person
Pyotr Sergeyevich Trofimov
Trofimov
also: Petya
A perpetual student and former tutor to Ranevskaya's drowned son Grisha; an idealist who preaches that mankind must work and atone for the sins of serfdom, and who declares himself and Anya "above love," a claim Ranevskaya punctures sharply in Act Three. Mocked as a "mangy gentleman" by an overheard remark, a taunt he comes to embrace with pride.
Reading notes
- The Cherry Orchard §235 a mangy gentleman
"Облезлый барин" (oblezly barin), literally "a mangy/moulted gentleman" -- an image of a once-fine coat gone bald and shabby -- is the insult an unnamed peasant woman hurls at Trofimov on the train; he repeats it to the family here, Varya throws it back at him mockingly at \S512, and he embraces it with open pride at \S513 ("Yes, I'm a mangy gentleman, and proud of it!").
- The Cherry Orchard §574 a second-form schoolboy
"Второклассник," a pupil in the second form (roughly the second year) of a Russian gymnasium -- Ranevskaya's point, delivered in anger, is that Trofimov's professed loftiness about being "above love" is emotionally as unformed as a schoolboy's, despite his being twenty-six or twenty-seven and a perpetual university student (see \S237, \S708-709).