« Matrenin Dvor» Solzhenitsyn - a story about tragic fate an open woman, Matryona, unlike her fellow villagers. Published for the first time in the magazine " New world"in 1963.
The story is told in the first person. Main character becomes Matryona's lodger and talks about her amazing fate. The first title of the story, “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man,” well conveyed the idea of the work about a pure, unselfish soul, but was replaced to avoid problems with censorship.
Main characters
Narrator- an elderly man who served some time in prison and wants a quiet, peaceful life in the Russian outback. He settled with Matryona and talks about the fate of the heroine.
Matryona– a single woman of about sixty. She lives alone in her hut and is often sick.
Other characters
Thaddeus- Matryona's former lover, a tenacious, greedy old man.
Matryona's sisters– women who seek their own benefit in everything treat Matryona as a consumer.
One hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow, on the road to Kazan and Murom, train passengers were always surprised by a serious decrease in speed. People rushed to the windows and talked about possible track repairs. Passing this section, the train again picked up its previous speed. And the reason for the slowdown was known only to the drivers and the author.
Chapter 1
In the summer of 1956, the author returned from the “burning desert at random simply to Russia.” His return “dragged on for about ten years,” and he was in no hurry to go anywhere or to anyone. The narrator wanted to go somewhere into the Russian outback with forests and fields.
He dreamed of “teaching” away from the bustle of the city, and he was sent to a town with the poetic name Vysokoye Pole. The author didn’t like it there, and he asked to be redirected to a place with the terrible name “Peatproduct”. Upon arrival in the village, the narrator understands that “it’s easier to come here than to leave later.”
In addition to the owner, the hut was inhabited by mice, cockroaches, and a lame cat that had been picked up out of pity.
Every morning the hostess woke up at 5 am, afraid to oversleep, since she did not really trust her watch, which had been running for 27 years. She fed her “dirty white crooked goat” and prepared a simple breakfast for the guest.
Once Matryona learned from rural women that “a new pension law had been passed.” And Matryona began to seek a pension, but it was very difficult to get it, the different offices to which the woman was sent were located tens of kilometers from each other, and the day had to be spent just because of one signature.
People in the village lived poorly, despite the fact that peat swamps stretched for hundreds of kilometers around Talnovo, the peat from them “belonged to the trust.” Rural women had to haul bags of peat for themselves for the winter, hiding from the raids of the guards. The soil here was sandy and the harvests were poor.
People in the village often called Matryona to their garden, and she, abandoning her work, went to help them. Talnovsky women almost lined up to take Matryona to their garden, because she worked for pleasure, rejoicing at someone else’s good harvest.
Once every month and a half, the housewife had her turn to feed the shepherds. This lunch “put Matryona at great expense” because she had to buy her sugar, canned food, and butter. Grandmother herself did not allow herself such luxury even on holidays, living only on what her poor garden gave her.
Matryona once told about the horse Volchok, who got scared and “carried the sleigh into the lake.” “The men jumped back, but she grabbed the reins and stopped.” At the same time, despite her apparent fearlessness, the hostess was afraid of fire and, until her knees trembled, of trains.
By winter, Matryona still received a pension. The neighbors began to envy her. And grandma finally ordered herself new felt boots, a coat from an old overcoat, and hid two hundred rubles for the funeral.
Once, Matryona’s three younger sisters came to Epiphany evenings. The author was surprised, because he had never seen them before. I thought maybe they were afraid that Matryona would ask them for help, so they didn’t come.
With the receipt of her pension, my grandmother seemed to come to life, and work was easier for her, and her illness bothered her less often. Only one event darkened the grandmother’s mood: at Epiphany in the church, someone took her pot with holy water, and she was left without water and without a pot.
Chapter 2
The Talnovsky women asked Matryona about her guest. And she passed the questions on to him. The author only told the landlady that he was in prison. I myself didn’t ask about the old woman’s past; I didn’t think there was anything interesting there. I only knew that she got married and came to this hut as a mistress. She had six children, but they all died. Later she had a student named Kira. But Matryona’s husband did not return from the war.
