The theme of the tragic fate of man in a totalitarian state in Solzhenitsyn’s works. The tragic fate of a person in a totalitarian state

Plan:
1. A concentration camp is a totalitarian state in miniature.
2. “People live here too” is the basic principle of Ivan Denisovich’s life.
3. Only through labor can freedom of spirit and personal freedom be achieved.
4. Preservation of dignity and humanity in any conditions, at any time - all this is the main thing for a person.
5. The human soul is something that cannot be deprived of freedom, cannot be captured or destroyed - this is the meaning of the story.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was conceived in the camp in 1950-51, and written in 1959. The image of Ivan Denisovich was based on the soldier Shukhov, who fought with the author in the Soviet-German war. All yours personal experience life in the camp, the author outlined all his impressions in his story. Main character works - simple Russian man, unremarkable. There were very, very many people like Shukhov in the camp. Before us appear people whom fate brought to a concentration camp, innocent people who did nothing reprehensible. Among them: Gonchik, who carried milk into the forest, Baptists suffering for their faith, Estonians, prisoners. They all live and work in the camp, trying to support own existence. There is everything on the camp territory: a bathhouse, a medical unit, and a dining room. All this resembles a small town. But the matter cannot be done without guards, of whom there are a huge number, they are everywhere, they make sure that all the rules are followed, otherwise a punishment cell awaits the disobedient.
And for eight years now, Ivan Denisovich has been wandering around the camps, enduring, suffering, tormenting, but at the same time maintaining his inner dignity. Shukhov does not change peasant habits and “doesn’t let himself down”, doesn’t humiliate himself because of a cigarette, because of rations, and certainly doesn’t lick the bowls, doesn’t denounce his comrades to improve his own fate.
Conscientiousness, reluctance to live at someone else’s expense, or to cause inconvenience to someone, forces him to forbid his wife from collecting parcels for him in the camp, to justify the greedy Caesar and “not to stretch your belly on other people’s goods.” He also never feigns illness, and when he is seriously ill, he behaves guiltily in the medical unit: “What... Nikolai Semenych... I seem to be... sick...” Solzhenitsyn writes that he speaks at the same time “conscientiously, as if he was coveting something that belongs to someone else.” . And while he sat in this clean medical unit and did nothing for five whole minutes, he was very surprised by this: “it was wonderful for Shukhov to sit in such a clean room, in such silence...”
Work, according to Shukhov, is salvation from illness, from loneliness, from suffering. It is at work that a Russian person forgets himself, work gives satisfaction and positive emotions, of which prisoners have so few.
That's why it's so bright folk character The character emerges in the work scenes. Ivan Denisovich is a mason, a carpenter, a stove maker, and a poplar carver. “He who knows two things will also pick up ten,” says Solzhenitsyn. Even in captivity, he is overwhelmed by the excitement of the work, conveyed by the author in such a way that Ivan Denisovich’s feelings turn out to be inseparable from the author’s own. We understand that A.I. Solzhenitsyn is a good mason. He transfers all his skills to his character. And human dignity, equality, freedom of spirit, according to Solzhenitsyn, is established in work; it is in the process of work that prisoners joke, even laugh. Everything can be taken away from a person, but the satisfaction of a job well done cannot be taken away.
The phrase where Shukhov says that “he himself doesn’t know whether he wanted it or not” has a very significant meaning for the writer. Prison, according to Solzhenitsyn, is a huge evil, violence, but suffering contributes to moral purification. With all their behavior in the camp, the heroes of A.I. Solzhenitsyn confirm the main idea of ​​this work. Namely, that the soul cannot be taken captive, it cannot be deprived of its freedom. The formal release of Ivan Denisovich will not change his worldview, his value system, his view of many things, his essence.
The concentration camp, the totalitarian system could not enslave strong in spirit there were a lot of people in our long-suffering country, who stood their ground and did not let the country perish.

