Comprehensive analysis works " Matrenin Dvor"A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
In the work “Matryona’s Dvor,” Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn describes the life of a hardworking, intelligent, but very lonely woman, Matryona, whom no one understood or appreciated, but everyone tried to take advantage of her hard work and responsiveness.
The very title of the story "Matrenin's Dvor" can be interpreted in different ways. In the first case, for example, the word “yard” can simply mean Matryona’s way of life, her household, her purely everyday worries and difficulties. In the second case, perhaps, we can say that the word “yard” focuses the reader’s attention on the fate of Matryona’s house itself, Matryona’s household yard itself. In the third case, the “yard” symbolizes the circle of people who were one way or another interested in Matryona.
Each of the meanings of the word “yard” that I have given above certainly contains the tragedy that is inherent, perhaps, in the way of life of every woman similar to Matryona, but still in the third meaning, it seems to me, the tragedy is greatest, since here we are talking it's already underway not about the difficulties of life and not about loneliness, but about the fact that even death cannot make people think one day about justice and proper attitude towards human dignity. Much stronger is the fear in people for themselves, their lives, without the help of someone else, whose fate they never cared about. “Then I learned that crying over the deceased is not just crying, but a kind of marking. Matryona’s three sisters flew in, seized the hut, the goat and the stove, locked her chest, gutted two hundred funeral rubles from the lining of her coat, and explained to everyone who came that They were the only ones close to Matryona."
I think that in this case all three meanings of the word “yard” are added up, and each of these meanings reflects one or another tragic picture: the soullessness, deadness of the “living courtyard” that surrounded Matryona during her life and subsequently divided her household; the fate of Matryona’s hut itself after Matryona’s death and during Matryona’s life; the absurd death of Matryona.
Main feature literary language Solzhenitsyn is that Alexander Isaevich himself gives an explanatory interpretation of many of the remarks of the heroes of the story, and this reveals to us the veil behind which lies Solzhenitsyn’s very mood, his personal attitude towards each of the heroes. However, I got the impression that the author’s interpretations are somewhat ironic in nature, but at the same time they seem to synthesize the remarks and leave in them only the ins and outs, undisguised, true meaning. “Oh, aunty, aunty! And how you didn’t take care of yourself! And, probably, now they are offended by us! And you are our darling, and the fault is all yours! And the upper room has nothing to do with it, and why did you go there, where was death guarding you? And no one called you there! And how did you die? And why didn’t you listen to us? !)".
Reading between the lines of Solzhenitsyn’s story, one can understand that Alexander Isaevich himself draws completely different conclusions from what he heard than those that could be expected. “And only here - from these disapproving reviews of my sister-in-law - did the image of Matryona emerge before me, as I did not understand her, even living with her side by side.” “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous man without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand.” Words involuntarily come to mind French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the meaning of which is that in reality everything is not as it is in reality.
Matryona is a contrast to the reality that in Solzhenitsyn’s story is expressed through the anger, envy and acquisitiveness of people. With her way of life, Matryona proved that anyone who lives in this world can be honest and righteous if he lives by a righteous idea and is strong in spirit.
Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich (1918 – 2008) Born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk. Parents came from peasant backgrounds. This didn't stop them from getting a good education. The mother was widowed six months before the birth of her son. To support him, she went to work as a typist. In 1938, Solzhenitsyn entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University, and in 1941, having received a diploma in mathematics, he graduated from the correspondence department of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (IFLI) in Moscow. After the start of the Great Patriotic War he was drafted into the army (artillery). On February 9, 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by front-line counterintelligence: when examining (opening) his letter to a friend, NKVD officers discovered critical remarks addressed to I.V. Stalin. The tribunal sentenced Alexander Isaevich to 8 years in prison followed by exile to Siberia.
In 1957, after the start of the fight against the personality cult of Stalin, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated. N. S. Khrushchev personally authorized the publication of his story about Stalin’s camps, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1962). In 1967, after Solzhenitsyn sent to the congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR open letter, where he called for an end to censorship, his works were banned. Nevertheless, the novels “In the First Circle” (1968) and “ Cancer building"(1969) were distributed in samizdat and were published without the consent of the author in the West. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich was awarded Nobel Prize on literature.
