Subject " little man"is one of the central themes in Russian literature. Pushkin (“The Bronze Horseman”), Tolstoy, and Chekhov touched on it in their works. Continuing the traditions of Russian literature, especially Gogol, Dostoevsky writes with pain and love about the “little man” living in a cold and cruel world. The writer himself noted: “We all came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat.”
The theme of the “little man”, “humiliated and insulted” was especially strong in Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”. One after another, the writer reveals to us pictures of hopeless poverty.
Here is a woman throwing herself off a bridge, “with a yellow, elongated, wasted face and sunken eyes.” Here is a drunken, dishonored girl walking down the street, followed by a fat dandy who is clearly hunting for her. Former official Marmeladov, who has “nowhere to go” in life, drinks himself into alcohol and commits suicide. Exhausted by poverty, his wife, Ekaterina Ivanovna, dies of consumption. Sonya goes out onto the street to sell her body.
Dostoevsky emphasizes the power of the environment over man. Everyday little things become a whole system of characteristics for the writer. One has only to remember the conditions in which the “little people” have to live, and it becomes clear why they are so downtrodden and humiliated. Raskolnikov lives in a room with five corners, similar to a coffin. Sonya's home is a lonely room with a strange acute angle. The taverns are dirty and terrible, in which, amid the screams of drunken people, you can hear the terrible confessions of destitute people.
In addition, Dostoevsky not only depicts the misfortunes of the “little man,” but also reveals the inconsistency of his inner world. Dostoevsky was the first to evoke such pity for the “humiliated and insulted” and who mercilessly showed the combination of good and evil in these people. The image of Marmeladov is very characteristic in this regard. On the one hand, one cannot help but feel sympathy for this poor and exhausted man, crushed by need. But Dostoevsky does not limit himself to touching sympathy for the “little man.” Marmeladov himself admits that his drunkenness completely ruined his family, that his eldest daughter was forced to go to the panel and that the family feeds, and he drinks with this “dirty” money.
The figure of his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna is also contradictory. She diligently preserves memories of a prosperous childhood, of her studies at the gymnasium, where she danced at the ball. She completely devoted herself to the desire to prevent her final fall, but she still sent her stepdaughter into prostitution and also accepts this money. Ekaterina Ivanovna, with her pride, strives to hide from the obvious truth: her house is ruined, and her younger children may repeat Sonechka’s fate.
The fate of Raskolnikov’s family is also difficult. His sister Dunya, wanting to help her brother, serves as a governess to the cynic Svidrigailov and is ready to marry the rich man Luzhin, for whom she feels disgust.
Dostoevsky's hero Raskolnikov rushes around the crazy city and sees only dirt, grief and tears. This city is so inhuman that it even seems like the delirium of a madman, and not the real capital of Russia. Therefore, Raskolnikov’s dream before the crime is not accidental: a drunk guy beats to death a small, skinny nag to the laughter of the crowd. This world is terrible and cruel, poverty and vice reign in it. It is this nag that becomes the symbol of all the “humiliated and insulted”, all the “little people” on the pages who are mocked and made fun of by the powers that be - Svidrigailov, Luzhin and the like.
But Dostoevsky is not limited to this statement. He notes that it is in the heads of the humiliated and insulted that painful thoughts about their situation are born. Among these “poor people” Dostoevsky finds contradictory, deep and strong personalities who, due to certain life circumstances, are confused in themselves and in people. Of course, the most developed of them is the character of Raskolnikov himself, whose inflamed consciousness created a theory contrary to Christian laws.
It is characteristic that one of the most “humiliated and insulted” - Sonya Marmeladova - finds a way out of the seemingly absolute dead end of life. Without studying books on philosophy, but simply following the call of her heart, she finds the answer to the questions that torment the student philosopher Raskolnikov.
F. M. Dostoevsky created a bright canvas of immeasurable human torment, suffering and grief. Peering closely into the soul of the “little man,” he discovered in it deposits of spiritual generosity and beauty, not broken by the most difficult living conditions. And this was a new word not only in Russian, but also in world literature.
Introduction
Chapter I. The image of the “little man” in Russian XIX literature V.
§ 1.1 The problem of the “little man” in the works of A.S. Pushkin
§ 1.2 “Little Man” in the works of N.V. Gogol
§ 1.3 Coverage of the problem of the “little man” in the prose of A.P. Chekhov
Chapter II. Attitude to the image of the “little man” F.M. Dostoevsky
§ 2.1 Pain about a person in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
§ 2.2 Humiliated and insulted in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
Conclusion
Bibliography
Methodological application
Introduction
The theme of the “little man” is one of the cross-cutting themes of Russian literature, to which writers constantly turned. A.S. was the first to touch on it. Pushkin in the story " Stationmaster" and in the poem "The Bronze Horseman". The continuators of this topic were N.V. Gogol, who created the immortal image of Akaki Akakievich in “The Overcoat”, M.Yu. Lermontov, who contrasted Pechorin with staff captain Maxim Maksimych. The best humanistic traditions are associated with this topic in Russian literature. Writers invite people to think about the fact that every person has the right to life, to happiness, to their own view of life. F.M. Dostoevsky is not just a continuer of the traditions of Russian literature, but also complements it, as he opens up a new aspect of this topic. F.M. Dostoevsky becomes the singer of “poor people,” “humiliated and insulted.” Therefore, the work of F.M. Dostoevsky is so completely thematic. With his work, the writer tries to prove that every person, no matter who he is, no matter how low he stands, has the right to sympathy and compassion.
“Little Man” - the image of a literary hero<#"justify">1.Study scientific and methodological literature on the research topic.
2.To study the depiction of the image of the “little man” in Russian literature of the 19th century.
.Analyze the attitude of F.M. Dostoevsky to the image of the “little man” in the novel “Crime and Punishment”.
Theoretical basis of the studythe works of domestic literary critics S.V. Belova, V.S. Belkinda, D.D. Blagogo, L.P. Grossman, M.S. Gusa, A.S. Dolinina, N.A. Dobrolyubova, F.I. Evnina, V.V. Ermilova, V.Ya. Kirpotina, V.I. Kuleshova, V.S. Nechaeva, P.T. Sahakyan, P.N. Sakulina, P.N. Tolstoguzova, U.R. Fokhta, A.G. Tseytlina, D.V. Chaly and others.
Scientific novelty of the researchThe final qualifying work is determined by the fact that the study scrupulously analyzes the image of the “little man” in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment".
Research methods:The research methodology is based on elements of genre-thematic, historical-typological and comparative-typological principles of analysis.
Practical significance:The research materials can be used in school practice, in extracurricular reading lessons and elective classes to study the creativity of F.M. Dostoevsky.
Structure of the WRC:the work consists of an Introduction, two chapters, a Conclusion, a Bibliography and a Methodological Appendix.
Chapter I. The image of the “little man” in Russian literature of the 19th century.
§ 1.1 The problem of the “little man” in the works of A.S. Pushkin
The definition of “little man” is applied to the category of literary heroes of the era of realism, usually occupying a rather low place in the social hierarchy: a minor official, a tradesman, or even a poor nobleman. The image of the “little man” turned out to be more and more relevant the more democratic literature became. The very concept of “little man” was most likely introduced into use by V.G. Belinsky.
The theme of the “little man” is raised by many writers. It has always been relevant because its task is to reflect the life of an ordinary person with all its experiences, problems, troubles and little joys. The writer takes on the hard work of showing and explaining the lives of ordinary people. The “little man” is a representative of the people as a whole. And every writer presents it differently.
What is a “little man”? In what sense is “small”? This person is small precisely in social terms, since he occupies one of the lower steps of the hierarchical ladder. His place in society is little or not noticeable. This man is also “small” because the world of his spiritual life and human aspirations is also extremely narrowed, impoverished, surrounded by all kinds of prohibitions and taboos. For him, for example, there are no historical and philosophical problems. He remains in a narrow and closed circle of his life interests.
People forgotten by everyone and humiliated have never attracted the attention of others. Their life, their little joys and big troubles seemed insignificant to everyone, unworthy of attention. The era produced such people and such an attitude towards them. Cruel times and tsarist injustice forced the “little people” to withdraw into themselves, to withdraw completely into their souls, which had suffered, with the painful problems of that period; they lived an unnoticed life and also died unnoticed. But it was precisely such people at some point, by the will of circumstances, obeying the cry of the soul, who began to fight against the powers that be, to cry out for justice, and ceased to be nothing. Therefore, writers of the late 17th - 19th centuries turned their attention to them. With each work, the life of people of the “lower” class was shown more and more clearly and truthfully. Little officials, stationmasters, “little people” who had gone mad against their own free will began to emerge from the shadows.
Interest in the “little man”, his fate and pain for him are constantly and repeatedly observed in the works of great Russian writers.
Among Russian writers A.S. Pushkin was one of the first to put forward the theme of the “little man” in Russian literature.
A.S. Pushkin in “Belkin's Tales” focuses on the fate of the “little man,” whom he tried to portray objectively, without idealization. In these stories, unlike many other works of that time in Russia, Pushkin began to write and talk about the ordinary, common man and tried to describe the life of such a person in society.
So, greatest poet XIX century A.S. Pushkin did not leave the theme of the “little man” unnoticed, only he focused his gaze not on the image of the kneeling man, but on the fate of the unfortunate man, showing us his pure soul, unspoiled by wealth and prosperity, who knows how to rejoice, love, suffer, in the story “The Station Agent” , part of the cycle of “Belkin’s Tales”.
A.S. Pushkin sympathizes with his hero. Initially, his life is not easy: “Who hasn’t cursed the stationmasters, who hasn’t scolded them? Who, in a moment of anger, did not demand from them a fatal book in order to write into it his useless complaint about oppression, rudeness and malfunction? Who doesn't consider them monsters? human race, equal to the late clerks or at least the Murom robbers? Let us, however, be fair, we will try to put ourselves in their position and, perhaps, we will begin to judge them much more leniently. What is a stationmaster? A real martyr of the fourteenth class, protected by his rank only from beatings, and even then not always... I have peace neither day nor night. The traveler takes out all the frustration accumulated during a boring ride on the caretaker. The weather is unbearable, the road is bad, the driver is stubborn, the horses are not moving - and the caretaker is to blame. Entering his poor home, a traveler looks at him as if he were an enemy; it would be good if he soon managed to get rid of the uninvited guest; but what if the horses don't happen? God! what curses, what threats will rain down on his head! In the rain and slush, he is forced to run around the yards; in a storm, in the Epiphany frost, he goes into the hallway, just to rest for a minute from the screams and pushes of an irritated guest... Let’s look into all this thoroughly, and instead of indignation, our hearts will be filled with sincere compassion.”
The hero of the story, Samson Vyrin, remains a happy and calm person for some time. He is accustomed to his service and has a good assistant, his daughter. He dreams of simple happiness, grandchildren, a big family, but fate has other plans. Hussar Minsky, while passing through their place, takes his daughter Dunya with him. After unsuccessful attempt to return his daughter, when the hussar “grabbed the old man by the collar with a strong hand and pushed him onto the stairs,” Vyrin was no longer able to fight. And the unfortunate old man dies of melancholy, grieving over the possible pitiable fate of his daughter.
A.S. Pushkin in “The Station Agent” reveals the image of Vyrin in a family tragedy. The caretaker is offended in his fatherly feelings, his human dignity is violated. Vyrin’s struggle with Minsky is for the assertion of the right to loved one. The development of events is associated with drastic changes in the private lives of the characters. Nevertheless, it would be wrong not to see in Pushkin’s conflict “a reflection of social contradictions: private life is determined by legal and property status.”
From the very first lines, the author introduces us to the powerless world of people in this profession. Every person passing by almost considers it his duty to pour out all the anger accumulated in road troubles on him. However, despite all the difficulties associated with the profession, the caretakers, according to Pushkin, are “... peaceful people, naturally helpful, inclined to live together, modest in their claims to honor and not too money-loving.” This is exactly the kind of person described in the story. Semyon Vyrin, a typical representative of the petty bureaucratic class, performed his service regularly and had his own “little” happiness - the beautiful daughter Dunya, who remained in his arms after the death of his wife. The clever, friendly Dunyasha became not only the mistress of the house, but also her father’s first assistant in his difficult work. Rejoicing, looking at his daughter, Vyrin probably painted in his imagination pictures of the future, where he, already an old man, lives next to Dunya, who has become a respected wife and mother. But the laws of the era enter into the narrative, when any elder, whether by rank, rank or class, invades the life of the “little man,” sweeping away everything in his path, regardless of other people’s feelings or moral principles. Breaking lives, crippling the souls of people, feeling the protection of others in power or money. This is what Hussar Minsky did to Vyrin, who took Dunya to St. Petersburg. The poor caretaker tries to resist the blows of fate by going in search of his daughter. But in a world where everything is bought and sold, they do not believe sincere, even paternal, feelings. Minsky sends the unfortunate father out.
