For next week, be sure to finish the play and watch this video which gives you a little background about Chekhov and the first productions of The Seagull. In many ways, this is a very autobiographical play, so you might hear some echoes of his own life once you know a little more about it. Be sure to respond to the question at the end of the video as a COMMENT. See you in class!
I think that the point behind the two not being happy is a message to the audience to be careful what you wish for, that things are not always as they seem. I feel that the rant from Trigorin in the play lends to this idea as well. He goes into a tyrant of sorts about how he is miserable doing what he does despite the fact that Nina wants it so badly for herself. I think Nina and Konstatin thought they would get happiness from success but they failed to realize that happiness comes from other things. I feel that was art of Chekhov's message to his audience. The reference to her being a seagull by Nina was from "The Water Nymph" which was about a young girl who was seduced by a prince who impregnates her and leaves. She was comparing herself and situation to the role that was played in that play.
ReplyDeleteYes, good response: both assume that success = happiness, when the truth is that success requires many 'unhappy' compromises that are their own failures. The question is, how much of yourself can you sacrifice to achieve a dream--and is that dream still worthwhile after these sacrifices. Nina has become a totally different person, and has seen the seamy side of theater, the kind that Irina also experienced but kept hidden (and that her class also shielded her from). Kostya, too, hoped that artistic success would grant him a kind of nobility, but it's merely made him known and somewhat notorious. He still doesn't have his mother or Trigorin's respect.
DeleteIn act 1 on page 115, Nina runs away from home for the night to act in the play and says "But it's the lake that attracts me, as if I were a seagull..." This is before Konstantin has the flop of a play and is embarrassed by his mother there. After his flop, Nina and him sort of break up, on page 131 is when he shoots the seagull in her honor, like he wants to shoot himself. Konstantin starts to go through an obvious depression at this time, but manages to become a successful writer through it. Assuming that Nina is happy with her new life as an actress could be what's having him hold on, and her letters signed 'the seagull' could have his hopes that she is going to come back to the lake, like a seagull. When she does come back, denies him and so he 'shoot himself down' because of her, or 'in her honor'. In act 4 on page 158 when Nina says "You say you kissed the ground I walked on? You should have killed me instead.. Im the seagull.. No, that's not it, I'm an actress. That's it." and continues with "Remember that seagull you shot? A man comes along, sesames her, and destroys her life because he has nothing better to do.. subject for a short story." (159). She practically confesses that Trigorin has practically used her to understand young girls for his novels.
ReplyDeleteAnother tie in of a seagull that is interesting is when Shamrayev tells Trigorin that he has the stuffed seagull that Konstantin shot ready for him. It is sort of another call of how Ninas life is going to be displayed on Trigorins wall, along with his novel based off her.
Yes, great points--Trigorin doesn't even remember wanting the seagull stuffed, because he's already moved on. He barely even remembers Nina, who is just another 'seagull' he used for a story and then looked for something else. Chekhov is criticizing art and artists here, because for as meaningful as it is, the people who create it have to constantly turn the raw material of life into art--which requires using people and not completely regarding them as human. So Trigorin has lost his connection with humanity in the service of art, and I wonder if Chekhov felt the same way? By the end of the play, both Nina and Kostya are alienated, too. Art, for all its power, is also self-destructive. It requires a ferocious sacrifice which is at the expense of truly living (despite what Irina says to Masha at the beginning of Act Two).
DeleteYHelm: Both Konstantin and NIna are unhappy because they both realize that the dreams of their youth will never be fulfilled. Although Konstantin is a successful writer, his life is empty without Nina. I think he shoots himself because he realizes that she will never love him and he cant stand to continue without that hope. Once filled with romantic ideas about love and fame, Nina is living the stark reality of acting. She no longer sees good in her life and seems to be losing her mind with all the references to being a seagull.
ReplyDeleteGood response...I wonder, though, if they have achieved their dreams, but the cost of achieving them was greater than the dreams themselves. Nina felt she would do anything to be famous, and while she's not a great actress like Irina, she is a traveling actress on the stage. But at what cost? I think for Kostya, I think he achieves his dream but not the result of his dream. He only wanted to be a writer so he could ennoble himself in society and his mother's eyes, but that utterly fails. She still doesn't read him. He's still just her son from Kiev.
