Essay on the topic “The Image of Grigory Melekhov” briefly: characteristics, life story and description of the hero in search of the truth
In Sholokhov's epic novel " Quiet Don» Grigory Melekhov occupies a central place. He is the most complex Sholokhov hero. This is a truth seeker. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. The life path of Grigory Melekhov is difficult and tortuous: first there was the First world war, then civil, and finally, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, an uprising and its suppression.
The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of a man who broke away from the people and became a renegade. His detachment becomes tragic, because he is a confused person. He went against himself, against millions of workers just like himself.
From his grandfather Prokofy Gregory, he inherited a hot-tempered and independent character, as well as the ability for tender love. The blood of the “Turkish” grandmother manifested itself in his appearance, in love, on the battlefield and in the ranks. And from his father he inherited a tough disposition, and it was because of this that integrity and rebellion haunted Gregory from his youth. He fell in love with a married woman Aksinya (this is a turning point in his life) and soon decides to leave with her, despite all the prohibitions of his father and the condemnation of society. The origins of Melekhov's tragedy lie in his rebellious character. This is the predetermination of a tragic fate.
Gregory is a kind, brave and courageous hero who always tries to fight for truth and justice. But war comes, and it destroys all his ideas about the truth and justice of life. The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of losses and terrible deaths: it cripples people from the inside and destroys everything dear and dear to them. It forces all the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of their warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty and thirst for blood as the Whites. He can't understand why all this? After all, war destroys the smooth life of families, peaceful work, it takes away the last things from people and kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov are unable to understand why this fratricidal massacre is happening? For whose sake and what should people die when they still have a long life ahead of them?
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters unfold against the background tragic story countries. Gregory will never again be able to forget how he killed his first enemy, an Austrian soldier. He cut him down with a saber, it was terrible for him. The moment of murder changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind and fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. But the war is on, Melekhov understands that he needs to continue killing. Soon his decision changes: he realizes that war kills the best people of his time, that the truth cannot be found among thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work for native land and raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. The path of Melekhov’s search turned out to be an impassable thicket. Sholokhov in his work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The author sympathizes with his hero Grigory Melekhov, whose life is already broken in such young years.
As a result of his search, Melekhov is left alone: Aksinya is killed by his recklessness, he is hopelessly distant from his children, if only because he will bring disaster on them with his closeness. Trying to remain true to himself, he betrays everyone: the warring parties, women, and ideas. This means that he was initially looking in the wrong place. Thinking only about himself, about his “truth,” he did not love and did not serve. At the hour when a strong man’s word was required from him, Gregory could only provide doubts and soul-searching. But the war did not need philosophers, and women did not need a love of wisdom. Thus, Melekhov is the result of a transformation like “ extra person"in conditions of the most severe historical conflict.
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Main impression Soviet people about the First World War - this is, of course, “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov
For several decades, the events of the First World War seemed to remain in the shadows, away from public attention. But the memories of that war echoed and were echoed in many books, poems, and songs. Here are the satirical revelations of Hasek, and the novels of Alexei Tolstoy, Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky - very thorough, by the way, with many quotes from the press of 1914 - 17...
Let's remember the textbook - “At the position, the girl saw off the fighter...”. Mikhail Isakovsky wrote these poems at the beginning of the war, and the young composer Igor Lavrentyev gave them a melody that became popular. We are accustomed to this wonderful song and, of course, we associate it with the image of the Great Patriotic War. But in 1941 they almost didn’t say “in position”; then another expression was in use - “seeing off to the front.” And the positions are precisely those of 1914 or 15, as they used to say in the years “ Great War“- and the poet remembered this saying.
But the main impression of Soviet people about that war is, of course, Sholokhov. Several generations of Soviet people learned about the First World War from Sholokhov, from the novel “Quiet Don”. Already in the early thirties, the book (or rather, the parts published by that time) received wide recognition. The source is, of course, subjective: fiction. But it is useful not to forget about it today, when leafy, smoothed-out, ceremonial assessments of that war are in use.
And some celebrate the centenary of the beginning of this tragic historical milestone as a kind of patriotic holiday, forgetting to comprehend the often not at all fanfare course of battles, not to mention the catastrophe in the rear, in the capitals...