Fate gave him another chance to see his daughter, but Dunya betrayed her father for the second time, allowing Minsky to push the old man out the door. Even after seeing her father’s grief, she did not repent to him and did not come to him. Devoted and lonely lives last days Vyrin at his station, sad about his daughter. The loss of his daughter deprived the old man of the meaning of life. An indifferent society silently looked at him and hundreds of others like him, and everyone understood that it was stupid to ask the strong for protection for the weak. The destiny of the “little man” is humility . And the stationmaster died from his own helplessness and from the selfish callousness of the society around him.
Professor N.Ya. Berkovsky points out that “Pushkin portrays Samson Vyrin with sympathetic insight into his social personality, with accuracy in everything that notes how he is positioned in the official, public world.” However, there is no reason to exaggerate the sociality of Pushkin’s story and turn Vyrin into an active Protestant. This is, first of all, a family story with a relatively happy ending.
Evgeniy, the hero of The Bronze Horseman, looks like Samson Vyrin. The hero lives in Kolomna, serves somewhere, and shuns the nobles. He does not make great plans for the future; he is satisfied with a quiet, inconspicuous life. He also hopes for his personal, albeit small, but much-needed family happiness. But all his dreams are in vain, because evil fate bursts into his life: the elements destroy his beloved. Evgeniy cannot resist fate; he quietly experiences his loss. And only in a state of madness does he threaten the Bronze Horseman, considering the man who built the city on this ruined place to be the culprit of his misfortune. A.S. Pushkin looks at his heroes from the outside. They do not stand out for their intelligence or their position in society, but they are kind and decent people, and therefore worthy of respect and sympathy.
“The Bronze Horseman” is one of the first works where the author tries to describe the “little man”. Pushkin begins his work odicly. He glorifies the city of Petra, the “greatness” of St. Petersburg, and admires the capital of Russia. In my opinion, the author does this in order to show the power of the capital and the entire Russian state. Then the author begins his story. The main character is Eugene, he is an impoverished nobleman, has neither a high rank nor a noble name. Evgeniy lives a calm, measured life, provides for himself by working hard. Evgeny does not dream of high ranks, he only needs simple human happiness. But grief breaks into this measured course of his life; his beloved dies during a flood. Evgeny, realizing that he is powerless in the face of the elements, still tries to find those to blame for the fact that his hope for happiness has collapsed. And he finds it. Eugene blames Peter I, who built the city in this place, for his troubles, which means he blames the entire state machine, thereby entering into an unequal battle; and Pushkin shows this through the revival of the monument to Peter I. Of course, in this battle Eugene, a weak man, is defeated. Due to enormous grief and inability to fight the state main character is dying.
In the novel " Captain's daughter“The category of “little people” includes Pyotr Andreevich Grinev and Captain Mironov. They are distinguished by the same qualities: kindness, justice, decency, the ability to love and respect people. But they have one more thing good quality- stay true to your word. Pushkin included the saying in the epigraph: “Take care of your honor from a young age.” They saved their honor. And so are the roads of A.S. Pushkin, like the heroes of his previously mentioned works.
A.S. Pushkin puts forward in them the democratic theme of the little man. This is what literary critic S.M. writes in his critical article “Pushkin’s Fiction.” Petrov: “Belkin’s Tales” appeared in print as the first realistic work of Russian prose. Along with traditional themes from the life of the nobility and estate (“The Young Lady-Peasant”). Pushkin puts forward in them the democratic theme of the little man (the story “The Station Warden”), which precedes N.V.’s “The Overcoat”. Gogol."
“Belkin’s Tales” was a polemical response to A.S. Pushkin on the main trends of contemporary Russian prose. The truthfulness of the image, deep penetration into the character of a person, the absence of any didacticism “The Station Agent” by A.S. Pushkin put an end to the influence of the sentimental-didactic story about a little man like “ Poor Lisa» N.M. Karamzin. Idealized images, plot situations deliberately created for didactic purposes in a sentimental story are replaced by real types and everyday paintings, depicting the true joys and sorrows of life. The deep humanism of the story by A.S. Pushkin confronts the abstract sensitivity of a sentimental story. The mannered language of a sentimental story, falling into moralizing rhetoric, gives way to a simple and ingenuous narrative, like the old caretaker’s story about his Duna. Realism is replacing sentimentalism in Russian prose.
The deep humanism of the story by A.S. Pushkin confronts the abstract sensitivity of a sentimental story. The mannered language of a sentimental story, falling into moralizing rhetoric, gives way to a simple and ingenuous narrative, like the old caretaker’s story about his Duna.
“In reality, Pushkin of the 30s, who more than once sympathetically depicted the life and way of life of “little people”, endowing the latter with warm human feelings, could not at the same time fail to see the limitations, the poverty of the spiritual needs of a petty official, a tradesman, a seedy nobleman. While pitying the “little man,” Pushkin at the same time shows the petty-bourgeois narrowness of his requests.”
In a later period, the same Dmitry Blagoy, in his book “The Creative Path of Pushkin,” brings out a new interpretation of the “little man” of the poet - the one who opposes himself to the autocracy: “The deep regularity, the organic nature of the theme of Peter for the post-December Pushkin is convincingly confirmed by the entire further course of his work, in which this theme becomes one of the leading, central themes, filling, as we will later see, with increasingly complex ideological, philosophical and socio-historical content, acquiring an increasingly problematic character, due to the production and artistic development of A.S. Pushkin precisely on this topic of the central questions of his modernity and Russian historical life in general - about the relationship between the state and the individual, the autocratic power and the simple “little” person, about the paths of Russian historical development, about the destinies of the country, the nation, the people. It is this issue that will be at the center of such works of Pushkin, related to the theme of Peter, as “The Blackamoor of Peter the Great”, as “Poltava”, as the deepest of the poet’s creations - the “Petersburg story” in verse, “The Bronze Horseman”. The first in this series, as if a compressed, concentrated introduction to everything that follows, is the poem “Stanzas”.
A well-known underestimation of the prose of A.S. Pushkin’s criticism of the 19th century slowed down the comparative historical study of the “little man” type. There are works in Soviet Pushkin studies that address this issue. However, comparative study artistic system prose by A.S. Pushkin in relation to the work of later, subsequent authors (in particular N.V. Gogol and F.M. Dostoevsky) is a problem that has not yet been solved in many ways. “This is a big task, one of the most important, facing our Pushkin studies.”
Thus, A.S. Pushkin, one of the first classics to describe the image of the “little man,” in the early stages of his work tried to show the high spirituality of such characters, as, for example, in the story “The Station Agent.” A.S. Pushkin shows that being a “little man” is a natural and inevitable destiny. Much is revealed to the “little man,” but little is accepted by him; he strives to alleviate his earthly fate, but only incurs even greater suffering; striving for good, does not avoid sin; leaves this life deeply depressed and awaiting the highest court; Death itself turns out to be more desirable for him than life. At A.S. Pushkin's image of the “little man” is deeply realistic. The question of the behavior of the “Little Man” in the works of A.S. Pushkin is staged sharply and dramatically. Later, in his works, motifs of the transition of the image of the “little man” and merging with the image of the folk hero - “Songs of the Western Slavs” were heard. For all works by A.S. Pushkin was characterized by a deep penetration into the character of each hero - the “little man”, masterful writing of his portrait, from which not a single feature escaped.
§ 1.2 “Little Man” in the works of N.V. Gogol
A.S. Pushkin discovered a new dramatic character in the poor official, N.V. Gogol continued the development of this theme in his St. Petersburg stories (“The Nose”, “Nevsky Prospekt”, “Notes of a Madman”, “Portrait”, “The Overcoat”). But he continued in his own way, relying on his own life experience. St. Petersburg struck N.V. Gogol’s paintings of deep social contradictions and tragic social catastrophes. According to Gogol, St. Petersburg is a city where human relationships are distorted, vulgarity triumphs, and talents perish. It is in this terrible, crazy city that amazing incidents happen to the official Poprishchin. It is here that poor Akaki Akakievich cannot live. Heroes N.V. Gogol goes crazy or perishes in an unequal struggle with the cruel conditions of reality.
After reading the stories by N.V. Gogol, we remember for a long time how an unlucky official in a cap of an indeterminate shape and in a blue cotton overcoat with an old collar stopped in front of a shop window to look through the solid windows of shops sparkling with wonderful lights and magnificent gilding. For a long time, with envy, the official gazed at various objects and, having come to his senses, continued on his way with deep melancholy and steadfast firmness. N.V. Gogol reveals to the reader the world of “little people”, the world of officials in his “Petersburg Tales”.
The theme of the “little man” is the most important in the St. Petersburg stories of N.V. Gogol. If in Taras Bulba the writer embodied the images folk heroes, taken from the historical past, then in the stories “Arabesque”, “Overcoat”, turning to modernity, he painted the disadvantaged and humiliated, those who belong to the lower social classes. With great artistic truth N.V. Gogol reflected the thoughts, experiences, sorrows and suffering of the “little man”, his unequal position in society. The tragedy of the deprivation of “little” people, the tragedy of their doom to a life filled with worries and disasters, constant humiliations of human dignity comes out especially clearly in the St. Petersburg stories. All this finds its impressive expression in life story Poprishchina and Bashmachkina.
If in “Nevsky Prospect” the fate of the “little man” is depicted in comparison with the fate of another, “successful” hero, then in “Notes of a Madman” the internal conflict is revealed in terms of the hero’s attitude towards the aristocratic environment and at the same time in terms of the collision of the cruel truth of life with illusions and false ideas about reality.
The story “The Overcoat” is central to the cycle of “Petersburg Tales”. “Petersburg Tales” differs in character from previous works by N.V. Gogol. Before us is bureaucratic Petersburg. This is the capital - the main and high-society, huge city. The city is business, commercial and labor. And the “universal communication” of St. Petersburg is the brilliant Nevsky Prospekt, on the sidewalk of which everything that lives in St. Petersburg leaves its traces; “exposes on him the power of strength or the power of weakness.” And a motley mixture of clothes and faces flashes before the reader, as in a kaleidoscope, and an eerie picture of the restless, intense life of the capital appears in his imagination. The bureaucracy of the time helped paint this accurate portrait of the capital.
The delays of the bureaucracy were so obvious (the problem of “higher” and “lower)” that it was impossible not to write about it. But also more amazing ability N.V. himself Gogol reveals with such depth the essence of the social contradictions in the life of a huge city in a brief description of only one street - Nevsky Prospekt. In the story “The Overcoat” by N.V. Gogol turns to the world of officials he hates, and his satire becomes harsh and merciless. This short story made a huge impression on readers. N.V. Gogol, following other writers, came out in defense of the “little man” - an intimidated, powerless, pathetic official. He expressed his most sincere, warmest and sincere sympathy for the destitute person in the beautiful lines of his final discussion about the fate and death of one of the many victims of callousness and tyranny.
A victim of such arbitrariness, a typical representative of a petty official in the story is Akaki Akakievich. Everything about him was ordinary: both his appearance and his inner spiritual humiliation. N.V. Gogol truthfully portrayed his hero as a victim of unfair activities. In "The Overcoat" the tragic and the comic complement each other. The author sympathizes with his hero, and at the same time sees his mental limitations and laughs at him. During his entire stay in the department, Akakiy Akakievich did not move up the career ladder at all. N.V. Gogol shows how limited and pitiful was the world in which Akaki Akakievich existed, content with poor housing, lunch, a worn uniform and an overcoat that was coming apart from old age. N.V. Gogol laughs, but he doesn’t laugh specifically at Akaki Akakievich, he laughs at the whole society.
