Images in the story of V. Rasputin “To the same land

In the creation of national spiritual culture different peoples a special role belongs to fiction and, first of all, to writers who consciously work in line with the traditions of Russian classics, in whose works one can find a variety of connections with their predecessors.

That is exactly what it is contemporary writer Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin, widely known in our country and abroad. He was born in 1937 in the village of Ust - Uda, located on the banks of the Angara, three hundred kilometers from Irkutsk. The beauty of the taiga region brought up in the future writer a tender love for nature. After graduating from a rural secondary school in 1954, Rasputin entered the Irkutsk University at the Department of History and Philology. The beginning of his journalistic activity also belongs to this time.

Since the beginning of the 80s, Rasputin has seen his main task as a writer in the struggle for the conservation of nature and spiritual rebirth of people. One of its main themes is the theme of memory, the theme of preserving the moral experience of previous generations. It is the theme of morality that he reveals in his story The Last Term. With the story of Rasputin, the mystical beginning returned to literature: the problems of life and death appeared in an eternal, timeless dimension. This was a turn to the traditions of Russian classics of the 19th century. V.Rasputin's creativity revealed to the world the deepest processes taking place in the country, in society, in the souls of our people.

The Red Book of Russian life in the story Deadline

The plot of Rasputin's story The Last Term is very simple. Anna is dying. According to a telegram from his son Mikhail, the eldest village daughter Barbara, the middle city daughter Lucy and the son Ilya, who lost his face, come to the funeral. Only the youngest and beloved daughter of the old woman Anna Tatyana, or Tanchora, as her mother always called her, was the only one of all the children who did not come, and there was not a word about her, not even a spirit. Delighted by the arrival of the children, the mother unexpectedly came to life for them. Varvara, Ilya and Lyusya, having stayed for three days and wishing their mother to live a long time, leave their parents' house, and at night the old woman died.

The central image of the work has long matured in the work of V. Rasputin. The prototype of the old woman Anna was V. Rasputin's grandmother Maria Gerasimovna. For its literary incarnation, the writer prepared, trained from his very first works. The features of the old woman Anna are already guessed in an early, dependent story - an essay And ten graves in the taiga, in the mournful image of a mother who gave birth fourteen times, and only two ... remained alive. The colors for the portrait were carefully selected, and their relevance and accuracy were checked on the sketches; We find the touches of the future image in the details seen earlier and even embodied in phrases that later, almost without change, will form the fabric of the story: The old woman was not afraid of death, she knew that there was no escape from death. She fulfilled her human duty... Her lineage continues and will continue - she was a reliable link in this chain to which other links were attached... The old woman died at night.

The old woman Anna is the image of an old Russian woman who still remembers her life before the revolution, survived several wars, gave them several of her children, and to them, the children, gave herself all. She gave to her children - that means she gave to the world, society, country - that's why this image is so close to us.

Anna has exhausted her life and with a light soul she meets death, which she thought about many times ... and knew her like herself - no, she is not afraid to die, everything has its place. Enough, profited, seen enough. She has nothing more to spend in herself, all spent - empty. Were exhausted to the very bottom, boiled away to the last drop.

She only knew: the children who had to be fed, watered, washed, prepared ahead of time, so that there was something to drink, feed them tomorrow. Looking back now at these years from her death door, she does not find much difference between them - all of them, urging each other on, passed the same way in a hurry: ten times a day the old woman lifted her head into the sky to see where the sun was, and she remembered herself - already high, already low, and she still hasn't done her job. It’s always the same: the kids were pulling, the cattle were screaming, the garden was waiting, and also the work in the field, in the forest, on the collective farm - an eternal whirlwind in which she had no time to breathe and look around, to hold in her eyes and soul the beauty of the earth and sky . Hurry, hurry, she urged herself on, pouncing first on one thing, then on another, and no matter how hard they did, there was no end in sight ....

Having given her whole life to her children, having spent all her strength on them and now not even being able to get out of bed, the old woman is most worried that she has become a burden to Mikhail and his family. Snatching from the distant girlish years the memory of a young, bright, beautiful nature and regretting for a moment that this beauty remains without her, she immediately shamed herself: she would be good if she wanted everything in the world to grow old and die with her. Bedridden, waiting for her death hour, in the allotted her last minutes she worries about her girlfriend Mironiha - Isn't it with her that it's ripe. One itch, like a finger.

