Two years after the events of the third act, the set­ting tran­si­tions to a room in Sor­in’s house now used by Trepli­eff as a writ­ing room. The scene begins with Masha and Med­viedenko enter­ing, dis­cussing their lives and the tur­bu­lent weath­er, hint­ing at the inter­nal and exter­nal storms present in their lives and the lives of the oth­er char­ac­ters. Med­viedenko desires to return home to his baby, but Masha insists on stay­ing overnight, sig­nal­ing her unrest and dis­tance from her fam­i­ly life.

As the scene devel­ops, the com­plex­i­ties of the char­ac­ters’ rela­tion­ships are laid bare. Masha, mar­ried to Med­viedenko out of a sense of hope­less­ness, still har­bors feel­ings for Trepli­eff, who is pre­oc­cu­pied with his writ­ing and the absence of Nina, a woman he deeply loves but who has left to pur­sue an act­ing career. Trepli­ef­f’s rela­tion­ship with his moth­er, Arkad­i­na, is strained, demon­strat­ing a con­flict between his aspi­ra­tions as a writer and her dis­mis­sive­ness toward his work. The cul­tur­al and finan­cial gaps between the char­ac­ters, such as Dorn’s rel­a­tive wealth and the oth­ers’ strug­gles, reflect broad­er social ten­sions.

Nina’s entrance marks a cli­max, reveal­ing her trans­for­ma­tion from an ide­al­is­tic girl into a woman marked by hard­ship. Despite achiev­ing her dream of becom­ing an actress, she’s faced with the real­i­ty of her choic­es, includ­ing a failed rela­tion­ship with Trig­orin and the loss of her child. This encounter with Trepli­eff explores themes of art, mem­o­ry, and the painful recog­ni­tion of their changed real­i­ties and unful­filled desires.

In their exchange, Nina refers to her­self as a sea-gull, a metaphor for her inno­cence and the dev­as­ta­tion that fol­lowed her ambi­tions. Despite their shared his­to­ry and unre­solved feel­ings, a chasm has grown between them, filled with Nina’s suf­fer­ing and Trepli­ef­f’s cre­ative and emo­tion­al stag­na­tion. Nina’s depar­ture, leav­ing Trepli­eff in despair, sym­bol­izes the end of their youth­ful illu­sions and the stark accep­tance of their respec­tive paths marked by com­pro­mise, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, and the endur­ing but painful nature of love.

The chap­ter con­cludes with an omi­nous shot, quick­ly fol­lowed by attempts to nor­mal­ize the sud­den dis­tur­bance, sym­bol­iz­ing the char­ac­ters’ des­per­a­tion to main­tain a facade of order amidst the chaos of their lives. Trepli­ef­f’s destruc­tion of his man­u­scripts sig­ni­fies a moment of cri­sis in his cre­ative life, mir­ror­ing his per­son­al tur­moil and the col­lec­tive despair of the char­ac­ters, who are caught between their aspi­ra­tions and the harsh real­i­ties they face.