But Akaki Akakievich had his own “poetry of life,” which had the same degraded character as his whole life. In copying papers, he saw his own diverse and “pleasant” world. Akaki Akakievich still retained the human element. Those around him did not accept his timidity and humility and mocked him in every possible way, throwing pieces of paper on his head. The life story of Akaki Akakievich is a new phase in his life. And a new overcoat is a symbol of new life. The apogee of Akakiy Akakievich’s creativity is his first arrival at the department in a new overcoat and attending a party at the head of the department. The difficult work of Akaki Akakievich was crowned with success, he at least somehow proved to people that he has self-esteem. At this seemingly pinnacle of prosperity, disaster befalls him. Two robbers take off his overcoat. Despair causes Akaki Akakievich to protest powerlessly. Seeking a reception from the “most private” and turning to a “significant person,” Akaki Akakievich “once in his life” wanted to show his character. N.V. Gogol sees the inconsistency of his hero's capabilities, but he gives him the opportunity to resist. But Akaki is powerless in the face of a soulless bureaucratic machine and, in the end, dies as unnoticed as he lived. The writer does not end the story here. He shows us the ending: the dead Akaki Akakievich, who during his life was resigned and humble, now appears as a ghost.
A famous episode in the play “The Overcoat” is the choice of name. This is not just bad luck with names in the calendar, but a picture of nonsense (since a name is a personality): he could be Mokkiy (translation: “mocker”), and Sossius (“the big guy”), and Khozdazat, and Triphilius, and Varakhasiy, and repeated the name of his father: “the father was Akaki, so let the son be Akaki (“doing no evil”), this phrase can be read as a sentence of fate: the father was a “little man,” let the son also be a “little man.” Actually, life, devoid of meaning and joy, is only dying for the “little man”, and out of modesty he is ready to complete his career immediately, as soon as he is born.
Bashmachkin died. But the story about the poor official does not end there. We learn that Akaki Akakievich, dying in a fever, in his delirium, scolded “His Excellency” so much that the old housewife, who was sitting at the patient’s bedside, became afraid. Thus, just before his death, anger arose in the soul of the downtrodden Bashmachkin against the people who killed him.
N.V. Gogol tells us at the end of his story that in the world in which Akaki Akakievich lived, the hero as a person, as a person challenging the entire society, can live only after death. “The Overcoat” tells the story of the most ordinary and insignificant person, about the most ordinary events in his life. The story had a great influence on the direction of Russian literature; the theme of the “little man” became one of the most important for many years.
"Overcoat" N.V. Gogol occupies a special place in the author’s “Petersburg Tales” cycle. The story of an unhappy official overwhelmed by poverty, popular in the 30s, was embodied by N.V. Gogol into a work of art that A.I. Herzen called it “colossal”.
"Overcoat" N.V. Gogol became a kind of school for Russian writers. Having shown the humiliation of Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, his inability to resist brute force, N.V. Gogol, at the same time, expressed his protest against injustice and inhumanity through the behavior of his hero. This is a riot on your knees.
The story “The Overcoat” first appeared in 1842 in the 3rd volume of the works of N.V. Gogol. Its theme is the position of the “little man”, and the idea is spiritual suppression, crushing, depersonalization, robbery of the human personality in an antagonistic society, as noted by A.I. Revyakin.
The story “The Overcoat” continues the theme of the “little man” outlined in “ Bronze Horseman" and "Station Master" A.S. Pushkin. But in comparison with A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol strengthens and expands the social resonance of this theme. N.V., who has long worried Gogol’s motif of isolation and defenselessness of man in “The Overcoat” sounds on some kind of highest, poignant note.
In the story by N.V. Gogol’s “The Overcoat” directly expresses the idea of a compassionate, humane attitude towards the “little man.”
The main character of this story, Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, works as a titular adviser in some institution. The senseless clerical work killed every living thought in Bashmachkin, and he found the only pleasure only in copying papers: “He lovingly wrote out letters in even handwriting and completely immersed himself in work, forgetting the insults caused to him by his colleagues, and poverty, and worries about his daily bread. Even at home, he only thought that “God will send something to rewrite tomorrow.”
But even in this downtrodden official, the man awakened when a new, worthy goal appeared for the continuation of his life. This new goal and joy for Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin was a new overcoat: “He even became somehow livelier, even stronger in character. Doubt and indecision naturally disappeared from his face and actions...” Bashmachkin does not give up his dream for a single day. He thinks about it like another person thinks about love, about family. So he orders himself a new overcoat, and as Gogol himself says in the story, “...his existence has somehow become fuller.”
The description of the life of Akaki Akakievich is permeated with irony, but there is also pity and sadness in it.
Leading the reader into spiritual world of the hero, describing his feelings, thoughts, dreams, joys and sorrows, the author makes it clear what happiness it was for Bashmachkin to achieve and acquire the overcoat, and what a disaster its loss turns into.
There was no happier person in the world than Akaki Akakievich when they brought him his overcoat. This overcoat played the role of a savior angel who brought happiness to Bashmachkin. After he bought a new overcoat, he became a completely new happy man, the new overcoat gave his life meaning and purpose.
But his joy was very short and short-lived. When he was returning home at night, he was robbed, and none of the people around him take part in the fate of the unfortunate official Bashmachkin. He will once again become unhappy and lose the joys of his life. He seeks help from a “significant person” in vain. But nothing came of it, and they even accused him of rebellion against his superiors and “higher ones.”
After these tragic events, Akaki Akakievich falls ill and dies of sadness.
At the end of this story, a “small and timid man,” driven to disappointment by the world of the powerful, protests against this merciless world. According to N.V. Gogol, the humiliation and insult of Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin has two reasons: firstly, he himself is to blame, because he does not know the value of his life and does not even consider himself a man, and only the overcoat turns him into a man, and only after buying the overcoat does the him a new life; secondly, according to N.V. Gogol, “strong” and “significant persons” do not allow little people to grow up in society and violate their natural rights.
The world of such “little” people as Akaki Akakievich is very limited. The goal and joy of such people lies in only one subject, without which they cannot continue life; they cannot think multilaterally at all. Apparently, the author of “The Overcoat” believes that every person should have a goal, the fulfillment of which he will strive, and if the goal of life is very small and insignificant, then the person himself becomes just as “small” and insignificant: for Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin the purpose and joy of life lay in the new overcoat. When he lost the purpose of his life, he died.
Thus, the theme of the “little man” - a victim of the social system - was brought to light by N.V. Gogol to its logical end. “A creature disappeared and disappeared, not protected by anyone, not dear to anyone, not interesting to anyone.” However, in his dying delirium, the hero experiences another “insight”, utters “the most scary words”followed by the words “Your Excellency.” The deceased Bashmachkin turns into an avenger and tears off the overcoat from the most “significant person.” N.V. Gogol resorts to fantasy, but it is emphatically conventional, it is designed to reveal the protesting, rebellious beginning hidden in the timid and intimidated hero, a representative of the “lower class” of society. The “rebellion” of the ending of “The Overcoat” is somewhat softened by the depiction of the moral correction of a “significant person” after a collision with a dead man.
Gogol's solution to the social conflict in The Overcoat is given with that critical ruthlessness that constitutes the essence of the ideological and emotional pathos of Russian classical realism.
The image of the “little man” in the story by N.V. Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” in particular, and throughout his work in general, allows the writer to focus on the “little people” living next to us: insecure, lonely, deprived of protection and support, in need of sympathy. This is a kind of criticism of the social structure.
§ 1.3 Coverage of the problem of the “little man” in the prose of A.P. Chekhov
A.P. Chekhov, a great artist of words, like many other writers, also could not ignore the theme of the “little man” in his work.
His heroes are “little people,” but many of them became that way of their own free will. Each of his heroes personifies one of the aspects of life: for example, Belikov (“Man in a Case”) is the personification of power, bureaucracy and censorship. And all the stories of A.P. Chekhov, as a whole, together form an ideological whole, create a generalizing idea of modern life, where the significant coexists with the insignificant, the tragic with the funny.
For the most part, there is no peaceful coexistence between the opposites in the souls of Chekhov's heroes. If a person submits to the force of circumstances and his ability to resist gradually fades away, then he ultimately loses everything truly human that was characteristic of him. This mortification of the soul, “reducing it” to a minimum size is the most terrible retribution that life rewards for opportunism.
In the stories of A.P. In Chekhov we see oppressive bosses, like in N.V. Gogol, there is no acute financial situation in them, humiliating social relations like F.M. Dostoevsky, there is only a person who decides his own destiny. With his visual images of “little people” with impoverished souls, A.P. Chekhov calls on readers to fulfill one of his commandments: “Squeeze the slave out of yourself drop by drop.” Each of the heroes of his “little trilogy” personifies one of the aspects of life: Belikov (“The Man in a Case”) is the personification of power, bureaucracy and censorship, the story (“Gooseberry”) is the personification of relations with the land, a perverted image of the landowner of that time, the story of love appears before us as a reflection of the spiritual life of people.
All the stories together form an ideological whole, creating a general idea of modern life, where the significant coexists with the insignificant, the tragic with the funny.
"The Man in a Case" is the first part of Chekhov's famous "little trilogy". Belikov, a Greek teacher who was in love with his subject, could bring a lot of benefit to high school students with his knowledge. Belikov's love for Greek language at first glance more high shape obsession than Ionych’s passion for hoarding or the hero of the story “Gooseberry” for owning a manor with gooseberries. But it is no coincidence that this teacher does not infect his students with his admiration for the wonderful subject he teaches; for them he is only a hated “man in a case.” Taking on the role of a guardian of morality, he poisons the lives of those around him: not only the students, but also the teachers and the director of the gymnasium, and not only the entire gymnasium - the entire city. That's why everyone hates him so much.
But the hero of the story “The Man in a Case”, in a sense, he is even satisfied with the position of the “little man”. Such heroes live the life that they have created for themselves and which fully corresponds to their character and inner world. This is the small happiness of these little people. They follow only their personal beliefs and do not care about how one or another of their actions will affect the fate of the people around them. So, for example, Belikov spends his entire life as if in a case: he wears dark glasses, a sweatshirt, stuffs his ears with cotton wool, and when he gets into a cab, he orders the top to be raised. He also has an umbrella, a watch, and a penknife in cases. Belikov's house symbolizes the ideal that he always sought to realize and create around himself. He does not understand that, due to his strangeness, he keeps the entire city in fear. Also, Chervyakov greatly bothers the general with his behavior. But he asks for forgiveness not because of remorse and not because he considered his act truly daring in relation to such a high rank. Chervyakov apologizes to Brizzhalov because of the stereotypes ingrained in his mind. He, like Belikov, fears “what might happen” if these stereotypes are not repeated. In his stories A.P. Chekhov portrayed little people who do not understand that it is their character and behavior, which they are content with and do not strive to develop from worse to better, that makes their life “small” and (although not by their special desire) disturbs the peace of the people around them.
A product of the reactionary era of the 1880s, Belikov himself, first of all, is in constant fear: no matter what happens! And let the sun shine, in case of rain or wind, just in case you need to dress warmly, you need to grab an umbrella, raise your collar, put on galoshes, stuff your ears with cotton wool and, when getting into the cab, close the top. The details in the hero’s behavior, noted by the artist at the moment when the hero leaves the house and goes out into the street, from which he expects nothing but trouble, immediately create a vivid image of a “small case” man. It would seem that a person like Belikov, afraid of the street, should feel out of danger in his own home. But he is no better at home than on the street. Here he has at his disposal an equally sophisticated selection of security items. No matter how things get damaged - and just in case, Belikov keeps his penknife in a case. No matter how the thieves break into the house, No matter how the cook Afanasy stabs him to death - the shutters, latches, bed with curtains, himself under the blanket with his head tightly covered are called upon to protect and preserve the peace (more precisely, anxiety) of Belikov, who walks around the house in a robe and cap.
The abundance of objects accompanying Belikov on the street, at home, at school, makes us once again recall the work of A.P.’s remarkable predecessors. Chekhov, who for the first time in Russian literature so closely connected the inner appearance of a person with the outside world, his environment, first of all, N.V. Gogol.
So, the whole meaning of Belikov’s life is in vigorous defense against outside world, from real life. But even more terrible for him is any manifestation of living thought. That’s why he likes all sorts of official circulars. They were especially dear to him if they contained prohibitions - a wide field for implementing his “philosophy of life.” “Caseness” as a property of human character, thus, goes far beyond the behavior of an individual in everyday life and reflects the worldview of an entire society living under a police-bureaucratic regime.