One day, when he came home, the narrator saw an old man - Thaddeus Mironovich. He came to ask for his son, Antoshka Grigoriev. The author recalls that for some reason Matryona herself sometimes asked for this insanely lazy and arrogant boy, who was transferred from class to class just so as “not to spoil the performance statistics.” After the petitioner left, the narrator learned from the hostess that it was the brother of her missing husband. That same evening she said that she was supposed to marry him. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Matryona loved Thaddeus. But he was taken to war, where he went missing. Three years later, Thaddeus’s mother died, the house was left without a mistress, and Thaddeus’s younger brother, Efim, came to woo the girl. No longer hoping to see her beloved, Matryona got married in the hot summer and became the mistress of this house, and in the winter Thaddeus returned “from Hungarian captivity.” Matryona threw herself at his feet, and he said that “if it weren’t for my dear brother, he would have chopped you both up.”
He later took as his wife “another Matryona” - a girl from a neighboring village, whom he chose as his wife only because of her name.
The author remembered how she came to her landlady and often complained that her husband beat her and offended her. She gave birth to Thaddeus six children. And Matryona’s children were born and died almost immediately. “Damage” is to blame for everything, she thought.
Soon the war began, and Efim was taken away, from where he never returned. Lonely Matryona took little Kira from the “Second Matryona” and raised her for 10 years, until the girl married a driver and left. Since Matryona was very ill, she took care of her will early, in which she ordered that part of her hut - a wooden outbuilding - be given to her pupil.
Kira came to visit and said that in Cherusty (where she lives), in order to get land for young people, it is necessary to erect some kind of building. The room bequeathed to Matrenina was very suitable for this purpose. Thaddeus began to come often and persuade the woman to give her up now, during her lifetime. Matryona did not feel sorry for the upper room, but she was afraid to break the roof of the house. And so, on a cold February day, Thaddeus came with his sons and began to separate the upper room, which he had once built with his father.
The room lay near the house for two weeks because a blizzard covered all the roads. But Matryona was not herself, and besides, three of her sisters came and scolded her for allowing the room to be given away. On the same days, “a lanky cat wandered out of the yard and disappeared,” which greatly upset the owner.
One day, returning from work, the narrator saw old man Thaddeus driving a tractor and loading a dismantled room onto two homemade sleighs. Afterwards we drank moonshine and in the dark drove the hut to Cherusti. Matryona went to see them off, but never returned. At one o'clock in the morning the author heard voices in the village. It turned out that the second sleigh, which Thaddeus had attached to the first out of greed, got stuck on the flights and fell apart. At that time, a steam locomotive was moving, you couldn’t see it from behind the hill, you couldn’t hear it because of the tractor engine. He ran into a sleigh, killing one of the drivers, the son of Thaddeus and Matryona. Late at night, Matryona’s friend Masha came, talked about it, grieved, and then told the author that Matryona bequeathed her “faggot” to her, and she wanted to take it in memory of her friend.
Chapter 3
The next morning they were going to bury Matryona. The narrator describes how her sisters came to say goodbye to her, crying “to show” and blaming Thaddeus and his family for her death. Only Kira truly grieved for her deceased adoptive mother, and “Second Matryona,” Thaddeus’s wife. The old man himself was not at the wake. When they transported the ill-fated upper room, the first sleigh with planks and armor remained standing at the crossing. And, at a time when one of his sons died, his son-in-law was under investigation, and his daughter Kira was almost losing her mind with grief, he was only worried about how to deliver the sleigh home, and begged all his friends to help him.
After Matryona’s funeral, her hut was “filled up until spring,” and the author moved in with “one of her sisters-in-law.” The woman often remembered Matryona, but always with condemnation. And in these memories arose completely new image a woman who was so strikingly different from the people around her. Matryona lived with an open heart, always helped others, and never refused help to anyone, even though her health was poor.
A. I. Solzhenitsyn ends his work with the words: “We all lived next to her, and did not understand that she was the same righteous person, without whom, according to the proverb, not a village would stand. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours."
Conclusion
The work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells the story of the fate of a sincere Russian woman, who “had fewer sins than a lame-legged cat.” The image of the main character is the image of that very righteous man, without whom the village cannot stand. Matryona devotes her entire life to others, there is not a drop of malice or falsehood in her. Those around her take advantage of her kindness, and do not realize how holy and pure this woman’s soul is.