1. Coverage of Soviet ideology today.
2. Writer and publicist - the difference is in the description of the historical course of events. Solzhenitsyn as a chronicler of the Soviet era.
3. Man in a totalitarian society.
4. What to eat human life under an authoritarian structure of political power?
5. Human freedom as a condition of his life.

On bookshelves stores today have a lot of literature dedicated to Soviet era, but rather its exposure. But the authors are not always historically accurate, based on memoirs and depicting the historical course of events. Today it is fashionable to denigrate that regime. But nevertheless, you shouldn’t be like the Bolsheviks and divide the whole world only into black and white. Yes, there was a lot of bad things and the memory of generations is designed to prevent a repetition of those events. But we should not forget that this is our history, and lessons should be drawn from it. It is difficult to figure out today where the truth is, the facts presented in strict accordance with reality, and where they are slightly or to a fair extent exaggerated by fiction and many conjectures.

If you read Solzhenitsyn, you can be sure that when describing the fates of his heroes, he never distorted the truth. He did not protest himself and did not divide everything only into black and white, rushing to extremes, but simply wrote about what happened, while leaving to the readers the right to choose how to relate to the described people and events occurring depending on or outside the will of the heroes . Solzhenitsyn did not set out to only describe the life of the camps or the laws by which prisoners lived - he wrote about the life of people on this and that side of the barbed wire. He did this in the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” comparing Shukhov’s “today’s” life and his memories of home. Such transitions give us, the readers, the opportunity to remember that Shukhov, and any prisoner in the camp, is first and foremost a person. Only everyone has their own habits, strong or weak traits character, their ways of adapting to life. In Soviet times, these people, more likely “subhumans” for the authorities, did not have names. These were only Yu-81, Iz-202... And people were considered only free labor force, which built the large industrial centers of Siberia. The GULAG archipelago is not Solovki or Magadan, it is the whole country. Yes. These are the facts of history, and you cannot escape them. But the entire state was one large camp in which the father renounced his son, and the son renounced his father. People were imprisoned here if they returned to their homeland, and it did not matter by what route they ended up outside of it. A striking example of this is an Estonian who was taken to Sweden by his parents as a child and later returned to his native coast. Here, such strong, intelligent, brave, dexterous people with natural acumen as Brigadier Tyurin disappeared in these same camps. He was the son of a kulak, he volunteered for the Red Army. Isn’t this a paradox that turned out to be unnecessary for the Soviet machine? But besides, the brigadier was an excellent student in combat and political training. In this state, belief in God was a crime (Alyoshka is a Baptist, who received a 25-year sentence for his religious beliefs).

These people, whose cases were essentially fabricated, fell into the realm of arbitrariness, violence and impunity. Only impunity was allowed to the overseers or those to whom generous parcels were brought. And then the prisoner who managed to butter himself up became the master of the situation. He could even sit with the guards and play cards with them (Gypsy Caesar). But here, again, everyone is free to decide for themselves: to be like Shukhov, who will remain hungry, but will not bend to anyone’s interests, or like Fetyukov, who was ready to grovel before anyone so that he, as if by chance, would drop his cigarette butt.

The totalitarian mechanism equated everyone to the same standard, and a step to the left or right was considered a betrayal. It was necessary to blindly follow the models of behavior that were imposed by the authorities. Any deviation from these established rules threatened to result in, if not physical violence, then humiliation human dignity and camp term. The level of vital fortitude was also different. And he depended only on moral principles: strong man will survive, adapt, but the weak will die, and this is inevitable.

What did human life mean to an authoritarian system? Given that the state machine resettled entire nations, influenced the geographical relationships in the world, practically adjusted the entire scientific potential(although the development of science and political system can hardly be so connected) and exterminated thinking intelligentsia. There are officially about twelve million examples of such twisted and broken destinies, and among them - simple and nameless - are such prominent scientists as N. I. Vavilov, the poet N. S. Gumilyov. Solzhenitsyn writes not about the luminaries of science, not about the geniuses of military leadership, not about great poets, but about ordinary people, from whose destinies the history of the country is formed. Solzhenitsyn did not allow himself to speculate; he painted a portrait of the entire country of that time, placing it within the framework of only one camp, where human life was only a statistical unit, and not the fate of a person with his roots and family traditions...