In 1973, the KGB confiscated the manuscript's activities. Died on August 3, 2008, a new work of the writer of the year in Moscow. "The Gulag Archipelago". The “GULAG Archipelago” meant prisons, forced labor camps, and settlements for exiles scattered throughout the USSR. On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, accused of treason and deported to Germany. In 1976 he moved to the USA and lived in Vermont, studying literary creativity. Only in 1994 was the writer able to return to Russia. Until recently, Solzhenitsyn continued his literary and social activities.
The main topic the work of this writer is not at all a criticism of communism and not a curse on the Gulag, but the struggle of good against evil - eternal theme world art. Solzhenitsyn’s work grew not only on the traditions of Russian literature of the 20th century. As a rule, his works are considered against the background of an extremely limited circle of socio-political and literary phenomena 19th -20th centuries. The artistic space of Solzhenitsyn's prose is a combination of three worlds - ideal (Divine), real (earthly) and hellish (devilish).
The structure of the Russian soul also corresponds to this structure of the world. It is also three-part and is a combination of several principles: holy, human and animal. IN different periods one of these principles is suppressed, the other begins to dominate, and this explains the high rises and deep falls of the Russian people. The time that Solzhenitsyn writes about in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”, in his opinion, is one of the most terrible failures in Russian history, the time of the triumph of the Antichrist. For Solzhenitsyn, the devilish anti-world is the kingdom of egoism and primitive rationalism, the triumph of self-interest and the denial of absolute values; the cult of earthly well-being dominates in it, and man is proclaimed the measure of all values.
Elements of oral folk art in the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” it is traditional to reveal inner world heroines based on song style. So, Matryona has a “singing” speech: “She didn’t speak, she hummed touchingly,” “benevolent words ... began with some kind of low torment, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” The impression was strengthened by the inclusion of “singing” dialectisms in the text. The dialectical words used in the story very vividly convey the speech of the heroine’s native area: kartovo, cardboard soup, kuzhotkom (in the evening), upper room, duel (blizzard), etc. Matryona has firm ideas about how to sing “in our way” “, and her memories of her youth evoke in the narrator an association with “a song under the sky, which has long been left behind and cannot be sung with the mechanisms.” The story uses proverbs that reflect bitter experiences folk life: “Dunno lies on the stove, Know-Nothing is on a string”, “There are two riddles in the world: how I was born - I don’t remember, how I die - I don’t know.”
At the end of the story folk wisdom becomes the basis for evaluating the heroine: “...she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb (meaning the proverb “A city is not worth without a saint, a village is not worth a righteous person”), a village is not worth.” In the story “Matrenin's Dvor” there are repeatedly signs that promise something unkind. It should be recalled that signs are common to many folklore works: songs, epics, fairy tales, etc. Tragic events are foreshadowed by Matryona’s fear of moving (“I was afraid...most of all for some reason...”), and the loss of her kitten at the blessing of water (“... like an unclean spirit took him away”), and that “on those same days a lanky cat wandered out of the yard...”. Nature itself protects the heroine from evil. A blizzard swirling around for two days interferes with transportation, and immediately after it a thaw begins. Thus, folklore and Christian motives occupy a significant place in this story. Solzhenitsyn uses them because they are directly connected with the Russian people. And the fate of the people during the turmoil of the 20th century is the central theme of Solzhenitsyn’s entire work. . .
Year of first publication - 1963 Genre: short story Genus: epic Type artistic speech: prose Plot type: social, psychological
History of creation The story “Matrenin's Dvor” was written in 1959 and published in 1964. This is Solzhenitsyn's story about the situation in which he found himself upon returning from the camp. He “wanted to worm his way in and get lost in the very interior of Russia,” to find “a quiet corner of Russia away from the railways.” After his rehabilitation in 1957, Solzhenitsyn lived in the village of Maltsevo, Kurlovsky district Vladimir region from the peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. The former camp inmate could only get hired for hard work, but he wanted to teach.
Initially, the author called his work “A village is not worth it without a righteous man.” It is known that in 1963, in order to avoid friction with censorship, the publisher A. T. Tvardovsky changed the name; the idea of righteousness referred to Christianity and was not welcomed in any way in the early 60s of the twentieth century.
