The main character of the story, twenty-year-old Maria Naryshkina, comes from a remote sand-covered town in the Astrakhan province. When she turned 16, her teacher father took her to Astrakhan for pedagogical courses. And after 4 years, student Maria Nikiforovna was appointed as a teacher in a distant region - the village of Khoshutovo on the border with the dead Central Asian desert.
Sandstorms were a disaster for the village. The peasant's strength was broken by the struggle with the desert. The peasants were “grieved” by poverty. The new teacher was upset that the children did not go to school properly, and in the winter they stopped altogether, because there were often snow storms, and the children had nothing to wear or put on shoes, so the school was often completely empty. Bread ran out towards the end of winter, children lost weight and lost interest even in fairy tales.
By the New Year, 2 out of 20 students had died. What to do in a village doomed to extinction?
But the young teacher did not give up and did not fall into despair. She decided to make the main subject at school training in sand fighting, teaching the art of transforming the desert into living earth.
Maria Nikiforovna went to the district department of public education for advice and help, but realized that she needed to rely only on her own strength. She convinced the peasants that they needed to plant shrubs so that they would retain the sand. The villagers went to community service for a month in the spring and a month in the fall. After 2 years, the shell plantings turned green in protective stripes around the irrigated vegetable gardens. A pine nursery was planted near the school so that the trees would conserve snow moisture and protect the plants from being depleted by the hot wind. And the peasants began to weave baskets, boxes, and furniture from the rods of the shells, earning two thousand rubles in earnings.
In the third year, trouble came. Once every 15 years, nomads passed through these places with a thousand horses, after three days there was nothing left in the village - no shell, no pine, no water.
But Maria Nikiforovna has already trained the villagers to fight sand, and after the nomads leave, they will plant shelyuga again. And the head of the okrono (district department of public education) transferred the young teacher to the village of Safutu, where settled nomads lived, in order to teach them the culture of the sands. Maria Nikiforovna faced a problem moral choice. She thought: “Will you really have to bury your youth in the sandy desert among wild nomads and die in a shelug bush, considering this half-dead tree in the desert to be your best monument and the highest glory of life?” After all, her personal life is not organized, she does not have a life partner - a husband. But she remembered her conversation with the leader of the nomads, the complex and deep life of the desert tribes, and understood the hopeless fate of the two peoples, squeezed into the sand dunes. She agreed to go to Safuta, jokingly saying that she would come to RONO in 50 years as an old woman, not along the sand, but along a forest road. The surprised head noticed that Maria Nikiforovna could manage not only a school, but also an entire nation.
1. The problem of man and nature.
2.The problem of a single enthusiast trying to resist the natural elements.
3. The problem of confronting circumstances.
4. The problem of happiness.
5. The problem of true values.
6. The problem of serving people
7. The problem of the meaning of life.
8. The problem of life achievement.
9. The problem of courage, perseverance, strength of character, determination.
10. The problem of the role of the teacher in people's lives.
11. The problem of debt and responsibility.
12. The problem of personal happiness.
13. The problem of self-sacrifice.
14. The problem of moral choice.
Updated: 2017-09-24
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The story “The Sandy Teacher” was written by Platonov in 1926 and published in the collection “Epiphanian Gateways” (1927), as well as in the newspaper “Literary Environments” No. 21 for 1927. The prototype of Maria Naryshkina was Platonov’s wife Maria Kashintseva. In 1921, Platonov’s bride eliminated illiteracy in a village 60 km from Voronezh, running away from her relationship with her future husband.
In 1931, the film “Aina” was created based on the story.
Literary direction and genre
The work belongs to the direction of realism. In the second edition, Platonov worked precisely on a realistic explanation of how the Russians appeared in Khoshutov. He calls them settlers, suggesting that they could have settled there during the Stolypin period. agrarian reform. For realism, Platonov changes the interval of appearance of nomads from 5 years to 15, but the settlement could hardly have arisen and stayed on the path of the nomads.
Another thing is the story of the taming of the sands. Indeed, there are known cases when villages and villages were resettled due to advancing sands. Platonov in his white autograph defines the genre of the work as an essay, since it conveys practical knowledge for fighting the sands. The story forms the plot of an entire educational novel, telling about the formation of the hero.
