The latest activity is the tale of the wild landowner. Analysis of “Wild Landowner” Saltykov-Shchedrin

09.04.2019

Analysis of a fairy tale "Wild landowner" Saltykova-Shchedrin

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. Their political tales he writes 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 a 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: “no one 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.

Landowner with strange name Urus Kuchum Kildibaev lives for 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 began to look 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.

Analysis of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

Shchedrin's tales in miniature contain the problems and images of the entire work of the great satirist. Of the thirty-two tales, twenty-nine were written in last decade his life (most from 1882 to 1886), and only three tales were created in 1869. Fairy tales seem to sum up the forty years creative activity writer.

Shchedrin often resorted to the fairy-tale genre in his work. There are elements of fairy-tale fiction in “The Story of a City,” and in satirical novel“Modern Idyll” and the chronicle “Abroad” include completed fairy tales. It is no coincidence that Shchedrin’s genre flourished in the 1980s. It was during this period of rampant political reaction in Russia that the satirist had to look for a form that was most convenient for circumventing censorship and at the same time the closest, understandable to the common reader.

When creating his fairy tales, Shchedrin relied not only on experience folk art, but also on the satirical fables of the great Krylov, on the traditions of Western European fairy tales. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tales that combines fantasy with reality.

As in all of Shchedrin’s works, fairy tales confront two social forces: the working people and their exploiters. The people act under the masks of kind and defenseless animals and birds (and often without a mask, under the name “man”), the exploiters act in the guise of predators. The symbol of peasant Russia, tortured by exploiters, is the image of Konyaga from the fairy tale of the same name. Horse is a peasant, a worker, a source of life for everyone. Thanks to him, bread grows in the vast fields of Russia, but he himself has no right to eat this bread. His destiny is eternal hard labor. “There is no end to work! Work exhausts the whole meaning of his existence...” exclaims the satirist

The generalized image of the worker - the breadwinner of Russia, who is tormented by the oppressors, is found in the most early tales Shchedrin: “How one man fed two generals”, “Wild landowner”. Showing the hard labor life of the working people, Shchedrin mourns the obedience of the people, their humility before the oppressors. He laughs bitterly at how a man, on the orders of the generals, twists a rope with which they then tie him.

In almost all fairy tales, the image of the peasant people is depicted by Shchedrin with love, breathing with indestructible power and nobility. The man is honest, straightforward, kind, unusually sharp and smart. He can do everything: get food, sew clothes; he conquers the elemental forces of nature, jokingly swimming across the “ocean-sea”. And the man treats his enslavers mockingly, without losing his sense of self-esteem. Generals from a fairy tale “Like one man procuring two generalsmil" They look like pathetic pygmies compared to the giant man. To depict them, the satirist uses completely different colors. They “understand nothing,” they are cowardly and helpless, greedy and stupid. Meanwhile, they imagine themselves to be noble people, they push the peasant around: “You’re sleeping, you couch potato!... Now go to work!” Having escaped death and become rich thanks to the peasant, the generals send him a pitiful handout to the kitchen: “... a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver - have fun, peasant!” The satirist emphasizes what people can expect from exploiters better life useless. The people can achieve their happiness only by throwing off their parasites.

In a fairy tale "Wild Landowner" Shchedrin seemed to summarize his thoughts on the liberation of the peasants. He poses here an unusually acute problem of the post-reform relationship between the serf-owning nobles and the peasantry completely ruined by the reform: “The cattle will go out to water - the landowner shouts: my water! a chicken wanders into the outskirts - the landowner shouts: my land! And the earth, and the water, and the air - everything became his! There was no torch to light the man's light, there was no rod to sweep out the hut with. So the peasants prayed to the Lord God all over the world:

God! It’s easier for us to perish even with small children than to toil like this all our lives!”

This landowner, like the generals from another fairy tale, had no idea about work. Abandoned by his peasants, he immediately turns into a dirty and wild animal. He becomes a forest predator. The wild landowner, like the generals, regains his outward human appearance only after his peasants return. Scolding the wild landowner for his stupidity, the police officer tells him that without peasant taxes and duties the state cannot exist, that without peasants everyone will die of hunger, “you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread at the market,” and the masters won’t have any money. . The people are the creator of wealth, and the ruling classes are only consumers of this wealth.

On the question of ways to change social order Russia is fought in vain by Leva the Fool (in the fairy tale “The Fool”), seasonal workers from “The Way and the Road”, the raven-petitioner from the fairy tale of the same name, the idealistic crucian carp, the boy Seryozha from “The Christmas Tale” and many others.

Heroes of fairy tales "Selfless Hare" and “Sane Hare” are philistine cowards who rely on the kindness of predators. The hares do not doubt the right of the wolf and the fox to take their lives; they consider it quite natural that the strong eat the weak, but they hope to touch the wolf’s heart with their honesty and humility. “Or maybe the wolf... ha ha... will have mercy on me!” Predators are still predators. It doesn’t help Zaitsev that they “didn’t start revolutions, didn’t go out with weapons in their hands.”

Shchedrinsky became the personification of wingless and vulgar philistinism wise minnow- the hero of the fairy tale of the same name. The meaning of life for this “enlightened, moderate-liberal” coward was self-preservation, avoiding conflicts and fighting. Therefore, the minnow lived to a ripe old age unharmed. But this life was humiliating. It consisted of continuous trembling for one's skin. “He lived and trembled - that’s all.”