Work in all the works of V. Rasputin is a vital matter, the number one question, that even saying goodbye to life, the old woman Anna argues ... with Mironikha more from resentment, almost jealousy: here Mironikha is able to go after a cow, but she is not. Accustomed to the whole world to meet both trouble and a holiday, convinced by personal experience of the effectiveness of collective work, knowing the price of mutual assistance and good neighborliness, the heroes of the Last Period do not fence off their souls from someone else's misfortune.

Reflecting on his dying mother, Mikhail says: We don't have a father, and now our mother will move, and all, and alone. Not small, but alone. Say, our mother has long been of no use, but it was believed: her first turn, then ours. It seemed to block us, you could not be afraid. And now live and think ... It seems like he went out into a bare place, and you can be seen all around. But the mother not only blocked them, she also kept the family together.

Death is the same heroine of the book as Anna. She looks into their faces, listens to their simple testaments, looks back at their lives and accepts them carefully with motherly love.

The family in the story Last term we find on the verge of final collapse. Rather, it has already broken up today. Of the many children of the old woman Anna, only Varvara visits her, - when potatoes or something else is needed, and the rest - as if they are not in the world.

They gather - and not all of them - at their mother's deathbed. And the fact that the only topic for conversation was their childhood memories, and how the brothers are trying in vain to restore contact through a bottle, and the sisters, calming their own conscience, reproach each other for spiritual callousness. There is no family for a long time, the only thing that somehow still holds her together is her mother. But now the old woman Anna dies - and do not gather them together anymore.

And even worse is that it was not love that gathered the children’s mother, not the desire to spend her in last way, but the fear that they will be condemned in the same way as they condemn Tanchora, the most beloved daughter of the old woman Anna, who never came to her dying mother. There is something touching in how patiently, but also stubbornly, Anna waits for her youngest, most beloved daughter. Only Tatyana is missing; Tanchora, - the old woman uttered with a plea; Here Tatyana is not going now either ... She ... will see her in a dream, then something else ...; And then Tanchora left, and disappeared. Saying goodbye to this earthly daughter, without meeting with her - at least mentally - she can not.

In a short time, the moral essence of four adults is exposed, which can hardly be called healthy.

Valentin Rasputin in the story Deadline wrote the Red Book of Russian life. The Red Book of Rasputin is hot and disturbing, and it hurts in the heart, but there is pain for death, and there is for healing. Before the writer, as before anyone else, the soul of a Russian person was opened. The author does not complicate, does not artificially bind life, he tries to untie its knots, to lead his hero out of the labyrinth.

The theme of memory in the work Live and remember

With the greatest acuteness, the moral problems are posed by the writer in his story Live and Remember. The work is written with the author's deep knowledge of folk life, psychology common man. The author places his characters in difficult situation. The young guy Andrei Guskov honestly fought almost until the very end of the war. Among the scouts, he was considered a reliable comrade, he was taken with him in a pair to insure each other, the most desperate guys. He fought like everyone else - no better and no worse. The soldiers valued him for his strength - stocky, wiry, strong. Life in the war was very difficult at times, but no one complained, because everyone got it equally. And so much they who fought, from the first days of the war, endured and withstood that I wanted to believe: there must be a special pardon given by fate for them, death must retreat from them, since they have managed to protect themselves from it so far.

Large and small homeland in Farewell to Matera

Heroes of V. Rasputin's prose - simple people from the village, all roots connected with their native land, natural in their worldly wisdom and unfailingly decent in their life ideas. So, in the story Farewell to Matera, a wonderful image of the old woman Daria is displayed, in which the sense of family, responsibility to the ancestors is sharpened to the limit. The story is structured in such a way that we gradually enter the space of Matera and its history, which allows us not only to get used to the time and place of action, but also to become close to them. The first chapter is devoted to the island and the village. It's like a bird's-eye view, a kind of general portrait. In the second chapter, we get acquainted with the main character of the work, "the oldest of the old women" Daria, and with other inhabitants of the island, and we do not get acquainted superficially, but immediately plunging into their life, worries, fates. We begin to guess how they lived, we see what they are and what is valuable to them. Here begins in the narrative the closest interweaving of their lives and the fate of Matera, which will be traced, deepened throughout the work. Sitting at the samovar, the old women talk, of course, first of all about the upcoming changes - and do not see anything good in them. Nastasya frankly yearns: "I'll die of longing there in one week. In the middle of strangers! Who replants an old tree ?!" Sima, who was recently on the island, is even worse: "Sima had no property, no relatives, and she had only one way - to the Nursing Home." Daria strengthens herself: she does not have the character to splash out her feelings. Daria's influence on her fellow villagers is great and deserved.