Because brief retelling“Matrenin’s Dvor” does not convey the original author’s speech and the atmosphere of the story; it is worth reading it in full.
Story test
Retelling rating
Average rating: 4.5. Total ratings received: 9747.
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You have probably met more than once people who are ready to work with all their might for the benefit of others, but at the same time remain outcasts in society. No, they are not degraded either morally or mentally, but no matter how good their actions are, they are not appreciated. A. Solzhenitsyn tells us about one such character in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.”
We are talking about the main character of the story. The reader gets to know Matryona Vasilievna Grigoreva at an already advanced age - she was about 60 years old when we first see her on the pages of the story.
Audio version of the article.
Her house and yard are gradually falling into disrepair - “the wood chips have rotted, the logs of the log house and the gates, once mighty, have turned gray with age, and their cover has thinned out.”
Their owner is often sick and cannot get up for several days, but once upon a time everything was different: everything was built taking into account big family, high quality and sound. The fact that now only a lonely woman lives here already sets the reader up to perceive tragedy life story heroines.
Matryona's youth
Solzhenitsyn does not tell the reader anything about the childhood of the main character - the main emphasis of the story is on the period of her youth, when the main factors of her future life were laid. unhappy life.
When Matryona was 19 years old, Thaddeus wooed her; at that time he was 23. The girl agreed, but the war prevented the wedding. There was no news about Thaddeus for a long time, Matryona was faithfully waiting for him, but she did not receive any news or the guy himself. Everyone decided that he had died. His younger brother, Efim, invited Matryona to marry him. Matryona did not love Efim, so she did not agree, and, perhaps, the hope of Thaddeus’s return did not completely leave her, but she was still persuaded: “the smart one comes out after the Intercession, and the fool comes out after Petrov. They didn't have enough hands. I'll go." And as it turned out, it was in vain - her lover returned to Pokrova - he was captured by the Hungarians and therefore there was no news about him.
The news about the marriage of his brother and Matryona came as a blow to him - he wanted to chop up the young people, but the concept that Efim was his brother stopped his intentions. Over time, he forgave them for such an act.
Efim and Matryona remained to live in their parents' house. Matryona still lives in this yard; all the buildings here were made by her father-in-law.
Thaddeus did not marry for a long time, and then he found himself another Matryona - they have six children. Efim also had six children, but none of them survived - all died before the age of three months. Because of this, everyone in the village began to believe that Matryona had the evil eye, they even took her to the nun, but they could not achieve a positive result.
After the death of Matryona, Thaddeus talks about how his brother was ashamed of his wife. Efim preferred to “dress culturally, but she preferred to dress haphazardly, everything in a country style.” Once upon a time, the brothers had to work together in the city. Efim cheated on his wife there: he started a relationship, and didn’t want to return to Matryona
New grief came to Matryona - in 1941 Efim was taken to the front and he never returned from there. Whether Yefim died or found someone else is not known for sure.
So Matryona was left alone: “misunderstood and abandoned even by her husband.”
Living alone
Matryona was kind and sociable. She maintained contact with her husband's relatives. Thaddeus’s wife also often came to her “to complain that her husband was beating her, and that her husband was stingy, pulling the veins out of her, and she cried here for a long time, and her voice was always in her tears.”
Matryona felt sorry for her, her husband hit her only once - the woman walked away as a protest - after this it never happened again.
The teacher, who lives in an apartment with a woman, believes that it is likely that Efim’s wife was luckier than Thaddeus’s wife. The elder brother's wife was always severely beaten.
Matryona didn’t want to live without children and her husband, she decides to ask “that second downtrodden Matryona - the womb of her little snatches (or Thaddeus’ little blood?) - for their youngest girl, Kira. For ten years she raised her here as her own, instead of her own who failed.” At the time of the story, the girl lives with her husband in neighboring village.
Matryona worked hard on the collective farm “not for money - for sticks”, in total she worked for 25 years, and then, despite the hassle, she managed to get a pension for herself.