Solzhenitsyn describes the life of the camp from the inside, refuting at the same time the Soviet dogma that a person is guilty even of what is said if what is said does not coincide with the official ideology. This life appears before us with everyday detail, experiencing the hero’s feelings (fear, homesickness or a hungry rumbling stomach). The reader thinks about whether Shukhov will be released, and what his second day would be like, and what will be the fate of the other characters in the story? But the fate of Shukhov is the fate of millions of similar convicts. How many of these Shukhovs are there on Russian soil?

IN totalitarian state there is no freedom for man. And freedom is the beginning of any creativity, the beginning real life and being in general. Totalitarian forces kill a person’s desire to live, because it is impossible to live according to someone else’s instructions. Only life itself can dictate its terms, and relations in society should be regulated not by a handful of people holding high positions in the party apparatus, but by society itself in accordance with the spirit of the time and culture.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008)

Man, writer, philosopher...

Lesson topic: “Biography of A.I. Solzhenitsyn”

Objective of the lesson:

1. introduce students to the pages of the biography and creativity of an unusual person;
2. skills to take notes, identify the main thing, generalize, reflect;
3. personality education.

Equipment:

1. Alexander Sokurov’s film “The Knot” (video equipment);
2. portrait of a writer;
3. notes on the board:

A) lesson topics;

B) epigraphs;

B) dictionary: Dissident; Zurich; Vermont, America.

Dissident – (mouth) – one who deviates from the dominant religion in the country; apostate.

(Latin) – disagreeing, contradictory.

D) recording of the main works:

1. I am not me, and mine literary fate- not mine, but all those millions who did not scratch, did not whisper, did not wheeze their prison fate, their camp discoveries.

A. Solzhenitsyn

1. ...Solzhenitsyn, more than any other writer, answered the question of who we are today through the question: what is happening to us?

S. Zalygin

Lesson progress

1. Organizational moment
2. 1. The teacher's word.

In the early 1980s, President Reagan invited the most prominent Soviet dissidents living in the West to breakfast. Of the entire host of those invited, only A.I. Solzhenitsyn refused, noting that he was not a “dissident”, but a Russian writer who could not talk with the head of state, whose generals, on the advice of scientistsare seriously developing the idea of ​​selective destruction of the Russian people through targeted nuclear strikes. Having expressed polite refusal, Solzhenitsyn, however, reciprocated by inviting Reagan, when his term of office expired, to visit his home in Vermont and there to talk in a calm atmosphere about pressing issues of relations between our two countries, unobtrusively emphasizing thatthe presidential office is occupied by oneface for a maximum of eight years,vocation Russian writer for life.

2. Who is this man?

Alexander Sokurov’s film “The Knot” will help us recognize this person ( 23 minutes of part I ), demonstrated in December 1998, when the writer turned 80 years old.

1. Born in December 1918. in Kislovodsk.

My father came from peasants, became a student, then volunteered for his first world war and was awarded the St. George Cross. He died in a hunting accident six months before the birth of his only child.

After high school Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University in Rostov-on-Don (1941).. ), at the same time he enters the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature as a correspondence student.

Goes to war, from 1942 to 1945. commands a battery at the front, awarded orders and medals.

In February 1945 with the rank of captain, arrested due to criticism of Stalin detected in correspondence and sentenced to 8 years:

1 year – on investigation and transfers

3g. - in the prison research institute

4g. – general work in the political Special Security Service.

1953 – Cancer – cured. Miracle.

The camp term ended on the day of Stalin’s death, March 5, 1953, and cancer was immediately discovered, when, according to the doctors’ verdict, he had no more to live three weeks... however, I did not die (with my hopelessly advanced malignant tumor, it was God’s miracle, I could not understand it any other way. All the life returned to me since then is not mine in the full sense, it has an embedded purpose).

