What is a summary of fiddler on the roof?

Answer 1

This is a play about tradition. Tevye, the lead character, says that without their traditions, the villagers are as shaky as a Fiddler on the Roof, meaning that if you play the fiddle on the rooftops, you're likely to slip and fall off!

Tevye is a milkman with five daughters, and is trying to follow tradition and marry them to good husbands. The oldest one is promised to the butcher, who's Tevye's age -- but she is in love with the tailor, who is her age. Tevye agrees to go against tradition and let them get married. The next daughter falls in love with a revolutionary-minded student and they get married without his permission. He eventually accepts this break from tradition. The third daughter falls in love with a Christian, and he does not forgive her for that after she runs away with him, but at the end of the play, there is hope that he might give in at last.

The background of the story is the Russian revolution, and the time of persecution of the Jews in Russia.