In the history of Russian culture there are many names known throughout the world. Among them, the name of M. Gorky occupies a worthy place. As an artist, he enriched world literature new themes, plots, conflicts and images. Among Gorky's works, the play “At the Lower Depths” occupies a special place. The writer showed in it the life of outcasts, people who have severed ties with society and are completely rejected by it. In my opinion, it is very interesting that the age-old philosophical debate about man is conducted not by sophisticated representatives of the intelligentsia, but by people from the lowest levels of life, barefoot and undressed, hungry and deprived of all rights. They discuss spiritual, social and ethical problems, which in the play have acquired extreme depth and intensity. The inhabitants of the shelter are not indifferent to the problems of good and evil, freedom, conscience, honor, happiness, life and death. All this interests them in connection with an even more important problem: what is a person, why does he appear on. earth, what is the meaning of his life? I think that it is in the acute clash of ideas that moral issues plays "At the Bottom".
Disputes, passionate and emotional discussion of issues that concern a person, allow us to make a fairly accurate conclusion about his character, about those traits that are usually hidden. Like alive real people the gloomy fatalist and skeptic Bubnov, the wanderer-comforter Luke, the preacher of truth and the greatness of man Satin and others appear before us. Behind each of them there is a whole system of moral and ethical views. Apparently, they did not know or read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - real contradictions real life force them to painfully search for an explanation for the situation in which they find themselves.
The play sharply compares the images of the characters, their thoughts, feelings and experiences. Sharp dialogues capture the reader's attention, creating an atmosphere of tension and conflict. Gorky uses bright, succinct words to express the main idea - about the purpose of Man.
The concept of “man” opens up in different facets in the writer’s work, even in those works where, as in the play “At the Bottom,” attention is focused on dark sides life. Characteristic feature The play is that the hymn to Man sounds loudly in it, as if in contrast to the terrible living conditions, poverty and hopelessness.
The literature of previous years, depicting “little” people, humiliated and insulted, expressed deep compassion for them. But when people stop being “small”, pity for them is not enough. It seems to me that the image of the wanderer-comforter Luke was introduced partly in order to emphasize this idea. To this day, the image of this “apostle of comforting lies” causes heated debate. Who is he - goodie or negative, does he pity people or is indifferent to them, strives to heal them with consolations or pursues other goals? I agree with B. Bialik’s point of view that in the very formulation of the question there is an error, “a lack of understanding of the entire complexity and depth of Gorky’s play. The point is not whether Luke pities people (of course he does) and whether he wants to help them with his consolations (of course he does), but how he understands people, how he evaluates a person.”
On the one hand, Luka sees a person in every inhabitant of the shelter. But at the same time, such pity implies powerlessness to change anything in life. Luke's consolations support the illusions that the characters in the play live by, trying to isolate themselves from the surrounding abomination. And the effect of Luke’s “fairy tales” is somewhat reminiscent of drugs: they do not cure an illness, but allow a person to reduce pain for a while and feel better.
Satin feels and understands all this. I think that is why he says: “He (Luke)... acted on me like acid on an old and dirty coin...” Satin’s famous monologue: “Man! This is great! It sounds... proud! Human! We must respect the person! Don’t feel sorry... don’t humiliate him with pity, you have to respect him!” - is a reaction to Luke’s worldview. Gorky contrasts the consoling and reconciling lie with faith in a free Man, who needs only the truth, no matter how harsh it may be.
Thus, the moral issues of M. Gorky’s play “At the Depths” are determined by ideological problems. On their basis, the plot is built and the author’s position is expressed. Portraying Russian reality in extremely harsh tones, which breaks people, causing them grief and suffering, Gorky persistently “collected small, rare crumbs of everything that could be called unusual - kind, selfless, beautiful”, strove to reveal in the soul of the most “destroyed” person the undestroyed inclinations or remnants of humanity. The work of M. Gorky is full of love for man and pain for him, for all his humiliation. And at the same time, the writer expresses faith in a happy future for humanity.
