A satirical depiction of reality appeared in Saltykov-Shchedrin (along with other genres) and in fairy tales. Here, as in folk tales, fantasy and reality are combined. Thus, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s animals are often humanized; they personify the vices of people.
But the writer has a cycle of fairy tales where people are the heroes. Here Saltykov-Shchedrin chooses other techniques for ridiculing vices. This is, as a rule, grotesque, hyperbole, fantasy.
This is Shchedrin’s fairy tale “The Wild Landowner”. In it, the stupidity of the landowner is taken to the limit. The writer sneers at the master’s “merits”: “The men see: although their landowner is stupid, he has a great mind. He shortened them so that there was nowhere to stick his nose; No matter where they look, everything is forbidden, not allowed, and not yours! The cattle go to water - the landowner shouts: “My water!” The chicken goes outside the outskirts - the landowner shouts: “My land!” And the earth, and the water, and the air - everything became his!”
The landowner considers himself not a man, but a kind of deity. Or at least a person of the highest rank. For him, it’s normal to enjoy the fruits of other people’s labor and not even think about it.
The men of the “wild landowner” are exhausted from hard work and cruel need. Tormented by oppression, the peasants finally prayed: “Lord! It’s easier for us to perish even with small children than to suffer like this all our lives!” God heard them, and “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.”
At first it seemed to the master that he would now live well without the peasants. And all the noble guests of the landowner approved of his decision: “Oh, how good it is! - the generals praise the landowner, - so now you won’t have that slave smell at all? “Not at all,” the landowner answers.”
It seems that the hero does not realize the deplorability of his situation. The landowner only indulges in dreams, empty in essence: “and so he walks, walks from room to room, then sits down and sits. And he thinks everything. He thinks what kind of cars he will order from England, so that everything is steam and steam, and so that there is no servile spirit at all; he thinks what a fruitful garden he will plant: here there will be pears, plums...” Without his peasants, the “wild landowner” did nothing but caress his “loose, white, crumbly body.”
It is at this moment that the climax of the tale begins. Without his peasants, the landowner, who cannot lift a finger without a peasant, begins to run wild. In Shchedrin's fairy tale cycle, full scope is given for the development of the motif of reincarnation. It was the grotesque in the description of the process of the landowner’s savagery that helped the writer show with all clarity how greedy representatives of the “conducting class” can turn into real wild animals.
But if in folk tales the process of transformation itself is not depicted, then Saltykov reproduces it in all its details. This is the unique artistic invention of the satirist. It can be called a grotesque portrait: a landowner, completely wild after the fantastic disappearance of the peasants, turns into a primitive man. “He was all overgrown with hair, from head to toe, like the ancient Esau... and his nails became like iron,” Saltykov-Shchedrin slowly narrates. “He stopped blowing his nose a long time ago, walked more and more on all fours, and was even surprised that he had not noticed before that this way of walking was the most decent and most convenient. He even lost the ability to utter articulate sounds and adopted some kind of special victory cry, a cross between a whistle, a hiss and a roar.”
Under the new conditions, all the severity of the landowner lost its force. He became helpless, like a small child. Now even “the little mouse was smart and understood that the landowner could not do him any harm without Senka. He only wagged his tail in response to the landowner’s menacing exclamation and a moment later he was already looking out at him from under the sofa, as if saying: wait a minute, stupid landowner! it's only the beginning! I will not only eat the cards, but also your robe, as soon as you oil it properly!”
Thus, the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” shows the degradation of man, the impoverishment of his spiritual world (did he even exist in this case?!), and the withering away of all human qualities.
This is explained very simply. In his fairy tales, as in his satires, with all their tragic gloom and accusatory severity, Saltykov remained a moralist and educator. Showing the horror of human fall and its most sinister vices, he still believed that in the future there would be a moral revival of society and times of social and spiritual harmony would come.
Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales, intended for adults, introduce the peculiarities of Russian society better than historical works. The story of the wild landowner is similar to an ordinary fairy tale, but it combines reality with fiction. The landowner, who becomes the hero of the story, often reads the actually existing reactionary newspaper “Vest”.
Left alone, the landowner at first rejoices that his wish has come true. Later comes the realization of one's own stupidity. The swaggering guests do not hesitate to tell him about his stupidity, realizing that the landowner has only candy left from the treats. This is also the official opinion of the police officer who collects taxes, who understands the inseparability of peasant taxes from the stability of the state.
But the landowner does not heed the voice of reason and does not listen to other people's advice. He remains strong-willed and dreams of fantastic foreign cars designed to replace men. A naive dreamer does not realize that in reality he is not able to wash himself. He is completely helpless because he doesn’t know how to do anything.
