The Discontentment of Intelligence in Checkov's Three Sisters

When a person is smarter than the people that he or she is brought into company, conversation can become boring. There isn’t much to talk about because no one has anything in common. This can lead to discontentment in one’s life, for everything can seem mediocre. This is true for Masha from the play Three Sisters, by playwright Anton Checkov. Masha and her two sisters, Irena and Olga, were brought up by their …

…knows all of this and that is the reason she keeps returning back to this poem when everything goes wrong. Masha is too intelligent for her own good. She cannot be content in her current situation with Koolyghin, for she loves Vershinin. Nevertheless, she cannot be with Vershinin because she is married to Koolyghin. She had resigned herself to these truths and she knows that, “We must go on living… we must go on living.” (329)