Brief story In the summer of 1956, at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow, a passenger gets off along the railway line to Murom and Kazan. This is the narrator, whose fate is reminiscent of the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front “was ten years late in returning”, that is, he served in a camp, which is also evidenced by the fact that when the narrator got a job, every letter in his documents were “groped”). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization. But it was not possible to live in a village with the wonderful name Vysokoye Polye, because they did not bake bread there and did not sell anything edible. And then he is transferred to a village with a monstrous name for his ears, Torfoprodukt. However, it turns out that “not everything is about peat mining” and there are also villages with the names Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudny, Shevertny, Shestimirovo. . . This reconciles the narrator with his lot, for it promises him “a bad Russia.” He settles in one of the villages called Talnovo. The owner of the hut in which the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva or simply Matryona.
Matryona's fate, about which she does not immediately, not considering it interesting for a “cultured” person, sometimes tells the guest in the evenings, fascinates and at the same time stuns him. He sees a special meaning in her fate, which Matryona’s fellow villagers and relatives do not notice. My husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her, like the village husbands of their wives. But it’s unlikely that Matryona herself loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front first world war and disappeared. Matryona was waiting for him, but in the end, at the insistence of Thaddeus’s family, she married her younger brother, Efim. And then Thaddeus, who was in Hungarian captivity, suddenly returned. According to him, he did not hack Matryona and her husband to death with an ax only because Efim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride with the same name. The “second Matryona” gave birth to six children to Thaddeus, but all the children from Efim (also six) of the “first Matryona” died without even living for three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “corrupted,” and she herself believed it. Then she took in the daughter of the “second Matryona”, Kira, and raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.
Matryona lived all her life as if not for herself. She constantly works for someone: for the collective farm, for her neighbors, while doing “peasant” work, and never asks for money for it. In Matryona there is a huge inner strength. For example, she is able to stop a running horse, which men cannot stop. Gradually, the narrator understands that it is precisely on people like Matryona, who give themselves to others without reserve, that the entire village and the entire Russian land still hold together. But he is hardly pleased with this discovery. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to it next? Hence the absurdly tragic end of the story. Matryona dies while helping Thaddeus and his sons drag across railway on the sleigh is part of his own hut, bequeathed to Kira. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona’s death and decided to take away the inheritance for the young people during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry out of obligation rather than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona’s property. Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.
Plot The story is absolutely documentary, there is practically no fiction in it, the events that happened are described in the story with chronological accuracy. The story begins in August 1956 and ends in June 1957. Climax The climax is the episode of cutting off the upper room, and the denouement is the moment of Matryona’s death at the crossing while transporting the log frame of her upper room: “At the crossing there is a hill, the entrance is steep. There is no barrier. The tractor went over with the first sleigh, but the cable broke, and the second sleigh... got stuck... there... Matryona was carried too.”
Composition The work consists of three chapters. 1. Image of a Russian village in the early 50s. Includes a detailed exposition: the story of finding shelter and meeting the mistress of the house, when the hero is only watching Matryona. 2. The life and fate of the heroine of the story. We learn the story of Matryona, her biography, conveyed in memories. 3. Moral lessons. The third chapter follows after the denouement and is an epilogue.
Main characters The narrator (Ignatyich) is an autobiographical character. Matryona calls R. Ignatyich. He served exile “in the dusty, hot desert” and was rehabilitated. R. wanted to live in some village in central Russia. Once in Talnov, he began renting a room from Matryona and teaching mathematics at a local school. R. is closed, avoids people, does not like noise. He worries when Matryona accidentally puts on his padded jacket and is tormented by the noise of the loudspeaker. But the hero got along with Matryona herself immediately, despite the fact that they lived in the same room: she was very quiet and helpful. But R., an intelligent and experienced person, did not immediately appreciate Matryona. He understood the essence of M. only after the death of the heroine, equating her with the righteous (“A village is not worth it without a righteous man,” R. recalled).
Is there a detailed portrait of the heroine in the story? What portrait details does the writer focus on? Matryona is endowed with a discreet appearance. It is important for the author to depict not so much the external beauty of a simple Russian peasant woman, but rather the inner light flowing from her eyes, and to emphasize his thought all the more clearly: “Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.”
Which artistic details create a picture of Matryona’s life? All her “wealth” is ficus trees, a lanky cat, a goat, mice and cockroaches. All the world Matryona in her darkish hut with a large Russian stove is a continuation of herself, a part of her life. Everything here is natural and organic: the beloved ficus trees “filled the owner’s loneliness with a silent but living crowd.”