The fairy tale ends sadly: the stubborn man grows fur, gets on all fours and begins to throw himself at people. It turned out that the gentleman, noble on the outside, had the essence of a simple creature. He remained human as long as he was served food on a plate and dressed in clean clothes.
The higher authorities decided to return the peasants to the estate so that they would work, pay taxes to the treasury and produce food for their owners.
But the landowner remained wild forever. He was caught and cleaned, but he still gravitates towards forest life and does not like to wash himself. This is the hero: a ruler in the serf world, but under the care of a simple peasant, Senka.
The author laughs at the morals of Russian society. He sympathizes with the peasants and accuses them of being too patient and submissive. At the same time, the writer demonstrates the powerlessness of landowners who cannot live without servants. The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin call for respect for the people, which is the basis that supports the well-being of such landowners.
Option 2
Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote his famous work, which was called “The Wild Landowner,” in 1869. There he examines quite topical issues that are relevant both at that time and now. For him, the genre of fairy tales is central, which he writes far from being for children. The author juxtaposes the tragic with the comic in his work, using techniques such as grotesque and hyperbole, as well as Aesopian language. Thus, he ridicules the autocracy and serfdom that still exist in the country.
At the center of events is an ordinary landowner who takes special pride in the fact that noble blood flows in his veins. His goal is simply to pamper the body, relax and be yourself. He is actually resting and he can afford such a lifestyle only thanks to the men, whom he treats very cruelly; he cannot even stand the spirit of ordinary men.
And so the landowner’s desire is fulfilled, and he is left alone, while God fulfilled not the desire of the landowner, but the desire of the peasants, who are completely exhausted from constant control and supervision.
Thus, Shchedrin ridicules the fate of the Russian people, which is quite difficult. Only after a while does the hero realize that he has committed real stupidity.
And in the end, the landowner has completely gone wild, inside the supreme being of man, the most ordinary animal is hidden, which lives only to fulfill its desires.
The hero has been restored to serf society, and a simple Russian peasant named Senka will take care of him.
The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is one of the brilliant works of a writer working in the genre of satire. He has to ridicule the socio-political system, he has to expose the existing morals and types of society, in which there is a rather strange morality that is not subject to comprehension. It shows how helpless landowners are, who are constantly looked after by simple serfs. All this is ridiculed by the author, who is forced to live in such a society; it is difficult for him to cope with the existing situation, so he tries to show its absurdity and condemn what is happening in society.
Analysis of the Wild Landowner
One of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s best works was published in 1869 and is called the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner.” This work can be classified as satire. Why a fairy tale? The author chose this genre for a reason; in this way he bypassed censorship. The heroes of the work have no names. A kind of hint from the author that the landowner is a composite image and corresponds to many landowners in Rus' in the 19th century. Well, take the rest of the heroes, men and Senka, these are peasants. The author raises a very interesting topic. The main thing for the author is that the peasant, honest and hardworking people are always higher in everything than the nobles.
Thanks to the fairy tale genre, the author's work is very simple and full of irony and various artistic details. With the help of details, the author can very clearly convey the images of the characters. For example, he calls the landowner stupid and soft-bodied. Who knew no grief and enjoyed life.
The main problem of this work is the difficult life of ordinary people. In the author’s fairy tale, the landowner appears as a soulless and cruel monster; all he does is humiliate the poor peasants and try to take away even the last thing from them. The peasants prayed, there was nothing else they could do, they, as people, wanted a normal life. The landowner wanted to get rid of them and in the end, God fulfilled the desire of the peasants to live better and the desire of the landowner to get rid of the peasants. After this, it becomes clear that the entire luxurious life of the landowner is provided by the peasants. With the disappearance of the “slaves”, life changed, now the landowner became like an animal. He changed in appearance, became scarier, overgrown, and stopped eating normally. The men disappeared and life changed from bright colors to gray and dull ones. Even spending time as before, in entertainment, the landowner feels that it’s still not the same. The author reveals the real meaning of the work, which relates to real life. The boyars and landowners oppress the peasants and do not consider them as people. But, in the absence of “slaves,” they cannot live a normal life, because it is the peasants and workers who provide all the good for them personally and for the country. And the upper strata of society bring nothing more than problems and misfortunes.
The people in this work, namely the peasants, are honest people, open and loving to work. With the help of their labor, the landowner lived happily ever after. By the way, the author shows the peasants not just as one thoughtless crowd, but as smart and insightful people. In this work, justice is very important for the peasants. They considered this attitude towards themselves unfair and therefore asked God for help.