DeleteKostya's lack of satisfaction reminds me of Chekhov's. Chekhov did not believe that this play was a work of brilliance at first. He needed constant validation from others to appreciate his own talent and continue writing. Perhaps, Kostya has this same plight. He needs others to acknowledge his talent because he doesn't actually believe in himself. He was successful, but his success would never be enough for his mother to respect him as an artist or for Nina to want him back. Despite all of his efforts, he would never be enough for the women he loved most. As for Nina, I think she felt broken and shallow. She placed her desires for fame over everything else, expecting a life full of glamour and happiness. Instead, she felt hollow. I could be wrong, but I think Nina felt that the passion Kostya ignited within her to become an actress ruined her life. It filled her with discontent. That is why she referred to herself as the seagull, because she felt ruined by unrealized happiness.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a clever way of looking at it: Chekhov, like most writers, needed a lot of validation to believe that his work had merit, that he had achieved something worthwhile. Otherwise, he might have simply destroyed The Seagull the way Kostya destroyed his first play. Yet Kostya is a portrait of a doomed Chekhov: he's more known that read, a fad that people talk about but don't enjoy reading. So no one is telling him he's a genius, that he needs to keep writing. Or more importantly, his mother isn't telling him that...and Nina was the next best hope, since she is a proxy for his mother. But even she rejects him. In the end, she still loves Trigorin, someone who has 'real' talent.
DeleteDevin Gaither:
ReplyDeleteNina compares herself to a seagull in the beginning of the play, which then represented her once untouched innocence. She was still young and naive, and was full of hopes and dreams rather than harsh realities. Nina is unhappy in Act 4 because although she works as an actress, she is neither as good nor successful as she thought she would be. Nina idolizes Trigorin because of his fame, and later falls in love with him. They have an affair and Nina becomes pregnant, but Trigorin simply casts her aside because he had grown "tired of her". At the end of Act 4, Nina once again refers to herself as a seagull. Instead of the pure and alive seagull from before, she believes herself to be the innocent seagull that was hunted down, shot, and killed. An image of what she once was before her dreams were crushed.
Kostya's failures eventually lead him to commit suicide at the end of the play. Although he became successful in his writing, he will never truly accept that the two woman he loved in his life, Nina and Irina, chose Trigorin over himself. It would've been a shadow looming over him for the rest of his life. He never felt worthy enough without their acceptance.
Great responses...I think, though, that his love of Nina is less for herself (since he even says she's only an okay actress, and doesn't seem that enamored of her) than for what she represents of his mother. She's a way to love his mother by proxy, and for a brief time, it worked. But even she couldn't respect him, and like her mother, she threw him over for Trigorin. That's what kills him: that someone he doesn't respect can be seen as talented while he is dismissed as a symbolist who can't write about human beings. If his mother would just read his work and praise it, he would be cured--or close to it. But she's so lost in her own hype that she can't bring herself down to earth to see him.
DeletePaul Harris:
ReplyDeleteI believe why Nina and Konstantin both end up unhappy towards the end as a result of their unhealthy fascination with the idea of fame and admiration as writers. Throughout the play, they view success as a writer as a fantasy to the point where they view the world of a famous writer as a completely different one than the world they're living in. This can especially be seen with Nina's encounter with Trigorin as he gives his monologue in the middle of Act II; to elaborate, you can clearly see, both in her body language and how she speaks, that Nina's feelings towards writing and succeeding as a writer are completely different than Trigorin. She's completely enamoured with the world of a famous writer and how wonderful such a life must be, as if Trigorin's life is vastly different to her own to the point where she couldn't even begin to comprehend what life he must live. Trigorin's response is a realistic one, in which the success he's been given has come with his own unique struggles and furthermore, his life is just as troubled and just as enjoyable as the one Nina is living; thus, when the two find success in their careers, their expectations aren't met because there's no way they could be. They're still just as normal and human as they were before, which is what disappoints them the most.