How does the theme of the heroine’s past unfold in the story? Not easy life path heroines. She had to endure a lot of grief and injustice in her lifetime: broken love, the death of six children, the loss of her husband in the war, hellish work in the village, severe illness, bitter resentment towards the collective farm, which squeezed all the strength out of her and then wrote her off as unnecessary. The tragedy of a rural Russian woman is concentrated in the fate of one Matryona.
How does Matryona appear in the system of other images in the story, what is the attitude of those around her? The heroes of the story fall into two unequal parts: Matryona and the author-narrator who understands and loves her, and those who can be called “Nematryona,” her relatives. The boundary between them is indicated by the fact that the main thing in the consciousness and behavior of each of them is interest in common life, the desire to participate in it, an open, sincere attitude towards people, or a focus only on one’s own interests, one’s own home, one’s own wealth.
The image of the righteous woman Matryona in the story is contrasted with Thaddeus. Fierce hatred is felt in his words about Matryona’s marriage to his brother. The return of Thaddeus reminded Matryona of their wonderful past. Nothing wavered in Thaddeus after the misfortune with Matryona; he even looked at her dead body with some indifference. The train crash, under which both the room and the people transporting it ended up, was predetermined by the petty desire of Thaddeus and his relatives to save money on little things, not to drive the tractor twice, but to make do with one flight. After her death, many began to reproach Matryona. So, my sister-in-law said about her: “. . . and she was unscrupulous, and did not pursue the acquisition, and was not careful; . . . and stupid, she helped strangers for free.” Even Ignatyich admits with pain and remorse: “There is no Matryona. Killed dear person. And on the last day I reproached her for wearing a padded jacket.”
The conflict between Matryona and the village is not developed in the story; there is rather indifference and neglect, a lack of understanding of her worldview. We see only one unrighteous Thaddeus, who forced Matryona to give up part of the house. After Matryona's death, the village will become morally poorer. Describing her funeral, Solzhenitsyn does not hide his dissatisfaction with his fellow villagers: they buried Matryona in a poor, unpainted coffin, drunk, in hoarse voices sang " eternal memory", they hastily divided her things. Why are they so heartless? The author explains the bitterness of people social problems. Social poverty led the village to spiritual poverty. Solzhenitsyn's view of the village of the 60s is distinguished by its harsh, cruel truthfulness. But this truth is imbued with pain, and torment, and love, and hope. Love is the desire to change the social order that has led Russia to the brink of the abyss. The hope is that if in every village there is at least one righteous woman, and he hopes that there is.
The theme of righteousness To the theme of righteousness, a favorite in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century century, Solzhenitsyn approaches delicately, unobtrusively and even with humor. Speaking about Matryona, his hero remarks: “Only she had fewer sins than her lame-legged cat. She was strangling mice! . “The writer rethinks the images of the righteous in Russian literature and portrays the righteous not as a person who went through many sins, repented and began to live like a god. He does righteousness naturally heroine's life. At the same time, Matryona is not a typical image, she is not like other “Talnovsky women” who live by material interests. She is one of those “three righteous people” who are so difficult to find.
Idea: Using the example of revealing the fate of a village woman, show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly reveal the measure of humanity in each person. The idea of “Matryona’s Court” and its problematics are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the heroine’s Christian-Orthodox worldview.
Art space Interesting art space story. It begins with its name, then expands to the railway station, which is located “one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the line that goes from Murom to Kazan,” and to the villages “over the hill,” and then covers the entire country that receives foreign delegation, and extends even into the Universe, which must be filled artificial satellites Earth. The category of space is associated with images of a house and a road, symbolizing the life path of the characters.
Issues: üRussian village of the early 50s, its life, customs, morals ü The relationship between the authorities and the working man üThe punitive power of love üThe special holiness of the heroine’s thoughts.
The values of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work are universal moral values. The story “Matryonin’s Dvor” calls for not repeating the mistakes of the last generation, so that people become more humane and moral. After all, these are the basic values of humanity!
Anna Akhmatova about A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryonin’s Dvor” “An amazing thing... This is worse than “Ivan Denisovich”... There you can blame everything on the cult of personality, but here... After all, it’s not Matryona, but the entire Russian village that fell under the locomotive and to pieces..."
Statements by A.I. Solzhenitsyn about the heroine of the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” are the same “She is a keeper, without her great-grandfather, the village would not exist. Not a hundred city. Neither the whole land is ours." “Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.”