In the play "At the Bottom" M. Gorky explores the consciousness of people thrown to the "bottom" of life as a result of deep social processes. Researchers characterize this work as a social, everyday and socio-philosophical drama. IN social conflict Three levels can be distinguished. Firstly, this is the problem of the relationship between the masters of life, endowed with power, and the powerless roomies. Secondly, this is the problem of human fate in an unjust society.
Thirdly, the problem of love as a facet of social conflict.
The conflict between the owners of the shelter, the Kostylev spouses, and its inhabitants is felt throughout the entire play.
Kostylev appears on stage in the first act, “humming something divine under his breath and suspiciously inspecting the shelter.” Already in this remark the author reveals the hypocrisy and falsehood of this hero. He is looking for his wife Vasilisa, suspecting her of treason. His selfishness and greed are shown in the dialogue with the former locksmith Kleshch. The owner is going to charge the guest “fifty dollars” for the place he occupies. The worker answers him rudely, without hiding his hatred: “You throw a noose over me and crush me... You’ll die soon, but you’re still thinking about fifty dollars.”
Kostylev behaves like Judas Golovlev: he pours out his affectionate, unctuous speech, using diminutive suffixes, often mentioning the name of God, hiding his greed behind his honeyed speech. Having praised the Actor for taking care of the sick Anna, the owner of the flophouse hypocritically declares: “In the next world, brother... there everything, every deed of ours is taken into account.” In response to his unctuous reasoning about kindness, the Actor remarks: “You are a rogue, old man.” Satin directly declares his dislike for the owner: “Who, except the devil, loves you?..” But Kostylev is not offended by the rudeness and hypocritically says: “And I love you all... I understand, you are my unfortunate, useless brothers getting lost." It should be noted that another “crafty old man,” whom the residents of the shelter call both a “scoundrel” and a “charlatan,” is Luke. He also speaks of his special love for people: “I respect swindlers too, In my opinion, not a single flea is bad: all are black, all jump. .." Are these roll calls random? Perhaps the author wanted to emphasize by this that Luke is sowing a comforting lie. But Luke plants illusions in the souls of the night shelters, pitying them. Kostylev covers up selfish interests and the desire for profit with lies.
By exposing the exploitative nature of the owners, Gorky shows that they are not far from socially left the inhabitants of the shelter. Kostylev takes the stolen goods from the thief Vaska Pepel and resells them. The relationship between the owners and the night shelters only creates tension, but is not the basis of the dramatic conflict.
The fate of most of the residents of the shelter develops like a drama and ends like a tragedy. There is only one reason for this: indifference to people in a society based on the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. People feel unwanted and rejected by society. “You are superfluous everywhere... and all the people on earth are superfluous...” - Bubnov declares to Nastya.
Each of the heroes experienced their own social conflict in the past, as a result of which they found themselves at the “bottom” of life, in a shelter.
Satin once worked at a telegraph office and read a lot of books. While defending his sister, in the heat of anger he accidentally kills the offender. loved one. So he ended up in prison, where he learned to play cards.
The actor once had the stage name Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky, and played a gravedigger in the drama “Hamlet.” But binge drinking began, and he lost his job in the theater.
Bubnov was a furrier and had his own establishment, but his wife got involved with the master. The hero leaves, leaving everything to his wife.
The tick has been working since an early age. He is proud to be a worker and at first considers himself superior to the rest of the night shelters. He has only been at the bottom for only six months, but hopes that after his wife’s death he will start a new life.
Anna trembled all her life over every bite, was afraid to eat too much, and endured beatings from her husband.
The Baron proudly reports that he belongs to “an old family from the time of Catherine,” and loves to remember how coffee with cream was served to him in bed in the morning. He graduated from the noble institute and got married. Having lost government money, he was forced to put on a prison robe.
Vaska Ash becomes a thief “by inheritance.” “...my parent spent his whole life in prison and ordered it for me too,” he reports about himself.
Nastya - "a girl who lives on her own" - lives with dreams of beautiful love, about the feat of self-sacrifice.
