Suicide and existential ending in the play Ivanov

Many contemporary theorists of Drama’s world believe that the root of most main schools of dramatic literature of 21th century, like absurd and existentialism, should be search in Chekhov’s drama. They think that many of these schools are indebted to traditions of Chekhov drama. In this essay with use of an analytical approach we are describing that suicide of Ivanov, main character of Chekhov first full length drama, is not a sudden death rather it’s arising from an “existential fear” that is one of the basic concepts of existentialism school. As suicide is the last action of the play and converge all events of the play has an important influence in forming and making the ending. Although Chekhov writes decades before the rise of existentialism school but the original ideas of his plays are very similar to many existentialist philosophers and writers, especially Heidegger, Camus and Sartre. So to clarify and explain questions and answers of this essay, we used their views.