Right, Nina can't believe that an artist is a human being; they have to be rarified and exalted, full of poetry and high sensations. But Trigorin is dull and unimaginative in life. He seduces Nina just to have a 'real' experience, because he's bored. And that's what disappoints her the most with theater: it's run by people obsessed with money , and it's just an endless stream of back-breaking labor. There's no love and poetry, just performances and money. It doesn't inspire her, even though she believes in what she's doing. On stage, it almost seem real again...but the second she steps off, she's back in the mundane, money-grubbing world. Irina is somewhat protected from this because of her class, though we can even see the cracks in her performance.
DeleteNína and Konstantín both bought into the lie that happiness comes from success. They wanted love from each other (and in Kóstya's case, from his mother) and they can never get it, and they realize that fame is less than zero comfort. I think this play is so moving because it shows people at their most earnest; they go forth eagerly, they are bright and beautiful and amazing, and they are ruined, just like most of the rest of the world. And what's the alternative? Irína hasn't been ruined, she seems happy, but everything that comes out of her mouth is nonsense, and all she cares about is her image. I think she is in the play so that we see that the alternative to living life with your eyes open is no better, and in fact is probably worse. And Trigórin; he's not ruined, he is the ruiner. In the world of this play, there are the harmed and there are those who harm them, and Chekhov is merciless in showing us exactly how this comes to be. (And there lies the difference between The Seagull and Manon Lescaut! The Seagull makes everyone's motivations crystal clear, and it ends in disillusionment. Manon Lescuat intentionally keeps everyone's motivations oblique, and it also ends in disillusionment, at least for Manon. Des Grieux is the Trigórin of Manon Lescaut, he is able to bounce back from his disappointment because he was the harmer, not the harmed.)
ReplyDeleteYes, great response...though I wonder whether or not Irina is also ruined? I think she's like Nina, in a way; she was broken and disillusioned, but found a way out. She learned to act for the rest of her life--not in plays, but in real life. Everything she does is an act so she doesn't have to look at herself. Note how she instructs Masha at the beginning of Act 2 about how she should comport herself, and always be "on." That doesn't sound like a happy woman! But as you suggest, the play shows us that having goals and ideals is great, but you have to be prepared to get them. And if you do, the ideals will change and they will change you--and maybe not for the better. Ironically, Sorin is probably one of the happier people in the play; he shouldn't regret not becoming a writer or getting married, since now he can daydream of how 'perfect' they might have been. The reality would force him into compromises that he might not be prepared to meet. Trigorin and Irina are two people who learned to make these compromises and go on. They're both broken and frazzled, but they are also intact. But I bet that didn't happen overnight!
DeleteI would like to think that Kostya and Nina end up in their desperate state because of two reasons. First, Kostya only wanted to make good, written art and have Nina's love, and he was denied the latter. He never cared much for national fame, but Nina was his muse and after she left he never felt like his work or talent mattered.
ReplyDeleteSecond, Nina was looking for love and fulfillment in all the wrong places, respectfully. Trigorin, while initially exciting to her, turned out to just be a high-class user; meanwhile, Kostya would've been faithful to her. Also, everyone else was very critical of her acting without knowing her personally, but Kostya adored her, faults and all.
Great responses; I wonder, though, how much Nina is a stand-in for his mother. Both are actresses, both play the same types of roles, and Irina is jealous of Nina, too. He's desperate for his mother's respect and love, since in the end, she rejects him as someone from "Kiev" (a hick, basically). Nina, in a similar way, wants Fame with a capital "f." Trigorin is a personification of that, and she thinks that if she devotes herself body and soul to fame, it will glorify her in return. It doesn't. She believes in romantic notions of sacrifice and duty, yet the kind of sacrifice she actually has to endure is neither romantic nor pure in any way.
DeleteCallie Farley: I think that Nina and Konstantin end up being unhappy in the end because, even though they become somewhat successful, I don’t think that they’ve met their own expectations for themselves. Both believe that accomplishing their goals will give more meaning and opportunity to their lives. At first, Nine is infatuated with fame and theater and she believes she will love herself and find happiness if she can make it as a famous actress. Later when she returns in Act Four, she has a lot less hope than when we first see her. Nina idolizes Trigorin because of his fame and she imagines that her life would be better if it were like his. However, when she gets pregnant with his child he casts her aside and I believe that this is really when she realizes that her life isn’t going to end up how she has always dreamt it. I think that Trigorin wants Nina because he feels like that will fill the void that he is missing because of his work. In some sense, the satisfaction these characters receive from being artists gets intertwined with being loved. Both Konstantin and Nina associate a meaningful life with the admiration of others. In writing, Konstantin gets discouraged in his the pursuit of perfection. He will never be happy with himself and pleased enough with his work so I honestly think that that's why he commits suicide, not really because of Nina and not really because of his craft, but because he will never be happy with himself.