Topic and issues
The theme of the story is the formation of personality, the problem of choice. The main idea is that to achieve life goals you need not only determination, but also wisdom and humility in the face of life's circumstances. In addition, in Chapter 5 Platonov solves the philosophical question of the coexistence of two ways of life - sedentary and nomadic. The heroine understands the plan of the Soviet employee and voluntarily, even joyfully, accepts the lifelong role of a sandy teacher.
They also rise social problems, associated with the authorities’ disdain for people (Maria is listened to politely, shakes hands as a sign of the end of the conversation, but helps only with advice). But they ask you to devote your whole life to a public cause. Relevant in the story philosophical problems sacrifice and retribution, gratitude, inspiration, wisdom and short-sightedness.
Plot and composition
The short story consists of 5 chapters. The first chapter retrospectively mentions childhood and studies main character, characterized by her father. The present in the story begins with the fact that the young teacher Maria Nikiforovna Naryshkina is sent to the distant village of Khoshutovo on the border with the Central Asian desert. The second part is about how, 3 days later, having arrived in a small village, Maria Naryshkina was faced with the meaningless hard work of the peasants who were clearing the courtyards that were again covered with sand.
The third part is about trying to teach literacy to children. The peasants were so poor that the children had nothing to wear; they were starving. When two children died in winter, the teacher guessed that the peasants did not need any science other than the science of fighting the sands and conquering the desert.
Maria Nikiforovna turned to the district with a request to send a sand science teacher. But she was advised to teach the peasants herself with the help of books.
The fourth part tells how the village has changed in 2 years. Only six months later, the peasants agreed to do public works for landscaping Khoshutov twice a year for a month. After 2 years, the shelyuga (a half-meter-tall shrub of redwood) was already protecting vegetable gardens and wells, and pine trees were growing in the village.
The last part is the climax. After 3 years, all the fruits of the labor of the teacher and peasants were destroyed. When the nomads passed through the village (which happened every 15 years), their animals gnawed and trampled the plants, drank water from the wells, the teacher went to the leader of the nomads, then to the district with a report. Zavokrono suggested that Maria Nikiforovna go to the even more distant village of Safutu, where settled nomads lived, in order to teach them how to fight the sands. Maria Nikiforovna resigned herself and agreed.
Thus, compositionally, the story is divided into several stages in the process of personality development: study and dreams about the future use of one’s skills, a difficult start to activity, success, disappointment and disappointment, awareness through sacrifice of one’s true destiny and humble acceptance of one’s own fate.
Heroes and images
The main character is Maria Naryshkina, who is described in the second sentence in masculine: “He was a young, healthy man.” The heroine's appearance emphasizes her resemblance to a young man, strong muscles and solid legs. That is, the heroine is strong and resilient. The author seems to be specially preparing her for physical tests.
Maria experiences mental suffering while studying at pedagogical courses, from 16 to 20 years old, when “both love and a thirst for suicide” happened in her life. These shocks prepared her for independent life in a distant village on the border with the desert. Self-confidence and a calm character were brought up by my father, who did not explain the events of the revolution and civil war.
Maria also fell in love with her desert homeland from childhood, and learned to see its poetry, similar to the tales of the Arabian Nights: tanned merchants, camel caravans, distant Persia and the Pamir plateaus, from where the sand flew.
For the first time, Maria encountered the elements of the killing desert on the road to Khoshutovo, having survived a sandstorm. The forces of the desert did not break the young teacher as they did the peasants. The death of two out of 20 students from hunger and disease made Naryshkina think. Her “strong, cheerful and courageous nature” found a way out: she learned the sand business herself and taught others.
For the peasants, the teacher became almost a god. She even had “prophets of the new faith” and many friends.
The first sadness in the teacher’s life was associated with the collapse of her new faith in victory over the elements. The new element - the hunger of the nomadic tribes - also did not break the girl. She knows how to objectively judge people. Both the leader’s answer and the answer turned out to be wise, which at first seemed unreasonable to the girl.
Maria Naryshkina’s choice to go to an even greater wilderness is not a sacrifice, as a result of which Maria allowed herself to be buried in the sands, but a conscious life goal.
The leader of the nomads in the story is contrasted with Zavokrono. The leader is wise, he understands the hopelessness of the struggle of nomads with sedentary Russians for grass. Zavokrono at first seems narrow-minded to Maria, but then she catches his precise calculation: when the nomads switch to a sedentary lifestyle, they will stop destroying the greenery in the villages.