“There are such born angels, they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide on top of this slurry (violence, lies, myths about happiness and legality), without drowning in it at all.” A. I. Solzhenitsyn True man is expressed almost only in moments of farewell and suffering - this is who he is, remember him... V. Rasputin
"Matrenin's Dvor" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.
“A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” - this is the original title of the story. The story echoes many works of Russian classical literature. Solzhenitsyn seems to be transferring one of Leskov’s heroes into historical era XX century, post-war period. And the more dramatic, the more tragic is the fate of Matryona in the midst of this situation.
The life of Matryona Vasilievna is seemingly ordinary. She devoted her entire life to work, selfless and hard peasant work. When the construction of collective farms began, she went there too, but due to illness she was released from there and was now brought in when others refused. And she didn’t work for money, she never took money. Only later, after her death, her sister-in-law, with whom the narrator settled, will remember evilly, or rather, remind her of this strangeness of hers.
But is Matryona’s fate really that simple? And who knows what it’s like to fall in love with a person and, without waiting for him, to marry someone else, unloved, and then see your betrothed a few months after the wedding? And then what is it like to live with him side by side, to see him every day, to feel guilty for the failure of his and your life? Her husband didn't love her. She bore him six children, but none of them survived. And she had to take in raising the daughter of her beloved, but now a stranger. How much spiritual warmth and kindness accumulated in her, that’s how much she invested in her adopted daughter Kira. Matryona survived so much, but did not lose the inner light with which her eyes shone and her smile shone. She did not hold a grudge against anyone and was only upset when they offended her. She is not angry with her sisters, who appeared only when everything in her life was already prosperous. She lives with what she has. And therefore I have not saved anything in my life except two hundred rubles for a funeral.
The turning point in her life was when they wanted to take away her room. She did not feel sorry for the good, she never regretted it. She was afraid to think that they would destroy her house, in which her whole life had flown by in one moment. She spent forty years here, endured two wars, a revolution that flew by with echoes. And for her to break and take away her upper room means to break and destroy her life. This was the end for her. The real ending of the novel is not accidental either. Human greed destroys Matryona. It is painful to hear the author’s words that Thaddeus, because of whose greed the matter began, on the day of Matryona’s death and then the funeral, only thinks about the abandoned log house. He does not feel sorry for her, does not cry for the one whom he once loved so dearly.
Solzhenitsyn shows the era when the principles of life were turned upside down, when property became the subject and goal of life. It is not for nothing that the author asks the question why things are called “good”, because they are essentially evil, and terrible. Matryona understood this. She didn’t care about outfits, she dressed like a villager. Matryona is the embodiment of true folk morality, universal morality, on which the whole world rests.
So Matryona remained not understood by anyone, not truly mourned by anyone. Only Kira alone cried, not according to custom, but from the heart. They feared for her sanity.
The story is masterfully written. Solzhenitsyn is a master of subject detail. He builds a special three-dimensional world from small and seemingly insignificant details. This world is visible and tangible. This world is Russia. We can say with precision where in the country the village of Talnovo is located, but we understand very well that in this village there is all of Russia. Solzhenitsyn connects the general and the particular and encloses it in a single artistic image.
Plan
- The narrator gets a job as a teacher in Talnovo. Settles in with Matryona Vasilyevna.
- Gradually the narrator learns about her past.
- Thaddeus comes to Matryona. He is busy with the upper room, which Matryona promised Kira, his daughter, raised by Matryona.
- When transporting a log house through railways Matryona, her nephew and Kira's husband die.
- There have been long disputes over Matryona's hut and property. And the narrator moves in with her sister-in-law.
The story “Matryonin’s Dvor” was written by Solzhenitsyn in 1959. The first title of the story is “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” (Russian proverb). The final version of the name was invented by Tvardovsky, who was at that time the editor of the magazine " New world", where the story was published in No. 1, 1963. At the insistence of the editors, the beginning of the story was changed and the events were attributed not to 1956, but to 1953, that is, to the pre-Khrushchev era. This is a bow to Khrushchev, thanks to whose permission Solzhenitsyn’s first story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1962) was published.
