Description of the image of Katerina in a thunderstorm by actions. Characteristic features of Katerina: sincerity and truthfulness, passion of nature

Among all types of work with the text of the play "Thunderstorm" (Ostrovsky), the composition causes particular difficulties. This is probably because the schoolchildren do not fully understand the peculiarities of Katerina's character, the peculiarity of the time in which she lived.

Let's try together to understand the issue and, based on the text, interpret the image the way the author wanted to show it.

A.N Ostrovsky. "Storm". Characteristics of Katerina

The very beginning of the nineteenth century. The first acquaintance with Katerina helps to understand the difficult environment in which she lives. The weak-willed husband who is afraid of his mother, the tyrant Kabanikha, who loves to humiliate people, strangles and oppresses Katerina. She feels her loneliness, her defenselessness, but with great love she remembers her parental home.

The characterization of Katerina ("Thunderstorm") begins with a picture of urban customs, and continues with her memories of the house where she was loved and free, where she felt like a bird. But was it all good? After all, she was given in marriage by the decision of the family, and her parents could not help but know how weak-willed her husband was, how cruel her mother-in-law was.

However, the girl, even in the stuffy atmosphere of the house-building, managed to maintain the ability to love. He falls in love with the nephew of the merchant Wild. But Katerina's character is so strong, and she herself is so pure, that the girl is afraid to even think about cheating on her husband.

The characteristic of Katerina ("Thunderstorm") stands out as a bright spot against the background of other heroes. Weak, weak-willed, content with the fact that Tikhon will escape from maternal control, lying by the will of circumstances Barbara - each of them struggles in his own way with unbearable and inhuman morals.

And only Katerina is fighting.

First with you. At first she does not want to hear about a meeting with Boris. Trying to "observe himself", he begs Tikhon to take her with him. Then she rebels against an inhuman society.

The characterization of Katerina ("Thunderstorm") is based on the fact that the girl is opposed to all characters. She does not secretly run to parties, as the cunning Varvara does, she is not afraid of the Kabanikha, as her son does.

The strength of Katerina's character is not that she fell in love, but that she dared to do it. And in the fact that, having failed to maintain her purity before God, she dared to accept death contrary to human and Divine laws.

The characterization of Katerina ("Thunderstorm") was created by Ostrovsky not by describing the features of her nature, but by the actions that the girl performed. Pure and honest, but infinitely lonely and infinitely loving Boris, she wanted to confess her love to the entire Kalinovsky society. He knew that she could be waiting, but she was not afraid of either the rumors or the bullying that would necessarily follow her confession.

But the tragedy of the heroine is that no one else has such a strong character. Boris abandons her, preferring an ephemeral legacy. Varvara does not understand why she confessed: she would walk herself slowly. The husband can only sob over the corpse, saying "you are happy, Katya."

The image of Katerina, created by Ostrovsky, is an excellent example of an awakening personality who is trying to break out of the sticky networks of the patriarchal way of life.

- this nature is not malleable, not bending. It has a highly developed personality, it has a lot of strength, energy; her rich soul demands freedom, breadth, - she does not want to secretly "steal" joy from life. She can not bend, but break. (See also the article The image of Katerina in the play "Thunderstorm" - briefly.)

A. N. Ostrovsky. Storm. Play

Katerina received a purely national upbringing, worked out by the ancient Russian pedagogy of Domostroy. All her childhood and youth she lived locked up, but the atmosphere of parental love softened this life - besides, the influence of religion prevented her soul from hardening in suffocating loneliness. On the contrary, she did not feel bondage: “she lived - she didn’t grieve about anything, like a bird in the wild!”. Katerina often went to churches, listened to the stories of wanderers and pilgrims, listened to the singing of spiritual verses - she lived carefree, surrounded by love and affection ... And she grew up as a beautiful, tender girl, with a fine mental organization, a great dreamer ... Brought up in a religious way , she lived exclusively in the circle of religious ideas; her rich imagination was fed only by those impressions that she drew from the life of the saints, from legends, apocrypha and those moods that she experienced during the service ...

