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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Uncle Vanya, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Anxiety about growing old or about being old is a consistent concern for many of the play’s characters. But ultimately, it seems that it’s this anxiety rather than old age itself that keeps these characters trapped in a cycle of regret. The opening scene almost immediately focuses on Astrov’s loss of youth, setting the tone for more age-related conversations that occur later in the play. Uncle Vanya himself feels as though he’s wasted his youth, and this belief fuels much of his erratic behavior. Professor Serebryakov is painfully aware of his old age, as he feels like he’s making everyone around him miserable simply by remaining alive. However, while old age presents its own challenges, most of these characters’ troubles stem from their own beliefs about what growing old means.
To Voynitsky, Astrov, and Serebryakov, being old means that the opportunities of life have already passed them by. Their age constantly draws their attention back to their regrets: things they wish they’d done or hadn’t done. Simply because they’re beyond a certain age threshold, they can’t see anything worthwhile lying ahead of them. They can only see what’s behind them and what could have been. Meanwhile, Marina is a character who goes against this trend. Though she’s very old, she seems content with her lot in life, and she never brings up her past at all. The play thus demonstrates the futility—and in extreme cases, destructiveness—of regret. In focusing so much on their youth, many of the plays characters fail to appreciate the life they still have left to live.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Old Age and Regret ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Old Age and Regret appears in each act of Uncle Vanya. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Old Age and Regret Quotes in Uncle Vanya
Below you will find the important quotes in Uncle Vanya related to the theme of Old Age and Regret.
Act 1
Quotes
I still love her and am faithful to her, I help with what I can and have given up my property for the education of the children she had by the man she loved. I lost my happiness but kept my pride. And what became of her? Her youth has now gone, by the laws of nature her beauty has faded, the man she loved has passed on… What has she left?
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I am now forty-seven. Till last year, like you, I deliberately tried to cloud my eyes with your learned talk, so as not to see real life — and I thought I was doing right. And now if you only knew! At nights I don’t sleep from vexation, from anger that I so foolishly lost the time when I could have had everything that my age now denies me!
Act 2
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I work all my life for learning, and I’m used to my study, the lecture hall, the colleagues I esteem — and then, I end up for no good reason in this tomb, see fools here every day, listen to worthless conversations… I want to live, I like success, I like fame, making a noise, and here it’s like being in exile. To pine every minute for the past, to watch the success of others, to be afraid of death… I can’t! I haven’t the strength! And they won’t even excuse me my age here!
Act 3
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I will not be silent! Stay here, I haven’t finished! You have destroyed my life! I haven’t lived, I haven’t lived! Thanks to you I wasted, I destroyed the best years of my life! You are my worst enemy!
Act 4
Quotes
Those who will live after us in a hundred or two hundred years’ time and who will despise us for living our lives so foolishly and with such a lack of taste — they may find a way of being happy, but we… You and I have only one hope. The hope that when we lie in our coffins we’ll be visited by visions, perhaps even agreeable ones.
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We shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live out many, many days and long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we shall labour for others both now and in our old age, knowing no rest, and when our time comes, we shall meekly die, and there beyond the grave we shall say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were sorrowful, and God will have pity on us, and you and I, dear Uncle, shall see a life that is bright and beautiful and full of grace, we shall rejoice and look back on our present woes with tenderness, with a smile — and we shall rest.