Then he was exiled to Kazakhstan “forever”; however, man-made eternity lasted “only” three years, after which, by definition Supreme Court USSR dated February 6, 1957 rehabilitation followed.

After rehabilitation he worked school teacher in Ryazan.

Following publication at 11 m issue of "New World" for 1962. The work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was accepted into the Writers’ Union, but except for a few more stories and one article, everything written was forced to be given away from “Samizdat” or published abroad.

In 1969 - excluded from the joint venture.

In 1970 – awarded Nobel Prize according to literature.

In 1974 - in connection with the release of the 1st volume of The Gulag Archipelago, he was forcibly expelled to the West.

Until 1976 lived in Zurich, then moved to the American state Vermont , nature reminiscent of central Russia.

He is married for the second time to Natalya Svetlova, they have three children - Ermolai, Ignat and Stepan. Currently, they are adults.

Ermolai – phenologist (study of living natural phenomena)

Ignat – musician

Stepan is a city planner.

Instead of creative work, at the very end of the war he experienced, he suffered arrest, prison and a camp, but:

- It’s scary to think that I would have become a writer (and I would have) if I hadn’t been imprisoned.

1955-1968 - novel “In the First Circle”

1955-1967 - story “Cancer Ward”

1958-1968 - “GULAG Archipelago” (designation of the camp country)

1963-1964 - 227 witnesses

1956 - story “Zakhar-Kalita”

1959-1963 – story “Matryonin’s Dvor”

By 1994 – 10 volumes “The Red Wheel” (narrative of the revolution)

! Let's turn to his ideas about the purpose of art in people's lives.

Art, Solzhenitsyn rightly believes, is characterized by a secret inner light, and it is not possible for a person to grasp all of it.

Solzhenitsyn believes that there are two types of artists:

1. one “considers himself the creator of an independent spiritual world and takes the act of creating this world onto his shoulders.”
2. another knows a higher power above him, this world was not created by him
   «… The artist is given only the ability to sense more acutely than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it - and acutely convey this to people»

? - What type of artist would you classify Solzhenitsyn as?

In defining his understanding of art, Solzhenitsyn reflects on Dostoevsky’s “mysterious” phrase “The world will be saved by beauty.”

Homework:

1. History of the creation of the work

zh No. 5, 89g, p.21

1. The camp, its structure, its regime, its purpose
2. Social hierarchy of camp life. Its laws. Camp workers.
3. The main character of the story:

a) Autobiography - on behalf of Shukhov.

b) What kind of figure is in front of us? What impression does it give?

5) Speech matter from which Solzhenitsyn’s hero was created.

6) Collective farm life illuminated in the work.

Lesson topic: “Theme tragic fate V
totalitarian state"

(story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”)

Objective of the lesson:

1. based on the analysis of the story, penetrate into the world of a person from the people, find out how he relates himself to the forcibly imposed reality and its ideas;
2. expression of the ability to analyze and prove one’s thoughts about the work read;
3. raising a creative reader.

Equipment:

1. portrait of the author;
2. epigraphs to the topic;
3. vocabulary: totalitarianism, righteous

Totalitarianism – one of the forms of the state, characterized by complete (total) control by the authorities state power over all spheres of society, the physical elimination of constitutional freedoms and rights.

Righteous – 1. a person who lives according to the commandments prescribed by any religion;

2. one who is guided by the principles of justice and honesty does not violate the rules of morality.

What field did the executioners trample,

They pressed with a merciless wheel.

Oh, if only all the tortured would stand up

And they told the truth about everything.

V. Bokov

I was very lucky that I was in the camp and, most importantly, that I survived there.

“I” survived to find itself in art and to revive in it the faces of those who were hidden behind alphanumeric signs.

A. Solzhenitsyn

Lesson progress

I. Organizational moment

II. Work on speech breathing"Start"

III. Express survey (based on a work read at home)

1. Name full name the main character of the story (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov)
2. Camp number of Ivan Denisovich ( Shch-854)
3. In what years do the events covered in the work take place?