“...until death, I loved to go to church! - she later recalled her youth in a conversation with her husband's sister Varvara. - Exactly, I used to go into paradise ... And I don’t see anyone, and I don’t remember the time, and I don’t hear when the service is over. Mamma used to say that everyone used to look at me, what was happening to me! And, you know, on a sunny day, such a light pillar goes down from the dome and smoke goes up in this pillar, like clouds. And I see, it used to be, a girl, I would get up at night - we also had lamps burning everywhere - but somewhere, in a corner and pray until the morning. Or I’ll go into the garden early in the morning, just as soon as the sun rises, I’ll fall on my knees, pray and cry, and I myself don’t know what I’m praying for and what I’m crying about!

From this story it is clear that Katerina was not just a religious person - she knew moments of religious "ecstasy" - that enthusiasm, which the holy ascetics were rich in, and examples of which we will find in abundance in the lives of the saints ... Like them, Katerina matured "visions" and wonderful dreams.

“And what dreams I had, Varenka, what dreams! Or golden temples, or some extraordinary gardens... And everyone sings invisible voices, and smells of cypress... Both mountains and trees, as if not the same as usual, but as they are written on the images!

From all these stories of Katerina, it is clear that she is not quite an ordinary person... Her soul, squeezed by the old way of life, seeks space, does not find it around her, and is carried away "woe", to God... There are many such natures in the old days went into "asceticism" ...

But sometimes, in relations with relatives, the energy of her soul broke through - she did not go "against people" but, indignant, protesting, she left then "from people"...

“I was born so hot! She tells Barbara. - I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, but it was towards evening, it was already dark; I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed it away from the shore. The next morning they already found it, ten miles away! ..

Eh, Varya, you don't know my character! Of course, God forbid this happens! And if it gets too cold for me here, they won't hold me back by any force. I'll throw myself out the window, I'll throw myself into the Volga. I don’t want to live here, so I won’t, even if you cut me!”

From these words it is clear that the calm, dreamy Katerina knows impulses that are difficult to cope with.

The story told by Ostrovsky is sad and tragic at the same time. The play depicts the fictional town of Kalinov and its inhabitants. The city of Kalinov, like its population, serves as a kind of symbol of typical provincial towns and villages in Russia in the 60s of the XIX century.

In the center of the play is the merchant family of Kabanikhi and Dikiy. Wild was cruel and the richest man in the city. An ignorant tyrant who could not live a day without swearing, and who believed that money gives him every right to mock weaker and defenseless people.

The boar, who established order in the town, adhered to traditional patriarchal customs, was charitable in public, but extremely cruel with her family. Kabanikha is a fan of domostroevshchina.

Her son Tikhon was calm and kind. Daughter Barbara is a lively girl who knows how to hide her feelings, her motto is: "Do what, but so that it is covered." Feklusha in the service of Kabanikhi.

The character of Katerina is characterized by sincerity and strength of feelings. "Why don't people fly like birds!" she exclaimed dreamily.

The heroine lived in a completely different world, invented by her, and did not want to live in the world in which the Boar lived with her household. “I don’t want to live like this and don’t! I'll throw myself into the Volga! she often said.

Katerina was a stranger to everyone, and nothing but oppression and resentment was prepared for her by fate in the world of wild and wild boars. The great Russian critic Belinsky called her "a ray of light in a dark kingdom."

The character of Katerina is also striking in its inconsistency, strength, energy and diversity. Throwing herself into the Volga was, in her opinion, the only way out of the suffocating, unbearable, intolerable hypocritical atmosphere in which she had to live.

This, no doubt, a brave act was her highest protest against cruelty, hypocrisy and injustice. Katerina sacrificed in the name of her ideal the most precious thing she had - her life.

