It's a Cold, Cold World

[YEPIKHODOV crosses the back of the stage playing his guitar.]

MRS. RANEVSKY. [Pensively.] There goes Yepikhodov. 

ANYA. [Pensively.] There goes Yepikhodov. G

AYEV. The sun has set, my friends.

TROFIMOV. Yes. 

GAYEV. [In a quiet voice, as if giving a recitation.] Nature, glorious Nature, glowing with everlasting radiance, so beautiful, so cold — you, whom men call mother, in whom the living and the dead are joined together, you who give life and take it away — 

VARYA. [Imploring him.] Uncle dear! 

ANYA. Uncle, you’re off again. 

TROFIMOV. You’d far better pot the red in the middle. 

GAYEV. I am silent. Silent.

When facing this really lame ending, I desperately went back to previous Acts searching for answers. I expected a really cool deux ex machina, a revelation, the second coming of our savior Jesus Christ, something, nothing. As skimming the pages with a certain feeling of defeat, I find this (apparently) normal excerpt, where Yepikhodov gruesomely describes the sundown. Suddenly I watched with my own eyes how the catharsis miraculously emerged from the II act, way before the ending, in an obscure and secretly fashion. The truth is the characters all were directly or indirectly accepting the idea of eventually loosing the orchard way before the orchard was actually lost. Gayeb, the character wich most conflicted with this conception, actually comes at ease when saying "you who give life and take it away..." Yepikhodov gives out the anagnorisis in the form of a metaphor... Very realistic.