And it is impossible to forget (and surpass!) the poetic images of Sholokhov... His prose is remembered in chunks, powerful fragments - like poetry. The Cossack Iliad begins on the eve of the war, in the penultimate year of peace. The next decade after the peaceful 1912 will be for Don Cossacks(and, accordingly, for the heroes of the novel) catastrophic. Yes, Sholokhov’s novel is the Cossack-style death of the Nibelungs of the 20th century. That is why it is difficult for the reader of “Quiet Don” to doubt that this is an epic.
War is approaching as in a fairy tale or epic - with alarming signs. “At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible screams hung over the farmstead, and the owl flew to the cemetery, moaning over the brown, grassy graves. “It will be bad,” the old men prophesied. “The war will come.” How many arguments and gossip did Don hear: to be or not to be a war? But even experienced Cossacks, veterans of many campaigns, could not imagine the scale of the disaster. They knew nothing about the war of the twentieth century. Nobody knew!
Sholokhov draws attention to the drama of the first days of the war: the breakdown peaceful life, tears of mothers and future widows. He is interested in precisely this perspective, precisely this layer of truth. Aleksey Tolstoy, who became a war correspondent, interpreted the beginning of the war completely differently. “And the whole people, the one who was just dark, and sleepy, and drunk, for whom we always feared, who were taught wisdom with such difficulties, rose up to this unprecedented war, decisively, courageously and seriously.” Different mood, different intonation. True, Tolstoy wrote these lines during the war, and Sholokhov comprehended the events of 1914 even after the next war - the Civil War. And yet, the ever-present features of two writers, contemporaries, but not like-minded people, appear here. Alexey Tolstoy was in no way a Tolstoyan... The sovereignist invariably appeared in him - even when it seemed irreparably old-fashioned.
The Great War is at the center of the Don epic, it unites and separates heroes, plays with destinies. Sholokhov began working on the novel as a very young man (and L.N. Tolstoy wrote the first volume of the novel “War and Peace” at the age of 36 - today it’s hard to believe). It seems that he did not visit the headquarters, did not fight in Galicia, did not communicate with the generals, could not participate in that war, but in the novel the author’s voice sounds impressive. It was as if he had seen a chronicle of battles both in reality and in documentaries - although when Russia emerged from the First World War, Mikhail Sholokhov was twelve years old.
This happens with great writers - and therefore conversations about Sholokhov’s “plagiarism” are unconvincing, involving, among other things, the following argument: “it’s hard to believe that a young man penetrated so deeply into the logic of history.” An artist can control a lot.
Revealing the fates of fictional heroes, he knows how to look at events strategically: “From the Baltic, the front stretched like a deadly rope. Plans for a wide offensive were being developed at headquarters, generals were poring over maps, orderlies were rushing to deliver ammunition, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were going to their deaths.” And again - a feeling of the meaninglessness of war, the futility of efforts. Sholokhov has no doubt: the war could have been avoided, the enemy would not have invaded Russian territory if...
It is difficult for a novelist - especially a Russian one and especially one who writes about war and peace - not to fall under the influence of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Not only artistic, but also ideological. Leo Tolstoy was perhaps the first to try to look at battles through the eyes of a peasant, a forced soldier, for whom war was, first of all, backbreaking work and separation from his native peasant home. Sholokhov was also no stranger to Tolstoy’s pacifism—with a folk, peasant slant. Sholokhov was also a communist, and the “First Imperialist” should have been treated accordingly. “The monstrous absurdity of war” - how Tolstoy-like it is. Several times Sholokhov compares the war to a meat grinder - while still on the train, the old railway worker will say about the Cossacks heading “to position”: “You are my dear beef.” Sholokhov shows the Cossacks heading to war as doomed.
In the mouth of a Cossack, such thoughts would seem strange. Although... No one knows how to hate war as much as experienced warriors. After all, even in 1914, it was not commanders or officers who were the initiators and culprits of the pan-European tragedy. If you need to fight, orders are not discussed and you should serve, as it was formulated back in the years of Peter the Great, without sparing your belly. “War is like a war,” this is how a popular French proverb is translated into Russian.
But the main culprits of bloodshed, by and large, are always diplomats, politicians and, most importantly, sharks big business- no matter what they were called in different eras.
Only they, as a rule, remain on the sidelines, remain behind the scenes, their names are not known to the general public, and, if known, they are not directly associated with the outbreak of wars.
The patriotic canon of Tsarist Russia is alien to the writer. For example, it is impossible to imagine Sholokhov writing the following words: “In the face of the terrible judgment of history taking place Russian state should become worthy of the name of Holy Rus' and Great Russia. And then in the victory, which, we believe, will crown our national efforts, we will see not a mercy granted to us, but a right earned by us.” This is an excerpt from an article by Nikolai Ustryalov, written when the war had been going on for more than a year, and revolutions were just a stone's throw away.