Katerina- the main character, wife of Tikhon, daughter-in-law of Kabanikhi. The image of K. is the most important discovery of Ostrovsky - the discovery of a strong folk character born by the patriarchal world with an awakening sense of personality. In the plot of the play, K. is the protagonist, Kabanikha is the antagonist in a tragic conflict. Their relationship in the play is not an everyday feud between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, their fates expressed the clash of two historical eras, which determines the tragic nature of the conflict. It is important for the author to show the origins of the character of the heroine, for which, in the exposition, contrary to the specifics of the dramatic kind, K. is given a lengthy story about life as a girl. Here is drawn an ideal version of patriarchal relations and the patriarchal world in general. The main motive of her story is the motive of all-penetrating mutual love: “I lived, didn’t grieve about anything, like a bird in the wild, what I want, it happened, I do it.” But it was a “will” that did not at all conflict with the age-old way of a closed life, the whole circle of which is limited to domestic work, and since K. is a girl from a wealthy merchant family, this is needlework, sewing with gold on velvet; since she works together with wanderers, then, most likely, we are talking about embroideries for the temple. This is a story about a world in which it does not occur to a person to oppose himself to the general, since he still does not separate himself from this community. That is why there is no violence and coercion. The idyllic harmony of patriarchal family life (perhaps it was precisely the result of her childhood impressions that remained forever in her soul) for K. is an unconditional moral ideal. But it lives in an era when the very spirit of this morality - the harmony between the individual and the moral ideas of the environment - has disappeared and the ossified form is based on violence and coercion. Sensitive K. catches this in her family life in the Kabanovs' house. After listening to the story of the daughter-in-law's life before marriage, Varvara (Tikhon's sister) exclaims in surprise: "But it's the same with us." “Yes, everything here seems to be from bondage,” K. drops, and this is the main drama for her.

It is very important for the whole concept of the play that it is here, in the soul of a woman who is quite “Kalinovskaya” in terms of upbringing and moral ideas, that a new attitude to the world is born, a new feeling, still unclear to the heroine herself: “... Something bad is happening to me, some kind of miracle! .. Something in me is so unusual. I’m just starting to live again, or I don’t know.” This is a vague feeling, which K., of course, cannot explain rationalistically - the awakening feeling of personality. In the soul of the heroine, naturally, in accordance with the whole range of concepts and sphere of life of a merchant's wife, it takes the form of individual, personal love. Passion is born and grows in K., but this passion is highly spiritualized, infinitely far from the thoughtless striving for hidden joys. K. perceives awakened love as a terrible, indelible sin, because love for a stranger for her, a married woman, is a violation of moral duty, the moral commandments of the patriarchal world for K. are full of primordial meaning. With all her heart she wants to be pure and impeccable, her moral demands on herself do not allow compromise. Having already realized her love for Boris, she resists it with all her might, but does not find support in this struggle: “it’s as if I’m standing over an abyss and someone is pushing me there, but there’s nothing for me to hold on to.” Indeed, everything around her is already a dead form. For K., the form and ritual in themselves do not matter - she needs the very essence of human relations, once clothed in this ritual. That is why it is unpleasant for her to bow at the feet of the departing Tikhon and she refuses to howl on the porch, as the guardians of customs expect from her. Not only external forms of domestic use, but even prayer becomes inaccessible to her as soon as she feels the power of sinful passion over herself. N. A. Dobrolyubov was wrong when he asserted that K.'s prayers became boring. On the contrary, K.'s religious sentiments intensify as her mental storm grows. But it is precisely the discrepancy between her sinful inner state and what religious commandments require of her that prevents her from praying as before: K. is too far from the hypocritical gap between the external performance of rituals and worldly practice. With her high morality, such a compromise is impossible. She feels fear of herself, of the desire for will that has grown in her, inseparably merged in her mind with love: “Of course, God forbid this should happen! And if it gets too cold for me here, they won't hold me back by any force. I'll throw myself out the window, I'll throw myself into the Volga. I don’t want to live here, so I won’t, even if you cut me!”

K. was given in marriage young, her family decided her fate, and she accepts this as a completely natural, common thing. She enters the Kabanov family, ready to love and honor her mother-in-law (“For me, mother, it’s all the same that my own mother, that you ...” - she says to Kabanikha in act I, but she doesn’t know how to lie), expecting in advance that her husband will be master over her, but also her support and protection. But Tikhon is not suitable for the role of the head of a patriarchal family, and K. speaks of her love for him: “I feel sorry for him very much!” And in the fight against illegal love for Boris K., despite her attempts, she fails to rely on Tikhon.