And when you think about it, there seems to be a sinister undertone in Belikov’s teaching of children to an ancient, dead language. Belikov resembles a non-commissioned officer both in his passion for voluntary defense of the police regime, and in the power of his harmful influence on people.
Characters depicted by A.P. Chekhov is always dynamic. Belikov also changed under the influence of a dim, timid light - a semblance of love that flared up in his soul upon meeting the laughing Varenka. But this change was external. Belikov’s very first thought about marrying Varenka began with the new “no matter what happens”; this “case” consideration ultimately crushed the semblance of love in his soul.
But this time this fear turned out to be not in vain: thrown from the stairs by teacher Kovalenko, Varenka’s brother, Belikov rolled down and lost his galoshes. This man seemed to have become physically fused with them, and suddenly he felt completely unprotected. The fatal outcome occurred immediately. Belikov could not survive the public shame, returned to his room, lay down and never got up again. This death is retribution for a false, deathly worldview, therefore there is nothing tragic in it.
Before us is a life crippled by social conditions, spent senselessly for oneself and for the harm of others. Fear of any manifestation of life, dull hostility to everything new, unusual, especially that which goes beyond what is permitted by the boss, are characteristic features of case life.
The story “Gooseberry” - about such a life - became a generalization of the entire Russian bourgeois life. During the work, the writer rejected the option of the official’s death from cancer. It would look like tragic accident. He also rejected the other ending he wrote down: he ate a gooseberry, said: “How stupid,” and died. This is for A.P. Chekhov's solution to the problem was too simple. In the final version, the official remained to live, satisfied with himself.
Self-righteous, tenacious vulgarity is a socially dangerous phenomenon. This conclusion to the story is striking in its accuracy and amazing simplicity. Chekhov's story exposes vulgarity, boredom, and limited interests. Before us is revealed something small, insignificant, at first glance almost harmless, constantly encountered, but terrible in its petty ordinariness.
At the beginning of the story, a landscape is drawn - endless fields, distant hills. A great, beautiful country and its vast expanses are contrasted with the life of an official, whose cherished goal is to acquire ownership of an insignificant piece of land, to lock himself for life in his own estate, to eat “not bought, but his own gooseberries.” Having visited his brother, who, after much hardship, realized his dream - he acquired an estate in his old age. But the hero A.P. is happy because of this. Chekhov, alas, did not, but continued only his “measured” existence.
A.P. Chekhov chooses the position of an observer of human life, but only those aspects of it that interest him as an artist. Life situations and their heroes are passed through his perception and corresponding tonality - from lyrical to deeply dramatic. A person’s life in Chekhov’s early stories is immersed in everyday life, which gives rise to unexpected, unusual, with a significant dose of comedy, situations that arise in A.P. Chekhov with the meaningful core of the work. In other words, the content of most early stories stems from " clean water misunderstandings”, as, for example, in the story “The Death of an Official”: “Something came off in Chervyakov’s stomach. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he backed away to the door, went out into the street and trudged... Arriving automatically home, without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and... died.”
Chekhov's hero- executor Ivan Dmitrich died from experiences caused by fear. At first glance, the answer seems simple and obvious. But the “simplicity” of Chekhov’s stories is illusory and requires the reader to pay close attention to the text. And in our case, also to the literary and artistic context, expressed in “The Death of an Official” by a number of associations. With servile zeal, Chekhov's executor tries again and again to apologize, bow to Brizzhalov, and listen with pleasure to the general's teaching. And even “scolding” from the “person” will not humiliate him, but will give him hope of being noticed. But the general does not understand Chervyakov’s “lofty” intentions and ignores his passionate desire to get into the field of view of an influential person. “What kind of ridicule is there? - thought Chervyakov. - There is no ridicule here at all! General, but he can’t understand!” The meaning of Chervyakov’s phrase: “No, you can’t leave it like that... I’ll explain it to him...” is that the executor is struck by the idea that he must not apologize, but “explain” his servility. And so, as it unexpectedly turned out for him, for the last time Chervyakov “began to report” to the general the real reason and purpose of his persistence: “Yesterday I came to bother you... not to laugh, as you deigned to say... Do I dare laugh? If we laugh, then we will never, and that means there will be no respect for people....” The general’s reaction: “Get out!” had a terrifying effect on Chervyakov: the general’s shout not only amazed, but terrified Chervyakov. Not only was Chervyakov completely misunderstood in his cherished bureaucratic intentions, it turned out that the high-ranking bureaucratic “person” herself completely neglected the principle on which the institution of bureaucracy had stood from time immemorial. But this principle was the only meaning and content of Chervyakov’s life. And so it collapsed... There was nothing left to exist... And Chekhov's official died. Without taking off his uniform, which, undoubtedly, will be on him and in the coffin. A.P. concluded with this important touch. Chekhov's portrait of his "little man".
We also see Chekhov’s image of a little man in the story “Chameleon”. Here, the innovation lies in the depiction of conflict, or rather the actual absence of it. The subject of the image turns out to be the little man himself as a person. The choice of the main detail characterizing the main character Ochumelov turns out to be unusual. To reveal it, Chekhov uses a large number of repetitions. Ochumelov’s reaction to the incident he witnesses changes several times, depending on the answer to the question: “Whose dog is this?” The police supervisor is presented here as a person, on the one hand, who is not susceptible to the influence of others, and on the other, also possessing a stereotype of thinking. For him, everything that is a general’s is better than “non-general’s”. Using the example of the image of policeman A.P. Chekhov plays on the Russian proverb: “Throws you into the heat, then into the cold.” Ochumelov constantly asks his subordinate to either take off or put on his coat, as he clearly feels internal discomfort due to the uncertainty of the current situation.
A.P. Chekhov rethinks the image of a little man; to the traits that evoke pity and sympathy, he adds negative qualities that he himself does not accept. This is veneration for rank, limited thinking. Such new lighting of this image makes it more expressive and makes us think once again about its essence.
The writer’s stories, in fact, are devoted to the study of various facets of spiritual subordination and slavery of “little people,” ranging from the simplest to the most complex.
In Chekhov's narrative, the environment has ceased to be an external force foreign to man, and the characters depend on it to the extent that they themselves create and reproduce it. Therefore, A.P. Chekhov, unlike most other writers who developed precisely the theme of conflict with the environment, has so many stories about a goal achieved, a dream come true, about people who have achieved “happiness.” The more fully a Chekhov character corresponds to the “environment,” the less he resembles a person.
A.P. Chekhov gave a multiple analysis of the reasons that force people into submission and captivity.
This writer has amazing words about a person in whom “everything should be beautiful - face, clothes, soul, and thoughts,” and people in his eyes probably could not be “small” at all.
Thus, Chekhov's “little man” is not so much a social or socio-psychological type as a moral one. It exists in any environment and in any people. A person must always remain human, never lose his dignity and value others, first of all, according to their human qualities, and not according to their positions.
A.P. Chekhov showed that the “little man” is no less important for society as a whole.
Summarizing the problem analysis “The image of the “little man in Russian literature of the 19th century.”,The following conclusions can be drawn.
1.Creativity of A.S. Pushkin marked the beginning of the creation in Russian literature of a unique gallery of images of “little people”. Author's position A.S. Pushkin is expressed in condemnation of the limitations of “little people,” but, condemning them, the writer still does not despise the “little man,” but tries to evoke sympathy for him.
2.N.V. Gogol has a slightly different attitude towards “little people”. He believes that “strong” and “significant persons” do not allow little people to grow up in society and violate their natural rights. Before us are people who are lonely, insecure, without reliable support, and in need of sympathy. Therefore, the writer neither judges the “little man” mercilessly nor justifies him: this image evokes both compassion and ridicule at the same time.
3.“Little Man” by A.P. Chekhov exists in any environment and in any people. In Chekhov's story about the “little man,” the environment has ceased to be an external, extraneous force, and the characters under study depend on it to the extent that they themselves create and reproduce it.
Chapter II. Attitude to the image of the “little man” F.M. Dostoevsky
§ 2.1 Pain about a person in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
“Crime and Punishment” is a book of great pain for humanity, one of the most powerful works of world literature, revealing the inhumanity of capitalist society.
The objective content of the novel is the complete impossibility of finding any human solutions if one remains on the basis of this society, within the limits of its reality and its consciousness. In the terrible pictures of poverty, abuse of man, loneliness, the unbearable stuffiness of life, it seems that all human grief is breathing and staring you straight in the face. It is impossible for a person to live in such a society! This is the main conclusion from the novel, which determines its mood, images, and situations.
IN complete contradiction with all his theories that crimes cannot be explained by social causes, the author seems to have tried to collect all the social reasons that push people to crime in the capitalist world. Hopelessness is the leitmotif of the novel.
Rodion Raskolnikov is “crushed by poverty.” He is forced to leave the university due to lack of funds to pay for his studies. His mother and sister are in danger of starvation. Raskolnikov identifies the only real path awaiting his sister Dunechka with the fate of Sonya Marmeladova: this is the path of prostitution, distinguished only by the legalized form of marriage. The Marmeladov family - Katerina Ivanovna, her children - lives only because Sonya sells herself. Dunechka agrees to the same sacrifice as Sonya, in the name of her sacredly beloved, only brother: she agrees to marry Luzhin. The image of Luzhin is a classic image of a bourgeois businessman, a scoundrel who vilely slandered the defenseless Sonya, a narcissistic vulgar who tyrannizes and humiliates people, a careerist, a miser and a coward. Dunechka and her mother are ready to turn a blind eye to all the abomination of Luzhin, just so that their Rodya can graduate from university. Proud, endlessly loving his sister and mother, Raskolnikov is not able to accept such a sacrifice from them.
He knows his sister well: “...What can I say! - he thinks after reading a letter from his mother, which tells about Dunya’s agreement to marry Luzhin. - The Svidrigailovs are heavy! It’s hard to hang around the provinces as a governess for two hundred rubles all your life, but I still know that my sister would rather become a Negro to a planter or become a Latvian to a Baltic German than to fuel her spirit and her moral sense by a connection with a person she doesn’t respect. and with which she has nothing to do - forever, for her own personal benefit! And even if Mr. Luzhin were all made of the purest gold or a solid diamond, even then he would not agree to become Mr. Luzhin’s legal concubine. Why does he agree now? What's the big deal? What is the solution? The point is clear: for himself, for his own comfort, even to save himself from death, he will not sell himself, but for someone else he will sell it! For a dear, for an adored person will sell! That’s what our whole thing is: he’ll sell it for his brother, for his mother!<…>. And mother! Why, here is Rodya, priceless Rodya, the first-born! Well, how can you not sacrifice at least such a daughter for such a firstborn!”
The reasons that push even such beautiful, proud, romantic creatures as Dunechka Raskolnikova into terrible moral compromises in a capitalist society are deeply revealed here. Like Sonya Marmeladova, Dunya would never sell herself for any good in the world, she would prefer to simply die, commit suicide. But, as D.I. beautifully said. Pisarev in his article “The Struggle for Life,” dedicated to “Crime and Punishment,” even suicide is an unaffordable luxury for the poor: “Perhaps Sofya Semyonovna would also be able to throw herself into the Neva; but, rushing into the Neva, she could not have laid out thirty rubles on the table in front of Katerina Ivanovna, which contained the whole meaning and the whole justification for her immoral act.”
Raskolnikov is tormented by the consciousness of complete hopelessness. “I don’t want your sacrifice, Dunechka, I don’t want it, mother! It won’t happen while I’m alive, it won’t happen, it won’t happen! Do not accept!" (XII; 229).
To sell himself and his sister would mean for Rodion Raskolnikov to commit moral suicide and moral murder.
This is how the most characteristic feature of F.M.’s entire thinking, all of his creativity, and his entire mental make-up was reflected. Dostoevsky: with the vengeful gloating of bitterness and pleasure precisely from the consciousness of complete, completely closed hopelessness.
