# Yermolay Lopahin — The Cherry Orchard character guide

> Yermolay Lopahin in The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Lopahin, Madame Lopahin, Yermolay Alexeyevitch, Yermolay

**First appearance:** 0001-the-cherry-orchard

## Snapshot

The peasant boy Lyubov once washed blood off is now a rich merchant in a white waistcoat, reading a book he can't make head or tail of.

## Who they are

Lopahin arrives at the station early, falls asleep waiting, and wakes to a house where he is both guest and creditor. He remembers Lyubov's kindness to him as a bleeding boy, yet he is the one who will do the arithmetic on her orchard; he calls himself a peasant even as he wears the waistcoat of a rich man. His restlessness — the book he can't read, the mooing joke at Varya's door — is the story's engine, the new money circling the old house it can't quite belong to.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_cherry_orchard_se/characters/lopahin
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_cherry_orchard_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_cherry_orchard_se/characters