"Old Daria, tall and lean..."; she has "a stern, bloodless face with sunken cheeks"; “Despite the years, the old woman Daria was still on her own feet, she controlled her hands, doing what she could and still rather big housework. Now, the son and daughter-in-law run into a housewarming party once a week, or even less often, and the whole yard, the whole garden on it, and in the yard a cow, a heifer, a bull from winter calving, a piglet, a chicken, a dog.

Everything in her household is solid and well-coordinated, tidy and well-groomed. And it was started for a long time, and continues without hesitation, according to routine. Matera accustomed people to unhurried efficiency, to work that binds the past and the future into the knot of the present. But before that, the people themselves cultivated this land, settled it, lived around it. The mothers have long since become one whole, and therefore the incipient discrepancy between the mood of the mothers and nature is especially sharply perceived, which does not yet know about the impending disaster, and if it even guesses, then the only thing it can answer with is its equanimity. The old women were already pondering the soul-rending news, and in the nature of the island there was still “grace all around, such peace and peace, the greenery shone so thickly and freshly before my eyes, even more raised, raising the island above the water, with such a clean, cheerful chime rolled on the stones Angara, and everything seemed so solid, eternal, that I didn’t believe in anything - neither in moving, nor in flooding, nor in parting. The old women seem to take on the pain of nature, allowing it to remain natural for the last months. Such moral character and feelings, like nobility, fidelity, respect, pride, love, shame, do not exist in an abstract form - they must be confirmed by actions, and, as you know, it is actions, deeds, and not words and good intentions that prove what a person is and what his principles. In that

sense, human memory - as the custodian of the moral experience of previous generations - plays a paramount role. And without a person feeling a connection with the past, it, memory, becomes flawed, incomplete. In Daria's "Farewell to Matyora" this sense of family, responsibility to ancestors, personal significance as a responsible, indispensable by anyone more than one unit is exacerbated in even more. Or rather, even, it is predominant in it, and all other goals and actions are linked primarily with this. Talking about the devastation that happened at the cemetery to her son, she speaks of this as the biggest misfortune of that hour: “They will ask me. And I have nothing to answer with. I was here, it was on me to keep an eye on. And that it would flood with water, it seems like I’m also guilty. And that I’ll lie down on my own. I wish I hadn’t lived to see this. This is perceived by her precisely as a disaster, because there was an intrusion into her previously harmonious relationship with the world, into what is called world outlook, and occurred in one of the most pain points. Humble it, and then everything else could lose its meaning, grind, droop.

Here is the old woman Daria, the fifty-year-old son Pavel and his son, Darya's grandson Andrey. Daria remembers her father’s testament to the word: “Live, it’s up to you to live. You will swim in grief, in evil, you will be exhausted, if you want to join us - no, live, move, in order to hook us stronger with the white light, to splinter in it that we were"; she sacredly honors the memory of the departed and thereby achieves an inner feeling of fulfillment of her duty to them, for she knows that "you live nothing at all, why would you not live in harmony, not think about what memory will remain of you. And the memory, she remembers everything, he holds everything, he won't drop a single grain. she insists on preserving and then moving the graves to a new location. Her son, Pavel, is already less resolute; he understands his mother, but what worries her is not the most important thing for him: having promised to fulfill her request, he will never do it. And Andrei does not understand at all what he is talking about, whether the grandmother is seriously starting such a strange, in his opinion, conversation. It is not difficult for him to decide to go to build the very dam, because of which the island will be flooded; he is attracted and inspired by achievements scientific and technological revolution, progress, in comparison with which Matera is only a special case, a grain of sand. Their truly philosophical dispute with the grandmother, apparently, leaves something in his mind, but still it is not possible to convince him. It's not that progress is bad - no, it's good, it's necessary. The question is to what extent he is morally secure, to what extent the soul of a person and the person himself are taken into account not as an appendage of progress, but as a consumer of his achievements. Andrey, who proves the necessity of hydroelectric power station, as if casually dropping: "Is there much sense from this Matera?" - comes to the accusation, which characterizes him quite eloquently as a child of precisely morally unsecured progress. “For some reason, you only think about yourself, and even then, however, you think more with memory, you have a lot of memory,” he throws to his grandmother and father, confident that he is right, that memory is bad, without it better. Maybe it’s better for someone, yes - is it stronger, won’t it be pulled out without it, like a blade of grass without a root, by the first wind, won’t it be carried anywhere? Here you can answer Andrei with his grandmother’s earlier reflections on conscience: “... they commemorate her without a way in every word, they’ve worn out the Christ’s before, there’s no place left to live. come on, the same one - so they thinned it out, not for themselves, not for asking, it would be enough for a show. She protects the blood connection with her small homeland, knows her price.

