A tragic love quadrangle: an analysis of the SeagullBased on his real events and experiences, The Seagull is one of the most most remarkable works of Anton Chekhov. The play explores love, loss and despair. Despite the play's classification as fiction, the event that served as the catalyst for Anton Chekhov's dramatization did take place. As Keith Neilson stated: The Seagull was based on an event in the life of Anton Chekhov. One afternoon, while walking with his friend Ilya Levitan, the landscape painter, he saw Levitan shooting a seagull that was flying over the river. Later, the sullen painter, feeling slighted by the woman he loved, threw the dead seagull at his feet and threatened suicide. (Keith Neilson)After experiencing such a significant event, Chekhov used this incident as a backdrop for his work of fiction, The Seagull. In Chekhov's four-act play, he used various literary elements to explore the lives of his four main characters, Arkadina, Trigorin, Nina, and Konstantin. Specifically, Chehkov manifests his theme of unrequited love through various literary elements such as symbolism, foreshadowing, and motifs. These elements show how unrequited love can ruin a person's life. Unrequited love is the constant underlying theme of the play and Chekov displays this clearly through the use of symbolism. The most powerful symbol that Anton Chehkov uses throughout his play is the “seagull.” The seagull, like the lives of the four main characters, runs through the entire work, subtly bringing the characters to life. Initially, the seagull symbolizes the quest for freedom and independence. “NINA: My father and his wife will never let me come here; they call this place Bohemia and are afraid middle of paper...... they have a shared love for another man, Dorn, and are married to a man she does not love, Shamrayev. Anton Chekov's play, The Seagull, uses the literary elements of symbolism, foreshadowing, and motifs to convey the theme of the complexities of love. This theme allows the reader to understand different versions of love, such as expressive love and unrequited love, so that the reader can relate more to the play. “The deviations from traditional techniques, however, are not simply new stage gimmicks, but reflect Chekhov's fundamental dramatic and thematic aims. He was not interested in theatrics or excitement as such, but in the effects of such incidents on his people. In his view, reality does not consist of a series of dramatic climaxes but rather of a mundane process of everyday life in which crucial events occur quietly in the background. » (Keith Neilson).