The story shows how myth and fairy tale shape a person’s personality, and a person then transforms space, turning it into a fairy tale. Geography, a story about distant countries, was the heroine's poetry. The thirst for conquering space, mixed with love for her homeland, prompted Maria to go to remote villages to make the myth of the green spaces of the former desert come true.
Artistic originality
The story contrasts the deadness of the Central Asian desert and the liveliness of the heroine herself and her ideas of landscaping, “the art of turning the desert into living land.” The dead is conveyed by metaphorical epithets and metaphors deserted sands, sandy shifting graves, a hot wind for dead children, the steppe has exhausted itself, the steppe has long died, a half-dead tree.
IN climax When making a decision, Maria Naryshkina sees her youth buried in the sandy desert, and herself dead in the shrub bush. But she replaces this dead picture with a living picture, imagining herself as an old woman driving along a forest road from the former desert.
Landscapes in the story form an important part of the idea, realizing the antithesis of the living and the dead.
The short story is full of aphorisms: “Someday youth will not be defenseless,” “Someone dies and swears,” “He who is hungry and eats the grass of his homeland is not a criminal.”
Composition
Andrei Platonov became known to readers in 1927, when his first collection of stories and short stories, “Epiphanian Gateways,” was published. Previously, Platonov tried his hand at poetry, appearing on the pages of newspapers and magazines with essays and articles. But his first book literary prose showed that it appeared in the literature creative individuality, bright and unusual. The writer's style, his world and, of course, his hero were unusual.
Platonov was very fond of all his characters: a machinist, a worker, a soldier or an old man. Each one is beautiful to him in its own way. It is not for nothing that one of Plato’s heroes said: “It only seems from above, only from above one can see that there is a mass below, but in fact, individual people live below, have their own inclinations, and one is smarter than the other.”
And from all this mass I would like to single out not even a hero, but one heroine of the story “The Sandy Teacher”.
This story was written in 1927, at a time not yet so far from the hot revolutionary times. Memories of this time are still alive, its echoes in “The Sandy Teacher” are still alive.
But Maria Nikiforovna Naryshkina herself was not affected by these changes of the era. Both her father and hometown, “dead, abandoned by the sands of the Astrakhan province,” standing “away from the marching roads of the Red and White armies.” Since childhood, Maria has been very interested in geography. This love defined her future profession.
The entire first chapter of the story is devoted to her dreams, ideas, and her growing up during her studies. But at this time, Maria was not protected from life’s anxieties as much as in childhood. We read the author’s digression on this matter: “It’s strange that no one ever helps at this age young man overcome the anxieties that torment him; no one will support the thin trunk, which is torn by the wind of doubt and shaken by the earthquake of growth.” In a figurative, metaphorical form, the writer reflects on youth and its defenselessness. There is an undoubted connection with the historical, contemporary period, which is not capable of helping a person entering life. Plato's hopes for changes in the situation are associated with thoughts about the future: “Someday youth will not be defenseless.”
Both love and the suffering of youth were not alien to Mary. But we feel that everything in this girl’s life will be completely different from how she saw it in her youth.
In a word, Maria Naryshkina could not even guess about her fate. Yes, everything turned out to be difficult for her: setting up the school, working with the children, who in the end completely abandoned school, since there was no time for it during the hungry winter. “Naryshkina’s strong, cheerful, courageous nature began to get lost and extinguish.” Cold, hunger and grief could not bring any other results. But the mind brought Maria Naryshkina out of her stupor. She realized that it was necessary to help people fight the desert. And this woman, an ordinary rural teacher, goes to the district department of public education to be taught how to teach “sand science.” But they gave her only books, treated her sympathetically and advised her to seek help from the local agronomist, who “lived one and a half hundred miles away and had never been to Khoshutov.” That's what they did.
Here we see that even in real difficulties, the government of the twenties did nothing to help people, even such initiators and activists as Maria Nikiforovna.
But this woman did not lose all her strength and resilience and still achieved her goal on her own. True, she also had friends in the village - Nikita Gavkin, Ermolai Kobzev and many others. However, the restoration of life in Khoshutov is entirely the merit of the “sandy” teacher. She was born in the desert, but she also had to fight with her. And everything came together: “The settlers... became calmer and more well-fed,” “the school was always full not only of children, but also of adults,” even “the desert gradually turned greener and became more welcoming.”
