Characteristics of the main characters. Retelling and characterization of the work “Live and Remember” by Rasputin V.G.

Works modern writers acutely describe our everyday, ordinary life, showing its shortcomings and omissions. Writers use real episodes of modern reality to try to identify, identify and show the negative aspects of people’s social and individual lives.

I was given the opportunity to reflect on one of the works of the modern Russian writer V. Rasputin - “Live and Remember”.

I, as a reader, am glad that I had the opportunity to read the works of the wonderful and talented Russian prose writer V. G. Rasputin, who created wonderful works about Russian people, about Russian nature, about the Russian soul. His novels and short stories are included in the golden fund of modern Russian literature.

The events described in the story take place in the winter of '45, in the last war year, on the banks of the Angara in the village of Atamanovka. The name, it would seem, is loud, and in the recent past even more intimidating - Razboinikovo. “...Once upon a time, in the old days, the local peasants did not disdain one quiet and profitable trade: they checked the gold miners coming from the Lena.” But the inhabitants of the village had long been quiet and harmless and did not engage in robbery. Against the backdrop of this virgin and wildlife The main event of the story occurs - the betrayal of Andrei Guskov.

In any work of art The title plays a very important role for the reader. The title of the book “Live and Remember” prompts us, the readers, to a deeper concept and understanding of the work. These words - “Live and remember” - tell us that everything that is written on the pages of the book should become an unshakable eternal lesson in the life of every person. “Live and Remember” is betrayal, baseness, human fall, a test of love with this blow.

Before us main character of this book - Andrei Guskov, “an efficient and brave guy who married Nastya early and lived with her for four years before the war.” But the Great Patriotic War unceremoniously invades the peaceful life of the Russian people. Together with the entire male part of the population, Andrei also went to war. Nothing foreshadowed such a strange and incomprehensible situation, and now, as an unexpected blow for Nastena, the news that her husband Andrei Guskov is a traitor. Not every person is given the opportunity to experience such grief and shame. This incident dramatically turns upside down and changes the life of Nastya Guskova. “...Where were you, man, what toys were you playing with when your fate was assigned. Why did you agree with her? Why, without thinking, did he cut off his wings, just when they were needed most, when it was necessary not to crawl, but to run away from trouble in the summer?” Now she is under the power of her feelings and love. Lost in the depths village life, women's drama extracted and shown by Rasputin. Living picture, which is increasingly encountered against the backdrop of war. The author conveys to readers that Nastena is a victim of war and its laws.

She could not act differently, along the universal chosen path, without obeying her feelings and the will of fate. Nastya loves and pities Andrei, but when the shame of human judgment over herself and over her unborn child defeats the power of love for her husband and life, she stepped overboard of the boat in the middle of the Angara, dying between two shores - the shore of her husband and the shore of all Russian people. Rasputin gives readers the right to judge the actions of Andrei and Nastena, to emphasize for themselves all the good and realize all the bad. The author himself is a kind writer, inclined to forgive a person rather than condemn, much less condemn mercilessly. He tries to leave room for his heroes to improve. But there are such phenomena and events that are intolerable not only for the people around the heroes, but also for the author himself, for the comprehension of which the author does not have the mental strength, but only one rejection.

Valentin Rasputin, with inexhaustible purity of heart for a Russian writer, shows a resident of our village in the most unexpected situations.

The author compares Nastena’s nobility with Guskov’s wild mind. The example of how Andrei pounces on the calf and bullies it, it is clear that he has lost human image, completely withdrew from people. Nastya is trying to reason with her and show her husband’s mistake, but she does it lovingly and does not insist.

The author introduces a lot of thoughts about life into the story “Live and Remember”. We see this especially well when Andrey and Nastya meet. The characters languish in their thoughts not out of melancholy or idleness, but wanting to understand the purpose of human life.

The multifaceted images described by Rasputin are also great. Here we see a typical village life collective image grandfather Mikheich and his wife, the conservatively strict Semyonovna. Soldier Maxim Volozhin, courageous and heroic, sparing no effort, fighting for the Fatherland. Many faces and controversial image a truly Russian woman - Nadka, left alone with three children. It is she who confirms the words of N.A. Nekrasov: “... a Russian share, a woman’s share.”