The image of the narrator in the work “Matryonin’s Dvor” is autobiographical. After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated; he actually lived in the village of Miltsevo (Talnovo in the story) and rented a corner from Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova (Grigorieva in the story). Solzhenitsyn very accurately conveyed not only the details of the life of the prototype Marena, but also the features of life and even the local dialect of the village.
Literary direction and genre
Solzhenitsyn developed Tolstoy's tradition of Russian prose in a realistic direction. The story combines the features of an artistic essay, the story itself and elements of life. The life of the Russian village is reflected so objectively and diversely that the work approaches the genre of “novel-type story.” In this genre, the character of the hero is shown not only in crucial moment its development, but also illuminates the history of character, the stages of its formation. The fate of the hero reflects the fate of the entire era and country (as Solzhenitsyn says, the earth).
Issues
At the center of the story moral issues. Are many worth it? human lives a captured plot or a decision dictated by human greed not to make a second trip with a tractor? Material values among the people are valued higher than the person himself. Thaddeus's son and his once beloved woman died, his son-in-law is threatened with prison, and his daughter is inconsolable. But the hero is thinking about how to save the logs that the workers did not have time to burn at the crossing.
Mystical motives are at the center of the story. This is the motive of the unrecognized righteous man and the problem of curse on things touched by people with unclean hands pursuing selfish goals. So Thaddeus undertook to demolish Matryonin’s upper room, thereby making it cursed.
Plot and composition
The story "Matryonin's Dvor" has a time frame. In one paragraph, the author talks about how at one of the crossings and 25 years after a certain event, trains slow down. That is, the frame dates back to the early 80s, the rest of the story is an explanation of what happened at the crossing in 1956, the year of the Khrushchev Thaw, when “something started to move.”
The hero-narrator finds the place of his teaching almost mystically, having heard a special Russian dialect at the bazaar and settled in “condo Russia”, in the village of Talnovo.
The plot centers on the life of Matryona. The narrator learns about her fate from herself (she talks about how Thaddeus, who disappeared in the first war, wooed her, and how she married his brother, who disappeared in the second). But the hero finds out more about the silent Matryona from his own observations and from others.
The story describes in detail Matryona's hut, located in a picturesque place near the lake. The hut plays an important role in the life and death of Matryona. To understand the meaning of the story, you need to imagine a traditional Russian hut. Matryona's hut was divided into two halves: the actual living hut with a Russian stove and the upper room (it was built for the eldest son in order to separate him when he got married). It is this upper room that Thaddeus dismantles in order to build a hut for Matryona’s niece and his own daughter Kira. The hut in the story is animated. The wallpaper that has fallen off the wall is called its inner skin.
The ficus trees in the tubs are also endowed with living features, reminding the narrator of a silent but living crowd.
The development of action in the story is a static state of harmonious coexistence between the narrator and Matryona, who “do not find the meaning of everyday existence in food.” The climax of the story is the moment of destruction of the upper room, and the work ends with the main idea and bitter omen.
Heroes of the story
The hero-narrator, whom Matryona calls Ignatich, makes it clear from the first lines that he came from prison. He is looking for a teaching job in the wilderness, in the Russian outback. Only the third village satisfies him. Both the first and the second turn out to be corrupted by civilization. Solzhenitsyn makes it clear to the reader that he condemns the attitude of Soviet bureaucrats towards people. The narrator despises the authorities who do not grant Matryona a pension, who force her to work on the collective farm for sticks, who not only do not provide peat for the fire, but also forbid asking about it. He instantly decides not to extradite Matryona, who brewed moonshine, and hides her crime, for which she faces prison.
Having experienced and seen a lot, the narrator, embodying the author’s point of view, acquires the right to judge everything that he observes in the village of Talnovo - a miniature embodiment of Russia.
Matryona is the main character of the story. The author says about her: “Those people have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.” At the moment of meeting, Matryona’s face is yellow, and her eyes are clouded with illness.
To survive, Matryona grows small potatoes, secretly brings forbidden peat from the forest (up to 6 bags a day) and secretly mows hay for his goat.
Matryona lacked womanly curiosity, she was delicate, and did not annoy her with questions. Today's Matryona is a lost old woman. The author knows about her that she got married before the revolution, that she had 6 children, but they all died quickly, “so two didn’t live at once.” Matryona's husband did not return from the war, but disappeared without a trace. The hero suspected that he had new family somewhere abroad.