fire like last act tragedy, the destruction of the former moral order.

A special place in the literature of the mid-80s was occupied by the story Fire. The story Fire looks like the last act of the tragedy, the destruction of the former moral order, the defeat of the former natural-patriarchal person. But in vain, apparently, some critics see in the story only a continuation and a final note in the memorial prayer of Valentin Rasputin, an artistic verdict on this inhuman communist system that ruined old Russia. Here again the bearers of the moral foundations of the former Matera are brought together in a duel with their conscientiousness, deep understanding of the soul, kindness and being, spiritually and morally fallen, criminals with female names, destroying everything around them. Main character In the story, Ivan Petrovich is amazed at one depressing change in his fellow countrymen: everyone is so fond of remembering their former highly moral life, they are ready to pray for their past, but suddenly they betray their own memories so easily before the onslaught of the Arkharovites. People, faced with some kind of unprecedented raft, holding on not to the best, but as if to the worst person, were confused and tried to stay away from the Arkharovites. Hundreds of people in the village, and a dozen seized power - that's what Ivan Petrovich could not understand - this far-sighted anxiety applies not only to the village of Sosnovka, but to all of Russia in the 80-90s. How so? So many prayers for the salvation of Russia, so many recollections of the past life in conscience that are powerful for the soul, and such timidity in front of dirty tricks? And such a protracted distrust of the state, alienation from it? Why can a dozen demihumans, conspiring, rallying not on the best, manipulate hundreds?

Then the writer did not know the answer to this question. But what happened during the fire? A very significant event. One of key characters, and in the Fire, and throughout the artistic world of Rasputin, the dumb hero Misha Khampo, the most conscientious hero, appointed to protect the good saved from the fire, suddenly abandoned the principle of non-resistance. Even realizing how unequal his strength as a loner in front of the Arkharovites, pouring blows both from the side and in the back, he did not save himself: at the cost of his life, he stopped the evil, twisted it into three deaths ... The plot of the story, as always with Rasputin, simple: in the village of Sosnovka on the banks of the Angara, Ors warehouses are burning. People are trying to save something from the fire. Who are these people, how do they behave in this situation, why do they commit this or that act? The writer is interested in precisely this, i.e., a person and everything that happens to him - and this cannot but excite all of us. After all, something happens to a person if his soul does not find peace, rushes about, hurts, groans. What happens to him, and who is to blame, and what are the reasons? All these questions seem to hover over Sosnovka, smelling of fire smoke, demanding an answer. Central character story - the driver Ivan Petrovich Egorov. But reality itself can be called the main character: both the long-suffering land on which Sosnovka stands, and the stupid, temporary, and therefore initially doomed Sosnovka, and Yegorov himself as an integral part of this village, this land - also suffering, doubting, looking for an answer.

"And before Ivan Petrovich felt that his strength was running out, but never before: the end, and only" - the first phrase of the story, as if warning that the action will take place in extreme situation, on the edge, on the verge of breaking. What happened to this strong, smart and kind person, why he was so tired that for him "the edge just opened up, the edge - nowhere further", "and it was hard to believe in tomorrow", and "I didn’t want anything, like in the grave", and even an unusual, unnatural desire for him appeared: "Let it be a long, long night, without measure and order, so that some can rest, others come to their senses, the third sober up ..."?