ReplyDeleteYes, good interpretation here: I think he's probably too selfish to kill himself for Nina--though maybe, he would for his mother. I think partly it's because of how the world rejects him. He thought by sharing his ideals on paper the world would embrace him and want to learn from him. But his own mother won't read his works, and neither will Trigorin. He could never find peace with himself because he couldn't be accepted by those he admired most: his mother and Trigorin. He's the kind of writer who can never just be happy writing; writing is only a means to an end, and that end is getting respect and love. And by the end of the play he still doesn't have it.
DeleteI think Konstantin being so unhappy at the end of the play goes back to the monologue Trigorin had at the beginning of act 2. In my mind Konstantin was so unhappy because he realized that Trigorin was in fact right about fame all along. Based on Konstantin's character throughout the whole play he would not be able to handle the pressure and stress that comes with fame and notoriety that Trigorin described. I believe this constant pressure to always have another piece of writing in the works was what led Konstantin to ultimately shoot himself again.
ReplyDeleteYes, Trigorin warned Nina that art is just hard work, and the more you do it, the more you are a slave to it. She doesn't believe this, and neither does Kostya, who believes that art is freeing and transformative. It can be--but it exacts a heavy price. In the end, he shared his pain and ideas with the world, and most of them didn't even bother to read it (his mother, for example). And that's a kind of rejection he simply can't stomach.
DeleteI think that there are definitely various interpretations that can be made about Konstantin and Nina's unhappiness at the end of the play. But personally, I think that their unhappiness stemmed from the fact that they both focused too much on the denotative idea of success without really considering the personal idea of success. Yes, they both reached their goals, and so they were successful in a way. However, neither of them became happy because what they both really craved was acknowledgement, praise, and love. They never really received any of those things, and I think that by the end of the play, Konstantin shot himself once he realized that he was not truly successful in the personal sense and probably never would be. And Nina kept calling herself 'the seagull' not only because of Trigorin's short story idea about her that came true, but possibly because what she needed was for everything to turn back to the way it was before she left the lake. She wanted to go back to when she was happy and innocent like a seagull returning home. I think that maybe the seagull is her innocent self and the actor is her experienced and destroyed self, and she keeps flickering back and forth between the two almost like her mind is split.
ReplyDeleteYes, great point: to them, success was an ideal ,something rarified and pure. Instead, success is dirty and hard--it takes work, compromises, and often, years of your life. When you get it (if you get it!), you might be too old and worn out to appreciate it. Or worse, no longer the kind of person who appreciates it--like Trigorin, who seems to take it for granted. Nina realizes that ideals are only beautiful when you don't try to achieve them, since they can remain simply ideals, like dreams, appreciated without trying to make them real. Though the same happens with Trigorin; when he tries to love Nina, she changes, becomes a mother, and bores him. When art becomes success it risks becoming a job.
DeleteCarla Torres:
ReplyDeleteI believe that being unhappy has to do with the differences in Nina and Konstantins life. It really showed at the end of the play especially when he killed himself. I feel like this was driven by the fact that they were trying to live a different life than what was made for them. Throughout the play, especially towards the end, I felt as if what Kostya Had gone through made for a hard life. So when he was with Nina, he was different or tried to be. Despite the different circumstances they come from. This play makes people’s eyes open to see the difficulties that come with being rich and poor. One thing that I liked reading was from act one where Masha mentions that money has nothing to do with happiness yet money is what plays a big role. It came full circle from act one to act four.
Yes, money seems to be what helps people shoulder disappointment or what allows them to get crushed completely. Nina didn't see the day to day struggle of acting, nor how much she would have to compromise her beliefs (and maybe much more) simply to get on the stage. Kostya, too, felt that exposing his emotions and being honest would win over the world. It didn't. Most people would rather be entertained than enlightened, and he can't simply be funny. And that's one of the things that kills him.