Matryona worked hard - she needed to prepare peat for the winter and gather lingonberries (in lucky days, she “brought six bags” a day).
lingonberries. We also had to prepare hay for the goats. “In the morning she took a bag and a sickle and left (...) Having filled the bag with fresh heavy grass, she dragged it home and laid it out in a layer in her yard. A bag of grass made dried hay - a fork.” In addition, she also managed to help others. By her nature, she could not refuse help to anyone. It often happened that one of the relatives or just acquaintances asked her to help dig up potatoes - the woman “left her line of work and went to help.” After harvesting, she, along with other women, harnessed themselves to a plow instead of a horse and plowed the gardens. She didn’t take money for her work: “you’ll have to hide it for her.”
Once every month and a half she had troubles - she had to prepare dinner for the shepherds. On such days Matryona went shopping: “I bought canned fish, I was bursting with sugar and butter, which I didn’t eat myself.” Such was the order here - it was necessary to feed her as best as possible, otherwise she would have been made a laughing stock.
After receiving a pension and receiving money for renting out housing, Matryona’s life becomes much easier - the woman “ordered new felt boots for herself. I bought a new padded jacket. And she straightened her coat.” She even managed to save 200 rubles “for her funeral,” which, by the way, didn’t have to wait long. Matryona takes an active part in moving the room from her plot to her relatives. At a railway crossing, she rushes to help pull out a stuck sleigh - an oncoming train hits her and her nephew to death. They took off the bag to wash it. Everything was a mess - no legs, no half of the torso, no left arm. One woman crossed herself and said:
“The Lord left her her right hand.” There will be a prayer to God.
After the woman’s death, everyone quickly forgot her kindness and, literally on the day of the funeral, began to divide her property and condemn Matryona’s life: “and she was unclean; and she didn’t chase after the plant, stupid, she helped strangers for free (and the very reason to remember Matryona came - there was no one to call the garden to plow with a plow).”
Thus, Matryona’s life was full of troubles and tragedies: she lost both her husband and children. For everyone, she was strange and abnormal, because she did not try to live like everyone else, but retained a cheerful and kind disposition until the end of her days.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote only about what he himself felt and understood. Idea famous story appeared during the writer’s stay in the village with a certain Matryona, who became the prototype of the main character. That's just artistic image turned out to be more tragic. Thus, the writer embodied his idea of the story, focusing on the problems of his contemporary society.
There were many tragic moments in Matryona’s fate: separation from her beloved, news of her husband’s disappearance, the loss of all her children. But such a fate was common in war and post-war times. The whole country experienced similar tragic moments.
A personal tragedy in the life of the main character appears after she agrees to give Kira the upper room. Despite the fact that it was dangerous to separate the upper room from the house, the woman does it, because her love for Kira and her feeling of guilt before ex-lover Thaddeus was more important. As a result of such selfless behavior, he becomes a victim of the greed and cruelty of others.
The author hints that not only her close people and neighbors are to blame for the tragic fate of the heroine, but also government system post-war period. Ordinary people did not feel any concern from the state. The peasants did not even have passports, which was a reminder of their lack of rights. Many were not paid wages or pensions. From the story we know that Matryona barely survived, because she was never given a pension. And when, many years later, she achieved it, the whole village envied her.
People worked hard on the collective farm for the sake of an idealized common good, while their personal interests were not taken into account. Even collective farm workers were not allowed to use tractors for private transportation. This pushed people to use cunning, and some secretly used technology. But rarely does the secret lead to a happy ending.
This is how he negotiates with the driver, who secretly takes a collective farm tractor to transport the room. But the person who agreed to break the law turned out to be, of course, dysfunctional. He left at night, and drunk at that, which leads to tragedy on railway. Matryona, who helped transport her room, finds herself caught between a sleigh and a drunken tractor driver - and as a result she is hit by a train. This was a fatal accident that the heroine subconsciously foresaw. She was always very afraid of trains.
The reasons for Matryona's tragic end are different. Firstly, to some extent she herself is to blame, because her selflessness and compliance allow others to take advantage of her kindness. Secondly, her environment, which did not understand the woman, but only took advantage of her selflessness and naivety. Thirdly, a bureaucratic system that did not take into account the interests of common people. All this led to the fact that the last righteous woman in the village has such a tragic fate.