Matryona had a quality that distinguished her from the rest of the village residents: she selflessly helped everyone, even the collective farm, from which she was expelled due to illness. There is a lot of mysticism in her image. In her youth, she could lift bags of any weight, stopped a galloping horse, had a presentiment of her death, being afraid of steam locomotives. Another omen of her death is a cauldron with holy water that disappeared to God knows where at Epiphany.
Matryona's death seems to be an accident. But why are the mice running around like crazy on the night of her death? The narrator suggests that 30 years later the threat of Matryona’s brother-in-law Thaddeus struck, who threatened to chop Matryona and his own brother, who married her.
After death, Matryona's holiness is revealed. The mourners notice that she, completely crushed by the tractor, has only her right hand left to pray to God. And the narrator draws attention to her face, which is more alive than dead.
Fellow villagers speak of Matryona with disdain, not understanding her selflessness. Her sister-in-law considers her unscrupulous, not careful, not inclined to accumulate goods; Matryona did not seek her own benefit and helped others for free. Even Matryonina’s warmth and simplicity were despised by her fellow villagers.
Only after her death did the narrator understand that Matryona, “not chasing after things,” indifferent to food and clothing, is the basis, the core of all of Russia. On such a righteous person stands the village, the city and the country (“the whole land is ours”). For the sake of one righteous person, as in the Bible, God can spare the earth and save it from fire.
Artistic originality
Matryona appears before the hero as fairy creature, similar to Baba Yaga, who reluctantly gets off the stove to feed the passing prince. She, like a fairytale grandmother, has animal helpers. Shortly before Matryona’s death, the lanky cat leaves the house; the mice, anticipating the death of the old woman, make a particularly rustling noise. But cockroaches are indifferent to the fate of the hostess. Following Matryona, her favorite ficus trees, like a crowd, die: they are of no practical value and are taken out into the cold after Matryona’s death.
Russian national character has repeatedly been the subject of depiction in literature. But it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who, using the example of a simple Russian woman, managed to show the depth of the Russian spirit, its versatility and spirituality.
Analysis of the image of the gerini Matryona
Matryona is a simple Russian woman, she is not characterized by heroism and loud actions. Her life repeats the lives of millions of women in Rus' who work hopelessly and suffer injustice. Appearance main character very simple, it cannot be called beautiful.
Matryona's life was not eventful bright events. She worked honestly all her life, sometimes faced injustice. But, despite this, Solzhenitsyn’s heroine did not become embittered at the world around her, but looked at it with kind eyes.
Matryona, like every person, found small joys in her life that dispersed sadness and sorrow. For the woman, these were ficus trees that grew in her house and a cat. This suggests thoughts about the limitations of Matryona’s consciousness. However, this is not so; the poverty in which a woman is forced to live does not allow her to have something more valuable.
Even Matryona’s lack of education does not cause irritation, but rather touches her. Accustomed to living surrounded by pristine nature, she condemns people who want to invade it, and believes that astronauts, by flying into space, will make it so that there will be more summer. She perceives the world around her as something sacred and inviolable, and humans as an integral part of this environment.
The main character, despite being tired from hopeless work, always helped her neighbors in field work, which earned them their love and affection. Work was her outlet, in it she realized her importance. Even when she was overcome by sad thoughts, she found salvation from them in work.
Matryona never chalked beautiful clothes Moreover, I didn’t see the need to buy it for myself. She saw the value of life not in external tinsel, but in the inner fulfillment of the people who surround her.
Matryona as a bearer of the Russian spirit
Why was the simple Russian Matryona chosen by the writer to embody the Russian national character? Because heroism and national consciousness are inherent not only to commanders, public figures and to writers he lives in the simple village woman Matryona.
She embodies the entire people, who are characterized by goodwill, independence of character, kindness and openness, sincerity and acute feeling debt. Everything that is in Matryona is inherent in each of us.
The simple life of a Russian woman is the heroism that has been glorified for centuries. Solzhenitsyn, thanks to his unsurpassed writing skills, was able to create an image of a bearer of national character that is understandable to everyone.
The writer shows us, using the example of Matryona, that the fate of Russia is not decided by politicians or universally recognized heroes, but millions of modest, hardworking women like the main character.
The prototype of Matryona is all the women of Russia who selflessly sacrifice their lives for the good of others and do not see it as heroic act. According to the author’s own prediction, Russia will exist as long as at least one such Matryona lives in it.
