Uncle Vanya reducing the cast-list from almost two dozen down to nine, changing the climactic suicide of "The Wood Demon" into the famous failed homicide of "Uncle Vanya", and altering the original happy ending into a more problematic, less final resolution—critics such as Donald Rayfield, Richard Gilman, and Eric Bentley have sought to chart the development of Chekhov's dramaturgical method through the 1890s. Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revised "The Wood Demon" during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891. A garden in Serebryakov's country estate. Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov
The Orchard Keeper The Orchard Keeper The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by the American novelist Cormac McCarthy. It won the 1966 William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel. "The Orchard Keeper" is set during the inter-war period in the hamlet of Red Branch, a small, isolated community in Tennessee. Its story revolves around three characters: Uncle Arthur Ownby, an isolated Woodman, who lives beside a rotting apple orchard; John Wesley Rattner, a young mountain boy; and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger. The novel begins with Marion picking up a hitchhiker named Kenneth Rattner, who attacks Marion with a tire