Shchedrin's sarcasm manifested itself most sharply and openly in fairy tales depicting the bureaucratic apparatus of the autocracy and the ruling elite, right up to the tsar. In the fairy tales “The Toy Business of Little People”, “The Watchful Eye”, “Idle Conversation”, images of officials appear robbing the people.

In a fairy tale "Eagle Patron" a devastating parody of the Tsar and the ruling classes is given. The eagle is the enemy of science, art, the defender of darkness and ignorance. He destroyed the nightingale for his free songs, he “dressed the literate woodpecker... in shackles and imprisoned him in a hollow forever,” and ruined the crow men. It ended with the crows rebelling, “the whole herd took off from their place and flew away,” leaving the eagle to die of starvation. “Let this serve as a lesson to the eagles!” - the satirist meaningfully concludes the tale.

With extraordinary courage and directness, the death of the autocracy is spoken of in the fairy tale. "Bogatyr". In it, the author ridicules the belief in the “rotten” Bogatyr, who gave up his long-suffering country to destruction and mockery. Ivanushka the Fool “broke the hollow with his fist” where the Bogatyr was sleeping, and showed everyone that he had long since rotted and that no help could be expected from the Bogatyr.

The masks of the animal world could not hide the political content of Shchedrin's fairy tales. Transferring human traits to animal world created comic effect, clearly exposed the absurdity of existing reality.

The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist uses traditional fairy-tale techniques, images, proverbs, sayings, and sayings.

In an elegy fairy tale, the hero pours out his soul, reproaches himself for being separated from active action. These are the thoughts of Shchedrin himself.

Images of fairy tales have come into use and have become household names for many decades.

A fairy tale is one of the epic genres of literature, which is characterized by deep subtext. That is why Saltykov-Shchedrin turned to this genre. His fairy tales are a separate, independent stage of his work, which contains everything that the writer accumulated over four decades of his career. creative path. He himself addresses his tales to “children of considerable age”, that is, adults. And the author addresses them quite harshly, intelligently, ridiculing human shortcomings and vices.
Shchedrin's tales are distinguished by their true nationality. Raising in them the most pressing issues of Russian reality, the writer acts as a defender of the people and an exposer of the ruling class. Saltykov's tales actually contain some borrowings from folk tales. These include magical transformations, a free form of presentation, and the main characters are representatives of the animal world.
Shchedrin's fairy tale is, of course, a very special variation of the fairy tale form. The writer for the first time filled it with acute social meaning, forced it to reveal dramas and comedies human life. A master of Aesopian language, in fairy tales written mainly during the years of severe censorship, Shchedrin uses the technique of allegory. Under the guise of animals and birds, he depicts representatives of various classes and social groups. Moreover, the author evilly ridicules not only the all-powerful masters, but also ordinary hard workers with their slave psychology. Saltykov-Shchedrin mercilessly criticizes the patience and irresponsibility of the ordinary Russian people.
I would like to dwell on the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” which is written very sarcastic and witty. It contrasts representatives of various social strata- people and nobles. With caustic irony, the author writes: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner, he lived and looked at the light and rejoiced. He had enough of everything: peasants, bread, livestock, land, and gardens. And that landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” Of course, this landowner did not know how to do anything and only dreamed of getting rid of the “servant spirit.”
One day God heeded his prayers, and finally the peasant world disappeared. And the “Russian nobleman Prince Urus-Kuchum-Kildibaev” was left alone. Attracts attention unusual surname. Such “multi-story” surnames with a Turkic sound belonged to ancient, highest aristocratic families, but under Shchedrin’s pen it takes on an absurd and very funny sound.
The landowner was left alone. Initially, he appears to us in the guise of a “firm-hearted” unshakable serf owner, convinced of the natural, natural superiority of the upper circles over simple, ordinary people who irritate him even with their presence.
But gradually he became wild: “... all over him, from head to toe, he was overgrown with hair, like the ancient Esau, and his nails became like iron... he walked more and more on all fours... He even lost the ability to utter articulate sounds. .. But I haven’t acquired a tail yet.” The hint is quite clear - the peasants live by their labor, and therefore they have a lot of everything: bread, meat, and fruits. And it turns out that deep down the supposedly noble personality is not even a savage, but a primitive animal. The “prince” looks like a person only as long as Senka feeds him, washes him and gives him clean clothes, in a word, keeps him in human form - collective image peasant.
But without “slaves” it is not only the landowner who suffers. Things are going badly for the city (the supply of food from the estate has stopped) and even for the state (there is no one to pay taxes). The author is convinced that the creator of basic material and spiritual values is the people, it is they who are the drinker and breadwinner, the support of the state. But at the same time, Shchedrin sincerely complains that the people are too patient, downtrodden and dark. He hints that the dominant forces standing over the people, although cruel, are not so omnipotent, and if desired, they can be defeated.

Tasks and tests on the topic “Written analysis of a fairy tale (based on the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin)”

Language and speech. Oral and written speech. Conversational and book speech - Speech 5th grade
Lessons: 3 Assignments: 8 Tests: 3
The topic and main idea of the text. Parts of text. Breaking text into paragraphs - Text 2nd grade
Lessons: 1 Assignments: 11 Tests: 1

Analysis of the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" by Saltykov-Shchedrin

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.

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.