He was tired of disbelief, he suddenly realized that he could not change anything. He sees that everything is going wrong, that the foundations are crumbling, and cannot save, support. More than twenty years have passed since Yegorov moved here, to Sosnovka, from his native flooded Yegorovka, which he now remembers every day. Over the years, before his eyes, as never before, drunkenness developed, the former communal ties almost broke up, people became, as if strangers to each other, embittered. Ivan Petrovich tried to resist this - he himself almost lost his life. And so he filed a letter of resignation from work, decided to leave these places, so as not to poison the soul, not to overshadow the remaining years with daily grief. A few days left to work.

It was on these unhappy reflections that Ivan Petrovich, who had barely entered the house, was overtaken by cries of: "Fire! Warehouses are burning!" And it was no coincidence that the driver fancied that "as if screams were coming from the bowels" - his soul was also on fire. And so they will go through the whole story - two fires connected one with the other by internal logic. Rasputin from chapter to chapter will force the reader to shift his anxious gaze from one glow to another and up to last page, until the final line will not give a break, will not reduce stress, because everything is important here. Fire devours quickly and forever - you need to have time to see what it devours, see and remember. It is unlikely that the warehouses, located with a capital letter "G", blazed by accident: "It took up in such a place that, having caught fire, it would burn without a trace." There could be many reasons for this. For example, to hide theft, shortages, cover their tracks. If in Rasputin's first story, Maria could suffer severely because of some thousand rubles and, moreover, innocently, now no one wanted to pay for tens or hundreds of squandered thousands.

Such big fire never happened in the entire history of Sosnovka - the fire could spread to the huts and burn out the village, Yegorov thought about this first of all, rushing to the warehouses. But there were other thoughts in other minds. If anyone had told Ivan Petrovich about them a decade and a half ago, he would not have believed it. It would not fit in his mind that people can profit from misfortune without fear of losing themselves, their face. He still didn't want to believe it. But already - could. Because everything was leading up to it. Sosnovka itself, no longer resembling the old Yegorovka, disposed to this. And in the former village it was hard: doomed to the expectation of death, to flooding, it was like paralyzed - no one was building, the timber industry was enticing young people; but Sosnovka ... Uncomfortable and untidy, and not urban or rural, but a bivouac type was this village, as if wandering from place to place, stopped to wait out the bad weather and rest, and just got stuck. But they were stuck waiting - when the command would follow to move on, and therefore - not taking deep roots, not preening and settling down with an eye on children and grandchildren, but just to fly over the summer, and then winter over the winter. "Everything here looked like a temporary shelter - and streets broken by technology, and dirt, and a club in a public bath. "The same people who, in their old villages, from where they came here, could not imagine life without greenery under the windows, they did not put up front gardens here either." Because everything is temporary: why put down roots if they later choose a forest here, and you have to wander further.There is Berezovka in the neighborhood: the timber industry has left, cutting down everything clean, and it is empty - "only rabid tourists, blowing smoke in the door, kindle in bonfires at home."

The people, accustomed to the grain-growing constant, in one place, could not take root in the new village. But this is not so bad that they did not take root. The trouble is that they began to adapt, to adopt the worst. Yes, and there was someone: the timber industry chose more than a hundred thousand cubic meters of wood a year, they needed working hands, so seasonal workers came here, people without a stake, without a yard, so - tumbleweed. In four years almost as many people died in Sosnovka because of drunken shooting and stabbing as in the six villages that merged into Sosnovka during the war. Then, learning about this, Ivan Petrovich gasped in amazement. Now he introduces himself again tragic case see why this might have happened.

The food warehouse was burning with might and main, "almost the entire village fled, but it seems that no one has yet been found who could organize it into one reasonable solid force capable of stopping the fire." Because the authorities, except perhaps Boris Timofeevich Vodnikov, the head of the section, are also someone else's, recent, consider temporary, and even that is not in place. And the fire engine is dismantled for parts, and fire extinguishers do not work. It's as if no one needs anything at all. Ivan Petrovich, and his friend from Yegorovka Afonya Bronnikov, and the tractor driver Semyon Koltsov - that's almost all who came running to put out the fire. The rest - as if to extinguish, but more helped the fire, because they also destroyed, finding their pleasure and self-interest in this. When Vodnikov shouted to the Arkharovites: “Break it!”, they immediately rushed to execute: “this job was for them.” It's not even that in a fire you really have to break a lot - and there is no time to think: Egorov also knocks down the fence and beats the boards. The essence of the feeling with which it is done. Arkharovtsy break with inspiration, "as if all their lives they were only engaged in breaking constipation."

