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Seagull

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Submitted By spanelld
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Pages 3
Erica Brown
THEA 104-010
Question 1 browneri@udel.edu What’s so Funny?
Section 1
As depressing as Chekov’s The Seagull is with attempted and successful suicides, hopeless love triangles, and lack of healthy relationships between almost every single character; I personally enjoyed it. Don’t get me wrong, I felt the sadness and hopelessness of the characters and plot, however, it was almost the pure paradoxical mannerisms that allowed me to actually enjoy it. It was almost as if every single character set up or created their own happiness and in some alternate reality the sad ending of the play could have been avoided. This was my reaction from just reading it. Upon actually watching the play in class, all of my inhibitions and fear of being judged for my cruel sense of humor dissipated. Physically watching the play made my thoughts more apparent and clear. I really started to feel badly for Nina due to the fact that she was, in a sense, stripped of her innocence, whereas reading it made me dislike her naivety.
Section 2
In Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, there can be many debate as to what the genre of the play falls into. Some argue it is pure tragedy, others argue drama, but there are others, including
Chekov, that argue it is a comedy. While these are very matter of fact and binary answers, I argue that the genre is not so black and white. Due to the paradoxical characters and their tragic demise, the genre of The Seagull can be categorized as a, “tragicomedy.” The Seagull possesses many elements of tragedy such as: believable characters, realistic events, and unhappy or unfortunate outcomes. However there is still an undertone of high comedy, or comedy of manners, that

can be found within these dull characters. They are the main cause of all their pain and misery and therein resides the comedy. Let us analyze two of the main characters, Nina

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