Saltykov-Shchedrin himself has great respect for the peasants, which he shows in the work. This can be seen, very clearly, when the landowner disappeared and lived without peasants and at the time when he returned. As a result, it turns out that the author leads the reader to one true opinion. It is not high-ranking officials, not officials who decide the fate of the country and each of the landowners, but the peasants. All the well-being and all the benefits of rich people rest on them. This is the main idea of the work.
One of the main characters of the work is Countess Anna Fedotovna Tomskaya, who is presented by the author as an eighty-year-old old woman
E.M. Remarque went down in history with his works on war-related themes. To be precise, thanks to works about the First World War.
The image of the pilot Alexei Meresyev has many positive personal qualities of the hero. Of course, a strong trait of his character is his persistence in achieving his goals.
The theme of serfdom and the life of the peasantry played an important role in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The writer could not openly protest the existing system. Saltykov-Shchedrin hides his merciless criticism of autocracy behind fairy-tale motives. He wrote his political tales from 1883 to 1886. In them, the author truthfully reflected the life of Russia, in which despotic and all-powerful landowners destroy hardworking men.
In this tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin reflects on the unlimited power of landowners, who abuse the peasants in every possible way, imagining themselves almost as gods. The writer also talks about the landowner’s stupidity and lack of education: “that landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” Shchedrin also expresses the powerless situation of the peasantry in Tsarist Russia in this fairy tale: “There was no torch to light the peasant’s light, there was no rod with which to sweep out the hut.” The main idea of the fairy tale was that the landowner cannot and does not know how to live without the peasant, and the landowner dreamed of work only in nightmares. So in this fairy tale, the landowner, who had no idea about work, becomes a dirty and wild beast. After all the peasants abandoned him, the landowner never even washed himself: “Yes, I’ve been walking around unwashed for so many days!”
The writer caustically ridicules all this negligence of the master class. The life of a landowner without a peasant is far from reminiscent of normal human life.
The master became so wild that “he was covered with hair from head to toe, his nails became like iron, he even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds. But he had not yet acquired a tail.” Life without peasants in the district itself has become disrupted: “nobody pays taxes, no one drinks wine in taverns.” “Normal” life begins in the district only when the peasants return to it. In the image of this one landowner, Saltykov-Shchedrin showed the life of all the gentlemen in Russia. And the final words of the tale are addressed to each landowner: “He plays grand solitaire, yearns for his former life in the forests, washes himself only under duress, and moos from time to time.”
This tale is full of folk motifs and is close to Russian folklore. There are no sophisticated words in it, but there are simple Russian words: “said and done”, “peasant trousers”, etc. Saltykov-Shchedrin sympathizes with the people. He believes that the suffering of the peasants will not be endless, and freedom will triumph.
The well-known writer Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin was a truly great creator. As an official, he skillfully denounced the ignorant nobles and praised the ordinary Russian people. The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the list of which numbers more than a dozen, are the property of our classical literature.
"Wild Landowner"
All tales of Mikhail Evgrafovich are written using sharp sarcasm. With the help of heroes (animals or people), he ridicules not so much human vices as the feeblemindedness of higher ranks. The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the list of which would be incomplete without the story about the wild landowner, help us see the attitude of the 19th century nobles towards their serfs. The story is small, but it makes you think about many serious things.
A landowner with the strange name Urus Kuchum Kildibaev lives for his own pleasure: he reaps a rich harvest, has luxurious housing and a lot of land. But one day he got tired of the abundance of peasants in his house and decided to get rid of them. The landowner prayed to God, but he did not heed his requests. He began to mock the men in every possible way and began to pressure them with taxes. And then the Lord took pity on them, and they disappeared.
At first, the stupid landowner was happy: now no one bothered him. But later he began to feel their absence: no one cooked his food or cleaned the house. The visiting generals and the police chief called him a fool. But he didn’t understand why they treated him like that. As a result, he became so wild that he even became like an animal: he grew hair, climbed trees, and tore his prey with his hands and ate it.
Saltykov-Shchedrin masterfully portrayed the satirical portrayal of the nobleman’s vices. The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” shows how stupid a person can be who does not understand that he lived well only thanks to his men.
In the end, all the serfs return to the landowner, and life flourishes again: meat is sold at the market, the house is clean and orderly. But Urus Kuchum never returned to its previous appearance. He still moos, missing his old wild life.
"The Wise Minnow"
Many people remember Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales from childhood, the list of which is quite large: “How a Man Fed Two Generals”, “The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “Kisel”, “The Horse”. True, we begin to understand the real meaning of these stories when we become adults.
Such is the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow”. He lived all his life and was afraid of everything: cancer, water fleas, people and even his own brother. His parents bequeathed to him: “Look both ways!” And the minnow decided to hide all his life and not catch anyone’s eye. And he lived like this for more than a hundred years. I have never seen or heard anything in my entire life.
Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tale "The Wise Minnow" makes fun of stupid people who are ready to live their whole lives in fear of any danger. Now the old fish thought about what he lived for. And he felt so sad because he did not see the white light. I decided to emerge from behind my snag. And after that no one saw him.
The writer laughs that even a pike won’t eat such an old fish. The gudgeon in the work is called wise, but this is undoubtedly because it is extremely difficult to call him smart.
Conclusion
The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin (their list is listed above) have become a real treasure trove of Russian literature. How clearly and wisely the author describes human shortcomings! These stories have not lost their relevance in our time. In this they are similar to fables.
The tale “The Wild Landowner” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, like his other satirical works, is intended for an adult audience. It was first published in the progressive literary magazine Otechestvennye zapiski in 1869, when it was headed by editor-publisher Nikolai Nekrasov, a friend and like-minded person of the writer.
Fairytale plot
The small work took up several pages of the magazine. The tale tells of a stupid landowner who pestered the peasants living on his land because of their "slave smell". The peasants disappear, and he remains the only occupant on his estate. The inability to take care of oneself and run a household leads first to impoverishment, and later to savagery and complete loss of sanity.
A madman hunts hares, which he eats alive, and talks to a bear. The situation reaches the provincial authorities, who order the peasants to be returned, the wild ones to be caught and left under the supervision of the servant.
Literary devices and images used
The work was typical of the author, who used satire and metaphorical devices to convey his ideas to the general public. The cheerful style, lively dialogues written in everyday colloquial language, cynical humor attracted readers with the ease of presentation. The allegorical images were thought-provoking and were extremely understandable both for serious subscribers of the magazine and for young cadets and young ladies.
Despite the fabulous narrative, Saltykov-Shchedrin directly mentions several times the real newspaper “Vest”, with whose editorial policy he did not agree. The author makes it the main reason for the protagonist's insanity. Using a satirical technique helps to ridicule a competitor and at the same time convey to the reader the inconsistency of ideas that can lead to absurdity.
The mention of the Moscow theater actor Mikhail Sadovsky, who was at the peak of his popularity at that time, is designed to attract the attention of an idle audience. Sadovsky's remarks in interrogative form indicate the absurdity of the actions of a madman and set the reader's judgments in the direction intended by the author.
Saltykov-Shchedrin uses his writing talent to present his political position and personal attitude to what is happening in an accessible form. The allegories and metaphors used in the text were perfectly understandable to his contemporaries. The reader from our time needs clarification.
Allegories and political background
The abolition of serfdom in 1861 caused violent cataclysms in the economic state of Russia. The reform was timely, but had a lot of controversial issues for all classes. Peasant uprisings caused civil and political aggravation.
The wild landowner, whom both the author and the characters constantly call stupid, is a collective image of a radical nobleman. The mental breakdown of centuries-old traditions was difficult for landowners. The recognition of the “man” as a free person with whom it was necessary to build new economic relations was happening with difficulty.
According to the plot, the temporarily obliged, as the serfs began to be called after the reform, were carried away by God in an unknown direction. This is a direct hint at the implementation of the rights that the reform has given them. The retrograde nobleman rejoices in the absence "manly smell", but demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the consequences. It is difficult for him to come to terms with the loss of free labor, but he is ready to starve, just not to have relations with former serfs.
The landowner constantly reinforces his delusional ideas by reading the newspaper Vest. The publication existed and was distributed at the expense of part of the nobility, dissatisfied with the ongoing reform. The materials published in it supported the destruction of the serfdom system, but did not recognize the peasants' ability to administrative organization and self-government.
Propaganda blamed the peasant class for the ruin of landowners and economic decline. In the finale, when the madman is forcibly brought back into human form, the police officer takes the newspaper from him. The author’s prophecy came true; a year after the publication of “The Wild Landowner,” the owner of “Vesti” went bankrupt and circulation ceased.
Saltykov describes the economic consequences that can occur without the labor of those temporarily obliged, without allegories: “not a piece of meat or a pound of bread in the market”, “robberies, robbery and murders have spread in the district”. The nobleman himself lost “its body is loose, white, crumbly”, became impoverished, became wild and finally lost his mind.
The police captain is responsible for straightening out the situation. A representative of the civil service voices the author’s main idea that “the treasury cannot exist without taxes and duties, and even more so without wine and salt regalia”. He shifts the blame for disruption of order and ruin from the peasants to “the stupid landowner who is the instigator of all the troubles”.
The tale of the “Wild Landowner” is a typical example of a political feuilleton, timely and vividly reflecting what was happening in the 60s of the 19th century.