(50s)

1. How old is the main character of the work?
2. List the heroes of the work, their occupation in freedom ( 0.5b for each)

IV. 1. The teacher’s word, which turns into an analysis of the work.

The conversation is accompanied by a commented reading of the text.

The most strong impression Shukhov's thoughts, the secret of his inner life conveyed in monologue, affect us.

Let's start, perhaps, with the idea that Ivan Denisovich came up with.

The working day ended and everyone returned to camp.

And this thought:

“Five roads converge to the watch…” ( page 77) text.

Urban planners - slaves - walk along the streets of tomorrow to work: in the morning - to the sites, in the evening - back.

Prisoners walk according to the camp rule, holding their hands behind them and lowering their heads.

The columns go as if to a funeral, “and you can see,” Ivan Denisovich is annoyed, “only the front two or three have legs and a piece of sunken land where you can step on with your feet.”

The mental activity of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov does not stop for a second.

He keeps track of camp time in hours and minutes.

2. … Camp. Its structure, its mode, its purpose.

For barbed wire life flows.

What saves a person in this inhuman life?

As always, involvement in a community of people. Here this is a brigade, the annals of a family in free life. Father-Brigadier...

The foreman in the camp is everything... ( page 30, page 34)

3. Social hierarchy of camp life. Its laws.

Camp workers (Buinovsky Caesar)

Law-taiga

1. The main character of the work

a) Autobiography (individual)

b) How did you get to the camp?

c) What kind of figure is in front of us? What impression does it make?

d) Speech matter from which Solzhenitsyn’s hero was created

1. Collective farm life

Conclusions, generalizations.

Camp life, no matter how regulated it was, offered prisoners a choice: there were executioners and guards, idiots and informants, goons and just raw prisoners.

? What did Shukhov choose?

Quietly and unnoticed by everyone, he became a righteous man.

Every day and hour I had to choose between good and evil, strength and weakness, dignity and humiliation.

The most difficult thing in choosing is to find support.

! And again the reader is overwhelmed by a sense of the absurdity of what is happening at the behest of the camp: for some reason, in the camp hospital, the young poet is finishing poems that were unfinished in the wild.

The peasant Glukhov was brought back from the war to logging.

And the guards themselves, the guards, the Russian people who stand on the towers in the cold and protect whom? And why?

? What kind of robber horde captured the country and sent one part of the people to another?

! The theme is the responsibility of the people and their leaders for the present and future of the country.

Lesson summary

Homework:

1. Find the beginning of the action, the plot of the plot

2. Who are they, the main characters of the story?

Group assignments:

I. Narrator

II. Matryona

Lesson topic: “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man”

Objective of the lesson:

1) trace how the image of the “majestic Slavic woman” is shown in the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn;

2) development monologue speech, ability to maintain dialogue;

3) personality education.

Equipment:

1. portrait of the writer;

2. notes on the board.

Lesson progress

I. Organizational moment

II. Opening remarks teachers.

The study of Russian character continued in other works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn at the end of 50 x – n.60s.

In the original version, the work was called “A village does not stand without a righteous man,” and the action in it took place in 1956 (in the published version, the events developed in pre-Khrushchev times in 1953). The changes were aimed at giving the story a more private meaning.

III. Conversation on the content of the work.

What event does the plot of the work focus on?

At 184 ohm km from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom and Kazan

What have we learned about the narrator?

He walked his way to “Matryona’s yard” “from” the dusty hot desert, where he “stayed for about ten years.” He succeeds in realizing his dream of returning to “inner” Russia when “something is changing in the country...” (allegories about liberation from the camp, the memorable “camp padded jacket.” For many years did not instill malice in the narrator’s soul...)

What have you learned about Matryona’s life?