Everything was reflected and seemed - life during the war and its happy ending - on the life of the village of Atamanovka. Valentin Rasputin, with everything he wrote, convinces us that there is light in a person, and it is difficult to extinguish it, no matter what the circumstances! In the heroes of V. G. Rasputin and in himself there is a poetic feeling of life, opposed to the established perception of life. Follow the words of Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin - “live forever, love forever.”

The concepts of “tradition” and “innovation” are inextricably linked. In art, any innovation is possible only with a deep understanding of what has already been discovered and created by predecessors. Thus, only strong roots allow the tree to grow and bear fruit. Rasputin’s work seems to “grow” out of the work of Dostoevsky and Gorky; our contemporary continues to reflect on the problems that tormented his great teachers. But in his novels he strives to understand how these sounds sound today eternal problems. The novel “Live and Remember” is primarily consonant with Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”.

Guskov himself would like to shift the blame to “fate”, before which “will” is powerless. It is no coincidence that the word “fate” runs like a red thread throughout the story, to which Guskov clings so much. Reluctance to admit the need for personal responsibility for one’s actions is one of those “touches to the portrait” that reveal a wormhole in Guskov’s soul and determine his desertion. The writer revealed to us the reason for Guskov’s crime, showing this feature of his character. However, Rasputin elevates a concrete historical fact to the rank of socio-philosophical generalizations, which brings him closer to such predecessors as Dostoevsky and Gorky. Rasputin could rely on artistic experience Dostoevsky. Showing the destruction of the personality of a person who betrayed the interests and ideals of the people as an irreversible process, without moral resurrection, R. follows the path paved by Gorky. Here we come to the most powerful manifestation of the destruction of the individual who has violated moral (social) and “natural” laws. to his own destruction of nature, its main incentive for the continuation of life on earth. First of all, this is the killing of a calf in front of the mother cow.

This is surprising: the cow “screamed” when Guskov raised an ax over her child. Guskov's fall and the impossibility of his moral resurrection become obvious precisely after this highly artistic, stunning plot situation. killing a calf. The idea of ​​the story is impossible to comprehend without the fate of Nastya, who also “transgressed,” but in a completely different way. In criticism, the fact of Nastya’s suicide has already been interpreted, firstly, as “the highest trial of the deserter Andrei Guskov.”

And, secondly, as “a judgment on oneself, one’s womanly, feminine, human weakness.” Nastya has reason to consider herself guilty: she really opposed herself to people. The story ends with the author’s message that they don’t talk about Guskov, “they don’t remember” for him “the connection of times has broken down”, he has no future. The author speaks of Nastya as if she were alive (without ever replacing the name with “body” or “dead woman”). “And on the fourth day Nastya washed up on the shore... Mishka, a farm laborer, was sent for Nastya. He brought Nastya back on the boat... And they buried Nastya among their own... After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya’s for a simple wake and cried: they felt sorry for Nastya.” With these words, signifying the “connection of times” restored for Nastya (a traditional folklore ending about the memory of a hero through the centuries), ends V. Rasputin’s story, which is a synthesis of a socio-philosophical and socio-psychological story, an original story, inheriting best features Russian literature, traditions of Dostoevsky and Gorky.

It so happened that in the last year of the war, he secretly returned from the war to a distant village on the Angara. local Andrey Guskov. The deserter does not think that he will be greeted with open arms in his father’s house, but he believes in his wife’s understanding and is not deceived. His wife Nastena, although she is afraid to admit it to herself, instinctively understands that her husband has returned, and there are several signs for him. Does she love him? Nastena did not marry for love, the four years of her marriage were not so happy, but she is very devoted to her man, because, having been left without parents early, for the first time in her life she found protection and reliability in his house. “They came to an agreement quickly: Nastena was also spurred on by the fact that she was tired of living with her aunt as a worker and bending her back to someone else’s family...”

