

previous act that he wanted to work as he has never done so ever in his life and in this act

he says that he has given the interview at a brick factory but through his careless behavior

towards his ambition, audience can guess that even he is not trying to achieve anything. He

wants to do something and achieve something but is too lazy to work for it. This tells us

that he prefers to remain his poetic aristocratic self and not change with time. Andre and

Kulygin are both loyal to their wives despite them knowing how both are cheating behind

their backs. Through this the author creates sort of juxtaposition to the state of their

personalities. Kulygin remains his loyal, charming self however Andre turns to gambling

and mortgaged the house but also remains loyal to his wife, which tells us that probably he

is in a state of denial and so is Kulygin but Kulygin didn’t make any rash decisions because

of current situation of his marriage but Andrey did and the sisters now have to pay for it.

5
Him not being in the services anymore is mentioned in this act through Olga’s dialogue on page. 302, while
convincing Irina that she should marry Tuzenbach and live a life she always wanted.
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Irina’s hopes are shattering as the time passes and as a result changing her personality.

Which is also being noticed by the audience and Tuzenbach as well as he mentions that she

was extremely lively a while back but now she has turned different. Which means time is

taking a toll on her personality. Not only her personality but the fire that has been going on

during the course of this act in the neighborhood may have been adjusted there to play a

role in the plot. It might be associated with the frustrations of every character in regards to

their unrequited ambitions and dreams in life. Which in turn would mean that time is

taking a toll on not only Irina’s personality and life but life of every character present in the

play.

All of these above observations lead us back to where we started. The sisters want to get

out of misery and disappointments in their lives. The act ends with Irina’s desire to going

back to Moscow as she can’t live here anymore but now Olga has given her a solution to her

misery, she asked her to marry Tuzenbach but yet again, Moscow is where Irina thinks she

will find happiness. Tuzenbach might just be a hope for her who will lead her to a better life

in a place she hopes to find happiness and hope for future. But at the end of the day, that

hope is killed but her desire remains. This tells us that hope is not something tangible and

as the time passes, people start finding “hope” in different things, in people, in occupations,

in countries but the real hope remains inside them throughout their lives which helps them

survive this timeless world.