Arkharovtsy... After the publication of "Pozhar" this word again came into use - as a synonym for evil, aggressive indifference, spitting: if only I felt good, for this "good" I will do anything with everyone. There are several of them in the story, Arkharovites, from the leader Sasha the Ninth to Sonya. And each, as expected, has a name. But we remember them not by their names, but as a kind of phenomenon, together, and Rasputin suggests what the essence is: “All sorts of people came, but there were none like the current ones. These appeared immediately as an organized force, with their own laws and seniority We tried to break them - it didn't work out." It was really a force, moreover, resting "not on the best, but as if on the worst in a person." She was able to become such because she did not see barriers, resistance. For, as Ivan Petrovich rightly guesses, into whose mouth the writer puts his innermost thoughts, "people scattered all by themselves even earlier, and the Arkharovites only picked up what was lying around without use."

And the unrighteous force that seized the unrighteous power, as you know, must confirm its advantage, which the Arkharovites did. As soon as the forester Andrey Solodov fined the timber industry enterprise for high stumps, as a result of which the Arkharovites were delayed in wages, they burned the malt bath, and then Solodov "lost the forestry mare, the only hard worker in the entire village, on which half of the gardens were plowed, and which was in forestry Only in the spring did her bones melt in the thicket; a rotting rope lay nearby. As soon as Ivan Petrovich himself several times expressed dissatisfaction with the work and behavior of the “orgnabor brigade”, he began to find either sand in the engine of his car, or a cut hose, or even just managed to take his head out from under the counter, as “a heavy metal support suddenly "She broke off. She took it and broke off, although, set and tilted inward, she should not have gone back and never walked. From the side where the forest was dumped, the Arkharovites were bustling about - two."

Even Vodnikov himself, their boss, "after payday, quietly carried a couple of bottles in his canvas bag to the cutting area ... And they learned to take it as it should be ..."

But not so much the Arkharovites were blamed by the same Yegorov, who was trying to understand what was happening, as his fellow villagers - why did they reconcile, succumb, allow themselves to be treated so disrespectfully? "Ivan Petrovich thought: the world does not turn over immediately, not in one fell swoop, but just like we do: it was not supposed, it was not accepted - it became, it was supposed and accepted, it was impossible - it became possible, it was considered a shame, a mortal sin - revered for dexterity and valor."

And this inner fire, invisible to anyone around, in the hero's soul is more fearless than the one that destroys warehouses. Clothing, food, jewelry, and other goods can then be replenished, reproduced, but it is unlikely that faded hopes will ever come to life, the scorched fields of former kindness and justice will begin to bear fruit again with the same generosity. After all, it was not by themselves that a dozen Arkharovites seized power - it means that something is behind them that gives them strength, tacitly supports and inspires. This "something" is a system aimed only at the momentary and requiring only momentary results. What soul, what graves of ancestors, what conditions for grandchildren? All this for the Arkharovites, and not only for them, is empty talk, they don’t pay for it, but for them the main criterion, the main measure of values ​​is the ruble. When Ivan Petrovich, who is preoccupied with spoiling equipment, destroying it, using it for his own needs, drinking and stealing, they say that all this is not the main thing, the main thing is to fulfill the plan, he is rightly indignant: "A plan, you say? A plan ?! Yes, it would be better if we lived without it!.. It would be better if we started another plan - not only for cubic meters, but also for souls! To take into account how many souls have been lost, gone to hell, and how many are left!.. The plan!. Do you remember how it was... well, let it be at least five years ago..." However, his indignation is doomed to misunderstanding. That is why Ivan Petrovich feels a terrible ruin in himself that he could not fully realize this creative energy given to him - there was no need for it, contrary to logic, it ran into a blank wall that refused to accept it. Therefore, he is overcome by a destructive strife with himself. His soul longed for certainty, but he could not answer her what was now true for him, what was conscience, for he himself, against his will, pulled out, uprooted from the microworld of Yegorovka, where everything helped him find harmony, was no longer able to connect the outer and the inner: they fell apart like two hemispheres, revealing a void in the middle. It is no coincidence that when, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their life together, Ivan Petrovich and his wife Alena went to their son Boris on Far East, there for the first time long years his soul rested: he again saw the unity of man and nature, "looked at people's faces, not spoiled through drunkenness alone", and realized that "life here did not feel hysterical, there was more order here, and this order was not kept on shouting and fines , but on a long-established communal law.