But Maria Nikiforovna’s main test lay ahead. It was sad and painful for her to realize that the nomads were about to arrive, although she did not yet know what to expect from them. The old people said: “There will be trouble.” And so it happened. Hordes of nomads came on August 25 and drank all the water in the wells, trampled all the greenery, gnawed everything. This was “the first real sadness in Maria Nikiforovna’s life.” And again she tries to correct the situation. This time she goes to the leader of the nomads. With “young anger” in her soul, she accuses the leader of inhumanity and evil. But he is wise and intelligent, which is what Maria notices for herself. And she has a completely different opinion about Zavukrono, who suggested leaving Khoshutovo and going to another place, Safuta.
This smart woman decided to sacrifice herself, her life for the sake of saving her village. Isn't it strength of character to give not just your youth, but your whole life to serving people, voluntarily giving up excellent happiness? Isn't it strength of character to help those who destroyed your achievements and victories?
Even this short-sighted boss recognized her amazing courage: “You, Maria Nikiforovna, could manage a whole people, and not a school.” Is it a woman’s job to “lead the people”? But it turned out that she, a simple teacher, could do it, and most importantly, strong woman.
How much she has already achieved! But how many victories she still has to win... It seems like a lot. You involuntarily believe in such a person. One can only be proud of him.
And I think Maria Nikiforovna Naryshkina herself will never have to say about herself as Zavokrono said: “For some reason I’m ashamed.” He, a man, has not accomplished such a feat in his life as the simple “sandy teacher” has accomplished and continues to accomplish.
Literature lesson on the topic: The story of A.P. Platonov “The Sandy Teacher.” Essay analysis. The problem is in the story.
Objective of the lesson: create conditions for students to develop a holistic vision of the problems in the story “The Sandy Teacher”.
Educational: introduce students to the issues, compositional and plot features story;
Developmental: development of logical and imaginative thinking; formation of dialogical skills;
Educational: using the example of the image of the main character to form an active life position, civil courage.
Lesson type: lesson of new knowledge.
Lesson format: dialogue lesson using computer slides.
Methods and techniques: partially search; visual, verbal.
Visual materials: portrait of A.P. Platonov, text of the story “The Sandy Teacher”, slide presentation, reproduction of the painting “Christ in the Desert”.
Lesson progress
I. Organizational moment.
1. Teacher's word.
The story by A.P. Platonov “The Sandy Teacher” tells the story of the life of a young teacher who belongs to a generation of honest, purposeful people who believe in a bright future, true enthusiasts of their work, striving to transform the world and devote themselves to building a new life, new relationships between people, between peoples in the era of literacy.
II. Defining a topic, setting a goal.
1 . 1) Why is the story called “The Sandy Teacher”?
2) What problems are raised in the work?
3) Let’s formulate the goals of the lesson. (slide 2)
4)Working with the epigraph: It will be difficult for you
Yes you have a heart
And it will come to the heart and mind,
And with reason, even the difficult will become easy.
(From a collection of fairy tales by A. Platonov)
III. Quiz – testing your knowledge of the text (slide 4)
1). How old was Maria Nikiforovna when she started teaching?
2). Why didn't the children in the village go to school?
3). Which new item had to be taught by a teacher?
4). Was Maria Nikiforovna able to help the inhabitants of the desert?
5). Did she stay in Khoshutov forever?
IV. Text research work.
The events of the story “The Sand Teacher” take place in the desert. According to the Western European scientist, an expert on the symbols of Carol, in the desert a person shows his strongest qualities. Jesus Christ, according to biblical tradition, went into the desert for forty days without food or drink to strengthen his spirit.
Painting “Christ in the Desert” (slide 5)
To the lyrical hero In A. S. Pushkin’s poem “The Prophet,” inspiration in the image of Seraphim also appears in the desert: We are tormented by spiritual thirst,
I dragged myself in the dark desert,
And the six-winged seraph
He appeared to me at a crossroads. (slide 6)
V. Image of the desert. (Work according to the text)(slide 7)
2. Why does the terrible picture of a devastating storm in the dead Central Asian desert end with a description of another land, “filled with the ringing of life,” which seemed to the traveler beyond the sea of dunes?