And Sholokhov even talks about the most heroic episodes of the war with sadness, with a grain of skepticism: “And it was like this: people collided on the killing field..., they bumped into each other, knocked them down, delivered blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and scattered, frightened by the shot that killed a man, they parted morally crippled. They called it a feat."
Here we are not talking about an abstract feat, but about the famous battle of the Cossack Kozma Kryuchkov. In childhood - and this happened during the First World War - Sholokhov, along with other boys, played “Kozma Kryuchkov,” but the childish delight was not preserved. “Kryuchkov, the favorite of the commander of the hundred, according to his report, received George. His comrades remained in the shadows. The hero was sent to division headquarters, where he hung around until the end of the war, receiving the other three crosses because influential ladies and gentlemen officers came from Petrograd and Moscow to see him. The ladies gasped, the ladies treated the Don Cossack to expensive cigarettes and sweets, and he first flogged them with thousands of obscenities, and then, under beneficial influence staff sycophants in officer's uniform, made a profitable profession out of it: he talked about the “feat”, thickening the colors to blackness, lied without a twinge of conscience, and the ladies were delighted, looked with admiration at the pockmarked robber face of the Cossack hero” - this is how Sholokhov saw Kryuchkov.
During the Great War, it was customary to talk about this very dashing Cossack in folklore (opponents will say: pseudo-folklore) spirit. Young Sholokhov did not like the cheerful style. But by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, either maximalism would weaken, or Sholokhov would become more sensitive to the topic of defending the Motherland. His front-line journalism is full of admiration for the heroes, and “The Fate of a Man” will be on the same shelf as “The Stories of Ivan Sudarev” by Alexei Tolstoy... Sholokhov will understand: the fighting people need an epic story about exploits, about heroism, about skilled and indomitable warriors - such as Kozma Kryuchkov.
During the Civil War, Kryuchkov found himself in the White camp and fought against the First Cavalry with the rank of cornet. He died in 1919, on his native soil, perhaps from a Cossack bullet. And his comrade-in-arms Mikhail Ivankov (participant in the legendary battle) entered the Red Army. It was he who told Sholokhov about the feat and about Kryuchkov in detail. It seems that the writer was prejudiced towards the hero: a white hare, and besides, a symbol of tsarist propaganda during the war. Propaganda is necessary at all times - especially during war years.
But Kryuchkov’s feat was not a falsification! At the very beginning of the war, four Cossacks on patrol took on 27 German lancers. As a result, only three Germans escaped. The Cossacks captured two, and the rest were accepted by the land.
Kozma Firsovich Kryuchkov earned his Georgy with courage and combat skill. Yes, they trumpeted the feat - and rightly so. At the beginning of the war, it was precisely such news that inspired recruits - those who had to pull the military burden. During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov would learn to appreciate such feats and the propaganda charge that was associated with them.
The fate of Kozma Kryuchkov’s comrades is like a plot from “Don Stories” or “Quiet Don”. Brothers in arms found themselves on opposite sides of the front line. Could the fratricidal split have been avoided? "Quiet Flows the Flow" shows contradictions from which it is incredibly difficult to get out. There are no coincidences in history.
Grigory Melekhov knew how to fight, was a savvy leader and a patient fighter, Sholokhov does not underestimate his valor. But the writer’s favorite hero is dissatisfied with himself: “the Cossack was riding horseback and felt that the pain for the person that oppressed him in the first days of the war had gone away irrevocably. The heart became coarsened, hardened, and just as a salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory’s heart did not absorb pity.” Very soon he begins to reject the war - for him, like for Hamlet, the world has split apart. Perhaps this happened when he met the gaze of the Austrians, whom he cut down.
Why was World War I considered an unjust war? In Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, “industrialists and bankers” were rushing to power. The traditional foundations of the merchant class were revised. IN previous centuries the merchants could not even imagine political influence on the scale of the empire: they could cope with the mayors... And here - as a result of the “development of capitalism in Russia” - they got the opportunity to openly profit from the war, and even influence the government. The semi-oligarchic system did not last long in Russia - and during the war it showed instability. Merchant arrogance cost Russia dearly: the best turned out to be victims, including among the Cossacks.