In Sosnovka, no one is answerable to anyone, moral obligations are illusory, if not completely absent. The same Arkharovites have nothing to treat with respect here - nothing connects them with this land, - so they turn off to recover at the cemetery, are rude and threaten the villagers, steal everything that lies badly.

"What's going on, Ivan?! What's going on?! Everyone's dragging!" - Yegorov's wife, Alena, exclaims in fright, not understanding how, along with a fire, such human qualities like decency, conscience, honesty. And if only the Arkharovites dragged everything that caught their eye, but after all, their own, Sosnov’s, too: “The old woman, who had never seen anything like it, picked up bottles thrown from the yard - and, of course, not empty”; one-armed Saveliy dragged sacks of flour and cereals straight to his own bathhouse. Fire... What is it doing? Why are we like this? - after Alena, Uncle Misha Khampo could have exclaimed, if he could speak. But why are there so few of them, indignant? L how much to eat. How much is left. After the fire, there was one more, on Hampo, less.

Uncle Misha Khampo seemed to have moved into "Fire" from "Farewell to Matyora" - there he was called Bogodul. No wonder the author emphasizes this, calling the old man "Egorov's spirit." He, just like Bogodul, hardly spoke, was just as uncompromising and extremely honest. He was considered a born watchman - not because he loved this work, but simply "that's how he cut himself out, such from hundreds of hundreds of charters that were inaccessible to his head, he issued the first charter: do not touch someone else's. All the inconvenience of the world and its disorder, he, perhaps, with he only connected them with one thing: they touch. And touching means depriving a person of a part of life: after all, he worked to acquire a thing, spent his strength, health. Alas, even Uncle Misha, who perceived theft as the biggest misfortune, had to put up with it: he guarded alone, and almost everyone was dragging. During the fire, he conscientiously, as always, guarded the things taken out of the warehouse, piled in a heap in the yard. And, seeing how someone was trying to throw a bundle of colored rags over the fence, he rushed after the thief. "Hampo had just managed to see who it was and what, when a blow fell on him from the side ... And again and again he was hit with something heavy - not with his hands. Uncle Misha kept pulling his head to see who was hitting, but nothing he could not lift it and only put out his right hand, which was not subject to him, trying to defend himself. And they kept beating and beating him, all beating and beating..." he himself was killed with a mallet. He followed his basic principle. What did they follow? Also principles? In that case, when and on what grounds did these "principles" appear, why did the impunity that encouraged them flourish? The story gives an unequivocal answer to these questions: guilt - permissiveness, violation of elementary justice. When a person was told to his face that something was not there, while it was, they frankly preferred something else to him, that means this person. So how will he answer? In "Fire", a guy who saw a burnt Ural motorcycle, which he had been chasing for a long time shopping, is indignant: "After all, there was one, there was a Ural! For whom was it?! For whom was it hidden ?!" Yes, and Ivan Petrovich himself, when he first got inside the warehouse, was amazed at the abundance - sausage circles, butter, red fish. "It was, then! It was after all! - and where did it all go? .. And Ivan Petrovich grinned or pushed himself, burned by the thought that in this place one must chuckle at one's folly: and the cars from the regional center, from there, from here, everyone God's day tucking in to Ors? .. How many nerobs and personal belongings in the world! And how did it happen that we surrendered to their mercy, how did it happen ?!" This whole story is a conflict that literary criticism has yet to seriously consider and study: the conflict of one and many, memory and unconsciousness, deep, truly folk and superficial, temporary , disinterestedness and greed, mercy and cruelty.

