Our Inhuman Condition Every human being ponders the questions, “What is life worth? Is it all meaningless?” Many plays bring up and discuss these questions and come up with suitable answers on how to solve the problem of feeling worthless. In our everyday lives, however, we don’t seem to discuss or even confront human worth and yet we try to go on as if we can perfectly comprehend all it means. In all reality most people avoid the subject and try to do anything but solve the problems we may have. Anton Chekhov, a Russian playwright, seems to portray a much more common view of life. In his play Uncle Vanya we see, as with many other Chekhov plays, how the main characters dance around the subject of marriage while openly discussing the meaninglessness
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Chekhov wanted us to see that this is life in the simplest sense, and we alone change our actions and no one else’s. Uncle Vanya displays the “everyday” in hopes that an “everyday man” could see and understand his message. Chekhov does not just show how man is destroying himself, but how he destroys everything around him, including natural elements. Chekhov expresses this in Uncle Vanya when a character explains at length the prior beauty of the Russian forests and silently longs for the day when things could be as they once were. In “Chekhov and Geography” Ian Matley proclaims,
Chekhov had probably acquired firsthand experience of the desirability of forest conservation during his various stays in the country, especially during the summers spent on the estate of the Kiselev family near Babkino from 1885 to 1887 and during his stays with the Lintvarev family near Sumy in the northern Ukraine in 1888 and 1889 (378).
Such firsthand experience of long laps of time close in nature would allow any man to see its beauty and wonder why and how most cannot observe it. In turn he would be led to be desirous that other men should appreciate the natural world and write this
Chekhov wanted us to see that this is life in the simplest sense, and we alone change our actions and no one else’s. Uncle Vanya displays the “everyday” in hopes that an “everyday man” could see and understand his message. Chekhov does not just show how man is destroying himself, but how he destroys everything around him, including natural elements. Chekhov expresses this in Uncle Vanya when a character explains at length the prior beauty of the Russian forests and silently longs for the day when things could be as they once were. In “Chekhov and Geography” Ian Matley proclaims,
Chekhov had probably acquired firsthand experience of the desirability of forest conservation during his various stays in the country, especially during the summers spent on the estate of the Kiselev family near Babkino from 1885 to 1887 and during his stays with the Lintvarev family near Sumy in the northern Ukraine in 1888 and 1889 (378).
Such firsthand experience of long laps of time close in nature would allow any man to see its beauty and wonder why and how most cannot observe it. In turn he would be led to be desirous that other men should appreciate the natural world and write this