Inherent F.M. Dostoevsky’s vindictive pleasure in the awareness of the hopeless situation of “little people” in the novel “Crime and Punishment” is turned against the laws of society, which forced the heroes of the novel to “choose” paths that lead in different ways to the murder of humanity. An inhuman society demands that a person renounce humanity - this is the truth revealed to Raskolnikov. "Crime and Punishment" reveals the situation of a person forced to choose between different types of inhumanity. This is expressed in Raskolnikov’s words addressed to Duna: “<…>and you reach such a line that you don’t step over it, you’ll be unhappy, but if you step over it, maybe you’ll be even more unhappy...” (XII; 232). Not to step over the line, that is, to come to terms with what life has doomed you to, means to be unhappy. And to step over, that is, to try through those methods that are used by successful gentlemen, strongmen of the world Therefore, to change their slave life means for those who are not able to completely renounce humanity, an immeasurably greater misfortune.
More and more pictures of social dead ends and the boundless loneliness of man unfold before the reader. In essence, the entire course, the entire movement of the novel consists of changing pictures of various forms of hopelessness. The scene of Raskolnikov meeting Marmeladov sets the tone for the entire novel, and Marmeladov’s phrase that a person has nowhere to go! - immediately raises this entire scene in the tavern, and the figure of little Marmeladov, and the entire theme of the novel to the height of a tragic thought about the fate of humanity. We immediately feel ourselves in the pathetic-tragic atmosphere of the suffering of millions of people.
Bourgeois objectivist science is, at best, limited to stating facts. The indifference of this science to humanity horrified F.M. Dostoevsky.
The ordinary horror of everyday life in a big city, the everyday, familiar nightmares of this life fill the entire novel. Here he is crushed under the hooves of Marmeladov. Some woman threw herself from the bridge into the darkened water of the ditch into which Raskolnikov was about to throw himself. Here is Katerina Ivanovna, after Luzhin slandered Sonya, rushing around the apartments of high-ranking officials in search of protection, and an important general, whom she prevented from having dinner, stomping on her, drives her away. Here she is, maddened by insults, organizing something like a demonstration of poverty on the streets of the capital, forcing children to sing and dance for the amusement of the crowd. And, just like in other works by F.M. Dostoevsky, an image of a giant city arises, fantastically beautiful and at the same time fantastically alien and hostile to disadvantaged people.
The image in Raskolnikov’s dream of a tortured nag, strained from an unbearable load, which, mockingly, is flogged in the eyes, right in the eyes, and beaten to death - one of the generalizing lyrical and tragic images novel. In this suffering dream, the Dostoevsky anguish of which was justified by the unbearable truth of life, the fates of all the tormented people, whose images appear before the reader from the pages of Crime and Punishment, seem to be concentrated.
The author shows the pure chance of saving the Marmeladov children from death. The fact that they were saved only thanks to Svidrigailov, who committed suicide and made a will in favor of the Marmeladov family, especially acutely emphasizes the randomness of the rescue.
This whole broad picture of reality, painted with a mighty, harsh brush, shows the real soil that nurtures crimes like Raskolnikov’s. The author emphasizes the characteristics of this kind of “ideas” and moods for the very “air” of time. Porfiry calls Raskolnikov’s act “fantastic”, but at the same time he explains the possibility of such “actions”, moods and “ideas” underlying them quite realistically: “The matter here is fantastic, gloomy, a modern matter, a case of our time, sir, when the human heart is darkened; when the phrase is quoted that blood is refreshing; ...when all life is preached in comfort” (XII; 386).
The motives that led Raskolnikov to his crime intertwined both the “Napoleonic” theme and the theme of the “lumpen revolt of despair.” The writer, apparently, while working on the novel, experienced strong fluctuations between these two options, two motivations for the crime. It goes without saying that this dilemma, the choice between two options, arose before the artist in different terms, in a different subjective understanding: in the mind of F.M. Dostoevsky’s dilemma was this: did Raskolnikov commit a crime in order to “become Napoleon”, “a spider sucking blood” from humanity, or did Raskolnikov commit a crime in order to become a philanthropist, “a benefactor of humanity” (XII; 356).
The author acutely felt the need to give final preference to one or the other option; Ultimately, he leaned toward the Napoleonic version, but still, much of the second version was preserved in the novel. Raskolnikov outlines the first option for Sonya, and the second for Dunya: “Here’s what: I wanted to become Napoleon, that’s why I killed... This is their law... The law, Sonya! This is true! And now I know, Sonya, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit is the ruler over them! Those who dare a lot are right. Whoever can spit on the most is their legislator, and whoever can dare the most is rightest! This is how it has been done until now and this is how it will always be! Only a blind man can’t see!” (XII; 358).
The most important point of Raskolnikov’s entire “theory” was the idea that “all people... are divided into “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” Ordinary people must live in obedience and have no right to break the law, because they are ordinary. And extraordinary people have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and break the law in every possible way, precisely because they are “extraordinary”. This is how Porfiry presents Raskolnikov’s idea. The latter confirms that Porfiry presented this “idea” expressed by Raskolnikov in his article “absolutely correctly,” and clarifies his “main thought.” “It consists precisely in this,” says the hero of the novel, “that people, according to the law of nature, are generally divided into two categories: into the lower (ordinary), that is, so to speak, into the material that serves solely for the generation of their own kind, and actually into people ..." (XII; 342).
This is the objective truth, which found expression in the most profound and realistic work of F.M. Dostoevsky. The author gave the reader a wonderful, truthful picture of the suffering of humanity under the yoke of a violent society and showed what ugly anti-humanistic ideas and sentiments are generated on the basis of this society.
Raskolnikov performs a monstrous “experiment” that must decide: who is he himself? can he “transgress the principle”? is he extraordinary, chosen, capable, without any reproaches of conscience, of doing everything that is required for dominion, for success in the society in which he lives - including whether he is made of the material from which real lords, true masters of this world? The murder of the moneylender was supposed to give him the answer to this question.
“I killed the principle!” (XII; 348) - says Raskolnikov. He wanted to kill the principle of humanism. The wolf laws and morals of bourgeois society deny and kill humanism - this is the truth revealed in the images of F.M. Dostoevsky.
DI. Pisarev said that Raskolnikov’s intention to renounce murder “<...>expressed<...>a person’s last shudder before an act completely contrary to his nature.”
No, Raskolnikov failed to kill the principle, to overcome the person in himself! This seems to be hinted at by Raskolnikov’s dream, in which he again kills the old woman, again and again brings the butt of an ax down on her head, and she still remains unharmed and laughs at him. Or maybe she is only laughing at his weakness, at the fact that he is made of the wrong stuff? So it might have seemed to Raskolnikov. But all the artistic concreteness of the novel speaks precisely of the fact that the principle of humanism cannot be killed. And one cannot help but note in this regard one characteristic contradiction of F.M. Dostoevsky. We know that he asserts the impossibility of humanity without God. But Raskolnikov experiences all the pangs of repentance, all the pain from violating the principle of humanity, without any appeal to God.
At F.M. Dostoevsky, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov's image of the “little man” takes on a different meaning.
F.M. Dostoevsky, being a follower of A.S. Pushkin, deepens his ideas, while the image of the “little man” by N.V. Gogol and A.P. Chekhov differs sharply from the Pushkin tradition. In the works of all three writers, the “little man” is in ordinary social conditions. These heroes, as a rule, are minor officials (titular advisers), which means they stand on the lowest rung of the career ladder. It can be assumed that they will have almost the same psychology. However, this is not true. We must consider how each writer imagines the character and psychology of the little person.” For comparison, let’s look at the psychology of such heroes as Bashmachkin (“The Overcoat” by Gogol), Makar Devushkin (“Poor People” by F.M. Dostoevsky) and Chervyakov (“The Death of an Official” by A.P. Chekhov). F.M. Dostoevsky shows the “little man” as a deeper personality than Samson Vyrin and Evgeniy in A.S. Pushkin. The depth of the image is achieved, firstly, by other artistic means. "Poor People" is a novel in letters, unlike Gogol's and Chekhov's stories. F.M. It is not by chance that Dostoevsky chooses this genre, because... The main goal of the writer is to convey and show all the internal movements and experiences of his hero. The author invites us to feel everything together with the hero, to experience everything with him and brings us to the idea that “little people” are individuals in the full sense of the word and their sense of personality, their ambition is much greater even than that of people with a position in society. The “little man” is more vulnerable; he is afraid that others may not see him as a spiritually rich person. Their own self-awareness also plays a huge role. The way they feel about themselves, whether they feel like individuals, forces them to constantly assert themselves even in their own eyes. Particularly interesting is the theme of self-affirmation, which Dostoevsky raises in “Poor People” and continues in “The Humiliated and Insulted.” Makar Devushkin considered his help to Varenka as some kind of charity, thereby showing that he was not a limited poor man, thinking only about how to find money for food. He, of course, does not suspect that he is driven not by the desire to stand out, but by love. But this once again proves to us the main idea of F.M. Dostoevsky - the “little man” is capable of high feelings.
Thus, characteristic of F.M. Dostoevsky’s vindictive pleasure in the awareness of the hopeless situation of “little people” in the novel “Crime and Punishment” is turned against the laws of society, which forced the heroes of the novel to “choose” paths that lead in different ways to the murder of humanity.
The author gave the reader a wonderful, truthful picture of the suffering of humanity under the yoke of a violent society and showed what ugly anti-humanistic ideas and sentiments are generated on the basis of this society.
§ 2.2 Humiliated and insulted in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
little man dostoevsky crime
The theme of the “little man” is in F.M. Dostoevsky is continuous throughout his work. So, already the first novel outstanding master, which is called “Poor People,” touched on this topic, and it became central to his work. In almost every novel by F.M. In Dostoevsky, the reader encounters “little people,” “humiliated and insulted,” who are forced to live in a cold and cruel world, and no one is able to help them. In the novel “Crime and Punishment” the theme of the “little man” is revealed with special passion, with special love for these people.
At F.M. Dostoevsky had a fundamentally new approach to depicting “little people”. These are no longer dumb and downtrodden people, as N.V. was. Gogol. Their soul is complex and contradictory, they are endowed with the consciousness of their “I”. At F.M. Dostoevsky’s “little man” himself begins to speak, talk about his life, fate, troubles, he talks about the injustice of the world in which he lives and the same “humiliated and insulted” as he.
Many terrible pictures of life, many unbearable human experiences unfold before the reader of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". But there is something, perhaps even more terrible, that no longer relates to the pictures of reality, not to the experiences of people unfolding before the reader, but to the novel itself.
“Having condemned Raskolnikov’s “rebellion,” F.M. Dostoevsky thereby wanted to condemn any social protest.”
Roman F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is psychological analysis a crime committed by poor student Rodion Raskolnikov, who killed an old money-lender. However, this is an unusual criminal case. This, so to speak, is an ideological crime, and its perpetrator is a criminal-thinker, a murderer-philosopher. He killed the moneylender not in the name of enrichment and not even in order to help his loved ones - his mother and sister. This atrocity was the result of tragic circumstances surrounding reality, the result of long and persistent reflections of the hero of the novel about his fate and the fate of all “humiliated and insulted”, about the social and moral laws by which humanity lives.
In the novel “Crime and Punishment”, the fate of many “little people”, forced to live according to the cruel laws of cold, hostile St. Petersburg, passes before the reader’s eyes. Together with the main character Rodion Raskolnikov, the reader meets the “humiliated and insulted” on the pages of the novel, and experiences their spiritual tragedies with him. Among them are a dishonored girl being hunted by a fat dandy, and an unfortunate woman who threw herself from a bridge, and Marmeladov, and his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna, and daughter Sonechka. And Raskolnikov himself also belongs to the “little people,” although he tries to elevate himself above the people around him. F.M. Dostoevsky not only depicts the misfortunes of the “little man”, not only evokes pity for the “humiliated and insulted,” but also shows the contradictions of their souls, the combination of good and evil in them. From this point of view, the image of Marmeladov is especially characteristic. The reader, of course, feels sympathy for the poor, exhausted man who has lost everything in life, so he has sunk to the very bottom. But Dostoevsky is not limited to sympathy alone. He shows that Marmeladov's drunkenness not only harmed himself (he is kicked out of work), but also brought a lot of misfortune to his family. Because of him, small children are starving, and the eldest daughter is forced to go out into the streets in order to somehow help the impoverished family. Along with sympathy, Marmeladov also arouses contempt for himself; you involuntarily blame him for the troubles that befell the family.