"Thunderstorm" is not a "tragedy of love", but rather a "tragedy of conscience". When the fall is over, K. no longer retreats, does not feel sorry for himself, does not want to hide anything, saying to Boris: “If I am not afraid of sin for you, will I be afraid of human judgment!” The consciousness of sin does not leave her at the moment of intoxication with happiness and takes possession of her with great force when happiness is over. K. repents publicly without hope of forgiveness, and it is the complete absence of hope that pushes her to commit suicide, a sin even more serious: “Anyway, I have ruined my soul.” It is not Boris's refusal to take her with him to Kyakhta, but the complete impossibility of reconciling his love for him with the demands of his conscience and his physical aversion to his home prison that kills K.

To explain the character of K., it is not the motivation that is important (radical criticism condemned K. for her love for Boris), but free will, the fact that she suddenly and inexplicably for herself, contrary to her own ideas about morality and order, fell in love with Boris not a “function” (as this is supposed in the patriarchal world, where she must love not the personality of a particular person, but precisely the “function”: father, husband, mother-in-law, etc.), but another person who is not connected with her in any way. And the more inexplicable her attraction to Boris, the clearer that the point is precisely in this free, unpredictable willfulness of individual feeling. And this is precisely the sign of the awakening of the personal principle in this soul, all the moral foundations of which are determined by patriarchal morality. Therefore, K.'s death is predetermined and irreversible, no matter how the people on whom she depends behave: neither her self-consciousness, nor her whole way of life allows the personal feeling that has awakened in her to be embodied in everyday forms. K. is not a victim of anyone personally from those around her (whatever she herself or other characters in the play may think about it), but of the course of life. The world of patriarchal relations dies, and the soul of this world leaves life in torment and suffering, crushed by the ossified form of worldly ties that has lost its meaning, and passes a moral judgment on itself, because in it the patriarchal ideal lives in its primordial content.
In addition to the exact socio-historical characterization, "Thunderstorm" has both a clearly expressed lyrical beginning and powerful symbolism. Both are primarily (if not exclusively) associated with the image of K. Ostrovsky consistently correlates fate and speech with the plot and poetics of lyrical songs about the female lot. In this tradition, K.'s story about free life as a girl, a monologue before the last meeting with Boris, is sustained. The author consistently poeticizes the image of the heroine, using for this even such a means, unconventional for a dramatic kind, as a landscape, which is first described in the remark, then the beauty of the Volga expanses is discussed in Kuligin's conversations, then in K.'s words addressed to Varvara, the motif of a bird and flight appears (“Why don’t people fly? .. You know, sometimes it seems to me that I am a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you are drawn to fly. That’s how you would run up, raise your hands and fly”). In the finale, the motif of the flight is tragically transformed into a fall from the Volga steep, from the very mountain that beckoned to fly. And K. saves K. from a painful life in captivity, the Volga, symbolizing distance and freedom (recall the story of K; about her childhood rebellion, when she, offended, got into a boat and sailed along the Volga - an episode from the biography of Ostrovsky's close friend, actress L. P. Kositskaya , the first performer of the role of K.).

The lyricism of "Thunderstorm" arises precisely because of the closeness of the world of the heroine and the author. The hopes for overcoming social discord, rampant individualistic passions, the cultural gap between the educated classes and the people on the basis of the resurrection of ideal patriarchal harmony, which Ostrovsky and his friends in the Moskvityanin magazine had in the 1850s, did not stand the test of modernity. The “Thunderstorm” was a farewell to them, reflecting the state of the people's consciousness at the turn of the epochs. The lyrical nature of The Thunderstorm was deeply understood by A. A. Grigoriev, himself a former Muscovite, saying about the play: "... as if not a poet, but a whole people created here."