These people are victims of social circumstances, and the events of the play confirm this. Vaska Pepel accidentally kills the owner of the shelter, Kostylev, in a fight, and hard labor awaits him in Siberia. He will go to the “golden side” not of his own free will, as Luke advised him. Her sister Natasha, mutilated by Vasilisa, goes missing more than once
comforting the residents of the shelter. Anna, who was poor before her death, dies. After the death of his wife, Mite loses hope for a decent life as a worker: “the funeral ate up” the tool. Nastya becomes embittered against everyone because the kind Luka who knew how to support her is not around. The actor commits suicide, despairing and losing hope of a cure in a free hospital.
The fate and life of people at the bottom serves as irrefutable evidence of violence against human personality, which inevitably arises under the conditions of a bourgeois state based on the principles of lies and indifference to people.
A vivid accusation of this sounds in the speeches of Satin. “Make my work pleasant... When work is pleasure, life is good!” - he polemically objects to Klesh, who reproaches the residents of the shelter for not working.
In the finale, Satin makes a speech in defense of the freedom and dignity of man, no matter what level of the social ladder he is at. He rebels against the lies that justify “the weight that crushed the hand of the worker... and blames the man dying of hunger.” “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters,” says Gorky’s reasoner. He opposes obedience and humility, calls on people to fight for their rights.
The “love polygon” - the relationship between Kostylev, Vasilisa, Ash and Natasha - is a facet of social conflict. Vasilisa is cheating on her husband with Ash and hopes, with the help of her lover, to get rid of her old and boring husband. Ash leaves Vasilisa for Natasha. Love for a pure, modest girl fills his soul with hope for an honest working life. The culmination of the love conflict is taken off stage. We only learn from the remarks of the night shelters that the “beast woman” scalded her out of jealousy sister boiling water
The murder of Kostylev becomes the tragic outcome of a love conflict. We see that the inhumane conditions of the “bottom” cripple people’s souls. Love here does not lead to personal enrichment, but to injury and hard labor.
Thus, from this love conflict, it is the cruel hostess of the flophouse who achieves all goals at once: revenge ex-lover and her rival, gets rid of her unloved husband and becomes the sole owner of the shelter. Her moral impoverishment emphasizes the monstrous social conditions in which both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners find themselves.
The action of the play "At the Bottom" takes place in a gloomy, semi-dark basement, like a cave, with a vaulted, low ceiling that presses on people with its stone weight, where it is dark, there is no space and it is difficult to breathe. The furnishings in this basement are also wretched: instead of chairs there are dirty stumps of wood, a roughly knocked together table, bunks along the walls
Thieves, cheaters, beggars, cripples - everyone who was thrown out of life - gathered here; different in their habits, life behavior, past fate, but equally hungry, exhausted and useless to anyone: the former aristocrat Baron, the drunken Actor, the former intellectual Satin, the mechanic-artisan Kleshch, the fallen woman Nastya, the thief Vaska. They have nothing, everything has been taken away, lost, erased and trampled into the dirt.
The motley gallery of characters in the play are victims of a soulless public order. Even here, at the very bottom of life, exhausted and completely destitute, they serve as an object of exploitation, even here the owners, the philistine owners, do not stop at any crime and try to squeeze a few pennies out of them.
The fates of all these people and the very existence of the “bottom” serve as a formidable indictment of the bourgeois world.
A. M. Gorky in one of his interviews spoke about the problems of the play as follows: “The main question that I wanted to pose is - what is better, truth or compassion? What is more necessary? Is it necessary to bring compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? "
A. M. Gorky attacked the bourgeois philosophy of comforting lies with great force. Luke considers all people insignificant, pitiful, weak, incapable of actively fighting for their rights and in need of condolences and consolation. Luke is a sower of illusions, comforting fairy tales, which desperate, weak people greedily grabbed. “White lies” is the principle that Luke follows. He inspires Vaska Pepl with the idea of going to Siberia, where he can start a new, honest life; The actor promises to name the city where he is cured of alcoholism in a luxurious hospital; He calms the dying Anna with the hope that for her unbearable torment on earth, after death she will find peace and eternal bliss in heaven. Luke's comforting lie meets with sympathy from the night shelters. They believe him because they want to believe in the existence of another truth, because they passionately want to break out of the shelter and make their way to another life, even though the path to it is unclear.
