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Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin and Peter Trophimof are two men who do not seem to get along on the surface considering all the name-calling passed back and forth amongst one another. Lopakhin calling Trophimof The Perpetual Student; and Trophimof calling Lopakhin a beast of prey, which devours everything, that comes in its way. The two come from very different backgrounds, however their views for the future of Russia are very similar. This gives them a common bond and respect for one another. Lopakhin comes from a long line of serfs. He grew up in an abusive home, in which his father was an alcoholic village shopkeeper. Lopakhin referred to his father on page 22 as an idiot who taught him nothing. He admits himself also a blockhead, idiot. He was 15 when his father struck him in the face, and Madame Ranevsky took him in to clean up his bloody nose. He remembers her saying, “Don’t cry, little peasant!” After recalling that memory after all these years he still seems offended by the comment she maid. The play does not mention a lot about Trophimof’s past. His father was a chemist. Peter is a 26-year-old student, who was Grisha, Madame Ranevsky’s dead son’s teacher. Even though the boy had been dead for 5 years, Trophimof continued to stay on at the cherry orchard. The two both believe that the people of Madame Ranevsky class were very thoughtless in how they spent money. On page 20 Lopakhin, while speaking to Madame Ranevsky and her brother Gayef says, “In all my life I never met anybody so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike!” Lopakhin has been trying for months to convince the two, to cut up the cherry orchard and the land along the river, in order to put villas up on the lots and lease them to the peasants. Madame Ranevsky said he didn’t know what he was talking about, and that nothing but gentry and peasants live in villages. They would not have any part in it.
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