2. The image of Katerina in the play "Thunderstorm"

Katerina is a lonely young woman who lacks human participation, sympathy, love. The need for this draws her to Boris. She sees that outwardly he does not look like other residents of the city of Kalinov, and, not being able to find out his inner essence, considers him a man of another world. In her imagination, Boris appears as a beautiful prince who will take her away from the "dark kingdom" to the fairy-tale world that exists in her dreams.

In terms of character and interests, Katerina stands out sharply from her environment. The fate of Katerina, unfortunately, is a vivid and typical example of the fate of thousands of Russian women of that time. Katerina is a young woman, the wife of the merchant's son Tikhon Kabanov. She recently left her home and moved to her husband's house, where she lives with her mother-in-law Kabanova, who is the sovereign mistress. In the family, Katerina has no rights, she is not even free to dispose of herself. With warmth and love, she recalls her parental home, her maiden life. There she lived freely, surrounded by the caress and care of her mother.

Katerina found herself in completely different conditions in her husband's house .. At every step she felt dependent on her mother-in-law, suffered humiliation and insults. On the part of Tikhon, she does not meet any support, much less understanding, since he himself is under the rule of Kabanikh. By her kindness, Katerina is ready to treat Kabanikha like her own mother. ". But Katerina's sincere feelings do not meet with support from either Kabanikha or Tikhon.

Life in such an environment changed the character of Katerina. Katerina's sincerity and truthfulness collide in the house of Kabanikh with lies, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and rudeness. When love for Boris is born in Katerina, it seems to her a crime, and she struggles with the feeling that has washed over her. Katerina's truthfulness and sincerity make her suffer so much that she finally has to repent to her husband. Katerina's sincerity, her truthfulness are incompatible with the life of the "dark kingdom". All this was the cause of the tragedy of Katerina.

"Katerina's public repentance shows the depth of her suffering, moral greatness, determination. But after repentance, her situation became unbearable. Her husband does not understand her, Boris is weak-willed and does not go to her aid. The situation has become hopeless - Katerina is dying. It is not the fault of Katerina's death one specific person. Her death is the result of the incompatibility of morality and the way of life in which she was forced to exist. The image of Katerina was of great educational importance for Ostrovsky's contemporaries and for subsequent generations. He called for a fight against all forms of despotism and oppression of the human person. This an expression of the growing protest of the masses against all forms of slavery.

Katerina, sad and cheerful, compliant and obstinate, dreamy, depressed and proud. Such different states of mind are explained by the naturalness of every mental movement of this at the same time restrained and impulsive nature, the strength of which lies in the ability to always be oneself. Katerina remained true to herself, that is, she could not change the very essence of her character.

I think that the most important trait of Katerina's character is honesty towards herself, her husband, the world around her; it is her unwillingness to live a lie. She does not want and cannot cheat, pretend, lie, hide. This is confirmed by the scene of Katerina's confession of treason. Not a thunderstorm, not a frightening prophecy of a crazy old woman, not a fear of fiery hell prompted the heroine to tell the truth. “The whole heart is broken! I can't take it anymore!" So she began her confession. For her honest and whole nature, the false position in which she found herself is unbearable. To live just to live is not for her. To live means to be yourself. Her most precious value is personal freedom, the freedom of the soul.

With such a character, Katerina, after betraying her husband, could not remain in his house, return to a monotonous and dreary life, endure the constant reproaches and “moralizing” of Kabanikh, lose her freedom. But any patience comes to an end. It is difficult for Katerina to be where she is not understood, where her human dignity is humiliated and insulted, her feelings and desires are ignored. Before her death, she says: “What is home, what is in the grave is all the same ... In the grave is better ...” She does not want death, but life is unbearable.

Katerina is a deeply religious and God-fearing person. Since, according to the Christian religion, suicide is a great sin, by deliberately committing it, she showed not weakness, but strength of character. Her death is a challenge to the “dark force”, a desire to live in the “light kingdom” of love, joy and happiness.

The death of Katerina is the result of a collision of two historical eras. With her death, Katerina protests against despotism and tyranny, her death testifies to the approaching end of the "dark kingdom." The image of Katerina belongs to the best images of Russian fiction. Katerina is a new type of people in Russian reality in the 60s of the XIX century.