Nastena threw herself into marriage like water - without any extra thought: she’ll have to get out anyway, few people can do without it - why wait? And what awaits her in new family and a strange village, I had a bad idea. But it turned out that from a working woman she became a working woman, only the yard was different, the farm was larger and the demand was stricter. “Maybe the new family would treat her better if she gave birth to a child, but there are no children.”

Childlessness forced Nastena to endure everything. Since childhood, she had heard that a hollow woman without children is no longer a woman, but only half a woman. So by the beginning of the war, nothing came of the efforts of Nastena and Andrei. Nastena considers herself to blame. “Only once, when Andrei, reproaching her, said something completely unbearable, she answered out of resentment that it was still unknown which of them was the reason - she or he, she had not tried other men. He beat her to a pulp." And when Andrei is taken to war, Nastena is even a little glad that she is left alone without children, not like in other families. Letters from the front from Andrei come regularly, then from the hospital, where he is wounded, too, maybe he will soon come on vacation; and suddenly there was no news for a long time, only one day the chairman of the village council and a policeman came into the hut and asked to see the correspondence. “He didn’t say anything else about himself?” - “No... What’s wrong with him? Where is he?" - “So we want to find out where he is.”

When an ax disappears in the Guskov family bathhouse, only Nastena wonders if her husband has returned: “Who would think of a stranger to look under the floorboard?” And just in case, she leaves bread in the bathhouse, and one day she even heats the bathhouse and meets someone in it whom she expects to see. The return of her husband becomes her secret and is perceived by her as a cross. “Nastena believed that in Andrei’s fate since he left home, in some way there was her participation, she believed and was afraid that she probably lived for herself alone, so she waited: here, Nastena, take it "Don't show it to anyone."

She readily comes to her husband’s aid, is ready to lie and steal for him, is ready to take the blame for a crime for which she is not guilty. In marriage you have to accept both the bad and the good: “You and I agreed to live together. When everything is good, it’s easy to be together, when everything is bad - that’s why people come together.”

Nastena's soul is filled with enthusiasm and courage - to fulfill her wifely duty to the end, she selflessly helps her husband, especially when she realizes that she is carrying his child under her heart. Meetings with her husband in the winter hut across the river, long mournful conversations about the hopelessness of their situation, hard work at home, insincerity settled in relations with the villagers - Nastena is ready for anything, realizing the inevitability of her fate. And although love for her husband is more of a duty for her, she pulls her life’s burden with remarkable masculine strength.

Andrei is not a murderer, not a traitor, but just a deserter who escaped from the hospital, from where, without proper treatment, they were going to send him to the front. Set to go on vacation after being away from home for four years, he can't resist the idea of ​​returning. As a village man, not urban and not a military man, already in the hospital he finds himself in a situation from which the only salvation is escape. This is how everything turned out for him, it could have turned out differently if he had been more steady on his feet, but the reality is that in the world, in his village, in his country there will be no forgiveness for him. Having realized this, he wants to delay until the last minute, without thinking about his parents, his wife, and especially about his future child. The deeply personal thing that connects Nastena with Andrey conflicts with their way of life. Nastena cannot raise her eyes to those women who are receiving funerals, she cannot rejoice as she would have rejoiced before when the neighboring men returned from the war. At a village celebration of the victory, she remembers Andrei with unexpected anger: “Because of him, because of him, she does not have the right, like everyone else, to rejoice in the victory.” The runaway husband posed a difficult and insoluble question to Nastena: who should she be with? She condemns Andrei, especially now, when the war is ending and when it seems that he would have remained alive and unharmed, like everyone who survived, but, condemning him at times to the point of anger, hatred and despair, she retreats in despair: yes after all, she is his wife. And if so, you must either completely abandon him, jumping onto the fence like a rooster: I am not me and the fault is not mine, or go with him to the end. At least on the chopping block. It is not without reason that it is said: whoever marries whom will be born into that one.