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You have probably met more than once people who are ready to work with all their might for the benefit of others, but at the same time remain outcasts in society. No, they are not degraded either morally or mentally, but no matter how good their actions are, they are not appreciated. A. Solzhenitsyn tells us about one such character in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.”
We are talking about the main character of the story. The reader gets to know Matryona Vasilievna Grigoreva at an already advanced age - she was about 60 years old when we first see her on the pages of the story.
Audio version of the article.
Her house and yard are gradually falling into disrepair - “the wood chips have rotted, the logs of the log house and the gates, once mighty, have turned gray with age, and their cover has thinned out.”
Their owner is often sick and cannot get up for several days, but once upon a time everything was different: everything was built with a large family in mind, with high quality and soundness. The fact that now only a single woman lives here already sets the reader up to perceive the tragedy of the heroine’s life story.
Matryona's youth
Solzhenitsyn does not tell the reader anything about the childhood of the main character - the main emphasis of the story is on the period of her youth, when the main factors of her future unhappy life were laid.
When Matryona was 19 years old, Thaddeus wooed her; at that time he was 23. The girl agreed, but the war prevented the wedding. There was no news about Thaddeus for a long time, Matryona was faithfully waiting for him, but she did not receive any news or the guy himself. Everyone decided that he had died. His younger brother, Efim, invited Matryona to marry him. Matryona did not love Efim, so she did not agree, and, perhaps, the hope of Thaddeus’s return did not completely leave her, but she was still persuaded: “the smart one comes out after the Intercession, and the fool comes out after Petrov. They didn't have enough hands. I'll go." And as it turned out, it was in vain - her lover returned to Pokrova - he was captured by the Hungarians and therefore there was no news about him.
The news about the marriage of his brother and Matryona came as a blow to him - he wanted to chop up the young people, but the concept that Efim was his brother stopped his intentions. Over time, he forgave them for such an act.
Efim and Matryona remained to live in their parents' house. Matryona still lives in this yard; all the buildings here were made by her father-in-law.
Thaddeus did not marry for a long time, and then he found himself another Matryona - they have six children. Efim also had six children, but none of them survived - all died before the age of three months. Because of this, everyone in the village began to believe that Matryona had the evil eye, they even took her to the nun, but they could not achieve a positive result.
After the death of Matryona, Thaddeus talks about how his brother was ashamed of his wife. Efim preferred to “dress culturally, but she preferred to dress haphazardly, everything in a country style.” Once upon a time, the brothers had to work together in the city. Efim cheated on his wife there: he started a relationship, and didn’t want to return to Matryona
New grief came to Matryona - in 1941 Efim was taken to the front and he never returned from there. Whether Yefim died or found someone else is not known for sure.
So Matryona was left alone: “misunderstood and abandoned even by her husband.”
Living alone
Matryona was kind and sociable. She maintained contact with her husband's relatives. Thaddeus’s wife also often came to her “to complain that her husband was beating her, and that her husband was stingy, pulling the veins out of her, and she cried here for a long time, and her voice was always in her tears.”
Matryona felt sorry for her, her husband hit her only once - the woman walked away as a protest - after this it never happened again.
The teacher, who lives in an apartment with a woman, believes that it is likely that Efim’s wife was luckier than Thaddeus’s wife. The elder brother's wife was always severely beaten.
Matryona didn’t want to live without children and her husband, she decides to ask “that second downtrodden Matryona - the womb of her little snatches (or Thaddeus’ little blood?) - for their youngest girl, Kira. For ten years she raised her here as her own, instead of her own who failed.” At the time of the story, the girl lives with her husband in a neighboring village.
Matryona worked hard on the collective farm “not for money - for sticks”, in total she worked for 25 years, and then, despite the hassle, she managed to get a pension for herself.
Matryona worked hard - she had to prepare peat for the winter and gather lingonberries (on good days, she “brought six bags” per day).
lingonberries. We also had to prepare hay for the goats. “In the morning she took a bag and a sickle and left (...) Having filled the bag with fresh heavy grass, she dragged it home and laid it out in a layer in her yard. A bag of grass made dried hay - a fork.” In addition, she also managed to help others. By her nature, she could not refuse help to anyone. It often happened that one of the relatives or just acquaintances asked her to help dig up potatoes - the woman “left her line of work and went to help.” After harvesting, she, along with other women, harnessed themselves to a plow instead of a horse and plowed the gardens. She didn’t take money for her work: “you’ll have to hide it for her.”
