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Chekhov's "The Seagull" is a modern masterpiece. Short of seeing a great production, the best way to experience this beautiful play is simply to read it, as I did:

For Chekhov, traditionally a short story writer, "The Seagull" was his first full length dramatic work. Chekhov struggled with the dramatic form, and this beautifully naturalistic play does suffer from what one might expect from a writer traditionally well practiced in a short story narrative form: surprisingly large parts of the play are episodic and descriptive of action/events.

What makes this a play are the main actions involving Nina, Konstantin, Trigorin, and Irina, with the two main characters being Nina and Konstantin - and who's story is it? Almost all the way through the play, through the 3rd act, it's a tossup, but given Chekhov's choice to narrate the critical turning point in Nina's and Trigorin's relationship, this is Konstantin's story, and he changes the most - literally going from life to death.

SO WHAT IS THE PLAY ABOUT?

"The Seagull" is a play about people who are so pre-occupied (with themselves, with what they want, with what they don't have) that they can't seem to listen, empathize, or even begin to understand anyone else - until (presumably) one of them dies.

ELABORATION:

The Seagull is almost totally character driven: the play lacks a strong plot, so much so that people accuse it have not having any "action." It's actually all action, but because a character's objectives are rarely achieved, the play has the feeling of "going nowhere" - on purpose (i.e., the characters feel they're going nowhere). The life of the play is in its microstructure, i.e., the dialog - each "beat" is (more or less) people wanting, pursuing objectives, and not listening, seeing, or connecting with anyone else, and - interestingly enough - failing to get what they want.

Almost all the characters have a sense of helplessness because they attribute their obstacles to forces or factors beyond their control, and because they feel they can never have what they so desperately want, they get (understandably) highly pre-occupied with their troubles - but then they fail, fail absolutely, to put all that aside when there's an opportunity to simply listen, take in, and understand someone else. Interestingly, why these characters are like this is completely unmotivated in the text: Chekhov provides no "psychological" explanation for their basic stance - but this is clearly who they are.

What the characters want, in the

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