The heroine is, as it were, outside of society, merging with nature. Darkness, lack of education. Memories of Matryona’s youth that in her youth she “didn’t consider five pounds a burden”, and once “she grabbed the bridle and stopped the sleigh”

Nekrasovka heroine:

In the game the horseman will not catch her,

In trouble - he will not fail - he will save:

Stops a galloping horse

He will enter the burning hut!

The heroine finds herself in the center of the eternal confrontation between good and evil, trying “with her conscience” and her life itself to connect the edges of the abyss.

Climax in external and internal plot plans is the moment of Matryona’s death at a crossing.

Matryona is still trying to restore harmony common life, making his bright contribution to the work started by “breakers - not builders”, for which “good” is a material concept.

Matryona - Thaddeus

Among her fellow villagers, Matryona remains “misunderstood”, a “stranger”.

At the end of the story folk wisdom becomes the basis for evaluating the heroine: “... she is the very righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.”

Review of "The Gulag Archipelago".

Homework:

References:

1. No. 5, 1990 Literature at school

One hour, one day, one human life in the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn

2. Akimov “On the Winds of Time”

3. No. 5, 1989 Literature at school

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: guide

4. No. 4, 1997 One day...

The conflict between the temporary and the eternal in the story “One Day...”

5. Weekly supplement to the newspaper “First of September” No. 17-18 1993.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is a prisoner. The prototype of the main character was the soldier Shukhov, who fought with the author during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War, however never sat. The camp experience of the author himself and other prisoners served as material for creating the image of I....

Gopchik is a boy of about sixteen, a pink piglet. He was imprisoned for delivering milk to the Bendera people in the forest. They gave me the same sentence as an adult. By nature he is affectionate, he fawns over all men, but he is also cunning - he chews his parcels alone at night. Alive...

A.I. Solzhenitsyn became known to the general reader in 1962, with the release of the November issue of the magazine " New world", in which the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published. A. I. Solzhenitsyn entered literature as an established personality,...

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is associated with one of the facts of the biography of the author himself - the Ekibastuz special camp, where in the winter of 1950-51 general works this story was created. The main character of Solzhenitsyn's story is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an ordinary...

IVAN DENISOVICH is the hero of A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1959-1962). Image of I.D. as if the author were composed of two real people. One of them is Ivan Shukhov, an already middle-aged soldier of the artillery battery, which he commanded during the war...

Time and personality - this is the theme stated in the very title of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1959) and acquiring genuine philosophical depth under the pen of Solzhenitsyn. It's about about the victim of the all-consuming Stalinist Gulag - a Soviet prisoner, a bricklayer...

With her hopeless patience,... With her hut without a canopy, And with an empty workday, And with her work night - not full... With all the trouble - Yesterday's war And the grave present misfortune.
A. T. Tvardovsky

Almost all of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work is about the tragic situation of man in a totalitarian state, about a prison state. And now we will analyze the story " Matrenin Dvor» ( original title- “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous person” autobiographical work, dedicated to a certain Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova, from whom the writer rented a room in the 1950s)

This story shows a picture of the difficult lot of peasants under the Stalinist regime. But against the backdrop of the traditional Solzhenitsyn theme stands classic look a Russian woman who will support and understand, humble herself, accept and survive all adversity (in this, Solzhenitsyn’s image of a woman is similar to Nekrasov’s).

A. T. Tvardovsky at the session Governing Council The European Writers Association spoke about this story like this: “Why is the fate of an old peasant woman, told in a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is an unread, illiterate, simple worker. And yet, her peace of mind endowed with such a quality that we talk to her as if we were talking to Anna Karenina.” A.I. Solzhenitsyn responded to this: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech relating to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism was always scouring the surface, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones.”

At the center of the story is the life of a peasant woman who worked her whole life on a collective farm not for the day, but “for the sticks of workdays in the accountant’s dirty book”; she did not receive a pension, did not accumulate property before her death. A dirty white goat, a lanky cat, ficus trees - that's all she had. In his declining years; Seriously ill, Matryona has no peace and is forced to literally earn a piece of bread by the sweat of her brow.

