The Discontentment of Intelligence in Checkov's Three Sisters

A detailed Summary of The Discontentment of Intelligence in Checkov's Three Sisters

When a person is smarter than the people that he or she is brought into company, conversation can become boring. There isn't much to talk about because no one has anything in common. This can lead to discontentment in one's life, for everything can seem mediocre. This is true for Masha from the play Three Sisters, by playwright Anton Checkov. Masha and her two sisters, Irena and Olga, were brought up by their father to be well read and intelligent. They were taught to read the classics and speak several languages, as well as memorize many things that later in life they find useless.

Masha is a very typical Checkovian character. She despises the way her life is going and she does nothing about it. When the play opens, the three sisters are sitting in a room waiting for everyone to arrive for Irena's Saints Day party. Masha is despondently singing under her breath, " 'A green oak grows by a curving shore, And round that oak hangs a golden chain'..." (254) She seems very depressed and she gets up to go home. Everyone is shocked that she is leaving her sister's party, even though she will return for dinner that evening. Her response to them: "What does it matter? ... In the old days when Father was alive we used to hav

e thirty or forty officers at our parties. What gay parties we had! And today-- what have we got today? A man and a half, and the place is quiet as a tomb. I'm going home. I'm depressed today, I'm sad, so don't listen to me." (255) Masha would be described as a brooding person, waiting for something to happen to save her from herself.

One main theme that she keeps repeating is that she is bored, or possibly going mad. She is not going mad; she is not content in her position in life for she feels that she is too bright for her own good. At one point in the play Koolyghin, her husband, declares how much he loves her and she crossly responds, "Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant!" (304) which is the Latin conjugated form of the verb amar, to love. It is almost as if she is saying that love is such a common word that it has lost all of its meaning. It is all so ordinary to her; it doesn't really matter. It is the monotony of her life that makes her, "so bored, bored, bored. ... and I can't keep it out of my head." (304)

Masha's life begins to change, and there is hope, but in the end, her emotions turn from that of boredom to that of resigned despair; she cannot be with the man that she really loves, Vershinin, for they are both married to other people. She does not want to do anything about this love, just as she does not want to do anything about her life, "If I love him, well- that's my fate! That's my destiny. ...How are we going to live the rest of our lives? What is going to become of us? When you read a novel, everything in it seems old and obvious, but when you fall in love yourself you suddenly discover that you don't really know anything, and you've got to make your own decisions. ... and now I'll keep quiet. ... I'll be like that madman in that story by Gogol- silence... silence." (307-8) It is this resignation to her situation that leads to her eventual unbalance. Although Masha knows that there is something going on inside of her, she is not ready to do anything about it

Some common words found in the essay are:
It's He's, Oh I'm, Saints Day, Irena Olga, , Nevertheless Vershinin, green oak, curving shore, 'a green oak, green oak grows, grows curving shore, oak hangs golden, oak grows curving, 'a green, oak grows, grows curving, oak hangs, hangs golden, shore round, golden chain', round oak, Checkov Masha,

Approximate Word count = 1360
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English