A. M. Gorky in one of his interviews spoke about the problems of the play as follows: “The main question that I wanted to pose is - what is better, truth or compassion? What is more necessary? Is it necessary to bring compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? "
In the play “At the Bottom” the author combined many of his theories, thoughts, and assumptions. Gorky made his heroes the inhabitants of the shelter, people who had sunk to the social and moral bottom. And this is no coincidence. It is at that depth of fall, which is reflected in the play, that a person is able to discuss the eternal problems of existence, because in real life he has nothing, and his existence comes rather from the mercy of his superiors. At the “bottom” all social signs and differences between people are erased: “There are no gentlemen here... everything has faded away, only one naked man remains.” So, what problems can be identified in this work? The author prompts us to think about man, about truth and saving lies, about mercy and cruelty, suffering and patience. The dispute about conscience in the work is very interesting. The question of whether it is needed in life arises after Kleshch’s remark that “trash, a golden company” lives in the shelter...” Objecting to Kleshch, Vaska Pepel notes that he agrees with those who, like Satin, consider having a conscience to be completely unprofitable. Bubnov’s position is the same: “What’s the use of conscience?” And the reader begins to wonder whether it is so necessary for people at the very “bottom” of life. Also in his work, Gorky outlined the problem of a real way out of the situation. It is associated with the image of the mechanic Kleshch, who wants to return to a “normal” life through hard, honest work. At first, Kleshch proudly opposes himself to those around him, believes in the feasibility of his plan, and works hard. But then his dream is shattered by harsh reality: he loses his job and experiences a crisis. At the end of the play, the hero gives up his dreams of work, reconciles himself with the “idling tramps,” and gets drunk with Satin, who preaches the principle of “not doing.” Through the image of Anna, Tick's wife, the problem of life and death, as well as compassion, develops. Anna is a “patient”, humbly bears her cross and calls only for sympathy. Also, thanks to her, the hard-heartedness of the Tick is emphasized. In response to Anna’s request not to shout or quarrel, he just tiredly says: “I’m sore!” Anna is out of breath and asks to open the door to the hallway, but Kleshch refuses her this, fearing that she will catch a cold. In such social conditions, people have no room for basic pity. In this sense, Bubnov acts as a preacher of the principle of indifference to one’s neighbor, lack of compassion. By the way, it is Bubnov who can be called a special hero of the play; his statements often seem cynical, but they show the true meaning of the situation, not allowing illusions to succumb. The problem of cruel truth and saving lies plays a very important role in the work. The philosophy of humane deception in the play is preached by the wanderer Luke. He appears, and with him pity and compassion enter the lives of the night shelters. This old man has a warm, affectionate word for everyone. The Wanderer believes that one should approach a person only through kindness and pity. With his story about two escaped convicts who broke into a dacha, Luka confirms the connection between pity for a person and goodness: “If I had not had pity for them, they might have killed me... or something else... Prison will not teach goodness, but a person will teach... Yes!" Here Luka is contrasted with Bubnov. This hero says: “In my opinion, throw out the whole truth as it is! Why be ashamed? But the truth he calls for is not within everyone's reach. And in this dispute, Mite opens up in a new way. He “trembles with excitement”, “screams” about his hatred of the truth: “I must breathe out... here it is, the truth! She doesn’t let you breathe, you can’t live with her...” A kind of culmination in this dispute between the heroes is Luke’s parable about the righteous land. One man kept getting ready to go in search of a righteous land, where “good people live... they respect each other, they help each other for simple things... and everything is nice and good with them!” For this he was ready to endure everything. The only thing he could not stand was the scientist’s explanation that the righteous land was not on the maps. After this news, he “went home and hanged himself!..” Faith in the ideal of goodness helps to live, “gives joy.” Trying to find out the truth, a person becomes convinced that its embodiment is in reality impossible, and this deprives him of vitality and the ability to fight fate. Satin, in turn, said: “man is the truth!” And in fact, in the play significant place occupies a dispute about a person. Bubnov says that “no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased... everything will be erased, yes!” Luke doesn’t see much difference between people: “I don’t care! I respect swindlers too; in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: they are all black, they all jump...” Satin, in his famous monologue, proclaims: “What is a person?.. It’s not you, not me, not them... no! - it’s you, me, them, the old man, Napoleon, Mohammed... in one!.. Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! Human! This is great! That sounds… proud!”