Noticing Nastena's pregnancy, her former friends begin to laugh at her, and her mother-in-law completely kicks her out of the house. “It was not easy to endlessly withstand the grasping and judgmental glances of people - curious, suspicious, angry.” Forced to hide her feelings, to restrain them, Nastena is increasingly exhausted, her fearlessness turns into risk, into feelings wasted in vain. It is they who push her to suicide, drag her into the waters of the Angara, shimmering as if from an eerie and beautiful fairy tale river: “She’s tired. If anyone knew how tired she is and how much she wants to rest.”

Please note that summary"Live and Remember" does not reflect full picture events and character descriptions. We recommend you read it full version works.

In 1975, the story was published twice as a separate book by Sovremennik, and after that it was republished many times. “Live and Remember” has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, etc.

"Live and Remember" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.

The plot of the story by V.G. Rasputin's "Live and Remember" reminds detective story: old man Guskov’s skis, ax and self-sustaining gabak disappeared from the bathhouse. However, the work itself is written in a completely different genre: it is a deep philosophical reflection on moral principles of being, about power love feeling. Since the ax disappeared from under the floorboard, Nasten’s daughter-in-law immediately guesses that one of her own took it. A complex range of feelings takes possession of her. On the one hand, she wants to see her husband, whom she sincerely loves. On the other hand, he understands that if he is hiding from people, it means he deserted from the front, and such a crime is war time not forgiven. A number of bright visual and expressive means of V.G. Rasputin shows the depth of Nastena’s experiences.

First, “she lay for a long time in the dark with her eyes open, afraid to move, so as not to give away her terrible guess to someone,” then she sniffed the air in the bathhouse like an animal, trying to catch familiar smells. She is tormented by a “stubborn horror in her heart.” The portrait of Nastena (long, skinny, with awkwardly protruding arms, legs and head, with frozen pain on her face) shows what moral and physical torment the war brought to the woman. Only her younger sister Katka forced Nastena to show interest in life and look for work. Nastena endured all the hardships steadfastly, learning to remain silent. She considered childlessness to be her greatest misfortune. Her husband Andrei was also worried about this and often beat her.

Rasputin does not try to justify Andrei’s desertion, but seeks to explain it from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved leave, wanted to see his wife, but the leave he was entitled to after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal that Andrei Guskov commits creeps into his soul gradually. At first he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: “If not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, when his turn comes.” Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the intelligence officers Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he take the path of betrayal? At first, Andrey just wants to see his family, Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in winter you couldn’t turn around in three days. Andrei remembered the demonstration execution, when in his presence they shot a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village. Guskov understands that you won’t get a pat on the head for going AWOL.

Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, he settled for some time with a mute woman, Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally found himself in his native place. However, the hero did not feel joy from the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed betrayal, Guskov embarked on the path of the beast. After some time, life, which he valued so much at the front, became no longer pleasant to him. Having committed treason, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax for a minute turns him into a hunted animal.

Andrei's betrayal falls fatally on Nastena's shoulders. For a long time she cannot comprehend what has happened: her husband, who came secretly to his native land, seems to her to be a werewolf: “Understanding little, she suddenly realized: is it her husband? Wasn't it a werewolf with her? Can you see it in the dark? And they say they can pretend so that even in broad daylight you can’t tell them apart from the real thing.” Because of Andrey, the woman has to lie and dodge. With touching naivety, Nastena tries to confront cruel reality. It seems to the heroine that she only dreamed of the night meeting with her deserter husband. V.G. shows with fine detail. Rasputin, like Nastena, strives to remove the obsession from himself, to get rid of it like a nightmare. Lost in years Soviet power Official religiosity is still alive in the depths of the consciousness of Russian people. It is her (as the strongest family amulet) that the unfortunate Nastena calls for help: “Not knowing how to place a cross correctly, she haphazardly crossed herself and whispered the words of a long-forgotten prayer that came to mind, left over from childhood.” However, the entire depth of grief and horror of the unfortunate woman, her awareness of the fatal line that Andrei’s betrayal drew between their family and the rest of the world, is embodied by the last phrase of the third part of the story, when Nastena freezes from the treacherous thought: “Wouldn’t it be better if this Was it really just a werewolf?

