The work "In People", written Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, is autobiographical. The narrator tells about the hard life of poor children and teenagers before the revolution.
Alyosha and Sasha's parents died. The boys served in the shoe shop. In addition, Alyosha performed household duties in the shop owner's house. The teenager's life was not easy, but he tried to do all the work honestly.
Relations between the brothers did not work out, Alyosha decided to run away. But this idea did not come true. The teenager suffered severe burns and was taken to the hospital.
Then Alyosha again began to live in his grandfather's house. The teenager became close to his grandmother, they often spent time together.
There was not enough money in the family, and Alyosha had to get a job as a servant again. But even there the teenager did not like it. The work was difficult, the owners allowed him to walk. The teenager ran away to work on the ship. Here Alyosha saw how the book characters did not look like ordinary people. This discovery saddened the teenager.
In the summer, Alyosha earned money by catching and selling birds. But with the advent of winter, this business had to be abandoned and again go to work for strangers. The gray everyday life of a teenager was brightened up only by communication with an adult beautiful woman, who evoked in Alyosha not only a feeling of first falling in love, but also a passion for reading poems.
Then the teenager fell ill and stopped seeing. Dependence on other people strong influence to Alyosha. But, fortunately, he soon recovered.
Again, the teenager had to work hard, and he saw the whole vile essence of people, how shopkeepers robbed the poor, buying expensive books and ancient icons from them for pennies.
Maxim Gorky once again reminds readers that one can remain honest and a good man even in difficult life situations.
Picture or drawing In people
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Composition
Peshkov did not like to invent, although he was a romantic. And his pseudonym - Gorky - gives off a light coquetry of a young writer. However, in childhood and adolescence, life did not at all please the future writer. His attitude to reading was like an attempt to escape from the realities of the gloomy routine. As in our time, some people hide from reality in the illusion of a virtual world, so he tried to protect his childish psyche from a cruel life with the help of literary fiction therapy. I vividly imagine a half-starved, beaten by the owner boy, catching the reflected light of the moon and directing these meager rays to the cherished book. Of course, everything was not as simple as it seems after a while. Such titans of thought as Lomonosov, Peshkov, Leo Tolstoy were genetically aimed at knowledge. And they managed to get them, despite any circumstances. Who knows, if Gorky's childhood had been similar to Tolstoy's, he might have achieved even more than the fame of a writer and a just person. It is possible that he would become a doctor of some sciences, an academician, a famous scientist or a major political figure.
But he became a writer without favorable conditions. On the contrary, his entire environment “was aimed at making the boy an ordinary hard worker, drunk and hooligan. And so the harsh embodiment of the environment would have happened if it were not for the books in which he found other ideals and which determined his moral goals.
It is known that the first literary experiments Peshkov were received favorably by critics and readers. Although not all. Too naturalistic (albeit in a light veil of romance) he displayed life. In this, his literary fate was a bit like that of Jack London, whose harsh realism of creativity was partly perceived negatively. Accustomed to a certain sentimentality and happy endings, readers both admired and cursed at the author, who plunged them into the cruel world of their era.
Yes, the writer himself sometimes followed the style of mass novels of that time, limited in plot and style.
But talent is not able to live within the established limits. After Chelkash, quite mature works appear in which the writer's skill is developed in full force. A special place among them is occupied by biographical books. They are not only realistic, but also polyphonic, since the epoch in all its diversity is shown through the fate of the boy.
Ultimately, every writer tries to find his own understanding of the truth through his own creativity. And this truth is different for everyone. In de Sade, the truth is in sexual perversions and not human cruelty. For Nietzsche, it consists in the realization of the idea of the superman. Rasputin - in praising the moral purity of the villagers. Gorky's different books interpret this understanding in different contexts.
"Mother" is almost a custom-made book in which the truth acquires the imposed idea of communism "in Lenin's way". Novels about the fate of the merchants, on the contrary, are multifaceted. And the fate of the heroes is not at all unambiguous. "In people" - a frank and transparent life of a small person who is trying to become worthy of a human title.
And in the creation of this work, those books that the hero managed to read - often stealthily - played a huge role.
The composition of the story is quite complex. The narrative of Izergil, who told a lot in her lifetime, is divided into three, as it were, independent parts (the legend of Larra, Izergil's story about his life, the legend of Danko), each of which is entirely subordinated to one goal - to most fully create the image of the protagonist. Therefore, all three parts are a single whole, permeated with a common idea, which is the author's desire to reveal the true value human life. The composition is such that two legends, as it were, frame the story of the life of Izergil, which constitutes the ideological center of the work. Legends reveal two concepts of life, two ideas about it.
The system of images is completely subordinated to the author's desire to best reveal the theme of the work, since the question of freedom and lack of freedom of a person haunts him throughout creative life. The most vivid images of the story, bearing the main ideological load, include the images of Larra, Danko and the old woman Izergil.
Larra, leading the image of the first legend, is presented to the reader in the worst possible light. Exorbitant pride, enormous selfishness, extreme individualism that justifies any rigidity - all this causes only horror and anger in people. The son of an eagle and an earthly woman, he, considering himself the embodiment of strength and will, puts his "I" above the people around him, than doomed himself to eternal loneliness, contempt and dislike. Therefore, the long-awaited freedom and immortality is a strange and inevitable punishment for him.
In the story, Larra is opposed to the hero of the second legend, who expresses the highest degree of love for people. Danko's pride is the strength of his spirit, self-confidence. He, having sacrificed his life for the sake of the liberation of people, deserves true immortality for the feat accomplished in the name of the life and happiness of the people.
One of the less visible, but no less significant images is the image of the narrative. It is this image of a man wandering around Rus', meeting on his way the most different people, includes essential means expressions of the author's position. It is through the eyes of the autobiographical hero that the reader sees Izergil. Her portrait immediately reveals a very significant contradiction. A young girl would have to tell about beautiful and sensual love, but a deep old woman appears before us. Izergil is sure that her life, filled with love, went completely differently than Larra's life. She cannot even imagine anything in common with him, but the narrator's gaze finds this commonality, paradoxically bringing their portraits closer.
The attitude of the author to the outcast Larre, in my opinion, is unequivocal. Condemning the life position of this hero, Gorky shows what result individualistic morality leads a person to. In the image of Danko, the writer embodies his ideal of a strong personality capable of self-sacrifice.
In all his images (episodic and main), Gorky sees a manifestation of the folk character of the turn of the century, tries to explore its strengths and weaknesses, expressing his position not directly, but indirectly, with the help of a variety of artistic means. In "Old Woman Izergil" the connection with the traditions of romanticism is clearly felt in the sharp opposition of the two heroes, in the use of romantic images of darkness and light (comparison of the shadows of Larra and Danko in the legend of Danko), in the hyperbolic depiction of the heroes ("There was so much longing in his eyes that could have poisoned all the people of the world with it." The depiction of colorful landscapes is of great artistic value. It not only conveys unforgettable impressions to the reader, but also, as it were, brings together "real life" and "fairy tale".
The originality of the genre (story within a story), which plays a large ideological and artistic role in this work, allows the writer to establish a connection between the legendary stories told by Izergil and reality.
A special place in the story is occupied by elements of a detailed description of Izergil, such as: "dim eyes," cracked lips, "a wrinkled nose, bent like an owl's nose," "black pits of the cheeks," a strand of ash-gray hair. "They tell of a difficult the life of the main character long before she tells her story. The meaning of the title of this work is quite easily determined. The fact is that the image of the old woman Izergil is as close as possible to the image of "a person living among people". Only she is endowed with the right and opportunity in an accessible form express their own view of life.Therefore, it is her consciousness, character, and sometimes mysterious contradictions that turn out to be the main subject of the image, from which it can be concluded that the story was written in order to create an image, after which the work is named.
Among the series of countless chapters and events, it is sometimes difficult to single out the only thing for which the work was written. Not everyone fully understands that dialogues, characters and events, although they are key factors in the narrative, cannot in themselves be the answer to the question: “What was this work about?”.
This is especially true in the works of the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorkov, it is not for nothing that his stories and novels are studied exclusively in high school. The story "In People" is no exception to this list.
The analysis of this work causes difficulties for many people, and sometimes it becomes very difficult for them to explain: “What, in fact, was this story about?”.
The work “In People” throughout all the chapters tells about the fate of an early orphaned child who had to work “in people” all his childhood away from home and family. He now and then had to do the dirtiest and most difficult work in order to somehow feed himself.
He saw a lot of dirt and injustice of the world on his way, and only books that he read in rare moments of leisure could save him from the gloom of what is happening around and give him the strength to wake up every new morning.
The end of this story is open, but gives hope for a better future: after long wanderings, Alyosha decides to get out of the "swamp" surrounding him and makes a fateful decision to go to college in a big city.
What does this story tell between the lines? There are actually quite a few topics, but a number of the main ones stand out clearly. Firstly, this, of course, is the theme of the deep depravity of the society of that era. This is evidenced by many episodes in the life of an orphan. These are also memories of a Cossack who tricked a certain woman out of the house, after which he severely beat and raped her. These are stories about the family of the owner, in whose house Alyosha worked.
Tales of men and women who were languishing with boredom and whose sole purpose was food and sleep. As a child, Alyosha was almost the only character who could read. Small child looked around, but saw only half of people with rotten souls, capable only of violence, deceit and betrayal. Rare meetings of Alyosha with really good people were extremely rare.
The second theme smoothly follows from the first one: the theme of early maturing of children and their moral upbringing. Maxim Gorky repeatedly emphasized that at the age of 13-15 main character I felt almost like a flabby old man, tired of life. In the conditions of life in which poor children found themselves, they had no chance of remaining children.
They grew up too fast, became smart and sad beyond their years. But the Author retains a certain optimism. On the example of the protagonist, he shows that such difficult living conditions for strong people become not only not destructive, but also save them. After all, the difficulties only tempered the soul and character of Alyosha, made him truly strong and kind person able to overcome any hardships of life.
The third theme is the theme of the role of books in a child's life. Think about what has kept Alyosha afloat all these years? Did it not let you give up, forced you to go forward, made him really wise in his thoughts and decisions and helped in the end not to merge with the withering crowd? Helped get out of vicious circle? Yes, they were books. Books in which the characters were brave and smart were the right example for Alyosha. Books that taught him to think made it possible to go to college. They played a really huge role in Alyosha's life.
So what is M. Gorky's story "In People" about? It is about the impoverishment and ugliness of society, which, in boredom and ignorance, has lost its human appearance. It is about the early maturation of children that face non-childish difficulties and the moral education of such children. In the end, it is about the invaluable contribution of books to the life and improvement of not only the child, but every single person.
When a child is no longer a child, but still far from adulthood, it was customary to call him a child in Rus'. Thus, the period of adolescence began at the age of ten or eleven. However, Maxim Gorky called his story, dedicated to the biography of the teenager Alyosha Peshkov, who remained an orphan at the age of eleven, in a completely different way - "In people". This name says a lot: to be "in people" meant living with complete strangers, sometimes earning a living by very hard work.
Indeed, after Alyosha Peshkov’s mother died, and even earlier, his father, the teenager’s grandfather, Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, died of cholera, said that he was not going to feed his grandson and sent him to a shoe store "boy". Alyosha's duties included meeting customers, but he had to work more at home: he swept the floor, washed dishes, and put on a samovar. He had to get up early in the morning with the cook, and go to bed very late. Anguish seized the boy when he went to bed in the evening. The situation was aggravated by cousin Sasha, who felt his superiority in age. He pushed Alyosha around, threatened with witchcraft - as a result, the boy was ready to run wherever his eyes looked, but due to an accident (he knocked over hot soup on his hands) he ended up in the hospital, and then with his grandmother.
However, a return to his former life did not work out: many of his old friends died or left the city, Alyosha had already grown out of childish games, so his love of reading saved him. Grandmother introduced him to folklore, revealed the beauty mother tongue. Thanks to her, he fell in love with nature and went to the forest with pleasure, watching how his grandmother talked with herbs and all living things around.
With the onset of cold weather, Alexei again had to go "to the people", because he could no longer make a living by catching birds, as in the summer. But wherever he ended up - in a shoe store, in a drawing workshop - only a heavy, "black" work, and the opportunity to study was not provided.
A lot of life experience received by a teenager who accidentally turned out to be a worker on a steamer. He witnessed human meanness and weakness, saw drunkenness and depravity, and was tormented by the realization that in life people are not at all like those described in books. There are no heroes, but only cowards and scoundrels.
But there were still those who left a mark on the soul of the boy. Once a Good Deed first pushed him to a book, later Alyosha took books from educated women, one of which shocked the hero's imagination the most. She was a beautiful and proud woman, surrounded by the attention of men, but clearly suffering from inner loneliness. Alyosha called her Queen Margot. It was she who instilled in him a taste for good reading, gave him the opportunity to read the Russian classics, to fall in love with the poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Odoevsky: she believed that you need to read Russian books in order to know Russian life. Alyosha experienced his first true love for Queen Margo.
However, he had to continue his hard way "in people". Fate even brought him to an icon-painting workshop, where he faced injustice: he saw how old people were robbed, buying old books and icons for next to nothing. In the evenings, Alyosha read aloud to the craftsmen who had gathered to rest after work. Only now it was not easy to get books - sometimes you had to beg for them as alms. At the same time, more than once the teenager heard from people the expression "forbidden books", the meaning of which I could not yet understand.
Having accidentally met his former master, Alyosha agreed to become "foreman"- an overseer of the workers who restored the malls at the fair after the flood. He, a teenager, had a hard time, because the workers openly laughed at his youth and did not really listen. Alyosha, at the age of 15, it seemed that he was already an elderly person, and everyone around was strangers. Most recently, he was going to leave for Astrakhan, and from there to flee to Persia, but he did not do this, and time was lost.
Loitering around the city, the grown-up Alexei saw a lot of abomination in human life, realizing that a few more years, and he himself would become like that if he didn’t break out of this provincial "bogs". Fortunately for him, Nikolai Evreinov, a high school student living nearby, persuaded Alyosha to go to Kazan in order to prepare for university admission. Thus ends this important era of growing up for every person.
Drawing a terrible life "lead abominations" life of the urban lower classes, Gorky shows how the preaching of patience, which was widespread at that time, was overcome in the mind of a teenager, how the will of him and his peers was tempered and the desire to resist evil and violence grew stronger. The writer with psychological accuracy reproduces the desire of the boy, and then the young man to "beautiful, cheerful, honest" life.
Certainly, autobiography story is obvious: Gorky wrote about his fate. But he sincerely considered his biography typical of representatives of the lower classes. However, the writer entrusts his hero with contact with the era, although the burden of historical responsibility for everything that the reader sees in his fate falls on the shoulders of the hero. So Maxim Gorky was one of the first to show the conflict between man and era. In works written in Soviet time, but remaining outside the scope of official literature, such a conflict will become the main one, as in B. Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago" or in A. Platonov's story "Doubting Makar".
Gorky's life was full of adventures and events, sharp turns and changes. My literary activity he began with a hymn to the madness of the brave and stories celebrating the man-fighter and his desire for freedom. Gorky knew the world of outcasts well. After all, together with them he walked many miles along the roads of Russia, worked in ports, bakeries, for rich owners in the village, spent the night with them in the open, often falling asleep hungry: to see where I live, what kind of people are around me,” wrote Gorky in 1910. It was this period of the writer's life that was reflected in such of his early works as "Old Woman Izergil", "Chelkash", "Makar Chudra" and others.
These stories are not only poetic legends, in them - living life with its ideological searches and contradictions. These works grew out of real soil. With his early romantic stories with bright, passionate and freedom-loving heroes, Gorky sought to awaken the souls of the townspeople. To them, to these philistines who have despaired and fallen, Gorky opposes his selfless heroes: Danko, the gypsy freemen, the proud natures of freedom-loving people,
who prefer death to submission even to a loved one. Well done
Loiko and the beautiful Radda perish, refusing love and happiness, for the sake of which
sacrifice freedom. Radda and Loiko strive to be free as the wind, satellite
their camp. Their independence and pride delight and attract attention, but also
doom these heroes to loneliness and the impossibility of happiness. They don't become
slaves of your feelings. They are ready to give their lives for freedom. And "handsome Loiko" cannot
catch up with the proud Radda,” because he had two options before him: kill Radda or
kill himself, and he chose the most cruel path, forgetting about the girl's father, Danil. By their death they affirm that happiness is freedom.
Gorky expressed this thought through the lips of Makar Chudra, who precedes his story about Loiko and Rada with the following (with the words: “Well, falcon, do you want to tell one true story?
remember, and, as you remember, you will be a free bird for your life.” Among the proud and
freedom-loving heroes, the wise old Izergil with special force expresses the writer's thought about the responsibility of a person for himself, his actions and deeds.
Staryxa Izergil, who tells wonderful tales and so loves “beautiful
and strong”, lived a life filled with “greedy love”.
She was subject to this insatiable passion, but in love she was freer and did not allow herself to be humiliated or even subjugated. She perfectly understood people, appreciated the best in them, but she was looking only for love, and when love passed, the person seemed to die for her.
“I never dated the people I loved. These are bad meetings, as with
the dead." Throughout her life, Izergil carried a sense of human
dignity; neither the vicissitudes of fate nor the danger of death could break him,
nor the fear of losing a loved one, losing love. Her life story is
the history of freedom and beauty of the highest moral values of man.
Her story about the selfless, heroic feat of Danko seems to us real story, witnessed by Izergil herself. Izergil confronts the intellectuals who have lost the will to live. But who are the people for whom Danko sacrificed his life, whom he brought out of the darkness of the forest and swamps into light and freedom, lighting the way for them with his burning heart? These are the same people against whom Izergil is fighting. With this work, Gorky calls on his contemporaries to fight for freedom and happiness.
people, and immediately. Or else take higher development pride and freedom in
demihuman Larre. After all, in common man they just wouldn't show up that way. A
here is a punishment for Larra was quite human. “Man pays for everything himself”,
Izergil says. Larra, on the other hand, “wanted to have everything and keep himself whole.” He seems to have received everything, became free, but everything received without sacrifice has depreciated, lost its meaning. Larra, Danko, Loiko Zobar - all of them can part with anything, but not with freedom.
The hero of Gorky, captured in "Chelkash" and many other works ("Konovalov", " former people”), is a person who seeks the truth, thirsts for justice, but stumbles upon a wall of rejection, becomes an anarchist. Chelkash cannot find love for freedom and therefore turns into an egoist individualist, whom life pushes to crimes. In Chelkash, Gorky is attracted by the fact that he is able to seek the truth and the meaning of life. Chelkash, of course, is romantic.
He is strong, brave, courageous, noble in his own way, he is able to throw all his money to the cowardly and miserable Gavrila, who almost killed him. Chelkash, like all the heroes of Gorky's early work, is looking for freedom, but his freedom is flawed: it is based on the same primitive instinct of the owner as Gavrila, to whom he
envious: “your own master”, “your own land”, “your home” ... “You can demand from any respect for you” - such are the reasoning of Chelkash.
In general, Gorky, as it were, revealed to us that there are somewhere, not beyond the seas and oceans, but here in Russia there are proud and freedom-loving people. These free heroes resist the society that rejected them with their love of freedom, independence, breadth of soul and humanity. In the early stories of Gorky, there is a wide panorama of the life of workers, peasants, artisans, and intellectuals. These are vagabonds, and thieves, and representatives of the young bourgeoisie. It is real, not fictional life that arises before us. And the most important thing is that no matter who Gorky writes about, the personality is at the center of his events. The author chose all the most important and essential, and discarded “everything accidental”, which may interfere with showing a person as he is.
All the heroes of Gorky's early work are morally emotional and experience spiritual trauma, choosing between love and freedom, but they still choose the latter, bypassing love and preferring only freedom.