With his play “At the Lower Depths,” A. M. Gorky refuted idealistic ideas: the ideas of non-resistance, forgiveness, humility. The whole play is imbued with faith in a real person, a Man with a capital M. The author raises in his play a lot of various problems that cannot be answered unequivocally. We can say that each of the heroes of the work, to one degree or another, reveals Gorky’s positions on moral issues.
/ / Social issues Gorky's plays "At the Depths"
Despite the fact that Maxim Gorky's play "" is already more than a hundred years old, it continues to be staged in many theaters around the world. This work, which showed the life of people who have sunk to the bottom, has not lost its relevance in our time. Gorky showed us daily life the poorest segment of the population in its usual terms.
The action of the play takes place in a flophouse that sheltered people of different age categories, different professions. Many of them had another life before, but now they are all at the bottom of this life.
Speaking about the social conflict of the play, it is worth noting that it is ambiguous and multifaceted. It is revealed in the confrontation between the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners, and also manifests itself in the personal tragedy of each hero of the work and the reasons that forced them to sink to the bottom of life.
To understand the conflict between the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners, it is necessary to understand what kind of people they were.
So, the owner of the shelter was Mikhail Kostylev. He was a hypocritical and greedy man. On the one hand, he gave shelter to those in need, and on the other, he ripped off their last money for accommodation.
His wife Vasilisa also treated the residents of the shelter with disgust. She was in love with Vaska Pepla, and was constantly jealous of his sister Natalya. Natalya Vasilisa and her husband were bullied with special zeal. Natalya, on the contrary, was quiet girl and did not allow herself to contradict her sister and her husband.
In the relationship between two sisters, Gorky showed us how social status affects the relationship between two people, even though they were sisters.
Vaska Pepel was one of the inhabitants of the Kostylevo shelter. He said to himself that since childhood he had been called a thief. Therefore, all his life he did nothing else except steal. It should be noted that Vasilisa encouraged Ash’s occupation by buying stolen things from him.
Another inhabitant of the shelter, Anna, had an unenviable fate. She was sick with a fatal disease and lived last days. Her husband, a mechanic, Kleshch had been waiting for his wife’s death for a long time. She was a burden to him. He thought that after Anna's death he would be able to earn money and live new life. But this was not destined to happen. Anna lived and endured, endured daily humiliation and beatings from her husband. There was no place for joy and happiness in her life. The girl no longer remembered when she ate her fill and put on something other than old rags.
The person who could not find use for his knowledge and skills, and now found himself in a shelter with its other inhabitants, was Satin. WITH early age he worked at the telegraph office and was fond of reading. But now he has become a beggar, not expecting anything from life. From the old days he only had a few intricate words left in foreign language which he loved to show off to others.
Orphan Nastya was forced to sell her body in order to somehow make ends meet. She was a dreamer. Nastya was fond of romance novels and believed that someday it would happen to her too true love. For her dreaminess and naivety, the girl endured daily ridicule from other inhabitants of the shelter.
Another inhabitant of the shelter was Bubnov. He ended up here because he found out about his wife’s betrayal and, not finding best option, went to Kostylev’s shelter.
In my opinion, the most tragic fall to the bottom was the fall of Baron. He was a former nobleman and held a high position. But now he is forced to spend time with those people whom he simply did not notice before. The Baron often recalled his past “well-fed” years. All that remained from that life was his arrogant manner of communicating with others.
The next inhabitant of the shelter was a man of the stage, a man who basked in applause, but who, succumbing bad habit, rolled down. The worst thing is that the Actor understands the cause of his suffering, but cannot do anything about it.
Now all these once different people are equal in their lack of rights. They find themselves at the bottom of their lives and are forced to accept their fate. These people have no future, they only have memories of their past life. They are all united by one road - the road down into the abyss. Such a life destroyed all human feelings and qualities in the inhabitants of the shelter and gave rise to not only social, but also moral degradation.
Old man Luka becomes a ray of light for the inhabitants of the shelter, who tried to “stir them up” by giving them hope. Unfortunately, it was already too late; no one could find the strength to climb up again. The actor commits suicide, Vaska Pepel was exiled to Siberia, and the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter suffered a worse fate.
Maxim Gorky in his play “At the Depths” tried to show us all the lack of rights of a person burdened social problems how important it is to be able to solve them in time in order to change your life.
In nineteen hundred and two, the premiere of the play “At the Depths” took place. This brilliant drama immediately attracted everyone's attention. They talked about it, wrote about it, discussed it, criticized it. It was truly a triumph for the writer. These heated discussions continue to this day, with the only difference being that now we know the attitude of the author himself towards it. If at the beginning of your creative path Maxim Gorky wrote romantic works, in which the real is intertwined with the ideal, and the heroes were too strong, too beautiful and noble, then the same cannot be said about the play “At the Bottom”. This is an image of rough, unembellished reality, and its heroes are people broken by fate and sank to the “bottom of life.”
This play was a vivid depiction of a person’s relationship with the environment, with the entirety of social conditions beyond his control. This is a refutation of passive humanism, addressed only to such feelings as pity and compassion, on the one hand, and contrasting it, on the other hand, with active, one might even say revolutionary, humanism, arousing in people the desire for protest and struggle. At first they didn’t understand this, and Luka, played by Moskvin, was praised by everyone, he became the center of attention. “Luka was supposed to be a negative type, and Satina was supposed to be given as a counterbalance to him. It turned out the other way around: Luka became positive, and Satin found himself in the role of Luka’s assistant,” wrote Gorky.
So what is this play “At the Bottom”? Let's try to figure it out. The action of the play develops along several parallel storylines, almost independent of each other. The relationship between the owner of the flophouse Kostylev, his wife Vasilisa, her sister Natasha and the thief Vaska Pepla is tied into a special plot knot - on this material it was possible to create a separate social drama. Develops separately storyline, connected with the relationship between the jobless and dejected mechanic Kleshch and his dying wife Anna. Indeed, on the basis of this drama it was also possible to create separate work. That is why the play “At the Bottom” is called a socio-philosophical drama. There are many other characters in the play, but they all live their own lives and are gathered in the shelter.
So, we see that the play has no single plot, no single action, no core. There is no main character, much less a positive hero. At the same time there is no one to name and negative hero. Attention is constantly drawn to different people. I think with this Gorky wanted to show that there is no division into “people” and “non-people.” Everyone has the right to their point of view. Note that the heroes mostly do not act, but speak. After all, it is from conversations that we learn their thoughts, their inner world. At the same time, each of them carries its own philosophy, its own “truth”.
Indeed, the word “truth” is key and almost the most important. It seems to permeate the entire work. From the very beginning of the play, a conflict between two truths develops: the truth of a bitter life, the “bottom” and the “fictitious” truth, the truth that they would like to see. This conflict is clearly expressed in the contrast between two heroes: Luke and Satin. To understand him, you need to understand the development of their relationship.
Luke, this wandering preacher, consoles everyone, promises everyone deliverance from suffering, says to everyone: “You, hope!”, “You, believe!” And he says this not because he really expects some changes, he calms everyone down because he knows that there will be no changes in the lives of the heroes. They are not able to change anything in her. And Luke believes that they cannot bear the heavy burden of the real truth, and their only relief is dreams and illusions. His entire philosophy fits into one phrase: “What you believe in is what you believe.” Yes, he feels sorry for these disadvantaged people. In essence, he is sure that the truth will never cure any soul, but you can only soften the pain with such a lie, a fictitious truth.
What about Satin? What is his truth? He is the only one who truly understood Luke, but his view of life is so at odds with Luke’s “truth” or even “faith” that he inevitably begins to refute his words, while still continuing to defend. Satin says: “I know lies! Those who are weak at heart... and those who live on other people's juices need a lie... some are supported by it, others hide behind it... And who is his own master... who is independent and does not wait for someone else's - why does he need a lie? Lies are the religion of slaves and masters... Truth is god free man!»
We see that if Luke's position is the idea of compassion, arousing faith in a person, it is capable of leading him further. The actor says: “Today I worked, swept the street... but didn’t drink vodka! What's it like? Here they are - two five-altyn, and I’m sober.” In the words of Luke there is a call for respect for a person: “A person, whatever he is, is always worth his price.” “Everyone thinks that he lives for himself, but it turns out that he lives for the best.”
“Man - that’s the truth, he understood it!” - Satin will exclaim about Luke. Despite the contrast, at first glance, between the positions of Luke and Satin, the latter exclaims: “Old man? He’s smart!.. He... acted on me like acid on an old and dirty coin...”
It seems to me that Satin and Luke agree that “everything is in man, everything is for man,” but they differ in their understanding of the paths to achieve this. For Luke, everyone is a person, but for Satin, all people are as one whole. If Luke’s love is pity, then Satin is more demanding: affection for humanity. And Satin is against any “fictional” truth. After all, with the entire development of the plot, Gorky wanted to show that this “fictional” truth, this compassionate lie can not only help, but, on the contrary, destroy a person. Desperate to recover, the Actor commits suicide. This pity did nothing to help the inhabitants of the shelter. This is evidenced by the stage directions of the first and last acts. Nothing has changed in the lives of the people gathered in the shelter; things have gotten even worse.
In my opinion, this is precisely what the author wanted to show how untenable Luke’s lies are! On the other hand, the inhabitants of the shelter are “masters and slaves”; they do not need “the truth of a free person.” They are weak in spirit and cannot change their lives. Awakened by Luka, they come into conflict with real world and are defeated. Luke's "fictional" truth does not withstand the collision with reality. And Luka himself disappears immediately after Kostylev’s murder. There is falseness in his compassion. He left without bringing anything good to these people.
The whole play contains understatement. Natasha has disappeared, Ash must be convicted, and somewhere in a vacant lot an Actor hanged himself. It seems to me that Gorky poses questions in the play, but does not give answers. How to live further? The inhabitants of the shelter are at a loss. And in this hidden call to change the world is the revolutionary nature of the play. The heroes of the play could not escape from the vicious circle.
Yes, Gorky writes again about “ former people“, but now he has turned from a romantic with the unconscious role of a tramp into a philosopher, painfully searching for the meaning of existence. He brought together many diverse individuals, uniting them in their desire for justice.
The play is filled with vivid characters and images. What did the author want to say? How did he see heroes?
Gorky himself identified the main problematic of the play: “...what is better: truth or compassion? What is more needed? Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This question is not subjective, but general philosophical.” Maxim Gorky admits that he was unable to fully answer this question. Why? To do this, you need to consider two images: Luke and Satin. Satin certainly expresses author's position. The hero is very far from the philosophy of Christian patience; for him there is one thing proudly sound word- a person who “pays for everything himself: for faith, for disbelief, for love, for intelligence - a person pays for everything himself, and therefore he is free.” In these words we hear the voice of Gorky himself. And many, reading “At the Lower Depths,” abandoned their comfortable lives and went to the revolutionary barricades.
However, critics perceived the play differently. The main direction of the play was associated with the image of Luke. They wrote that Luke “brought to light all the good things that had previously been dormant.” The main motive was interpreted as reconciliation with life and a feeling of pity for the person.
Page: [ 1 ]