Nastena begins to help her husband hide and feeds him. She trades food for things. All the worries fell on the shoulders of this woman (about younger sister, about elderly fathers-in-law). In the same time terrible secret puts stone wall between Nastena and her fellow villagers: “Alone, completely alone among people: no one to talk to, no one to cry with, you have to keep everything to yourself.”

The heroine's tragedy is intensified by the fact that she became pregnant. Having learned about this, Andrei at first rejoices, and then understands what a difficult situation his wife finds herself in: after all, everyone will think that the woman spoiled this child while her husband is fighting at the front. In a difficult conversation on this topic, the symbolically important image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, by right hand Hangars. And now there are two: people and me. It’s impossible to bring them together: the Angara needs to dry out,” says Andrey Nastene.

During the conversation, it turns out that the heroes once had the same dream: Nastena, in her girlish form, comes to Andrei, who is lying near the birch trees and calls him, telling him that she was tortured with the children.

The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful intractability of the situation in which Nastena found herself.

Talking about the fate of the heroine, V.G. Rasputin simultaneously sets out his views on life and happiness. They are sometimes expressed by him in aphoristic phrases: “Life is not clothes, you don’t try them on ten times. What you have is all yours, and it’s not good to renounce anything, even the worst.” It’s paradoxical, but, left alone with their common joy and misfortune, the heroes finally found that spiritual closeness, that mutual understanding that was not there when they lived happily as a family before the war.

Having learned about Nastena's pregnancy, her fellow villagers condemn her. Only Andrei Mikheich’s father understands with his heart the bitter truth about which he is so stubbornly silent. Tired of shame and eternal fear, she throws herself from the boat into the waters of the Angara River. Plot-story by V.G. Rasputin's “Live and Remember” shows that in difficult moments for the homeland, every person must courageously share its fate, and those who showed cowardice and cowardice will face retribution. They have no future, no right to happiness and procreation.

In addition to the main storyline The story contains interesting author's thoughts about the fate of the village. During the war, the village becomes shallow. The souls of people are hardened by grief. Pain for the fate of the Russian village is a cross-cutting theme in V.G.’s work. Rasputin.

The story “Live and Remember” was written in 1974. In 2008, the work was filmed by director Alexander Proshkin. The main roles in the film were played by Daria Moroz and Mikhail Evlanov.

The main character of the story is a young woman named Nastya. The orphan was brought up in her aunt's house, not knowing any love or even just good treatment. WITH early years Nastya was forced to work hard so as not to be a freeloader in someone else's house. When Andrei Guskov asked the girl to marry him, she accepted his proposal without hesitation. Nastya never loved her husband, but she was sure that in marriage she would find happiness, which she did not have in her childhood. In a few years life together There were no children in the Guskov family. Andrei blamed his wife for this. Nastya constantly felt guilty.

The head of the family leaves for the front. A young wife receives letters from her husband. But one day a policeman and the chairman of the village council came to her. Andrei has gone missing and is suspected of desertion. When the ax disappeared from the bathhouse, the young wife immediately realized that her husband had returned home. After some time, the meeting of the spouses did take place. It seemed to Nastya like an obsession, a nightmare.

The superstitious woman was sure that the man she met in the bathhouse was not her husband, but a werewolf. Nastya doubted for a long time the reality of everything that happened at night, believing that she had only dreamed it all. Subsequently, Andrei explained to his wife that he was not a murderer or a traitor. He didn't commit any crime. The reason for his desertion was his too early discharge from the hospital. Guskov had to go back to the front, despite the fact that his treatment was not yet completed.

Andrei understands that his actions will be regarded by the authorities as one of the most terrible crimes, but does not want to correct the situation in any way. Nastya carefully hides the illegal return of her husband from her fellow villagers. The young woman still does not love her husband. A sense of duty forces her to lie. The long-awaited pregnancy becomes an unexpected joy for the Guskovs. For the sake of her husband and unborn child, Nastya is ready to endure even greater hardships.