3. What did the desert mean to the villagers?
4. Find a description of the desert, transformed by the efforts of the villagers and the young teacher.
5. What is the Heroine's Action? (slide 8)
(Give your youth and your whole life to serving people, voluntarily giving up personal happiness).
Highlighting “Values” – serving people. (slide 9)
Students highlight their (modern) understanding of a given value, as well as that other understanding.
6. What is the meaning of serving people?
Hypothesis : If a person gives himself entirely to serving people, his life has meaning.
Maria realized that it was necessary to help people fight the desert
She did not lose all her strength and resilience and still achieved her goal on her own.
She decided to sacrifice herself to save her village.
Answer: The meaning of serving people is to selflessly do work that improves the lives of others.
Conclusion: People like Maria are needed. I remember the words of N. A. Nekrasov: (slide 10)
Mother Nature! If only such people
Sometimes you didn't send to the world -
Life would die out...
7. The heroine achieves results, but at what cost?
“I returned as a 70-year-old old woman, but...
VI. Regional component.
1. Until the 70s of the 20th century, visiting teachers worked in schools in our area. They, just like the “sand teacher,” were sent to us. Their merit is the education and training of local personnel, introduction to culture, etc.
Filimonova Lyudmila Arkadyevna came to work at her home school and works to this day. Her teaching experience is ___ years.
VII. Reading an essay.
VIII. Show presentation. The song "teacher" is playing
IX. Bottom line. Ratings
X. Homework.
Write a mini-essay on the topic “The role of the teacher in the village” (slide 11).
Analysis of the story “The Sandy Teacher” by A. Platonov
The action of Andrei Platonov's story “The Sandy Teacher” takes place in the 1920s in the small Central Asian village of Khoshutovo. Outside the village, a real desert begins - merciless and cold towards people.
The idea of the value of knowledge for humans and entire nations is the main idea of the story “The Sand Teacher.” The mission of the main character, teacher Maria Naryshkina, is to bring knowledge. In the conditions where Naryshkina lived, the knowledge and ability to create forest belts, preserve green spaces and grow plants turned out to be vital.
The style of the story “The Sandy Teacher” is very laconic. The heroes speak little - in Khoshutov they always speak a little, saving words and strength, because they will still be needed in the fight against the invasion of sands. The entire story of Maria before she made the fateful decision to go to work among the nomads, among a foreign people, is summarized by the author in several dozen short paragraphs. I would even call the style of the story close to reportage. The work contains few descriptions of the area, more narration and action.
But special attention The author pays attention to the feelings and emotions of the characters. They clarify the situation in which the residents of Khoshutovo, covered with sand, found themselves better than any descriptions of the landscapes. “The old watchman, crazy from silence and loneliness, rejoiced at her as if he had returned his daughter.” “A sad, slow feeling gripped the traveler, Maria Nikiforovna, when she found herself among the deserted sands on the way to Khoshutovo.”
Platonov’s syllable is very metaphorical, figurative: “a fragile growing heart,” “life oozed out in the desert.” Life in Khoshutov really barely moves, as if water is being filtered drop by drop. Here a drop of water is the focus of life itself.
The theme of cultural exchange and mutual understanding between people also occupies one of the central places in the work, Friendliness and the desire to find common language with different personalities - these are the values that are proclaimed by the author in the story. After the appearance, and in fact, the raid of the nomads, Maria Naryshkina goes to the leader of the tribe to express to him all her complaints, to dissuade him from destroying their village and spoiling green spaces. The leader of the nomads, having talked with the young woman, becomes imbued with sympathy for her. She goes to him too.
But this doesn't give a solution main problem story - how to save the fruits of your labor? How to preserve the lives of people and the well-being of villages when there is no water and there is not enough grass for everyone? “Someone dies and curses,” says the tribal leader. Naryshkina’s boss invites her to become a teacher in a nomadic settlement: to teach them to respect other people’s work and to plant greenery. Mary becomes the very helping hand that one people extends to another.
The work also touches on the theme of giving up personal life for the sake of the public good. “Will you really have to bury your youth in the sandy desert among wild nomads?...” the young teacher thinks. However, remembering the “hopeless fate of two peoples squeezed in the grip of the desert,” Maria without hesitation decides to go and teach the nomads.