The figure of his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna is also contradictory. On the one hand, she is trying in every possible way to prevent a final fall, remembering her happy childhood and carefree youth when she danced at the ball. But in fact, she is simply consoled by her memories, allows adopted daughter engage in prostitution and even accept money from her.
As a result of all the misfortunes, Marmeladov, who has “nowhere to go” in life, becomes an alcoholic and commits suicide. His wife dies of consumption, completely exhausted by poverty. They could not bear the pressure of society, soulless St. Petersburg, and did not find the strength to resist the oppression of the surrounding reality.
Sonechka Marmeladova appears completely different to readers. She is also a “little person”; moreover, nothing could be worse than her fate. But despite this, she finds a way out of the absolute dead end. She was used to living according to the laws of her heart, according to Christian commandments. It is from them that she draws strength. She understands that the lives of her brothers and sisters depend on her, so she completely forgets about herself and devotes herself to others. Sonechka becomes a symbol of eternal sacrifice; she has great sympathy for man, compassion for all living things. It is the image of Sonya Marmeladova that becomes the most obvious exposure of the idea of blood according to Raskolnikov’s conscience. It is no coincidence that, together with the old money-lender, Rodion also kills her innocent sister Lizaveta, who is so similar to Sonechka.
Troubles and misfortunes haunt the Raskolnikov family. His sister Dunya is ready to marry a man who is opposite to her in order to financially help her brother. Raskolnikov himself lives in poverty, he cannot even feed himself, so he is even forced to pawn the ring, a gift from his sister.
The novel contains many descriptions of the destinies of “little people.” F.M. Dostoevsky described with deep psychological accuracy the contradictions reigning in their souls, was able to show not only the downtroddenness and humiliation of such people, but also proved that it was among them that there were deeply suffering, strong and contradictory personalities.
Life appears before him as a tangle of insoluble contradictions. Everywhere he sees pictures of poverty, lack of rights, suppression of human dignity. At every step he meets rejected and persecuted people who have nowhere to escape. And Raskolnikov himself was not in the best position. He, too, essentially has nowhere to go. He lives from hand to mouth, huddles in a miserable closet, like a closet, from where they threaten to throw him out into the street. The fate of his sister was also at risk.
In Marmeladov’s conversation with Raskolnikov in the tavern, the idea is heard that in the beggar, and therefore in him, no one suspects the nobility of feelings. And he has this nobility. He is able to deeply feel, understand, suffer not only for himself, but also for his hungry children, justify his wife’s rude attitude towards himself, and appreciate the dedication of her and Sonya. Despite Marmeladov’s seemingly loss of human appearance, it is impossible to despise him. Do you dare to condemn a person whose fate was so tragic not only through his fault? Before us is a man offended by the ruthless laws of society, and although deeply aware of his fall, he has retained his sense of self-worth.
Katerina Ivanovna is sick with consumption, as evidenced by the red spots on her face, which Marmeladov is so afraid of. From his story about his wife, we learn that she is from a noble family and was brought up in the provincial noble institute. Having married without parental blessing, finding herself in a desperate situation, with three children in her arms, after the death of her husband, she was forced to marry Marmeladov. “You can judge because of the extent to which her misfortunes reached, that she, educated and brought up and with a well-known surname, agreed to marry me! But I went! Crying and sobbing and wringing my hands - I went! Because there was nowhere to go!” (XII; 116). But there was no relief even after the second marriage: the husband was kicked out of work and started drinking, the landlady threatened to throw him out, Lebezyatnikov was beaten, hungry children were crying. It is not cruelty that guides her when she sends Sonya to the panel, but despair and hopelessness. Katerina Ivanovna understands that her stepdaughter sacrificed herself for her loved ones. That is why, when she returned with the money, she “stood on her knees all evening, kissing her feet” (XII; 117). Marmeladov gives his wife an accurate description, saying that she is “ardent, proud and unyielding” (XII; 89). But her human pride is trampled upon at every step, and she is forced to forget about her dignity and self-love. It is pointless to seek help and sympathy from others, Katerina Ivanovna has “nowhere to go”, there is a dead end everywhere.
Talking about Sonya and the girl Raskolnikov met on the boulevard, it is no coincidence that the writer draws attention to their portraits: the purity and defenselessness shown in the portraits of Sonya and the girl do not correspond to the lifestyle that they are forced to lead, so Raskolnikov “it was strange and wild to look at such phenomenon" (XII; 78). Their future is bleak, it fits into the formula: “hospital... wine... taverns and also a hospital... in two or three years - a cripple, in total she will live nineteen or eighteen years old” (XII; 193). F.M. Dostoevsky convincingly shows that indifference, malicious mockery and hostility reign in this world. Everyone, except Raskolnikov, listens to the “funny man” Marmeladov “snorting”, “smiling” or “yawning”. The crowd of spectators who poured out to watch the agony of the dying Marmeladov was just as indifferent. In Raskolnikov’s first dream, so similar to reality, a horse is whipped “with pleasure,” “with laughter and witticisms.”
Thus, the novel “Crime and Punishment” reflected the anxiety of F.M. Dostoevsky for the future of humanity. He shows that it is impossible to continue living the way the “humiliated and insulted” live now. On the other hand, the writer does not accept the path that Raskolnikov took for the happiness of the world.
Roman F.M. Dostoevsky's “Crime and Punishment” is not only one of the most sorrowful books in world literature. This is a book of hopeless sorrow.
And yet, the decisive factor in assessing its significance is the deep truth about the unbearability of life in a violent society, where the gentlemen Luzhins reign with their malice, stupidity, and selfishness. What remains in our hearts is not the idealization of suffering, not hopelessness and hopelessness, but irreconcilable hatred of the entire world of human oppression.
Inherent F.M. Dostoevsky’s vindictive pleasure in the awareness of the hopeless situation of “little people” in the novel “Crime and Punishment” is turned against the laws of society, which forced the heroes of the novel to “choose” paths that lead in different ways to the murder of humanity. An inhuman society demands that a person renounce humanity - this is the truth revealed to Raskolnikov. "Crime and Punishment" reveals the situation of a person forced to choose between different types of inhumanity.
In complete contradiction with all his theories that crimes cannot be explained by social reasons, the author seems to have tried to collect all the social reasons that push people to crime in the capitalist world. Hopelessness is the leitmotif of the novel. In essence, the entire course, the entire movement of the novel consists of changing pictures of various forms of hopelessness.
Worldview F.M. Dostoevsky is based on one enduring fundamental value - love for man, high humanism. The writer refutes social theories that talk about the necessity and possibility of sacrificing the lives of several people for the sake of the happiness of others.
According to F.M. Dostoevsky, all people are equal before God, there are no “small” and “great”, every person is the highest value. “Little Man” is a microworld, it is a whole universe on a micro scale, and in this world many protests and attempts to escape from a difficult situation can be born. This world is very rich in bright feelings and positive qualities, but this micro-scale universe is subjected to humiliation and oppression from the huge universes. The “little man” is thrown out into the street by life.
“Little People” by F.M. Dostoevsky is small only in his social position, and not in his inner world. F.M. Dostoevsky wanted a better life for the pure, kind, selfless, honest, thinking, sensitive, reasoning, spiritually exalted and trying to protest against injustice; but a poor, practically defenseless “little man.”
F.M. Dostoevsky tells about the life of people of low ranks who are constantly hungry, cold and sick; they have to live in miserable apartments in remote areas and often borrow money.
The theme of an individual human personality, spinning in a whirlpool of certain circumstances and conditions that limited their life in Russia, is revealed in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” with such skill and talent that the very fact that this writer’s novel instantly made him a recognized master of words.
This theme always sounds in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky: the story of the “little people” is the most striking example of one of the trends in the work of F.M. Dostoevsky.
Thus, F.M. Dostoevsky in his novel “Crime and Punishment” described with deep psychological accuracy the contradictions reigning in the souls of “little people”, managed to show not only their downtroddenness and humiliation, but also proved that it is among them that there are deeply suffering, strong and contradictory personalities.
The images of “little people” created by the author are imbued with the spirit of protest against social injustice, against the humiliation of man and faith in his high calling. The souls of “poor people” can be beautiful, full of spiritual generosity and beauty, not broken by the most difficult living conditions. Is it possible to compare the beauty of Dunya with the stupid complacency of Luzhin or throw a stone at Sonechka, who becomes the embodiment of the moral ideal that Raskolnikov lost?
F. M. Dostoevsky's worldview is based on one enduring fundamental value - love for man, high humanism. The writer refutes social theories that talk about the necessity and possibility of sacrificing the lives of several people for the sake of the happiness of others. According to F.M. Dostoevsky, all people are equal before God, there are no “small” and “great”, every person is the highest value.
So, the theme of “the humiliated and insulted” was heard with particular force in the novel “Crime and Punishment.” Pictures of hopeless poverty, one darker than the other, are revealed to the reader. The action takes place in squalid neighborhoods, in the pitiful slums of St. Petersburg, in fetid drinking bars, in dirty squares. It is against this background that the life of the Marmeladovs is depicted. The fate of this family is closely intertwined with the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov. The novel creates a vast canvas of immeasurable human torment, suffering and grief. The writer gazes intently and piercingly into the soul of the “little man” and discovers in him enormous spiritual wealth, spiritual generosity and inner beauty, not exterminated by unbearable living conditions. The beauty of the “little man”’s soul is revealed, first of all, through the ability to love and compassion. In the image of Sonechka Marmeladova Dostoevsky reveals such great soul, such a “capacious heart” that the reader bows before her.
In “Crime and Punishment” F.M. Dostoevsky with particular force develops the idea of the responsibility of a specific individual for the fate of the disadvantaged. Society should be organized on such principles as to exclude such phenomena, but every person is obliged to sympathize and help those who find themselves in tragic circumstances. The murderer Rodion Raskolnikov, himself crushed by poverty, cannot ignore the tragedy of the Marmeladov family and gives them his pitiful pennies. An inveterate cynic and villain, Svidrigailov arranges the fate of the orphaned Marmeladov children. This is Christian, this is how a person should act. On this road for F.M. Dostoevsky's thought contained the true humanism of the great writer, who argued that the natural state of man and humanity is unity and brotherhood and love.
Summarizing the problem analysis "Attitude to the imagelittle manF.M. Dostoevsky", the following conclusions can be drawn.
1.The theme of the “little man” is in F.M. Dostoevsky is continuous throughout his work. In almost every novel by F.M. In Dostoevsky, the reader encounters “little people,” “humiliated and insulted,” who are forced to live in a cold and cruel world, and no one is able to help them.
2.In the novel “Crime and Punishment” the theme of the “little man” is revealed with special passion, with special love for these people. This is due to the fact that they, unlike typical “little people,” are trying with all their might to escape from unfavorable circumstances, and do not want this to prevent them from living and feeling fully.
3.At F.M. Dostoevsky had a fundamentally new approach to depicting “little people”. These are no longer dumb and downtrodden people, as N.V. was. Gogol. Their soul is complex and contradictory, they are endowed with the consciousness of their “I”. In Dostoevsky, the “little man” himself begins to speak, talk about his life, fate, troubles, he talks about the injustice of the world in which he lives and the same “humiliated and insulted” as he.
Conclusion
The image of the “little man” appeared in world literature in the 19th century and became very popular. This type of literary hero was a person from low social strata, with his own advantages and disadvantages, joys and sorrows, dreams and aspirations. During the heyday of the realistic movement in literature, the inner world, the psychology of the “little man” occupied many writers. Russian classics especially often addressed the theme of the “little man.” The first of them were A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov.
A.S. Pushkin is one of the first classics to describe the image of the “little man”. For all works by A.S. Pushkin was characterized by a deep penetration into the character of each hero - the “little man”: this is a masterful portrait of such a character, both his behavior and speech manner.
A direct successor of the “little man” theme after A.S. Pushkin became N.V. Gogol, and then A.P. Chekhov.
It should be noted that the active image of the “little man” is also characteristic of the work of F.M. Dostoevsky.
The writer in his work showed the immensity of the suffering of humiliated and insulted people and expressed enormous pain for this suffering. F.M. Dostoevsky himself was humiliated and insulted by the terrible reality that broke the fate of his heroes. Each of his works looks like a personal bitter confession. This is how the novel is perceived Crime and Punishment . It reflects a desperate protest against the cruel reality that crushed millions of people, just as the unfortunate Marmeladov and his wife, Katerina Ivanovna, were crushed to death.