Ivan Petrovich decides to leave Sosnovka and go to his son Boris in the Far East. As we remember, I have already submitted an application, and internally got together, and prepared Alyona. But the fire that happened showed what all the Arkharovites and their Ivans together, who did not remember their kinship, could not bring him to - showed that the earth itself is already in agony, it is overflowing with suffering, and if it does not have a defender, it is difficult to say what can happen. In the final chapter of the story, where we see the hero alone with nature, the thought clearly sounds that "no land is rootless", that it depends on the person, on what he is. Moving farther and farther away from the post-fire fuss and excitement of the village, observing the mountain, the forest, the bay, the sky, Egorov feels how “easy, liberation and evenly steps for him, as if he had accidentally found his step and sigh, as if he had finally endured on the right path." Will he return? Will he leave Sosnovka forever? "The earth is silent, either meeting or seeing him off. The earth is silent. What are you, our silent land, how long are you silent? And are you silent?" These questions end the story, similar to the painful question that life itself asks. Except us, no one will answer it. Time is running, the earth waits, her judgment draws near. Yes, "Fatherland and the smoke is sweet and pleasant to us," but not the smoke of a fire, but the smoke above a habitable house in which both children and grandchildren live. Valentin Rasputin showed us the fire. We must think about the house ourselves, and not let it catch fire.

Ringing string of alarm, a symbol of trouble - Money for Mary

Considering the theme of morality, you also need to pay attention to the first story by Valentin Rasputin Money for Mary. His early prose is already a generic feature of all the works of the writer! -carried in itself the spirit of anxiety, a near collapse, hidden for the time being catastrophic. In 1997, the writer confesses: I began to hear a ringing at night, As if they were touching a long string stretched across the sky, and it responds with a languid, clear, whining sound .... It comes from no one knows where, no one knows that the speaking signal fascinates me ... plunges me in a daze: what's next?

What is this? Or is my name already? The ringing string of alarm, a symbol of fast-flowing life, trouble, sounds already in the first story of the writer. In the first story, the trouble seems to be small, quite earthly: a saleswoman in a rural store, Maria, was found to have a shortage of a thousand rubles. Due to the simplicity of her soul, due to close, almost kinship relations with fellow villagers, friends from childhood, she sometimes did not sell goods aloofly, but often gave on credit, did not count well. And then the auditor discovered a debt that horrified both Maria, and her tractor driver's husband Kuzma, and the children. The inspector, however, took pity on the heroine and gave the kind, inept Maria the opportunity to collect the missing money in five days .... This failure in a quiet life sharply raised the question: how will the soul of the people behave in relation to Mary? Will she reveal the full power of kinship? Discord has invaded, will harmony, righteous principles, conscience save?

Guilty without guilt, Maria says to her husband Kuzma: I remembered, someone told me that the women there, in these prisons, get up on each other. What a shame. I got sick. And then I think: why, I'm not there yet, but still here.

On the whole, the story Money for Maria with Kuzma walking around the huts with a hat, with a meeting at the collective farm, at which the chairman suggested that employees - state employees simply sign the statement, and lend money to Kuzma to save Maria - individually, it’s easier to refuse .. .conversation without witnesses - looks like a domestic incident.

There is some transcendent horror that seizes Mary, in her prayer: Do not give me to them. But the main horror that seized both Maria and Kuzma, who was ready to turn over the whole earth, but not give Mary away, is different: how easily people took advantage of Maria's kindness, innocence, inexperience and how difficult, alas, they donate money to save her. The author showed the grief of Mary from a moral point of view, and not a national one.

The work of Valentin Rasputin is a phenomenon in world literature, and, like any phenomenon, it is unique, unique.

Conscience, guilt, memory are the key moral categories in Rasputin's works. It is conscience that determines the behavior of a person, his fate, connection with folk memory. After reading the stories of Rasputin, you will never forget them, there are so many bitter and just words about human happiness and grief, about a crime against the moral laws that keep life, and which we do not always remember.

Critics will turn to his works more than once, give examples, and develop the writer's thoughts. The main thing, of course, is the works themselves. They need to be read slowly, slowly, with thought. Rasputin's books deserve it. The writer himself says that "reading is work ... The reader himself must participate in the events, have his own attitude to them and even a place in them, feel the rush of blood from the movement."