A hopeless situation
Pregnancy brought more than just joy. The absence of a husband and the presence of a child can only mean one thing: Nastya cheated on Andrey. If this is not the case, it means that Guskov has returned, which, in turn, indicates his desertion. Nastya agrees to be considered an unfaithful wife if it helps save her husband.

A young woman faces hatred and contempt from those around her. Upon learning that the daughter-in-law is pregnant, the mother-in-law immediately kicks her out of the house. Despair leads Nastya to suicide. A young woman rushes into the Angara.

Nastena Guskova

Having not received love and affection in childhood, main character dreams of her own family, where she would be the mistress. Nastya has no time to wait true love. She wants to leave her aunt's house as soon as possible and accepts a marriage proposal from an unloved man.

The main character trait of the main character is a feeling for a long time. Nastya knows that she must be married, must have children, must be a faithful and devoted wife to her husband. This is her purpose, and she does not see her life differently. When Andrey is in trouble, Nastya makes every effort to help him. The young woman still does not love her husband. But Andrey is her only one close person, which she doesn't want to lose.

The dream of true happiness seems especially close to Nastya after she finds out about her pregnancy. Now she will have a full-fledged family, and she will no longer consider herself a flawed woman. But at some point the main character realizes that this time too happiness will pass by. The long-awaited child was conceived at the wrong time. It will bring sorrow instead of joy.

A sense of duty makes Nastya suffer severely. She fulfilled her duty to her husband, but at the same time betrayed her homeland. Seeing how funerals are brought to other families, Nastya reproaches herself for the fact that another woman became a widow instead of her. Her husband is alive only because other people's husbands died. This seems unfair to Nastya.

Finding herself in a hopeless situation, the main character sees only decision your problem. However, the author does not want Nastya to be considered a suicide. Trying to justify his heroine, he says that the young woman is simply very tired. She was looking for rest, not death.

Andrey Guskov

Unlike his wife, Andrei is not burdened with a sense of duty. He can easily be called an irresponsible person. Andrey lives for himself and for himself. He recognizes only his own truth. For the absence of children, the main character, first of all, blames his wife. He does not consider himself either a deserter or a traitor. Andrei ran away from the hospital because they wanted to send him to the front ahead of time. He was simply saving his life and was not going to betray anyone. Besides, he is just a peasant, not a warrior. Andrei was not born to kill other people.

Guskov selfishly accepts all his wife’s sacrifices, without even thinking about what suffering he is dooming her to with his actions. Having shifted all his problems to the weak, fragile Nastya, Andrey does what he considers necessary. His wife's suffering means nothing to him. She is a woman, her destiny is to endure. Despite the fact that his wife’s pregnancy only worsened the current situation, Andrei does not feel any remorse and does not blame himself for conceiving a child in such difficult circumstances. He finally got what he wanted for so long.

main idea

The desire to follow duty may not always be justified. The desire to constantly give for free is no less destructive than the constant desire to unrequitedly accept a sacrifice. By disturbing the energy balance, both the giver and the taker remain losers.

Analysis of the work

Valentin Rasputin presented the life of ordinary Russian people in his story. “Live and Remember” (a brief summary of this work is hardly capable of conveying the entire palette of feelings experienced by the characters) - not unique story. Women and men like Nastya and Andrey during the Great Patriotic War there were a lot.

The author does not condemn his heroes, does not pass harsh sentences on them. Nastya refused to hand over her unloved husband to the authorities. She wanted to be happy no matter what. You shouldn’t blame Andrey either. He was not born to kill and destroy. The mission of a simple peasant is creative work. Andrei does not consider himself a traitor because he always served his homeland in a different way: he cultivated the land, as his ancestors did. The main character is sure that he did not betray his homeland, but his homeland betrayed him in some way. He fought for a long time, was wounded and hoped for a vacation, during which he could be with his family and heal his wounds. But instead, Andrei will again have to go to the hated war.

The horrors of a bloodbath awaken in a person the instinct of self-preservation - one of the most ancient human instincts. The fewer chances for life a person has, the stronger his desire to stay alive.

