Trigorin comes across as a reasonable man, but a close reading of the play reveals him as cold-hearted and unprincipled when it comes to using others to advance his agenda. While talking with Nina, he sees the dead seagull and writes something in the notebook he always carries with him. When Nina asks him what he wrote, he says,
An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed.