The essay “Peculiarities of the problems of one of the works of V. Rasputin. “Moral issues of modern prose Critical materials of Internet libraries

Contemporaries often do not understand their writers or do not realize their true place in literature, leaving it to the future to make assessments, determine contributions, and place emphasis. There are plenty of examples of this. But in today's literature there are undoubted names, without which neither we nor our descendants can imagine it. One of these names is Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin. The works of Valentin Rasputin consist of living thoughts. We must be able to extract them, if only because it is more important for us than for the writer himself: he has done his job.

And here, I think, the most appropriate thing is to read his books one after another. One of the main themes of all world literature: the theme of life and death. But in V. Rasputin it becomes an independent plot: almost always an old person who has lived a lot and seen a lot in his life passes away from his life, who has something to compare with, something to remember. And almost always this is a woman: a mother who raised children and ensured the continuity of the family. For him, the theme of death is not so much, perhaps, a theme of leaving as a reflection on what remains - in comparison with what was. And the images of old women (Anna, Daria), which became the moral, ethical center of his best stories, old women perceived by the author as the most important link in the chain of generations, are an aesthetic discovery of Valentin Rasputin, despite the fact that similar images, of course, existed before him in Russian literature. But it was Rasputin, like perhaps no one before him, who managed to philosophically comprehend them in the context of time and current social conditions. The fact that this is not a random find, but a constant thought, is evidenced not only by his first works, but also by his subsequent, right up to the present day, references to these images in journalism, conversations, and interviews. Thus, even answering the question “What do you understand by intelligence?”, the writer immediately, as if from the series that is constantly in the sphere of mental activity, gives an example: “Is an illiterate old woman intelligent or unintelligent? She had never read a single book, and had never been to the theater. But she is naturally intelligent. This illiterate old woman absorbed the peacefulness of her soul partly along with nature, partly it was supported by folk traditions and a circle of customs. She knows how to listen, make the right counter movement, carry herself with dignity, and say exactly.” And Anna in “The Deadline” is the clearest example of an artistic study of the human soul, shown by the writer in all its majestic uniqueness, uniqueness and wisdom - the soul of a woman who comprehends and has even comprehended what each of us has thought about at least once in our lives.

Yes, Anna is not afraid to die, moreover, she is ready for this last step, because she is already tired, she feels that “she has lived down to the very bottom, boiled away to the last drop” (“Eighty years, as you can see, is still a lot for one person, if it has become so worn out that now you just have to throw it away..."). And it’s no wonder that I’m tired - all my life I’ve been running, on my feet, in work, in worries: children, house, garden, field, collective farm... And then the time came when there was no strength left at all, except to say goodbye to the children. Anna couldn’t imagine how she could leave forever without seeing them, without saying goodbye to them, without finally hearing their dear voices. The Ionins came to bury Varvara, Ilya and Lyusya. We set ourselves up for exactly this, temporarily dressing our thoughts in clothes appropriate for the occasion and covering the mirrors of the soul with the dark fabric of the upcoming parting. Each of them loved their mother in their own way, but they were all equally unaccustomed to her, separated long ago, and what connected them with her and with each other had already turned into something conventional, accepted by the mind, but not touching the soul. They were obliged to come to the funeral and fulfill this duty.

Having given the work a philosophical mood from the very beginning, conveyed by the mere presence of death next to a person, V. Rasputin, without lowering this level when it comes not to Anna, but, perhaps, drawing subtle psychologism precisely from the philosophical richness, creates portraits the old woman's children, bringing them to filigree with each new page. One gets the impression that with this meticulous work, with this recreation of the smallest details of their faces and characters, he delays the old woman’s death itself: she cannot die until the reader sees with his own eyes, to the last wrinkle, those whom she gave birth to, whom she was proud of, who finally remains on earth instead of her and will continue her through time. So they coexist in the story, Anna’s thoughts and the actions of her children, sometimes - occasionally coming closer, almost to the point of touching, sometimes - more often - diverging to invisible distances. The tragedy is not that they don’t understand it, but that it doesn’t occur to them that they really don’t understand. Neither her, nor the moment itself, nor those deep-seated reasons that can control a person’s condition beyond his will and desire.

So for whom did they gather here: for their mother or for themselves, so as not to look indifferent in the eyes of their fellow villagers? As in “Money for Mary,” Rasputin is concerned here with ethical categories: good and evil, justice and duty, happiness and human moral culture, but at a higher level, because they coexist with such values as death and the meaning of life. And this gives the writer the opportunity, using the example of the dying Anna, in whom there is more extract of life than in her living children, to deeply explore moral self-consciousness, its spheres: conscience, moral feelings, human dignity, love, shame, sympathy. In the same row is the memory of the past and responsibility towards it. Anna was waiting for the children, feeling an urgent inner need to bless them on their further path through life; the children hurried to her, striving to fulfill their external duty as carefully as possible - invisible and, perhaps, even unconscious in its entirety. This conflict of worldviews in the story finds its expression, first of all, in the system of images. It is not possible for grown-up children to understand the tragedy of the breakdown that has been revealed to them and the impending rupture - so what can be done if it is not given? Rasputin will find out why this happened, why they are like this? And he will do this, leading us to an independent answer, surprising in the psychological authenticity of the depiction of the characters of Varvara, Ilya, Lucy, Mikhail, Tanchora.

We must see each of them, get to know them better, in order to understand what is happening, why it is happening, who they are, what they are like. Without this understanding, it will be difficult for us to grasp the reasons for the almost complete loss of strength from the old woman, to fully understand her deep philosophical monologues, often caused by a mental appeal to them, the children, with whom the main thing in Anna’s life is connected.

They are difficult to understand. But it seems to them that they understand themselves, that they are right. What forces give confidence in such correctness, is it not the moral stupidity that has knocked out their former hearing - after all, it once existed, did it exist?! The departure of Ilya and Lucy is a departure forever; now from the village to the city it will not be one day’s journey, but an eternity; and this river itself will turn into Lethe, through which Charon transports the souls of the dead only from one bank to the other, and never back. But in order to understand this, it was necessary to understand Anna.

But her children were not ready to do this. And it’s not for nothing that against the background of these three - Varvara, Ilya and Lucy - Mikhail, in whose house his mother lives out her life (although it would be more correct - he is in her house, but everything has changed in this world, the poles have shifted, deforming the cause-and-effect relationships ), is perceived as the most merciful nature, despite his rudeness. Anna herself “did not consider Mikhail better than her other children - no, this was her fate: to live with him, and wait for them every summer, wait, wait... If you don’t take three years in the army, Mikhail was with his mother all the time, got married with her, he became a man, a father, like all men, he became mature, and with her, he was now approaching old age closer and closer.” Perhaps this is why Anna is brought closer by fate to Mikhail, because he is closest to her in the structure of his thinking, the structure of his soul. The same conditions in which she and her mother live, long communication that unites them through joint work, the same nature for two, prompting similar comparisons and thoughts - all this allowed Anna and Mikhail to remain in the same sphere, without breaking ties, and from only related ones , blood, turning them into a kind of pre-spiritual. Compositionally, the story is structured in such a way that we see Anna’s farewell to the world in an ascending manner - farewell as a strict approach to the most significant, after meeting with which everything else seems petty, vain, insulting this value, located at the highest level of the ladder of farewell. First, we see the old woman’s internal separation from her children (it is no coincidence that Mikhail, as the highest in spiritual qualities among them, will be the last one she sees), then follows her separation from the hut, from nature (after all, through the eyes of Lucy we see the same nature as Anna, while she was healthy), after which comes the turn of separation from Mironikha, as from a part of the past; and the penultimate, tenth, chapter of the story is devoted to the main thing for Anna: this is the philosophical center of the work, after passing through which, in the last chapter, we can only observe the agony of the family, its moral collapse.

After what Anna experienced, the last chapter is perceived in a special way, symbolizing the last, “extra” day of her life, which, in her own opinion, “she had no right to enter.” What happens on this day seems truly vain and agonistic, be it teaching the incompetent Varvara how to weave at a funeral or the untimely, causing departure of children. Perhaps Varvara could mechanically memorize a beautiful, deep folk lamentation. But even if she had memorized these words, she still would not have understood them and given them no meaning. And there was no need to memorize it: Varvara, citing the fact that the guys were left alone, leaves. And Lucy and Ilya do not explain the reason for their flight at all. Before our eyes, not only the family is collapsing (it fell apart long ago), but the elementary, fundamental moral foundations of the individual are collapsing, turning a person’s inner world into ruins. The mother’s last request: “I’ll die, I’ll die. You'll see. Sedni. Wait a moment, wait a minute. I don't need anything more. Lucy! And you, Ivan! Wait. I tell you that I will die, and I will die” - this last request went unheard, and it will not go in vain for either Varvara, Ilya, or Lyusa. This was for them - not for the old woman - the last of the last terms. Alas... That night the old woman died.

But we've all stayed. What are our names - aren't they Lyusyas, Barbarians, Tanchors, Ilyas? However, it's not about the name. And the old woman could be called Anna at birth.

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Lyceum of Modern Management Technologies No. 2

Abstract on the topic:

“Moral problems in the works of V. Rasputin”

Completed by: student of grade 11 “B”

Chubar Alexey Alexandrovich

Checked by: literature teacher

Bliznina Margarita Mikhailovna

Penza, 2008.

3
"Farewell to Matera" 4
"Money for Mary" 7
"Deadline" 9
"Live and Remember" 11
Conclusion 13
14

The range of moral problems in the author’s work

V. Astafiev wrote: “You always have to start with yourself, then you will reach the general, national, universal problems.” Apparently, Valentin Rasputin was guided by a similar principle on his creative path. He covers events and phenomena that are close to him in spirit, which he had to endure (the flooding of his native village in the work “Farewell to Matera”). Based on his personal experiences and observations, the author outlines a very wide range of moral problems, as well as many different human characters and personalities who solve these problems in their own way.

Sergei Zalygin wrote that Rasputin’s stories are distinguished by their special “artistic completeness” - completeness and completeness of “complexity”. Be it the characters and relationships of the heroes, be it the depiction of events - everything from beginning to end retains its complexity and does not replace the logical and emotional simplicity of some final, indisputable conclusions and explanations. The pressing question is “who is to blame?” in Rasputin’s works does not receive a clear answer. As if in return, the reader realizes the impossibility of such an answer; we guess that all the answers that come to mind are insufficient, unsatisfactory; they will not ease the burden in any way, will not correct anything, will not prevent anything in the future; we remain face to face with what happened, with that terrible, cruel injustice, and our whole being rebels against it...

Rasputin's stories are an attempt to find something basic and decisive in the mentality and consciousness of modern man. The author approaches his goal by highlighting and solving in his works such moral problems as the problem of memory, the problem of relationships between “fathers” and “children”, the problem of love and attachment to the native land, the problem of pettiness, the problem of empathy, compassion, mercy, conscience, the problem of the evolution of ideas about material values, a turning point in the spiritual life of mankind. It is worth noting that the author does not have works devoted to any of the above problems. Reading Rasputin's novels and stories, we see the deep mutual penetration of various moral phenomena, their interconnection. Because of this, it is impossible to clearly identify one specific problem and characterize it. Therefore, I will consider the “tangle” of problems in the context of certain works and in the end I will try to draw a conclusion on the moral issues of Rasputin’s work as a whole.

"Farewell to Matera"

Each person has his own small homeland, that land that is the Universe and everything that Matera became for the heroes of the story by Valentin Rasputin. All of V.G.’s books originate from love for his small homeland. Rasputin, so I would like to consider this topic first. In the story “Farewell to Matera” one can easily read the fate of the writer’s native village, Atalanka, which fell into a flood zone during the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station.

Matera is both an island and a village of the same name. Russian peasants inhabited this place for three hundred years. Life goes on slowly, without haste, on this island, and over those more than three hundred years, Matera has made many people happy. She accepted everyone, became a mother to everyone and carefully fed her children, and the children responded to her with love. And the residents of Matera did not need comfortable houses with heating, or a kitchen with a gas stove. They did not see happiness in this. If only I had the opportunity to touch my native land, light the stove, drink tea from a samovar, live my whole life next to the graves of my parents, and when the turn comes, lie next to them. But Matera leaves, the soul of this world leaves.

Mothers stand up to defend their homeland, try to save their village, their history. But what can old men and women do against the almighty boss, who gave the order to flood Matera and wipe it off the face of the earth? For strangers, this island is just a territory, a flood zone.

Rasputin skillfully depicts scenes of people parting with the village. Let’s read again how Yegor and Nastasya postpone their departure again and again, how they do not want to leave their native land, how Bogodul desperately fights to preserve the cemetery, because it is sacred to the inhabitants of Matera: “And the old women crawled around the cemetery until the last night, stuck put back the crosses, installed bedside tables.”

All this once again proves that it is impossible to tear a people away from the land, from its roots, that such actions can be equated to brutal murder.

The main ideological character of the story is the old woman Daria. This is the person who remained devoted to his homeland until the end of his life, until the last minute. This woman is a kind of guardian of eternity. Daria is a true national character. The writer himself is close to the thoughts of this sweet old woman. Rasputin gives her only positive traits, simple and unpretentious speech. It must be said that all the old residents of Matera are described by the author with warmth. But it is through Daria’s voice that the author expresses his judgments regarding moral problems. This old woman concludes that the sense of conscience has begun to be lost in people and society. “There are a lot more people,” she reflects, “but my conscience is the same... our conscience has grown old, she has become an old woman, no one looks at her... What about conscience if this happens!”

Rasputin's characters directly associate the loss of conscience with a person's separation from the earth, from his roots, from age-old traditions. Unfortunately, only old men and women remained faithful to Matera. Young people live in the future and calmly part with their small homeland. Thus, two more problems are touched upon: the problem of memory and the peculiar conflict of “fathers” and “children”.

In this context, “fathers” are people for whom breaking with the earth is fatal; they grew up on it and absorbed love for it with their mother’s milk. This is Bogodul, and grandfather Egor, and Nastasya, and Sima, and Katerina. “Children” are those youth who so easily left the village to the mercy of fate, a village with a history of three hundred years. This is Andrey, Petrukha, Klavka Strigunova. As we know, the views of “fathers” differ sharply from the views of “children,” therefore the conflict between them is eternal and inevitable. And if in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” the truth was on the side of the “children”, on the side of the new generation, which sought to eradicate the morally decaying nobility, then in the story “Farewell to Mother” the situation is completely opposite: young people are ruining the only thing that makes it possible preservation of life on earth (customs, traditions, national roots). This idea is confirmed by Daria’s words, expressing the idea of the work: “The truth is in memory. He who has no memory has no life.” Memory is not just events recorded in the brain, it is a spiritual connection with something. The writer makes you wonder whether a person who left his native land, broke with his roots, will be happy, and, by burning bridges, leaving Matera, will he not lose his soul, his moral support? Lack of connection with one’s native land, readiness to leave it and forget it like a “bad dream”, disdainful attitude towards one’s small homeland (“It should have been drowned a long time ago. There is no smell of living things... not people, but bugs and cockroaches. They found a place to live - in the middle of the water ... like frogs”) does not characterize the heroes from the best side.

The outcome of the work is deplorable... An entire village disappeared from the map of Siberia, and with it the traditions and customs that over the centuries shaped the human soul, his unique character, and were the roots of our lives.

V. Rasputin touches on many moral issues in his story, but the fate of Matera is the leading theme of this work. Not only is the theme traditional here: the fate of the village, its moral principles, but also the characters themselves. The work largely follows the traditions of humanism. Rasputin is not against change, he does not try in his story to protest against everything new, progressive, but makes one think about such transformations in life that would not destroy the humanity in a person. Many moral imperatives are also traditional in the story.

“Farewell to Matera” is the result of an analysis of one social phenomenon, carried out on the basis of the author’s memories. Rasputin explores the branchy tree of moral problems that this event exposed. Like any humanist, in his story he addresses issues of humanity and solves many moral problems, and also, which is not unimportant, establishes connections between them, demonstrates the inseparability and dependence on each other of the processes occurring in the human soul.

"Money for Mary"

For many of us, the concepts of “humanity” and “mercy” are inextricably linked. Many people even identify them (which, however, is not entirely true). The humanist writer could not ignore the topic of mercy, and it is reflected in the story “Money for Mary.”

The plot of the work is very simple. An emergency occurred in a small Siberian village: the auditor discovered a large shortage from the store clerk Maria. It is clear to both the auditor and fellow villagers that Maria did not take a penny for herself, most likely becoming a victim of the accounting neglected by her predecessors. But, fortunately for the saleswoman, the auditor turned out to be a sincere person and gave five days to pay off the shortage. He took into account, apparently, both the woman's illiteracy and her disinterestedness, and most importantly, he took pity on the children.

This, it would seem, quite everyday situation shows human characters well. Maria's fellow villagers take a kind of test of mercy. They are faced with a difficult choice: either help out their conscientious and always hardworking countrywoman by lending her money, or turn away, not notice the human misfortune, keeping their own savings. Money here becomes a kind of measure of human conscience. The work reflects the author’s perception of various kinds of misfortunes. Rasputin's misfortune is not just a misfortune. This is also a test of a person, a test that reveals the core of the soul. Here everything is revealed to the bottom: both good and bad - everything is revealed without concealment. Such crisis psychological situations organize the dramaturgy of the conflict in this story and in other works of the writer.

Maria's family always treated money simply. Husband Kuzma thought: “yes - good - no - oh well.” For Kuzma, "money was patches that are put on the holes necessary for living." He could think about stocks of bread and meat - one cannot do without this, but thoughts about stocks of money seemed to him amusing, buffoonish, and he brushed them aside. He was happy with what he had. That is why when trouble knocked on his house, Kuzma does not regret the accumulated wealth. He thinks about how to save his wife, the mother of his children. Kuzma promises his sons: “We will turn the whole earth upside down, but we will not give up our mother. We are five men, we can do it.” Mother here is a symbol of the bright and sublime, incapable of any meanness. Mother is life. Protecting her honor and dignity is what is important to Kuzma, not money.

But Stepanida has a completely different attitude towards money. She can’t bear to part with a penny for a while. School director Evgeniy Nikolaevich also has difficulty giving money to help Maria. It is not a feeling of compassion for his fellow villager that guides his action. He wants to strengthen his reputation with this gesture. He advertises his every step to the whole village. But mercy cannot coexist with rude calculation.

Thus, in the person of the head of the family, we see an ideal that we need to be equal to, solving questions about prosperity and its impact on people's consciousness, about family relationships, the dignity and honor of the family. The author again demonstrates the inextricable connection of several moral problems. A minor deficiency allows you to see the moral character of the representatives of society, reveals different facets of the same quality of a person.

"Deadline"

Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin is one of the called masters of "village prose", one of those who continue the traditions of Russian classical prose, primarily from the point of view of moral and philosophical problems. Rasputin explores the conflict between a wise world order, a wise attitude to the world and an unwise, fussy, thoughtless existence. The search for the roots of this conflict in the 1970 story “The Deadline.”

On the one hand, the narration is conducted by an impersonal narrator, depicting the events in the house of the dying Anna, on the other hand, it is as if Anna herself tells her views, thoughts, feelings are transmitted in the form of improperly direct speech. This organization of the story creates a feeling of dialogue between two opposing life positions. But in fact, the author’s sympathies are clearly on Anna’s side; the other position is presented in a negative light.

Rasputin's negative position belongs to the author's attitude towards Anna's already adult children, who gathered in the house of a dying old mother to say goodbye to her. Only after all, you can’t plan the moment of death, you can’t calculate ahead of time, like a train stopping at a station. Contrary to all forecasts, old woman Anna is in no hurry to close her eyes. Her strength weakens and then returns again. Meanwhile, Anna’s children are primarily occupied with their own concerns. Lyusya hurries to sew a black dress for herself while her mother is still alive, in order to look appropriate at the funeral, Varvara immediately begs for this unsewn dress for her daughter. Sons Ilya and Mikhail thriftily buy a box of vodka - "the mother must be seen off as it should" - and begin to drink in advance. And their emotions are unnatural: Barbara, only having arrived and opening the gate, “as soon as she turned on herself, she began to cry: “You are my mother-ah!” Lucy “also shed a tear.” All of them - Ilya, and Lucy, and Varvara, and Mikhail - have already come to terms with the inevitability of loss. An unexpected glimmer of hope for recovery causes them not relief, but rather confusion and annoyance. It was as if their mother had deceived them, as if she had forced them to waste their time and nerves, and had mixed up their plans. So the author shows that the spiritual world of these people is poor, they have lost their noble memory, are concerned only with petty matters, have become divorced from Nature (the mother in Rasputin’s story is the nature that gives life). Hence the author’s disgusted detachment from these heroes.

Rasputin wonders why Anna’s children have such thick skin? They weren't born that way, were they? And why did such a mother have soulless children? Anna recalls the past, the childhood of her sons and daughters. He remembers when Mikhail’s first child was born, how happy he was, he burst into his mother with the words: “look, mother, I am from you, he is from me, and someone else is from him...”. Initially, the heroes are able to “sensitively and acutely be surprised at their existence, at what surrounds them at every step,” they are able to understand their participation in the “endless goal” of human existence: “so that the world never grows poor without people and grows old without children.” But this potential was not realized; the pursuit of momentary benefits eclipsed the whole light and meaning of life for Mikhail, Varvara, Ilya and Lyusa. They have no time and do not want to think; they have not developed the ability to be surprised by existence. The writer explains the main reason for moral decline, first of all, by the loss of a person’s spiritual connection with his roots.

In this story, there is one image that is completely opposed to the images of Anna’s insensitive children - this is the youngest daughter Tanchor. Tanya retained the consciousness of her connection with the whole world, coming from childhood, and a grateful feeling for her mother, who gave her life. Anna remembers well how Tanchora, diligently combing her head, said: “You’re doing great for us, Mom.” - “What else is this?” - the mother was surprised. “Because you gave birth to me, and now I live, and without you no one would have given birth to me, so I would never have seen the world.” Tatyana differs from her brothers and sisters in her sense of gratitude to her mother, to the world, hence all the best, morally bright and pure, sensitivity to all living things, joyful liveliness of disposition, tender and sincere love for her mother, which neither time nor distance can extinguish . Although she is also capable of betraying her mother, she did not even consider it necessary to respond to the telegram.

Anna Stepanovna never lived for herself, never shied away from duty, even the most burdensome one. No matter whoever was close to her in trouble, she looked for her guilt, as if she had overlooked something, was too late to intervene in something. There is a conflict between pettiness, callousness and a sense of responsibility for the whole world, a certain selflessness and kindness. The author's position is obvious; he is on the side of the rich spiritual world. For Rasputin, Anna is the ideal image. The writer said: “I have always been attracted to images of ordinary women, distinguished by selflessness, kindness, and the ability to understand another.” The strength of the characters of Rasputin's favorite heroes lies in wisdom, in the people's worldview, and in people's morality. Such people set the tone and intensity of the spiritual life of the people.

In this work, the connection of several moral problems is less noticeable. The main conflict of the work, however, can be associated with the conflict between “fathers” and “children”. It should be noted that the problem of crushing the soul posed by the author is very large-scale and deserves consideration in a separate work.

"Live and Remember"

This story was born from the contact between the writer’s experiences in childhood and his present-day thoughts about the village during the war years. And again, as in “Money for Maria” and in “The Deadline,” Valentin Rasputin chooses a critical situation that tests the moral foundations of the individual.

Did the main character know at that very moment when, succumbing to mental weakness, he jumped on a train heading not to the front, but from the front to Irkutsk, what this action would turn out to be for him and his loved ones? Perhaps he guessed, but only vaguely, indistinctly, for fear of fully thinking through everything that was going to happen after this, after this.

Every day that Andrei avoided war did not delay, but brought closer the tragic outcome. The inevitability of tragedy is contained in the very plot of “live and remember,” and all pages of the story breathe with a foreboding of tragedy. Rasputin does not lead his hero to a choice, but begins with a choice. From the first lines, Guskov is at a fork in the road, one of which leads to war, towards danger, while the other leads away from war. And by giving preference to this second road, he sealed his fate. He disposed of it himself.

Thus, one of the most important moral problems arises in the author’s work - the problem of choice. The work shows that one should not succumb to temptation (even such a “high” one as meeting with family) or give in to slack. The hero is lucky on his way home; in the end he achieves his goal without being put on trial. But, having avoided the tribunal, Guskov still did not escape the trial. And from punishment, perhaps more severe than execution. From moral punishment. The more fantastic the luck, the more clearly in “Live and Remember” is the roar of an impending disaster.

Conclusion

Valentin Rasputin has already traveled a long creative path. He wrote works that raise a huge number of moral problems. These problems are very relevant in modern times. What is especially noteworthy is that the author does not look at the problem as an isolated, separate phenomenon. The author explores the interconnection of problems by studying the souls of people. Therefore, you can’t expect simple solutions from him.

After Rasputin's books, the idea of life becomes somewhat clearer, but not simpler. At least some of the many schemes with which the consciousness of any of us is so well equipped, in contact with this artistically transformed reality, reveal their approximateness or inconsistency. The complex in Rasputin remains complex and ends in a complicated way, but there is nothing deliberate, artificial in this. Life is really replete with these complexities and an abundance of interrelations between phenomena.

Valentin Rasputin, with everything he wrote, convinces us that there is light in a person and it is difficult to extinguish it, no matter what circumstances happen, although it is possible. He does not share a gloomy view of man, of the original, fearless "viciousness" of his nature. In the heroes of Rasputin and in himself there is a poetic sense of life, opposed to the base, naturalistic, its perception and image. He remains faithful to the traditions of humanism to the end.

Used literature and other sources:

1. V.G. Rasputin “Live and Remember. Stories" Moscow 1977.

2. F.F. Kuznetsov “Russian literature of the 20th century. Sketches, essays, portraits" Moscow 1991.

3. V.G. Rasputin “Down and Upstream. Stories" Moscow 1972.

4. N.V. Egorova, I.V. Zolotareva “hourly developments in Russian literature of the XX century”, Moscow, 2002.

5. Critical materials of Internet libraries.

6. www.yandex.ru

7. www.ilib.ru

In Atamanovka

And here Andrey is in his native village. He secretly approaches his home and steals an ax and skis from the bathhouse. Nastya guesses who the thief might be and decides to make sure of it: at night she meets Andrei in the bathhouse. He asks her not to tell anyone that she saw him: realizing that his life has reached a dead end, he sees no way out of it. Nastya visits her husband, who has found refuge in a remote winter camp in the middle of the taiga, and brings him food and necessary things. Soon Nastya realizes that she is pregnant. Andrei is happy, but they both understand that they will have to pass off the child as illegitimate.

In the spring, Guskov's father discovers his gun is missing. Nastya tries to convince him that she exchanged the gun for a captured German watch (which Andrei actually gave her) in order to sell it and hand over the money for a government loan. As the snow melts, Andrei moves to a more distant winter quarters.

End of the war

Nastya continues to visit Andrey, who would rather commit suicide than show himself to people. The mother-in-law notices that Nastya is pregnant and kicks her out of the house. Nastya goes to live with her friend Nadya, a widow with three children. The father-in-law realizes that Andrei may be the father of the child and asks Nastya to confess. Nastya does not break her word to her husband, but it is hard for her to hide the truth from everyone, she is tired of constant internal tension, and besides, the village begins to suspect that Andrei may be hiding somewhere nearby. They start following Nastya. She wants to warn Andrei. Nastena swims towards him, but sees that her fellow villagers are swimming after her, and rushes into the Angara.

Who is the main character of the story: deserter Andrey or Nastya?

Let's listen to what the author himself says.
“I wrote not only and least of all about the deserter, about whom for some reason everyone is constantly talking, but about a woman... A writer does not need to be praised, but needs to be understood.”
It is from these author’s positions that we will consider the story. Although, of course, the image of Andrei is quite interesting in the sense that the writer makes a deep analysis of the state of the human soul at a crisis moment of its existence. In the story, the fates of the heroes are intertwined with the fate of the people at the most difficult moment in their history.
So, this is a story about a Russian woman, “great in her exploits and in her misfortunes, keeping the root of life” (A. Ovcharenko).

Image of Nastena

“During the frosts, in the Guskovs’ bathhouse, located in the lower garden near the Angara, closer to the water, a loss occurred: a good, old-fashioned carpenter’s ax of Mikheich disappeared... Someone who was in charge here grabbed a good half of the leaf tobacco-samosad from the shelf and in the dressing room I coveted old hunting skis.”
The ax was hidden under the floorboard, which means that only those who knew about it, only their own, could take it. This is exactly what Nastya immediately guessed. But this guess was too scary for her. Something heavy and terrible settles in Nastya’s soul.
And then, in the middle of the night, “the door suddenly opened, and something, brushing against it, rustling, climbed into the bathhouse.” This is Nastena’s husband, Andrey Guskov.
The first words addressed to his wife were:
- Shut up Nastena. It's me. Be quiet.
He couldn’t say anything more to Nastya. And she was silent.
Further, the writer “shows how, having violated his duty, a person thereby places himself, trying to save a life, outside of life... Even the closest people, his wife, distinguished by rare humanity, cannot save him, for he is doomed by his betrayal” (E . Osetrov).

Nastyona's rare humanity

What is Nastya’s tragedy? The fact is that she found herself in a situation that even the power of her love could not resolve, because love and betrayal are two incompatible things.
But here too the question is: did she love her husband?
What does the author say about her life before meeting Andrei Guskov?
Nastya became an orphan at the age of 16. Together with her little sister, she begged, and then worked for her aunt’s family for a piece of bread. And it was at that moment that Andrei asked her to marry him. “Nastena threw herself into marriage like into water, without any extra thought: she would have to leave anyway...” And although she had to work no less in her husband’s house, it was still her home.
She felt a sense of gratitude towards her husband for taking her as his wife, bringing her into the house and at first not even giving offense.
But then a feeling of guilt arose: they did not have children. In addition, Andrei began to raise his hand against her.
But still, she loved her husband in her own way, and most importantly, she understood family life as loyalty to each other. Therefore, when Guskov chose this path for himself, she accepted it without hesitation, as well as her path, her suffering on the cross.
And here the difference between these two people clearly manifests itself: he thought only about himself, seized by the desire to survive at all costs, and she thought more about him and how best to help him. She was absolutely not characterized by the selfishness that filled Andrei.
Already at the first meeting, he says to Nastya words that, to put it mildly, do not correspond to their previous relationship: “Not a single dog should know that I am here. If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you. I'll kill - I have nothing to lose. Remember that. I can get it from wherever you want. Now I have a firm hand on this, I won’t lose it.” He needs Nastya only as a breadwinner: to bring a gun, matches, salt.
At the same time, Nastya finds the strength to understand a person who finds himself in an extremely difficult situation, even if it was created by himself. No, neither Nastya nor the readers justify Guskov, we are just talking about understanding the human tragedy, the tragedy of betrayal.
At first, Andrei did not even think about desertion, but the thought of his own salvation increasingly turned into fear for his life. He did not want to return to the front again, hoping that the war would end soon: “How can we go back, again to zero, to death, when it’s nearby, in its old days, in Siberia?! Is this right and fair? He just needs to be at home for one single day, to calm his soul - then he’s again ready for anything.”
V. Rasputin, in one of the conversations dedicated to this story, said: “A person who has set foot on the path of betrayal at least once follows it to the end.” Guskov set foot on this path even before the very fact of desertion, i.e. internally he already accepted the possibility of escape by heading in the opposite direction from the front. He thinks more about what he faces for this than about the inadmissibility of this step at all. Guskov decided that it was possible to live by different laws than the rest of the people. And this opposition doomed him not just to loneliness among people, but also to reciprocal rejection. Guskov chose to live in fear, although he perfectly understood that his life was at a dead end. And he also understood: only Nastya would understand him and would never betray him. She will take his blame.
Her nobility, openness to the world and goodness are a sign of a person’s high moral culture. Although she very much feels spiritual discord, because she is right in front of herself - but not right in front of people; does not betray Andrei - but betrays those whom he betrayed; honest before her husband - but sinful in the eyes of her father-in-law, mother-in-law and the entire village. She has retained a moral ideal and does not reject the fallen; she is able to extend a hand to them. She simply cannot afford to be innocent when her husband suffers from what he did. This guilt she voluntarily accepts is a manifestation and proof of the heroine’s highest moral purity. It would seem that until the last days of her life she should hate Andrei, because of whom she is forced to lie, dodge, steal, hide her feelings... But she not only does not curse him, but also offers her tired shoulder.
However, this mental heaviness exhausts her.

Still from the movie “Live and Remember”
... Not knowing how to swim, she risks herself and her unborn child, but once again gets across the river to convince Guskov to surrender. But this is already useless: she is left alone with double guilt. “Fatigue turned into a desired, vengeful despair. She didn’t want anything anymore, didn’t hope for anything, an empty, disgusting heaviness settled in her soul.”
Seeing herself being chased, she again feels a surge of shame: “Does anyone understand how shameful it is to live when someone else in your place could live better? How can you look people in the eyes after this...” Nastena dies by throwing herself into the Angara. “And there wasn’t even a pothole left in that place for the current to trip over.”

What about Andrey?

We see Guskov’s gradual fall, a fall to an animal level, to biological existence: the killing of a roe deer, a calf, “conversations” with a wolf, etc. Nastena does not know all this. Perhaps, knowing this, she would have decided to leave the village forever, but she feels sorry for her husband. And he thinks only about himself. Nastya tries to turn his thoughts in the other direction, towards her, and tells him: “What can I do with me? I live among people - or have you forgotten? What am I going to tell them, I wonder? What will I tell your mother, your father? And in response he hears what Guskov should have said: “We don’t care about anything.” He doesn’t think about the fact that his father will definitely ask Nastena where the gun is, and his mother will notice that she is pregnant - he will have to explain somehow.
But he doesn’t care about this, although his nerves are on edge: he is angry at the whole world - at the winter hut, which is set for a long life; at the sparrows that chirp loudly; even on Nastena, who does not remember the harm done to her.
Moral categories gradually become conventions for Guskov, which must be followed when living among people. But he was left alone with himself, so only biological needs remain for him.

Is Guskov worthy of understanding and pity?

The author, Valentin Rasputin, also answers this question: “For a writer there is not and cannot be a complete person... Do not forget to judge and then justify: that is, try to understand, comprehend the human soul.”
This Guskov no longer evokes positive feelings. But he was also different. And he didn’t become like this right away; at first his conscience tormented him: “Lord, what have I done?!” What have I done, Nastena?! Don’t come to me anymore, don’t come – do you hear? And I'll leave. You can not do it this way. Enough. Stop tormenting yourself and tormenting you. I can not".
Guskov’s image leads to the conclusion: “Live and remember, man, in trouble, in grief, in the most difficult days and trials: your place is with your people; any apostasy, whether caused by your weakness or lack of understanding, turns into even greater grief for your Motherland and people, and therefore for you too” (V. Astafiev).
Guskov paid the ultimate price for his action: it will never continue in anyone; No one will ever understand him the way Nastena does. And it doesn’t matter how he lives next: his days are numbered.
Guskov must die, but Nastena dies. This means that the deserter dies twice, and now forever.
Valentin Rasputin says that he expected to leave Nastena alive and did not think about the ending that is now in the story. “I was hoping that Andrei Guskov, Nastena’s husband, would commit suicide. But the further the action continued, the more Nastena lived with me, the more she suffered from the situation in which she found herself, the more I felt that she was leaving the plan that I had drawn up for her in advance, that she was no longer subordinate to the author, that she is beginning to live an independent life.”
Indeed, her life has already gone beyond the boundaries of the story.

In 2008, a film based on V. Rasputin's story "Live and Remember" was made. Director A. Proshkin. In the role of Nastya - Daria Moroz. In the role of Andrey - Mikhail Evlanov.
Filming took place in the Krasnobakovsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region, among the Old Believer villages, on the basis of which the image of the village of Atamanovka from the book by Valentin Rasputin was created. Residents of the surrounding villages took part in the crowd scenes, and they also brought preserved wartime items as props.

Composition

The problem of morality has become especially relevant in our time. In our society, there is a need to talk and think about the changing human psychology, about the relationships between people, about the meaning of life that the heroes and heroines of novels and short stories so tirelessly and so painfully comprehend. Now at every step we encounter the loss of human qualities: conscience, duty, mercy, kindness. In Rasputin's works we find situations close to modern life, and they help us understand the complexity of this problem. The works of V. Rasputin consist of “living thoughts”, and we must be able to understand them, if only because for us it is more important than for the writer himself, because the future of society and each individual depends on us.

The story “The Last Term,” which V. Rasputin himself called the main one of his books, touched on many moral problems and exposed the vices of society. In the work, V. Rasputin showed relationships within the family, raised the problem of respect for parents, which is very relevant in our time, revealed and showed the main wound of our time - alcoholism, raised the question of conscience and honor, which affected every hero of the story. The main character of the story is the old woman Anna, who lived with her son Mikhail. She was eighty years old. The only goal left in her life is to see all her children before death and go to the next world with a clear conscience. Anna had many children. They all left, but fate wanted to bring them all together at a time when the mother was dying. Anna's children are typical representatives of modern society, busy people with a family and a job, but for some reason they remember their mother very rarely. Their mother suffered greatly and missed them, and when the time came to die, only for their sake she stayed a few more days in this world and she would have lived as long as she wanted, if only they were nearby. And she, already with one foot in the next world, managed to find the strength to be reborn, to blossom, and all for the sake of her children. “Whether it happened by a miracle or not by a miracle, no one will say, only when she saw her children did the old woman begin to come to life.” What about them? And they solve their problems, and it seems that their mother does not really care, and if they are interested in her, it is only for the sake of appearances.

And they all live only for decency. Don’t offend anyone, don’t scold anyone, don’t say too much – everything is for the sake of decency, so as not to be worse than others. Each of them, on difficult days for their mother, goes about their own business, and their mother’s condition worries them little. Mikhail and Ilya fell into drunkenness, Lusya walks, Varvara solves her problems, and none of them came up with the idea of giving their mother more time, talking to her, just sitting next to them. All their concern for their mother began and ended with the "semolina porridge", which they all rushed to cook. Everyone gave advice, criticized others, but no one did anything themselves. From the very first meeting of these people, arguments and swearing begin between them. Lusya, as if nothing had happened, sat down to sew a dress, the men got drunk, and Varvara was even afraid to stay with her mother. And so the days passed: constant arguments and swearing, insults at each other and drunkenness. This is how the children saw off their mother on her last journey, this is how they took care of her, this is how they cherished and loved her. They did not imbue the mother's state of mind, did not understand her, they only saw that she was getting better, that they had a family and a job, and that they needed to return home as soon as possible. They could not even say goodbye to their mother properly. Her children missed the “deadline” to fix something, ask for forgiveness, just be together, because now they are unlikely to get together again.

In this story, Rasputin very well showed the relationship of the modern family and their shortcomings, which are clearly manifested at critical moments, revealed the moral problems of society, showed the callousness and selfishness of people, their loss of all respect and the usual feeling of love for each other. They, native people, are mired in anger and envy. They care only about their own interests, problems, only their own affairs. They do not even find time for close and dear people. They did not find time for the mother - the dearest person. For them, “I” comes first, and then everything else. Rasputin showed the impoverishment of the morality of modern people and its consequences. The story "The Deadline", on which V. Rasputin began working in 1969, was first published in the magazine "Our Contemporary", in numbers 7, 8 for 1970. She not only continued and developed the best traditions of Russian literature - primarily the traditions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - but also gave a new powerful impetus to the development of modern literature, setting her a high artistic and philosophical level.

The story was immediately published as a book in several publishing houses, was translated into other languages, and published abroad - in Prague, Bucharest, Milan. The play "Deadline" was staged in Moscow (at the Moscow Art Theater) and in Bulgaria. The fame brought to the writer by the first story was firmly established. The composition of any work by V. Rasputin, the selection of details, and visual means help to see the image of the author - our contemporary, citizen and philosopher.

One of the most famous modern Russian writers is Valentin Rasputin. I read a lot of his works, and they attracted me with their simplicity and sincerity. In my opinion, among Rasputin’s defining life impressions, one of the most powerful was the impression he received from ordinary Siberian women, especially old women. There were many things that attracted them: calm strength of character and inner dignity, selflessness in difficult village work and the ability to understand and forgive others.

This is Anna in the story The Last Term. The situation in the story is set right away: an eighty-year-old woman is dying. It seemed to me that life, introduced by Rasputin in his stories, is always taken at the moment of a breakthrough in its natural course, when suddenly a great misfortune looms with inevitability. It seems as if the spirit of death is hovering over Rasputin's heroes. The old tofamark from the story And Ten Graves in the Taiga thinks almost exclusively about death. Aunt Natalya is ready for her date with death in the story Money for Maria. Young Leshka dies in the arms of his friends (I forgot to ask Leshka...). A boy accidentally dies from an old mine (There, on the edge of the ravine). Anna in the story The Last Time is not afraid to die, she is ready for this last step, because she is already tired, feels that she has lived down to the very bottom, has boiled away to the last drop. All my life I’ve been running, on my feet, in work, in worries: children, house, garden, field, collective farm... And then the time came when there was no strength left at all, except to say goodbye to the children. Anna couldn’t imagine how she could leave forever without seeing them, without finally hearing her own voices. During her life, the old woman gave birth many times, but now she has only five left alive. It turned out this way because first death began to wander into their family, like a ferret into a chicken coop, and then the war began. They separated, the children scattered, they were strangers, and only the imminent death of their mother forces them to come together after a long separation. In the face of death, not only the spiritual depth of a simple Russian peasant woman is revealed, but also the faces and characters of her children appear before us in a revealing light.