For them, “Quiet Don” sounds like a requiem: “Many Cossacks were missing, they were lost in the fields of Galicia, Bukovina, East Prussia, the Carpathian region, Romania, they lay down as corpses and decayed under the gun funeral service, and now the high hills are overgrown with weeds mass graves, crushed by the rains, covered with shifting snow... The graves are overgrown with grass - the pain is overgrown with age. The wind licked the footprints of the departed - time will lick the blood pain and memory of those who did not wait, because it is short human life and not all of us are destined to trample the grass for a long time...”
That's how it was. The dead cannot be returned.
But memory still does not die, this is proven by the current attention to the fate of the heroes and victims of the First World War.
G.R. Derzhavin, a guard lieutenant, dedicated the following lines to the Izmail heroes:
But their glory never dies,
Who will die for the fatherland;
She shines so forever
Like moonlight on the sea at night.
This is also true in relation to those who fell in the First World War, to the dead and mutilated Sholokhov Cossacks.
Special for the Centenary
Grigory Melekhov is one of central images M. Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don". The tragedy of Gregory’s fate is closely connected with the tragedy of the Cossacks in Rus'. The writer managed to realistically convey the fate of the hero and prove the objective necessity of his actions
Gregory is a young Cossack. People liked him for his love of farming and work, for his Cossack prowess. From the first pages of the novel we notice the inconsistency of Gregory's character.
It manifests itself both in personal relationships and in actions during the war. Grishka has a relationship with the married Aksinya, but his father’s disappointment in him (Melekhov beat Grishka. “Zhenya! I’ll marry a fool!” - the father shouted to his son.) worries the Cossack and he breaks off his relationship with the girl without experiencing mental anguish, but at the wedding with Natalya, for whom he was not the best candidate for a husband, but still had the luck of being chosen by her, he thought only about Aksinya. His back and forth between the two girls continues throughout most of the novel and neither of them works out. good fate: Natalya experiences a suicide attempt, is expelled by her family and lives in longing for her husband, Aksinya completely dies...
Melekhov himself does not understand what he needs, he cannot decide which side to take, with whom to be.
We see the same in his attitude to the war, to the revolution. Gregory went to war with strong convictions, but the war breaks him. We see the emotional experiences of the Cossack: “...My conscience is killing me. I stabbed someone with a lance near Leshniv. In the heat of the moment... It was impossible otherwise... Why did I cut this guy down?..” “...Well, I cut down a man in vain and I’m sick through I dream about him, the bastard, at night, the bastard. Is it my fault?..” He becomes callous and cold, but his humanity does not leave Grigory. However, the Cossack dreams of returning to his homeland, he is drawn to the land, his native kuren. Grishka was able to go through the war, end up in a hospital, and rise to the rank of officer. He stood out in the crowd of Cossacks, Four Crosses of St. George and four medals are an indicator of this. Melekhov tried to understand the essence of red and white movement, but couldn't. He went over to the side of the Reds, but saw that the cruelty on each side was equal, he realized that there was no “good” side and “bad” side, that there was blood, cruelty, and injustice everywhere. In the hero’s conversations, we see the hopelessness of the choice: “If the Red Army soldiers weren’t going to kill me at the party then, I might not have participated in the uprising.
“If you weren’t an officer, no one would touch you.”
“If they hadn’t taken me into the service, I wouldn’t have been an officer.” The Cossack dreams of returning to his homeland, he is drawn to the land, his native village. I remember the words he said at the beginning of the novel: “I won’t move anywhere from the land. There’s a steppe here, there’s something to breathe, but what about there?”
Gregory's tragedy is a tragedy of inconsistency, a tragedy of an individual who finds himself at a crossroads in an era of turning points. historical events, the tragedy of the entire Russian Cossacks. At the end of the story, Gregory returns to the earth. He has no one close to him except his son, but the main thing is that the Cossack finds himself, his place in life.
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Updated: 2017-04-02
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This rich image embodied the dashing, thoughtless Cossack youth and the wisdom of a life lived, filled with suffering and troubles of a terrible time of change.
Image of Grigory Melekhov
Sholokhov's Grigory Melekhov can safely be called the last a free man. Free by any human standard.
Sholokhov deliberately did not make Melekhov a Bolshevik, despite the fact that the novel was written in an era when the very idea of the immorality of Bolshevism was blasphemous.
And, nevertheless, the reader sympathizes with Gregory even at the moment when he flees on a cart with the mortally wounded Aksinya from the Red Army. The reader wishes Gregory salvation, not victory for the Bolsheviks.