Once every month and a half she had troubles - she had to prepare dinner for the shepherds. On such days, Matryona went shopping: “I bought canned fish, bought sugar and butter, which I didn’t eat myself.” Such was the order here - it was necessary to feed her as best as possible, otherwise she would have been made a laughing stock.
After receiving a pension and receiving money for renting out housing, Matryona’s life becomes much easier - the woman “ordered new felt boots for herself. I bought a new padded jacket. And she straightened her coat.” She even managed to save 200 rubles “for her funeral,” which, by the way, didn’t have to wait long. Matryona takes an active part in moving the room from her plot to her relatives. At a railway crossing, she rushes to help pull out a stuck sleigh - an oncoming train hits her and her nephew to death. They took off the bag to wash it. Everything was a mess - no legs, no half of the torso, no left arm. One woman crossed herself and said:
“The Lord left her her right hand.” There will be a prayer to God.
After the woman’s death, everyone quickly forgot her kindness and, literally on the day of the funeral, began to divide her property and condemn Matryona’s life: “and she was unclean; and she didn’t chase after the plant, stupid, she helped strangers for free (and the very reason to remember Matryona came - there was no one to call the garden to plow with a plow).”
Thus, Matryona’s life was full of troubles and tragedies: she lost both her husband and children. For everyone, she was strange and abnormal, because she did not try to live like everyone else, but retained a cheerful and kind disposition until the end of her days.
The story “Matryonin’s Dvor” was written by Solzhenitsyn in 1959. The first title of the story is “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” (Russian proverb). Final version The names were invented by Tvardovsky, who at that time was the editor of the magazine “New World”, where the story was published in No. 1 for 1963. At the insistence of the editors, the beginning of the story was changed and the events were attributed not to 1956, but to 1953, that is to the pre-Khrushchev era. This is a bow to Khrushchev, thanks to whose permission Solzhenitsyn’s first story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1962) was published.
The image of the narrator in the work “Matryonin’s Dvor” is autobiographical. After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated; he actually lived in the village of Miltsevo (Talnovo in the story) and rented a corner from Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova (Grigorieva in the story). Solzhenitsyn very accurately conveyed not only the details of the life of the prototype Marena, but also the features of life and even the local dialect of the village.
Literary direction and genre
Solzhenitsyn developed Tolstoy's tradition of Russian prose in a realistic direction. The story combines the features of an artistic essay, the story itself and elements of life. The life of the Russian village is reflected so objectively and diversely that the work approaches the genre of “novel-type story.” In this genre, the character of the hero is shown not only at a turning point in his development, but also the history of the character and the stages of his formation are illuminated. The fate of the hero reflects the fate of the entire era and country (as Solzhenitsyn says, the earth).
Issues
At the center of the story moral issues. Are many worth it? human lives a captured plot or a decision dictated by human greed not to make a second trip with a tractor? Material values among the people are valued higher than the person himself. Thaddeus's son and his once beloved woman died, his son-in-law is threatened with prison, and his daughter is inconsolable. But the hero is thinking about how to save the logs that the workers did not have time to burn at the crossing.
Mystical motives are at the center of the story. This is the motive of the unrecognized righteous man and the problem of curse on things touched by people with unclean hands pursuing selfish goals. So Thaddeus undertook to demolish Matryonin’s upper room, thereby making it cursed.
Plot and composition
The story "Matryonin's Dvor" has a time frame. In one paragraph, the author talks about how at one of the crossings and 25 years after a certain event, trains slow down. That is, the frame dates back to the early 80s, the rest of the story is an explanation of what happened at the crossing in 1956, the year of the Khrushchev Thaw, when “something started to move.”
The hero-narrator finds the place of his teaching in an almost mystical way, having heard a special Russian dialect at the bazaar and settling in “kondovaya Russia”, in the village of Talnovo.
The plot centers on the life of Matryona. The narrator learns about her fate from herself (she talks about how Thaddeus, who disappeared in the first war, wooed her, and how she married his brother, who disappeared in the second). But the hero finds out more about the silent Matryona from his own observations and from others.