I admire Anna's character. In my opinion, it has preserved the unshakable foundations of truth and conscience. There are more strings in the soul of an illiterate old woman than in the souls of her urban children who have seen the world. There are also heroes in Rasputin who, perhaps, have few of these strings in their souls, but they sound strong and pure (for example, the old Tofamarca woman from the story The Man from This World). Anna and, perhaps to an even greater extent, Daria from the story Money for Maria, in terms of wealth and sensitivity of spiritual life, in intelligence and knowledge of a person, can be compared with many heroes of world and Russian literature.

Take a look from the outside: a useless old woman is living out her life, she hardly gets up in recent years, why should she continue to live? But the writer describes her to us in such a way that we see how in these last, seemingly completely worthless years, months, days, hours of her , minutes there is intense spiritual work going on in her. Through her eyes we see and evaluate her children. These are loving and pitying eyes, but they accurately notice the essence of changes. The change in face is most clearly visible in the appearance of Ilya’s eldest son: Next to his bare head, his face seemed unreal, painted, as if Ilya had sold his own or lost at cards to a stranger. In him, the mother either finds traits familiar to her, or loses them.

But the middle daughter Lyusya became all city, from head to toe, she was born from an old woman, and not from some city woman, probably by mistake, but then she found her own anyway. It seems to me that she has already been completely reborn to the last cell, as if she had neither childhood nor rural youth. She is jarred by the manners and language of the village sister Varvara and brother Mikhail, their indelicacy. I remember one scene when Lucy was about to take a health walk in the fresh air. A picture of her once native places appeared before her eyes, which painfully struck the woman: an abandoned, neglected land was spread out before her, everything that had once been well-groomed, brought into an expedient order by the loving labor of human hands, now converged in one strange wide desolation. Lucy understands that she was tormented by some kind of silent long-standing guilt, for which she will have to answer. This is her fault: she completely forgot everything that happened to her here. After all, she was given to know both the joyful dissolution in her native nature, and the daily example of a mother who felt a deep kinship with everything living (it was not for nothing that Luce remembered the case when her mother affectionately, like a native person, raised the horse Igrenka, hopelessly fallen behind plowing, completely exhausted), remembered it and the terrible consequences of national tragedies: a split, struggle, war (an episode with a driven, brutalized Bandera).
Of all Anna's children, I liked Mikhail the most. He stayed in the village, and Anna is living out her life with him. Mikhail is simpler, ruder than her city children, he has more bumps with pretensions and pours on him, but in fact he is more cordial and deeper than the others, not like Ilya, he rolls through life like a cheerful bun, trying not to touch any corners.

The two chapters in the story are magnificent about how, having bought two boxes of vodka for the supposed wake, the brothers, overjoyed that their mother had suddenly miraculously recovered from death, began to drink them, first alone, and then with their friend Stepan. Vodka is like an animated creature, and, like an evil, capricious ruler, you need to be able to handle it with the least possible losses for yourself: you need to take it out of fear, ... I don’t respect drinking it alone. Then she, cholera, is angrier. The highest moment in the lives of many, especially men, alas, was drinking. Behind all the colorful scenes, behind the picaresque stories of drunkards (here is the story of Stepan, who fooled his mother-in-law and snuck into the underground for moonshine), behind the comical conversations (say, about the difference between a woman and a woman) there arises real social, popular evil. About the reasons for drunkenness, Mikhail said: Life is completely different now, almost everything has changed, and they, these changes, demanded supplements from a person... The body demanded rest. It's not me who drinks, it's him who drinks. Let's return to the main character of the story. In my opinion, old woman Anna embodied all the best aspects of the original Siberian character in her tenacity in carrying out everyday tasks, in her firmness and pride. In the last chapters of the story, Rasputin focuses entirely on his main character and the final segment of her life. Here the writer introduces us to the very depths of a mother’s feelings for her last, most beloved and closest child, her daughter Tanchora. The old woman is waiting for her daughter to arrive, but she, unfortunately, did not arrive, and then something in the old woman suddenly snapped, something burst with a short groan. Of all the children, again only Mikhail was able to understand what was happening to his mother, and he again took sin upon his soul. Your Tanchora will not arrive, and there is no point in waiting for her. I sent her a telegram not to come, overpowering himself, he puts an end to it. It seems to me that this act of his cruel mercy is worth hundreds of unnecessary words.

Under the pressure of all the misfortunes, Anna prayed: Lord, let me go, I will go. Let's go to the mine of my death, I'm ready. She imagined her death, her mortal mother, as the same ancient, emaciated old woman. Rasputin’s heroine envisions her own departure to the far side with amazing poetic clarity, in all its stages and details.

Leaving, Anna remembers her children in those moments when they expressed the best in themselves: young Ilya very seriously, with faith, accepts his mother’s blessing before leaving for the front; Varvara, who grew up such a whiny, unhappy woman, is seen in early childhood digging a hole in the ground just to see what is in it, looking for something that no one else knows about her, Lucy desperately, with all her being, rushes from the departing ship to meet her mother, leaving home; Mikhail, stunned by the birth of his first child, is suddenly pierced by an understanding of the unbreakable chain of generations in which he has thrown a new ring. And Anna remembered herself at the most marvelous moment of her life: She is not an old woman, she is still a girl, and everything around her is young, bright, beautiful. She wanders along the shore along a warm, steamy river after the rain... And it is so good, so happy for her to live at this moment in the world, to look at its beauty with her own eyes, to be among the stormy and joyful action of eternal life, consistent in everything, that she is dizzy head and a sweet, excited ache in my chest.

When Anna dies, her children literally abandon her. Varvara, citing the fact that she left the boys alone, leaves, and Lyusya and Ilya do not explain the reasons for their flight at all. When the mother asks them to stay, her last request goes unheard. In my opinion, this will not be in vain for either Varvara, Ilya, or Lyusa. It seems to me that this was the last of the last terms for them. Alas…

The old woman died during the night.

Thanks to Rasputin's works, I was able to find answers to many questions. This writer remains in my opinion one of the best, leading modern prose writers. Please do not pass by his books, take them off the shelf, ask at the library and read slowly, slowly, thoughtfully.