Character Analysis
Andrey is the only son in the Prozorov family. Because of the whole universal belief that men represent the future, this means that at the beginning of the play everyone is super pumped on him. Just wait, ladies.
Anyway, like Irina, he has a really clear arc in the play, transitioning from ambition and resolve to despair and resignation. As the family genius, Andrey is subjected to both the terribly high expectations of his sisters and their relentless teasing. He's a solitary guy, usually coming and going through the large group scenes. When the girls harass him for his crush on Natasha, he starts sweating. "Will you all please stop it," he begs (1.139). He seems to like Natasha because she's the opposite of his sisters, "so sweet and so ordinary" (1.223). Famous last words (at least, in nineteenth-century Russia).
Natasha's ordinariness—read, lower-middle-class values—becomes a huge problem just a couple years later, though, after the birth of their first child. She prattles on about the baby and Andrey simply isn't interested. It's funny and also kind of sad when he spills out his troubles to Ferapont, the deaf old worker. "How funny life is," he muses, "Today I had nothing to do, I was bored, I picked up this book—my old lecture notes from the university—and I started to laugh" (2.20). Geez, we hope we never feel that way about school.
The ambitions Andrey had in Act I have totally fallen away and he slips more and more into irrelevance. Out of a need for some entertainment, he begins gambling. Finally coming clean to his sisters—whom he has always respected and feared—he admits, "I mortgaged this house, and I didn't get your permission. It's my fault and I'm sorry and I ask you to forgive me. I had to do it because I owed a lot of money—thirty-five thousand" (3.121). Whoa, dude. When his sisters don't say anything, he rambles on and cries over his unhappiness, and their shared unhappiness, with Natasha. Should have stuck with the higher education thing, bro.
At the end of the play, Andrey seems old well before his time. He walks back and forth with the baby carriage. Natasha intermittently entertains her lover in the house while Andrey sits idly by, and if that weren't enough already, she yells at him to be quiet. Chebutykin's sage advice? "Put on your hat, pick up your stick, and get out of here. Don't look back. And the farther away you get, the better" (4.78).
We don't have to worry about little Bobik and Sophie, though. It's clear that Andrey's not going anywhere. Not that anyone would be much worse off if he did. And he, for one, would sure as heck be a bit better. (But then, we could say that about pretty much everyone in the play.)