Gregory is an honest, hardworking, fearless, trusting and selfless person, a rebel. His rebellion is evident even in early youth when he, with gloomy determination, for the sake of love for Aksinya - married woman- breaks up with his family.
He has the determination not to be afraid public opinion, no condemnation of farmers. He does not tolerate ridicule and condescension from the Cossacks. He will contradict his mother and father. He is confident in his feelings, his actions are guided only by love, which seems to Gregory, in spite of everything, the only value in life, and therefore justifies his decisions.
You need to have great courage to live contrary to the opinion of the majority, to live with your head and heart, and not be afraid of being rejected by your family and society. Only a real man, only a real human fighter. The father's anger, the contempt of the farmers - Gregory doesn't care about anything. With the same courage, he jumps over the fence to protect his beloved Aksinya from his husband’s cast-iron fists.
Melekhov and Aksinya
In his relationship with Aksinya, Grigory Melekhov becomes a man. From the dashing young guy, with hot Cossack blood, he turns into a loyal and loving male protector.
At the very beginning of the novel, when Grigory is just wooing Aksinya, one gets the impression that future fate He doesn’t care at all about this woman, whose reputation he ruined with his youthful passion. He even talks about this to his beloved. “The bitch won’t want it, the dog won’t jump up,” Grigory says to Aksinya and immediately turns purple at the thought that scalded him like boiling water when he saw tears in the woman’s eyes: “I hit a lying man.”
What Gregory himself initially perceived as ordinary lust turned out to be love that he would carry throughout his life, and this woman would not turn out to be his mistress, but would become his unofficial wife. For the sake of Aksinya, Grigory will leave his father, his mother, and his young wife Natalya. For the sake of Aksinya, he will go to work instead of getting rich on his own farm. Will give preference to someone else's house instead of his own.
Undoubtedly, this madness deserves respect, as it speaks of the incredible honesty of this man. Grigory is not capable of living a lie. He cannot pretend and live as others tell him. He doesn't lie to his wife either. He does not lie when he seeks the truth from the “whites” and the “reds”. He lives. Grigory lives his own life, he himself weaves the thread of his destiny and he doesn’t know how to do it any other way.
Melekhov and Natalya
Gregory's relationship with his wife Natalya is saturated with tragedy, like his whole life. He married someone he did not love and did not hope to love. The tragedy of their relationship is that Gregory could not lie to his wife. With Natalya he is cold, he is indifferent. writes that Grigory, out of duty, caressed his young wife, tried to excite her with young loving zeal, but on her part he met only submission.
And then Gregory remembered Aksinya’s frantic pupils, darkened with love, and he understood that he could not live with the icy Natalya. He can't. I don’t love you, Natalya! - Grigory will somehow say something in his heart and he will immediately understand - no, he really doesn’t love you. Subsequently, Gregory will learn to feel sorry for his wife. Especially after her suicide attempt, but she will not be able to love for the rest of her life.
Melekhov and the Civil War
Grigory Melekhov is a truth-seeker. That is why in the novel Sholokhov portrayed him as a rushing man. He is honest, and therefore has the right to demand honesty from others. The Bolsheviks promised equality, that there would be no more rich or poor. However, nothing has changed in life. The platoon commander is still wearing chrome boots, but the “vanek” is still wearing windings.
Gregory first falls to the whites, then to the reds. But it seems that individualism is alien to both Sholokhov and his hero. The novel was written in an era when being a “renegade” and being on the side of a Cossack businessman was mortally dangerous. Therefore, Sholokhov describes Melekhov’s throwing during the Civil War as the throwing of a lost man.
Gregory evokes not condemnation, but compassion and sympathy. In the novel, Gregory acquires a resemblance peace of mind and moral stability only after a short stay with the Reds. Sholokhov could not have written it any other way.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov
Over the course of 10 years, during which the action of the novel develops, the fate of Grigory Melekhov is filled with tragedies. Living during wars and political changes is a challenge in itself. And remaining human in these times is sometimes an impossible task. We can say that Gregory, having lost Aksinya, having lost his wife, brother, relatives and friends, managed to retain his humanity, remained himself, and did not change his inherent honesty.
Actors who played Melekhov in the films "Quiet Don"
In the film adaptation of the novel by Sergei Gerasimov (1957), Pyotr Glebov was cast in the role of Grigory. In the film by Sergei Bondarchuk (1990-91), the role of Gregory went to the British actor Rupert Everett. In the new series, based on the book by Sergei Ursulyak, Grigory Melekhov was played by Evgeniy Tkachuk.