But Solzhenitsyn showed Matryona not only as a lonely and destitute woman in a totalitarian state, but a rare person immeasurable kindness, generosity, with a selfless soul. It shows how individuals live in this society. Having buried six children, lost her husband at the front, and was sick, Matryona did not lose the desire to respond to other people’s needs and grief, and was an optimist. “Not a single plowing of the garden was complete without Matryona. The Talnovsky women established precisely that it is harder and longer to dig up your garden with a shovel than to plow six gardens by yourself, taking a plow and harnessing six of them. That's why they called Matryona to help.
- Well, did you pay her? - I had to ask later.
- She doesn't take money. You can’t help but hide it for her.”
Her hard work was enough for seven. On his own yurba he carried bags of peat, which ordinary peasants had to steal from the state (at that time peat was allowed only to bosses).

She could not refuse help to anyone, be it a relative or the state:
“Tomorrow, Matryona, will you come to help me? We'll dig up the potatoes.
And Matryona could not refuse. She left her line of work and went to help her neighbor...”;
“So-so,” the chairman’s wife said separately. - Comrade Grigoriev? We will need help! collective farm! Tomorrow I’ll have to go and take out the manure! Matryona’s face formed an apologetic half-smile - as if she was ashamed of the chairman’s wife, because she couldn’t pay her for her work.
“Well,” she said. - I'm sick, of course. And now she’s not involved in your case.” And then she hastily corrected herself:
“What time should I come?”

She sincerely rejoices at someone else’s good harvest, although this never happens on the sand herself: “Oh, Ignatich, and she has big potatoes! I dug in a hurry, I didn’t want to leave the site, by God I really do!” Having essentially nothing, Matryona knows how to give. She is embarrassed and worried, trying to please her guest: she cooks larger potatoes for him in a separate pot - the best she has.

Unlike the others, Matryona “...didn’t chase outfits. Behind clothes that embellish freaks and villains.”

This woman is capable of a selfless act: “Once, out of fear, I carried the sleigh into the lake, the men jumped back, but I, however, grabbed the bridle and stopped it. The horse was oatmeal. Our men loved to feed the horses. Which horses are oatmeal, they don’t even recognize them.” She literally repeated the words “... will stop a galloping horse...”.

But not everyone in Talnovo is like that. The sisters don’t understand Matryona, “stupidly working for others!” for free". Thaddeus, who returned from Hungarian captivity, did not understand her sacrifice. When Matryona, after the death of his mother, married his younger brother, because “they didn’t have enough hands,” he said a terrible phrase, which Matryona remembers with a shudder for the rest of her life: “He stood on the threshold. I'll scream! I would throw myself at his knees!.. It’s impossible... Well, he says, if it weren’t for my dear brother, I would have chopped you both up!”

Matryona was a stranger among her own people, misunderstood, condemned, absurd, strange, the whole village considered her “not of this world.” But these shortcomings of Matryona, on the other hand, are her own advantages.

Running through the entire story is the question of why people are so different and why, out of a crowd of hypocritical and calculating people, there is only one such spiritual, moral, unique, extraordinary person - such as this good-natured working old woman? Probably because he is “the righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village is not worthwhile. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours" (this last words, and they again return us to the first version of the story's title).

And all these neighbors and “relatives” are just a background for greater contrast.
Matryona's death is as tragic as her life. Her house was taken away, and she herself absurdly died under the wheels of a train, giving it away: the house was inextricably linked with its owner (that’s why the story is called that), the house was gone - Matryona also died. Who is to blame for the death of Solzhenitsyn’s heroine? She was killed by someone else's self-interest, greed, greed - these eternal destroyers of life, humanity, who do not choose victims and make them all who are in the field of their influence.

Probably everyone wishes for themselves a different fate, not the same as Matryona’s. Dreams may not come true, happiness may not happen, success may not come, but a person must go his own way without losing his humanity and nobility. And this does not depend on what state this person lives in: totalitarian or capitalist.