DeleteI believe the play shows that the two characters are striving for something in their lives to fill their respective voids. In Konstantin’s case, it is a writing career and Nina. In Nina’s case, it is her acting career and, by the end of Act 2, Trigoran. Although they each find their careers, they realize that it isn’t as glamours or world changing as they expected it to be and that their careers are all they will achieve. Neither character was able to be with the person they love and because of these things, they are left hollow and disappointed. It only adds to their insult that neither have been able to achieve the success of the other writer and actress in the play.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Nina’s habit of referring to herself as the seagull. I took this as a metaphor for the earlier scene when Konstantin killed the seagull as a message to Nina. She even references this incident in Act 4. She sees herself, and the seagull, as innocent creatures who were spotted by a hunter and made prey, only to be left decaying in their aftermath. To Nina, she is Trigoran’s seagull.
I think that both Konstantin and Nina place all of their faith in someday obtaining this abstract idea of "happiness" and they think they can achieve it through love and fame and success. But once they have actually gotten to the place that they assumed they would finally feel happy and satisfied, they do not. Nina seems to realize that the "happiness" she should be feeling during Act 4 is not there, and she was truly happy back when she thought she wasn't. It seems that Nina finally compares herself to the seagull because of the moment in Act 2 where Trigorin pitches his idea for a short story in which he is clearly using Nina as inspiration for the main character, and this is when he compares this girl to the seagull. But she rejects this idea several times. She declares, "I'm the seagull... No, that's not it. I'm an actress. That's it" (158). I think she understands that she has latched onto this idea that her life has been destroyed, similarly to the seagull in Act 2, but she doesn't want this to be the case.
ReplyDeleteKurstyn Young:
ReplyDeleteI think they are both unhappy because they have spent their lives, as far as we know, chasing after the idea of fame and love. Konstantin spent his life loving Nina, and it was never really returned. Nina was chasing fame and had fer affair with Trigorin, but there was never true love. Both characters had bad relationships with their parents, which might have had something to do with their screwed up version of love. They never seemed to be independent people, they placed all their hopes and dreams on other people, and never figured out how to truly live outside from their ideals. Konstantin never handled his emotions well, Act 1-4. When he realized that Nina still did not love him, he was completely done. Nina still wants to be free, like the seagull in Act 1, but it comes full circle and she questions if she really is free? This realization to Konstantin, that he never will be free and will never be with Nina, leaves him with nothing else to live for, which is why he ends his life.
Amily Clary:
ReplyDeleteNina is unhappy due to the fact that she now has her fame but it certainly was not what she expected it would be like. She loved Trigorin and then Konstantin loved Nina. This odd triangle leads to Konstantins death as soon as Nina leaves the house. Konstantin wanted to leave with Nina, and she gave him the cold shoulder telling him she loved Trigorin more than ever on page 159. Konstantin states that he hopes that nobody see`s Nina leaving the garden as it would upset his mother. Previous to this the characters had just talked about how the only people scared of death are people that believe in the afterlife due to being judged for their sins. Konstantin whether he believes or not probably thought that there was no longer a reason he needed to live. His published stories were failing and the woman he loved did not love him back. He tore up his manuscripts and threw them under his desk. Soon after he shot himself only to be found by Trigorin and Dorn. The "seagull" seems to be represented as the one that Konstantin shot. Also on page 159 Nina says in referring to the Seagull, "A man comes along, sees her, and destroys her life because he has nothing better to do." Which I think rightfully describes the situation they are in.
Konstantin and Nina both because who they wanted to be. Nina became an actress, but not a good one because she was constantly worried about Trigorin not loving her and that caused her to not be focused in her acting. Konstantin became a decent writer but he still didn't seem happy. I think Konstantin was not happy because he did not have the support of his mother. His mom never read anything he wrote because she "didn't have time." He wanted to prove to his mother that he was good enough for her but she did not care. When Nina came to see Konstantin she broke his heart by saying she still loved Trigorin and I feel like that was the last straw for him. He couldn't handle not being loved by the two women he loved and not being good enough for his mom. He was depressed for years and maybe he thought becoming famous would fix him but it didn't. I think Nina ended up being unhappy with her life for similar reasons. Her father and stepmother didn't care about her and neither did Trigorin. She just wanted to also be loved but they people she wanted to love her didn't.
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