Rasputin's story “Live and Remember”: summary

The concepts of “tradition” and “innovation” are inextricably linked. In art, any innovation is possible only with a deep understanding of what has already been discovered and created by predecessors. Only strong roots allow the tree to grow and bear fruit. Rasputin's work seems to grow out of the work of Dostoevsky and Gorky; our contemporary continues to reflect on the problems that tormented his great teachers. But in his works he strives to understand how these eternal problems sound today. The story “Live and Remember” is consonant, first of all, with Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”.

Dostoevsky’s passionate refutation of that in Raskolnikov that is inhumane and contrary to the human nature of the hero himself is carried out in “Crime and Punishment” not only through a dispute of “ideas”, which corresponds to the socio-philosophical essence of the novel, but also in the collision of the hero’s “idea” with his in kind, when the latter “cannot stand it.” And this reflects the originality psychological basis novel.

The path of Rasputin’s heroes to death is historically conditioned and natural, but this is different literary tradition, discovered by Gorky, who viewed the world not only from the point of view of solving moral and philosophical problems, but, above all, from the point of view of the prospects for socio-historical development. And this not only does not remove, but very often includes the tragic beginning in the Soviet novel and story of the 20th century.

Guskov himself would like to shift the blame to fate, before which the will is powerless. It is no coincidence that the word “fate” runs like a red thread throughout the story, to which Guskov clings so much. Reluctance to admit the need for personal responsibility for one’s actions is one of those touches to the portrait that reveal a wormhole in Guskov’s soul and determine his desertion. The writer revealed to us the reason for Guskov’s crime, showing this feature of his character. However, Rasputin elevates a concrete historical fact to the rank of socio-philosophical generalizations, which brings him closer to such predecessors as Dostoevsky and Gorky. Rasputin could rely on Dostoevsky's artistic experience. Showing the destruction of the personality of a person who betrayed the interests and ideals of the people as an irreversible process, without moral resurrection, Raskolnikov follows the path paved by Gorky.

Here we come to the most powerful manifestation of the destruction of the personality of someone who has violated moral (social) and natural laws, to his own destruction of nature, its main incentive - the continuation of life on earth.

First of all, this is the killing of a calf in front of the mother cow: the cow “screamed” when Guskov raised an ax over her child. The hero's fall and the impossibility of his moral resurrection become obvious precisely after this highly artistic, stunning plot situation - the killing of a calf.

The idea of ​​the story is impossible to comprehend without the fate of Nastya, who also “transgressed,” but in a completely different way. In criticism, the fact of Nastya’s suicide has already been interpreted, firstly, as “the highest judgment on the deserter Andrei Guskov” and, secondly, as “a trial on herself, her womanly, feminine, human weakness.” Nastya has reason to consider herself guilty: she really opposed herself to people.

The story ends with the author’s message that they don’t talk about Guskov, “they don’t remember” - for him “the connection of times has fallen apart”, he has no future. The author talks about Nastya as if she were alive (without ever replacing the name with “body” or “dead woman”). “And on the fourth day Nastya washed ashore... They sent Mishka the farmhand to fetch Nastya. He brought Nastya back on the boat... And they buried Nastya among their own... After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya’s for a simple wake and cried: they felt sorry for Nastya.”

With these words, signifying the “connection of times” restored for Nastya (the ending traditional for folklore about the memory of a hero through the centuries), the work of V. Rasputin ends, which is a synthesis of a socio-philosophical and socio-psychological story, an original story that inherits the best features of Russian literature, traditions of Dostoevsky and Gorky.

Everything is fine. Everything is quiet. The myth of complete peace is destroyed as soon as my eyes involuntarily stop at the second shelf of my grandmother’s bookcase. Undoubtedly, the red book that recently found itself among the old, well-thumbed volumes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy prevents me from falling asleep. The strange thing is that I'm not at all interested in where it came from. On the contrary, my tired mind is troubled by a completely different question: why did Rasputin call the book “Live and Remember”? This title grabs my attention. “Live and remember” - there is some hidden, vital meaning hidden here. To whom and why were these words intended? Don't know. That’s why I sit down near the window, pick up Rasputin’s book and forget myself for many hours, leafing through the pages of this story.

