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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Normal Eccentricity:
In the play's expositional conversation between Astrov and Marina, Astrov tells her that he has become an eccentric on account of the eccentric people around him. In the fourth act, he again brings up eccentricity, but this time to describe Voynitsky. Imbuing the motif with paradox, he tells Voynitsky that being an eccentric is normal:
You aren’t mad but simply an eccentric. A buffoon. I used to consider all eccentrics sick, abnormal, but I’m now of the opinion that the normal condition of man is to be eccentric. You’re quite normal.
People usually use the word "eccentric" to refer to those who behave in an unconventional or odd way. Consequently, the word by definition means the opposite of normal. Nevertheless, Astrov concludes in his conversation with Voynitsky that most people are eccentric—that it is more normal than being ordinary.
Through this paradox, Astrov makes a comment on the play's characters. In his view, they and the other people surrounding him in his daily life are difficult to understand. He finds it much rarer to fully comprehend the people he encounters than to struggle to make sense of their behavior. And even if he states that eccentricity is rather universal, Astrov's comment to Voynitsky does come with a certain degree of disdain. The other word he proposes, "buffoon," has a negative connotation. Buffoons may make people laugh, but their behavior is ridiculous.
This relates to the comment he makes early in the play, when he says it is an "unavoidable fate" to gradually become an eccentric yourself when "you're surrounded by eccentrics, nothing but eccentrics, and you live with them two or three years." In this way, eccentricity is a sort of infectious disease that unavoidably spreads between people. Eccentricity is also negatively loaded in this early conversation with Marina, as Astrov relates it to the "boring, stupid, dirty" nature of life, which "drags one down." He may be normalizing eccentricity, but it nevertheless bothers him.
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