The story describes in detail Matryona's hut, located in a picturesque place near the lake. The hut plays an important role in the life and death of Matryona. To understand the meaning of the story, you need to imagine a traditional Russian hut. Matryona's hut was divided into two halves: the actual living hut with a Russian stove and the upper room (it was built for the eldest son in order to separate him when he got married). It is this upper room that Thaddeus dismantles in order to build a hut for Matryona’s niece and his own daughter Kira. The hut in the story is animated. The wallpaper that has fallen off the wall is called its inner skin.
The ficus trees in the tubs are also endowed with living features, reminding the narrator of a silent but living crowd.
The development of action in the story is a static state of harmonious coexistence between the narrator and Matryona, who “do not find the meaning of everyday existence in food.” The climax of the story is the moment of destruction of the upper room, and the work ends with the main idea and bitter omen.
Heroes of the story
The hero-narrator, whom Matryona calls Ignatich, makes it clear from the first lines that he came from prison. He is looking for a teaching job in the wilderness, in the Russian outback. Only the third village satisfies him. Both the first and the second turn out to be corrupted by civilization. Solzhenitsyn makes it clear to the reader that he condemns the attitude of Soviet bureaucrats towards people. The narrator despises the authorities who do not grant Matryona a pension, who force her to work on the collective farm for sticks, who not only do not provide peat for the firebox, but also forbid asking about it. He instantly decides not to extradite Matryona, who brewed moonshine, and hides her crime, for which she faces prison.
Having experienced and seen a lot, the narrator, embodying the author’s point of view, acquires the right to judge everything that he observes in the village of Talnovo - a miniature embodiment of Russia.
Matryona - main character story. The author says about her: “Those people have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.” At the moment of meeting, Matryona’s face is yellow, and her eyes are clouded with illness.
To survive, Matryona grows small potatoes, secretly brings forbidden peat from the forest (up to 6 bags a day) and secretly mows hay for his goat.
Matryona lacked womanly curiosity, she was delicate, and did not annoy her with questions. Today's Matryona is a lost old woman. The author knows about her that she got married before the revolution, that she had 6 children, but they all died quickly, “so two didn’t live at once.” Matryona's husband did not return from the war, but disappeared without a trace. The hero suspected that he had new family somewhere abroad.
Matryona had a quality that distinguished her from the rest of the village residents: she selflessly helped everyone, even the collective farm, from which she was expelled due to illness. There is a lot of mysticism in her image. In her youth, she could lift bags of any weight, stopped a galloping horse, had a presentiment of her death, being afraid of steam locomotives. Another omen of her death is a cauldron with holy water that disappeared to God knows where at Epiphany.
Matryona's death seems to be an accident. But why are the mice running around like crazy on the night of her death? The narrator suggests that 30 years later the threat of Matryona’s brother-in-law Thaddeus struck, who threatened to chop Matryona and his own brother, who married her.
After death, Matryona's holiness is revealed. The mourners notice that she, completely crushed by the tractor, has only her right hand left to pray to God. And the narrator draws attention to her face, which is more alive than dead.
Fellow villagers speak of Matryona with disdain, not understanding her selflessness. Her sister-in-law considers her unscrupulous, not careful, not inclined to accumulate goods; Matryona did not seek her own benefit and helped others for free. Even Matryonina’s warmth and simplicity were despised by her fellow villagers.
Only after her death did the narrator understand that Matryona, “not chasing after things”, indifferent to food and clothing, is the basis, the core of all of Russia. On such a righteous person stands the village, the city and the country (“the whole land is ours”). For the sake of one righteous person, as in the Bible, God can spare the earth and save it from fire.
Artistic originality
Matryona appears before the hero as fairy creature, similar to Baba Yaga, who reluctantly gets off the stove to feed the passing prince. She, like a fairytale grandmother, has animal helpers. Shortly before Matryona’s death, the lanky cat leaves the house; the mice, anticipating the death of the old woman, make a particularly rustling noise. But cockroaches are indifferent to the fate of the hostess. Following Matryona, her favorite ficus trees, like a crowd, die: they are of no practical value and are taken out into the cold after Matryona’s death.