Its main character, Andrei Guskov, before the war was a nice, hard-working guy, an obedient son, and a reliable husband. He was sent to the front in 1941. “He didn’t climb across others, but he didn’t hide behind other people’s backs either,” the author says about him. Andrei was not one of the timid ones - he fought regularly for three years.

True, he did not want to die. There was also a great desire to see my relatives and meet my beloved wife Nastena. And it turned out that after being seriously wounded in the chest, he ends up in a Novosibirsk hospital, from which home is “a stone’s throw away.” But the commission does not even give him a short leave - he is sent straight to the front. It was then that the soldier made a rash decision - he tried to “rush” without permission from his superiors into an unauthorized absence home.

Only after getting bogged down in slow military trains did Andrei realize that the matter smelled not of a guardhouse for AWOL, but of a tribunal for desertion. If the train had been faster, he would have returned on time. And it wasn’t “for his skin” that he was shaking, but he wanted to see his relatives - maybe in last time. How did his action, which became the choice of his whole life, turn out? And in general, did he have the right to fulfill such, even the most modest, desire - to see his wife? No. And Andrei forgot that it is impossible to arrange happiness for oneself separately from the general fate of the people. The entire heavy spiritual burden fell on Nasteka.

The author notes: “... it is the custom of a Russian woman to arrange her life only once and endure everything that befalls her.” And she endures. When a fugitive is announced, she even takes the blame of her husband upon herself. “Without guilt, but guilty,” says Rasputin. Nastena “took” the cross of Andrei, who still vaguely understands how his decision to return home will turn out. But for this offense he will be maliciously punished by fate. And soon the terrible consequences of apostasy begin to be seen, primarily for the person himself. There is an inevitable disintegration, loss of personality. And the punishment of a person is within himself. Andrei learned to howl like a wolf from a beast wandering near the hut and thought with malicious vindictiveness: “This will come in handy.” good people frighten". He adapted to stealing fish from other people's holes - and not out of extreme need, but out of a desire to annoy those who, unlike him, live openly, without hiding, without fear. Then he approaches a strange village and kills a calf, without realizing that he did this not only for the sake of meat, but also to please some whim of his own, which had settled firmly and powerfully in him.

This is how connections with what is dear and sacred to everyone are broken: with people, with nature, with respect for other people’s work and property. Andrei did not pass the test of humanity, his soul disintegrates, and Nastena turns into a hunted creature. Shame, persistent and stinging, dries up her conscientious nature. Double life step by step selects the simplest and most necessary joys. There is no longer any cordiality, simplicity and trust in communication with her friends; she can now neither speak, nor cry, nor sing with people. Out of habit, they accept her as one of their own, but she is already a stranger to them, an outsider. There is no joy from love, from motherhood, which I was so looking forward to, from Victory. “It has nothing to do with the great Victory Day. Most last man has, but she doesn’t.” The child also turned into a tragedy. What fate awaits him? How to explain his appearance to people? And shouldn't we get rid of it? It turns out that Nastya also received stolen love, stolen motherhood, stolen life.

“It’s sweet to live, it’s scary to live, it’s a shame to live,” notes Rasputin. Tired despair drags Nastena into a rapid whirlpool.

And one night, when she was unable to swim across to Andrei, because her fellow villagers, wary of her pregnancy, began to keep an eye on her, she, hearing a chase not far away, tired, tormented, rushes into the water, not saving Andrei, but putting an end to her lot. Nastena is pure before the world and people, going into the waters of the Angara. With her ability to sacrifice - by taking upon herself, innocently, the guilt of her husband, she embodies true values. Even the terrible civilized world did not break her, did not embitter her at all. But Andrei could not stand the tests of life. His moral foundations are crumbling. And now there is no justification for his flight, which he saw in the unborn child. He thought that the life that was born would replace the one that was ruined, that it would save him from the painful pricks of conscience for a uselessly burned existence. The death of his wife and unborn child, those who were dear to Andrei, which he explained and justified his desertion, is punished by the author of the hero: “Live and remember. !