The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov in M. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”.
For in those days there will be such sorrow as has not happened since the beginning of creation... even to this day there will not be... Brother will betray brother to death, and father will betray children; and the children will rise up against their parents and kill them.
From the Gospel
Among the heroes of "Quiet Don" it falls to the lot of Grigory Melekhov to be the moral core of the work, which embodies the main features of a powerful folk spirit. Grigory is a young Cossack, a daredevil, a man with capital letter, but at the same time, he is a man not without weaknesses, as evidenced by his reckless passion for a married woman, Aksinya, whom he is unable to overcome.
The fate of Gregory became a symbol of the tragic fate of the Russian Cossacks. And therefore, having traced all life path Grigory Melekhov, starting with the history of the Melekhov family, one can not only reveal the reasons for its troubles and losses, but also come closer to understanding the essence of that historical era, whose deep and faithful appearance we find on the pages of “Quiet Don,” one can understand a lot about the tragic fate of the Cossacks and the Russian people as a whole.
Gregory inherited a lot from his grandfather Prokofy: a hot-tempered, independent character, the ability for tender, selfless love. The blood of the “Turkish” grandmother manifested itself not only in Gregory’s appearance, but also in his veins, both on the battlefield and in the ranks. Brought up in the best traditions of the Russian Cossacks, Melekhov from a young age cherished Cossack honor, which he understood more broadly than just military valor and loyalty to duty. His main difference from ordinary Cossacks was that his moral sense did not allow him to share his love between his wife and Aksinya, or to participate in Cossack robberies and reprisals. One gets the impression that this era, which sends trials to Melekhov, is trying to destroy or break the rebellious, proud Cossack.
The first such test for Gregory is his passion for Aksinya: he did not hide his feelings, he was ready to answer for his offense among the Cossacks. In my opinion, it would have been much worse if he, a young Cossack, had secretly visited Aksinya. When he realized that he was not able to break completely with his former mistress, he left the farm and went with Aksinya to Yagodnoye, albeit not conforming to the popular image of a Cossack, but still listening to his moral sense and not giving up on himself.
During the war, honestly fulfilling his Cossack duty, Gregory did not hide behind the backs of his comrades, but also did not boast of reckless courage. Four St. George's crosses and four medals are valuable evidence of how Melekhov behaved during the war.
Grigory Melekhov stood out among other Cossacks, although he was devoid of the “superhuman” touch that authors usually endow with their main characters. The inevitable murders that Gregory commits in battle are committed by him with cold steel, which means in an even battle. He reproached himself for a long time and could not forgive himself for the murder of an unarmed Austrian. He is disgusted by violence, and even more so by murder, because the essence of Gregory’s character is love for all living things, an acute sense of other people’s pain. All he dreams of is to return to his native kuren and take up his favorite farm. But he is a Cossack, awarded for his valor officer rank, who with his mother’s milk absorbed the unwritten Cossack ideas about honor and duty. This predetermined the tragic fate of Melekhov. He is forced to be torn between the craving for his native land and the duty of a warrior, between his family and Aksinya, between the whites and the reds.
A conversation with Mishka Koshev showed in the best possible way the tragic hopelessness of that fatal circle into which Melekhov found himself against his will:
“If the Red Army soldiers had not been going to kill me at the party then, I might not have participated in the uprising.
“If you weren’t an officer, no one would touch you.”
“If I hadn’t been hired, I wouldn’t have been an officer... Well, it’s a long song!”
The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of the Russian Cossacks as a whole. No matter which side the Cossacks fight on, they want one thing: to return to their native farm, to their wife and children, to plow the land, to run their farm. But the whirlwind of history burst into their kurens, tearing the Cossacks from their native places and throwing them into the very heat of a fratricidal war, a war in the name of ideals that are obscure, and even alien to the majority of ordinary Cossacks. However, no matter how the war tossed the Cossack, if his soul was not deadened, then the longing for the land, for his native farm, was alive in it.
Sholokhov compares the life of Gregory at the end of his journey with the black steppe scorched by fires. A strong, brave man became a light sliver in the stormy ocean of historical changes. Here it is - Tolstoy's insignificance of personality in history. But no matter how great the tragedy of what is happening, the last symbolic picture inspires hope - a father and son, and all around “the young grass is cheerfully green, they tremble over it in blue sky Countless larks, migrating geese graze on the green fodder, and little bustards, who have settled for the summer, build nests.”