F.M. Dostoevsky opposes the endless moral humiliation of the “little man,” but he rejects the path chosen by Rodion Raskolnikov. He is not a “little man”, he is trying to protest. Raskolnikov's protest is terrible in its essence (“blood according to conscience”) - it deprives a person of his human nature.
The writer showed enormous human torment, suffering and sorrow of “little people”. And in the midst of such a nightmare, the “little man”, possessing a pure soul, immeasurable kindness, but “humiliated and insulted”, is great in moral terms, in his nature.
“Little Man” as depicted by F.M. Dostoevsky protests against social injustice. The main feature of F.M.’s worldview Dostoevsky - love for humanity, paying attention not to a person’s position on the social ladder, but to nature, his soul - these are the main qualities by which a person must be judged.
F.M. Dostoevsky wanted a better life for the pure, kind, selfless, noble, soulful, honest, thinking, sensitive, reasoning, spiritually exalted and trying to protest against injustice; but a poor, practically defenseless, “humiliated and insulted” “little man.”
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Methodological application
Summary of a lesson conducted in the 10th grade of MBOU Secondary School No. 1 in Birsk
Lesson topic:The theme of the little man in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment".
The purpose of the lesson: to promote awareness of the versatility of F.M.’s creativity. Dostoevsky, his novel “Crime and Punishment”, awareness of the fundamentals of the author’s moral position (pain for a person).
Lesson objectives:
1. educational:reveal the traditions and innovation of F.M. Dostoevsky in the image of a little man, contribute to the development of information competence;
2. developing:develop communicative competence (the ability to work in a group, distribute roles, cooperate, negotiate), speech competence (to express one’s thoughts in a logical manner; to express thoughts in the correct literary language);
3. educational:to cultivate a civic position - a person’s personal responsibility for his destiny; cultivate a sense of compassion for people; aversion to drunkenness.
Equipment:presentation “Life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky"; exhibition of books with works by F.M. Dostoevsky; illustrations for stories and their design in the form of presentations; musical accompaniment for presentations.
References:
Literature. Grade 10. / Edited by Yu.V. Lebedev in parts II. Part II. - M., 2012. - 383 p.
F.M. Dostoevsky. Novel "Crime and Punishment". - M., 2012. - 608 p.
Lesson plan:
I. Warm-up “Epigraph”.. Control and preparatory stage.. Questions and answers.. Filling out the table.. Understanding the results of the work. Essay-miniature.
During the classes
I. Teacher's word:We continue to study Dostoevsky's novel “Crime and Punishment”.
At the beginning of the lesson, let's spend a moment of eloquence: I propose to talk about Raskolnikov's theory. What is this theory in relation to humanity (based on materials from the previous lesson).
Questions from students to the speaker:
So, what didn’t work for Raskolnikov here?
Where should we place our loved ones and dear ones?
Teacher:It turns out that the “trembling creatures” included Dunya’s sister, mother, Sonya, and the Marmeladov family, i.e. those for whom he committed a crime (slides).
How can they be combined?
Look at the blackboard: Samson Vyrin
Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin.
Who are they?
Student 1.Samson Vyrin - Dunya's father from the story by A.S. Pushkin “The Station Warden”, Akakiy Akakievich Bashmachkin - titular adviser in the story by N.V. Gogol's "The Overcoat".
Which writer introduces the image of the “little man” into Russian literature?
Student 2.The image of the “little man” was first introduced into Russian literature by A.S. Pushkin.
What is A.S. like? Pushkina, N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky?
Student 3.Samson Vyrin from the story “The Station Agent” is lonely, because his own daughter left him, got married and left. And he can't do anything about it. So he dies of grief.
Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin from the story by N.V. Gogol's "Overcoat" - a titular adviser who clutched his overcoat - and did not see anything around, did not want to hear, was not interested in anything.
At F.M. Dostoevsky in the novel “Crime and Punishment” “little man” is Marmeladov. He is a poor official at the very bottom of the social ladder. He lost his job, and his family was left without any means of livelihood. Of course, the reason for this was the spinelessness and lack of will of Marmeladov himself, who, realizing the depth of the abyss into which he is falling, drags his loved ones with him.
Remember these heroes of the works of A.S. Pushkin and N.V. Gogol.
Student 4.Samson Vyrin from the story by A.S. Pushkin "Station Warden". Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin from the story by N.V. Gogol's "The Overcoat".
Teacher: Early XIX century was marked by the approval critical realism in Russian culture. A new hero appears: a little man. F.M. Dostoevsky, a classic of Russian literature, continues the traditions of his predecessors.
Today we will try to talk about a certain group of heroes in the novel “Crime and Punishment” and try to unite them according to some common feature or commonality.
How would you formulate the topic of our lesson?
Look at the screen, at the table.
A.S. Pushkin N.V. Gogol F.M. Dostoevsky “The Station Agent” Samson Vyrin The story “The Overcoat” A.A. Bashmachkin ?
Which character do you think is the “little man”?
Student:Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin.
Teacher:What new did F.M. introduce? into the image of the “little man” F.M. Dostoevsky? This question can be answered by listening to the answers of other groups.
Student.F.M. Dostoevsky sought to attract public attention to the fate of the most disadvantaged, the most offended, “humiliated and insulted.” After all, their terrible situation is a terrible reproach to those who drove them into a state of “dead end.”
Our class is divided into 3 groups. This table is a task for one of the groups.
What episodes do you think need to be considered in order to fully reveal the theme of the little man?
Student:This is the episode “Raskolnikov’s conversation with Marmeladov in the tavern.”
Student:episode "Letter from Mother to Raskolnikov."
Possible student answers.
Response plan:
. Marmeladov's appearance(ultimately not lost nobility).
. Speech by Semyon Zakharych(florid, pompous, speech - confession).
Working with the dictionary:confession* 1) the ritual of repentance of sins before the priest and receiving absolution; 2) (translated.) a frank confession of something, a frank statement of something.
3. Attitude towards yourself(“cattle”, self-flagellation, drunkenness - unhappy, weakness).
. Great love for family and children(feels a responsibility, worries about Sonya).
. The corner where the family lives(retelling).
. Death of Marmeladov. (Endless suffering was depicted in his face: “Sonya! Daughter! Forgive me!”).
Teacher:So, drawing the life of the “little man,” F.M. Dostoevsky reveals one of the main themes - the theme of poverty and humiliation. What crime is Marmeladov committing?
Student:A crime against his family, whom he loves, but condemns to a hungry and miserable coexistence. And most importantly, he condemns his own daughter to shame, humiliation and loneliness.
Teacher:How are Marmeladov and Raskolnikov similar?
Student:Both are criminals. Raskolnikov is ideological, Marmeladov is spontaneous. Marmeladov's punishment - guilt before his wife, children, daughter Sonya - is in himself. In his repentance there is purification.
Teacher:Who is guilty? Environment or person? And Sonya? Criminal?
Student:Raskolnikov stepped over others for himself, then Sonya stepped over herself for others.
Teacher: Was there a choice?
Student:There is always a choice.
Teacher:Briefly describe the contents of the mother's letter to her son.
Student:Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother. The sight of this letter has a very strong effect on him: “The letter,” says F.M. Dostoevsky,” his hands trembled; he didn’t want to print it in front of her (in front of Nastasya); he wanted to be alone with this letter. When Nastasya came out, he quickly raised it to his lips and kissed it, then for a long time peered at the handwriting of the address, at the small handwriting of his mother, who was familiar and dear to him, who had once taught him to read and write. He hesitated; he even seemed to be afraid of something.” If a person receives and holds an unopened letter in this way, then you can imagine how he will read it both line by line and between the lines, how he will peer into every shade and turn of thought, how he will look for a hidden thought in the words and under the words , to look for what lay, perhaps, like a heavy stone on the soul of the writing person, and what was hidden most carefully from the inquisitive eyes of her beloved son. Reading the letter gives Rodion unbearable torture.
The letter begins with the most ardent expressions of love: “You know how much I love you, you are the only one for us, for me and Dunya, you are our everything, you are our hope, our hope.” Then comes the news about the sister: “Thank you God, her torture is over, but I’ll tell you everything in order, so that you know how it all happened and what we have been hiding from you until now.” Since they write to Raskolnikov about the end of the torture and at the same time admit that until now they have hidden a lot or even everything from him, he may think that in the future they will hide a lot from him. Regarding the completed torture, the letter provides the following details. Dunya entered the house of the Svidrigailovs as a governess and took a whole hundred rubles in advance, “more in order to send you sixty rubles, which you so needed then and which you received from us last year.” Having enslaved herself in this way for several months, Dunya was forced to endure the rudeness of Svidrigailov, the old reveler. From rudeness and ridicule, Svidrigailov moved on to courtship and intensely began to invite Dunya to escape abroad. Svidrigailov’s wife, overheard her husband begging Dunya in the garden, “beat Dunya with her own hands,” did not want to listen to anything, but she screamed for an hour and, finally, ordered Dunya to be immediately taken to the city on a simple peasant cart, into which all her things were thrown , underwear, dresses, everything as it happened, untied and unpacked. And then a torrential rain arose, and Dunya, insulted and disgraced, had to travel seventeen miles with the man in an uncovered cart.” The angry Juno was not satisfied with this revenge. She disgraced Dunya throughout the city. All their acquaintances distanced themselves from them, everyone stopped bowing to them; a gang of scoundrels from merchant clerks and office scribes, always ready to beat and spit on anyone who was lying down, even sought to take on the role of avengers and was going to tar the gates of the house in which the insidious seductress of the chaste Svidrigailov lived. The owners of the house, burning with the same virtuous indignation and bowing before the infallible verdict of public opinion, the guide of which was the constantly mad fool Marfa Petrovna, even demanded that the Raskolnikov ladies clear the apartment of their corrupting and compromising presence.
Finally, the matter was clarified. Svidrigailov showed his wife Dunya’s letter; written long before the tragic scene in the garden and clearly proving that only one old celadon was to blame for everything. But the new turn of the matter only further aggravated Dunya’s situation. Dunechka became the heroine of the day, that is, all the vulgarities and scoundrels of the city, all the gossips and gossips, arrogated to themselves the right and made it their sacred duty to look with their stupid eyes into the soul of the offended girl.
The only way out for Dunya is to accept the offer of Luzhin, who is a distant relative of Marfa Svidrigailova. But is this the best solution?
A letter from his mother brings Raskolnikov out of a state of “indecision” and pushes him to accept the “terrible, wild and fantastic question” that tormented his heart and mind.
Teacher:What do we learn from it about the life of Raskolnikov’s sister and mother?
Student:Sister Dunya was forced to work as a governess in the Svidrigailovs’ house, and silently endured the rudeness and ridicule of Svidrigailov, the old reveler. Svidrigailov's wife, having overheard her husband's conversation with Dunya, where he asked her to run away with him abroad, beat her and drove her out in disgrace throughout the city. Finally, the matter was clarified. Svidrigailov showed his wife Dunya’s letter; written long before the tragic scene in the garden and clearly proving that only one old celadon was to blame for everything. The mother then went with a letter to all the houses and proved Dunya’s ambition. Later they decided to marry Dunya to Luzhin.
Teacher:F.M. Dostoevsky shows the life of humiliated and insulted, but very noble, modest and sincere ordinary people.
Let's go back to the table that group 1 filled out.
Analysis and addition of the table.
A.S. Pushkin N.V. Gogol F.M. Dostoevsky “Station Warden” Samson Vyrin Kind, modest worker, official of the 14th grade. He humbles himself and does not protest, because... maybe the daughter did not object to what happened to her. What should I do? A.S. Pushkin does not give an answer. The story “The Overcoat” by A.A. Bashmachkin A humiliated, downtrodden man, but a goal appears - a low, petty goal, but a goal (to buy an overcoat). Strive for justice. The novel “Crime and Punishment” Semyon Zakharych Marmeladov. The voice of the “little man” himself sounds, he begins to judge himself and those around him.
Teacher:The theme of the “little man” was embodied not only in fiction, but also in painting.
The beginning of the 19th century was marked by the establishment of critical realism in Russian culture. The work of Pavel Andreevich Fedotov is characterized by a critical attitude towards the reality of that time - the founder of critical realism. His canvases reflected mournful reflections on the fate of the “little man”, crushed by the bureaucratic tyranny of “those in power.”
Artists began to depict on their canvases ordinary people. Let's look at reproductions of paintings by V.G. Perova (slides).
Painting by V.G. Perov "The arrival of a governess to a merchant's house." Nobody wants to laugh when looking at this picture. This is already a tragedy. There is no doubt that an educated poor girl will be lonely and unhappy among these well-fed, narrow-minded people. And her humble pose, lowered head indicates that before us is a timid, quiet and kind creature.
What character is this girl like?
Student:This girl looks like the heroine of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", Rodion Raskolnikov's sister - Dunya.
Teacher:What conclusion did you draw?
Student:A proud and noble girl. “She is remarkably good-looking - tall, amazingly slender, strong, self-confident, which was expressed in every gesture of hers and which, however, did not take away the softness and grace of her movements. She looked like her brother in face, but she could even be called a beauty.”
Teacher:How multifaceted is the work of great artists! How closely interconnected painting and literature are! It can be assumed that the problem of the “little man” is a very pressing problem, because it is reflected in the works of different creators, but each of them, of course, saw this problem in their own way.
Homework:Write a miniature essay “My thoughts on the problem of the “little man” in literature (painting).”
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F. M. Dostoevsky in his work showed the immensity of the suffering of humiliated and insulted people and expressed enormous pain for this suffering. The writer himself was humiliated and insulted by the terrible reality that broke the fate of his heroes. Each of his works looks like a personal bitter confession. This is exactly how the novel “Crime and Punishment” is perceived. It reflects a desperate protest against the cruel reality that crushed millions of people, just as the unfortunate Marmeladov was crushed to death.
The story of the moral struggle of the novel's protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, unfolds against the backdrop of everyday life in the city. The description of St. Petersburg in the novel makes a depressing impression. Everywhere there is dirt, stench, stuffiness. Drunken cries can be heard from the taverns, poorly dressed people crowd the boulevards and squares: “Near the taverns on the lower floors, in the dirty and smelly courtyards of Sennaya Square, and especially near the taverns, there were crowds of many different types of industrialists and rags... There are no rags here. attracted no one’s arrogant attention, and one could walk around in any form without scandalizing anyone.” Raskolnikov is one of this crowd: “He was so poorly dressed that another, even an ordinary person, would be ashamed to go out into the street in such rags during the day.”
The life of the other heroes of the novel is also terrible - the drunken official Marmeladov, his wife Katerina Ivanovna, who is dying of consumption, Raskolnikov’s mother and sister, who are experiencing the bullying of landowners and rich people.
Dostoevsky depicts various shades of the psychological experiences of a poor man who has nothing to pay his landlord’s rent. The writer shows the torment of children growing up in a dirty corner next to a drunken father and a dying mother, amid constant abuse and quarrels; the tragedy of a young and pure girl, forced due to the desperate situation of her family to start selling herself and dooming herself to constant humiliation.
However, Dostoevsky is not limited to describing everyday phenomena and facts of terrifying reality. He seems to connect them with the depiction of the complex characters of the novel's heroes. The writer strives to show that the everyday everyday life of the city gives rise not only to material poverty and lawlessness, but also cripples the psychology of people. The “little people” driven to despair begin to have various fantastic “ideas” that are no less nightmarish than the reality around them.
This is Raskolnikov’s “idea” about Napoleons and “trembling creatures,” “ordinary” and “extraordinary” people. Dostoevsky shows how this philosophy is born from life itself, under the influence of the terrifying existence of “little people.”
But not only Raskolnikov’s fate consists of tragic trials and painful searches for a way out of this situation. The lives of the other heroes of the novel - Marmeladov, Sonya, and Dunya - are also deeply tragic.
The heroes of the novel are painfully aware of the hopelessness of their situation and the cruelty of reality. “After all, it is necessary that every person should be able to go at least somewhere. For there comes a time when it is absolutely necessary to go somewhere!.., after all, it is necessary that every person should have at least one place where he can regretted!.. Do you understand, do you understand... what does it mean when there is nowhere else to go?..” - from these words of Marmeladov, sounding like a cry for salvation, the heart of every reader contracts. They, in fact, express the main idea of the novel. This is the cry of the soul of a man, exhausted, crushed by his inevitable fate.
The main character of the novel feels a close connection with all humiliated and suffering people, feels a moral responsibility towards them. The destinies of Sonya Marmeladova and Dunya are connected in his mind into one knot of social and moral problems. After committing the crime, Raskolnikov is overcome by despair and anxiety. He experiences fear, hatred of his persecutors, horror of a committed and irreparable act. And then he begins to look more closely than before at other people, to compare his fate with theirs.
Raskolnikov brings Sonya's fate closer to his own; in her behavior and attitude to life, he begins to look for a solution to the issues that torment him.
Sonya Marmeladova appears in the novel as the bearer of the moral ideals of millions of “humiliated and insulted.” Like Raskolnikov, Sonya is a victim of the existing unjust order of things. Her father's drunkenness, the suffering of her stepmother, brother and sisters, doomed to hunger and poverty, forced her, like Raskolnikov, to cross the line of morality. She begins to sell her body, giving herself over to the vile and depraved world. But, unlike Raskolnikov, she is firmly convinced that no hardships in life can justify violence and crime. Sonya calls on Raskolnikov to abandon the morality of the “superman” in order to firmly unite his fate with the fate of suffering and oppressed humanity and thereby atone for his guilt before him.
“Little people” in Dostoevsky’s novel, despite the severity of their situation, prefer to be victims rather than executioners. It's better to be crushed than to crush others! The main character gradually comes to this conclusion. At the end of the novel, we see him on the threshold of a “new life,” “a gradual transition from one world to another, acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality.”
- The theme of the “little man” is a cross-cutting theme in Dostoevsky’s work.
- Peculiarities of the image of “little people” in Dostoevsky.
- The image of Marmeladov and Ekaterina Ivanovna..
- The image of Sonechka Marmeladova.
- Raskolnikov and his family.
The theme of the “little man” is a cross-cutting theme for F. M. Dostoevsky throughout his work. Thus, already the first novel of the outstanding master, called “Poor People,” touched on this topic, and it became the main one in his work. In almost every novel by Dostoevsky, the reader encounters “little people,” “humiliated and insulted,” who are forced to live in a cold and cruel world, and no one is able to help them. In the novel “Crime and Punishment” the theme of the “little man” is revealed with special passion, with special love for these people.
Dostoevsky had a fundamentally new approach to depicting “little people.” These are no longer dumb and downtrodden people, as they were in Gogol. Their soul is complex and contradictory, they are endowed with the consciousness of their “I”. In Dostoevsky, the “little man” himself begins to speak, talk about his life, fate, troubles, he talks about the injustice of the world in which he lives and the same “humiliated and insulted” as he.
In the novel “Crime and Punishment”, the fate of many “little people”, forced to live according to the cruel laws of cold, hostile St. Petersburg, passes before the reader’s eyes. Together with the main character Rodion Raskolnikov, the reader meets the “humiliated and insulted” on the pages of the novel, and experiences their spiritual tragedies with him. Among them is a dishonored girl being hunted by a fat dandy, and an unfortunate woman who threw herself from a bridge, and
Marmeladov, and his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna, and daughter Sonechka. And Raskolnikov himself also belongs to the “little people,” although he tries to elevate himself above the people around him.
Dostoevsky not only depicts the misfortunes of the “little man”, not only evokes pity for the “humiliated and insulted,” but also shows the contradictions of their souls, the combination of good and evil in them. From this point of view, the image of Marmeladov is especially characteristic. The reader, of course, feels sympathy for the poor, exhausted man who has lost everything in life, so he has sunk to the very bottom. But Dostoevsky is not limited to sympathy alone. He shows that Marmeladov's drunkenness not only harmed himself (he is kicked out of work), but also brought a lot of misfortune to his family. Because of him, small children are starving, and the eldest daughter is forced to go out into the streets in order to somehow help the impoverished family. Along with sympathy, Marmeladov also arouses contempt for himself; you involuntarily blame him for the troubles that befell the family.
The figure of his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna is also contradictory. On the one hand, she is trying in every possible way to prevent a final fall, remembering her happy childhood and carefree youth when she danced at the ball. But in fact, she simply takes comfort in her memories, allows her adopted daughter to engage in prostitution and even accepts money from her.
As a result of all the misfortunes, Marmeladov, who has “nowhere to go” in life, becomes an alcoholic and commits suicide. His wife dies of consumption, completely exhausted by poverty. They could not bear the pressure of society, soulless St. Petersburg, and did not find the strength to resist the oppression of the surrounding reality.
Sonechka Marmeladova appears completely different to readers. She is also a “little person”; moreover, nothing could be worse than her fate. But despite this, she finds a way out of the absolute dead end. She was used to living according to the laws of her heart, according to Christian commandments. It is from them that she draws strength. She understands that the lives of her brothers and sisters depend on her, so she completely forgets about herself and devotes herself to others. Sonechka becomes a symbol of eternal sacrifice; she has great sympathy for man, compassion for all living things. It is the image of Sonya Marmeladova that becomes the most obvious exposure of the idea of blood according to Raskolnikov’s conscience. It is no coincidence that, together with the old money-lender, Rodion also kills her innocent sister Lizaveta, who is so similar to Sonechka.
Troubles and misfortunes haunt the Raskolnikov family. His sister Dunya is ready to marry a man who is opposite to her in order to financially help her brother. Raskolnikov himself lives in poverty, he cannot even feed himself, so he is even forced to pawn the ring, a gift from his sister.
The novel contains many descriptions of the destinies of “little people.” Dostoevsky described with deep psychological accuracy the contradictions reigning in their souls, was able to show not only the downtroddenness and humiliation of such people, but also proved that it was among them that there were deeply suffering, strong and contradictory personalities.
The unflattering nickname “little people” in the works of not only Dostoevsky, but also many other Russian writers, refers to those with extremely modest incomes, who are sometimes in a very difficult financial situation; they are offended by fate and those around them, they suffer poverty and humiliation.
In the novel “Crime and Punishment”, the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, is one of the “little people”, whom at the beginning of the story the reader finds in the most depressed state, not only materially, but also spiritually: it is need that pushes him to crime, it is money he considers, if not the main, but one of the main driving forces in the dominant system of the world. In an effort to help the needy, the offended, the insulted, he decides to kill, however, as we know, it does not bring good or happiness to anyone: Rodion demolishes his wealth under a stone, and takes the weight of his deed and the blame for it on himself - a victim who, due to senselessness, is capable of competing with the victim Sonechka. Raskolnikov’s ultimate goal was not achieved, and cannot be achieved, but if this is so, what can justify the means?
The Raskolnikov family is also counted among those very humiliated and insulted, for the happiness and right to which the main character fights so fiercely and selflessly: Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who is Rodion’s own mother, lives on a modest pension and small earnings from a small job, and sister Dunya endures the bullying of the rich masters, being a simple governess. They have resigned themselves to their fate and do not look at the sky at the cranes; for them, a bird in their hands is wealth that should be protected and cherished. The role of “little people” is firmly rooted in their appearance and demeanor; the mask of humility has become theirs. true face- whether this is good, or, on the contrary, worthy of reproach, in fact hardly belongs to the decision.
A slightly different side of human despair is represented by the Marmeladovs, who, despite their sugary surname, live far from sweet life. The head of the family, Semyon Zakharovich, gives up, loses the battle to fate itself and becomes one of those pitiful ordinary people who, by nature, being people of good and even virtuous character, without even trying to raise their hands in a gesture of defense, meekly accept blows, turning the other cheek. He drags his wife, Katerina Ivanovna, into the quagmire of despair and hopelessness. Need pushes Marmeladov's eldest daughter Sonechka to desperate acts, sacrifices that are not justified to a greater extent by any of those for whom they were intended.
A striking example of a fighter is the former student Razumikhin, a friend of Rodion, who did not bend under the wind of circumstances and retained a desperate and rebellious spirit, never forgetting the most important thing, the only thing that the “little people” had left - hope and simple human compassion.
Thus, the main characters in the novel “Crime and Punishment” are people who are impoverished and desperate, but at the same time show their qualities completely in different ways. It is this diversity of personalities in the work that makes it so significant for the self-awareness of the Russian people and all of humanity as a whole.
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