Composition.

The image of Taras Skotinin in the comedy by D.I. Fonvizin "Undergrowth"

Taras Skotinin is one of the main characters in D.I. Fonvizin’s “Undergrowth” climedia. He is a nobleman by origin. He was the brother of Mrs. Prostakova.
I imagine this hero as a middle-aged man, with a thick build and a stupid expression on his face.
This character was with a mean character. He wanted to marry Sophia because of the pigs that Sophia, Starodum's niece, bred.
I believe that Skotinin is a “worthy” representative of his kind, family: he morally and morally degraded, turned into an “animal”, as his surname speaks of. He did not have a proper upbringing in childhood and he was ignorant.
I think that Skotinin is a negative character, rather than a positive one, because he has a bad character, he did everything for personal gain; he was mean and cunning. The author’s attitude towards him is also bad, because the author makes fun of him and says that he is ignorant and without lack of education.

"Undergrowth" was written in 1781. At that time, the most revolutionary idea in Russia was the idea of ​​an enlightened monarchy proclaimed by the French Encyclopedists.

The comedy "Undergrowth" is rightly considered the pinnacle of Fonvizin's work and the entire domestic dramaturgy of the 18th century. Keeping in touch with the worldview of classicism, comedy has become a deeply innovative work.

The play ridicules vices (rudeness, cruelty, stupidity, ignorance, greed), which, according to the author, require immediate correction. The problem of education is central in the ideas of the Enlightenment, it is also the main one in Fonvizin's comedy, which is emphasized by its title.

The specificity of the depicted reality corresponds to and language works (one of the rules of classicism). For example, speech Prostakova: rude in addressing servants ("swindler", "cattle", "thieves' mug" - tailor Trishka; "beast", "scoundrel" - nanny Eremeevna), caring and affectionate in conversation with her son Mitrofanushka ("live a century, a century study, my dear friend", "darling"). The "correct", bookish language forms the basis of the speech of positive characters: it is spoken by Starodum, Pravdin, Milon and Sophia. Thus, the speech of the heroes, as it were, divides the characters into negative and positive (one of the rules of classicism). Observed in comedy and rule of three unities. The action of the play takes place in the estate of Mrs. Prostakova (unity of place). The unity of time is also present. The unity of action presupposes the subordination of the action of the play to the author's task, in this case, the solution of the problem of true education. In the comedy, the unenlightened (Prostakova, Skotinin, Prostakov, Mitrofanushka) are opposed to the educated (Starodum, Sophia, Pravdin, Milon) characters.

This completes the adherence to the traditions of classicism.

For Fonvizin, unlike the classicists, it was important not only to pose the problem of education, but also to show how circumstances (conditions) influence the formation of a person's character. This significantly distinguishes comedy from the works of classicism. The Undergrowth laid the foundations for a realistic reflection of reality in Russian fiction. The author reproduces the atmosphere of landlord arbitrariness, exposes the greed and cruelty of the Prostakovs, impunity and ignorance of the Skotinins. In his comedy about education, he raises the problem of serfdom, its corrupting influence on both the people and the nobles. Unlike the works of classicism, where the action developed in accordance with the solution of one problem, "Undergrowth" is a multi-dark work. Its main problems are closely related to each other: the problem of education - with the problems of serfdom and state power. To expose vices the author uses such techniques as speaking surnames, self-disclosure of negative characters, subtle irony on the part of positive characters. In the mouth of goodies, Fonvizin puts criticism of the "corrupted age", idle nobles and ignorant landowners. The theme of serving the Fatherland, the triumph of justice is also carried through positive images.

The nominal meaning of the surname Starodum(favorite hero Fonvizin) emphasizes his commitment to the ideals of the old, Peter's times. Starodum's monologues are aimed (in accordance with the tradition of classicism) at educating "those in power", including the empress. Thus, the coverage of reality in comedy is unusually wide compared to strictly classic works.

The system of comedy images is also innovative. Actors are traditionally divided into positive and negative. But Fonvizin goes beyond classicism, introducing heroes from the lower class into the play. These are serfs, serfs (Eremeevna, Trishka, teachers Kuteikin and Tsyferkin). Fonvizin's attempt to give at least a brief background of the characters, to reveal different facets of the characters of some of them, was also new. So, vicious, cruel serf-owner Prostakov in the finale, she becomes an unhappy mother, rejected by her own son. She even evokes our sympathy.

Fonvizin's innovation manifested itself and in creating character speech. It is brightly individualized and serves as a means of their characterization. Thus, formally following the rules of classicism, Fonvizin's comedy turns out to be a deeply innovative work. It was the first socio-political comedy on the Russian stage.

Prostakov - noblewoman, mother of Mitrofanushka and sister of Taras Skotinin. Her surname indicates the lack of education and ignorance of the heroine, as well as the fact that at the end of the play she gets into trouble.

Prostakova is the driving face of comedy. She plots to marry Mitrofan to a wealthy ward Sofya (against her original intention to pass her off as her brother). Later, when her plans fall apart, Prostakova wants to secretly marry the young (despite Sophia's protests).
The main feature in Prostakova's character is a crazy, animal love for her son. She believes that everything that is beneficial for Mitrofan is good, what is unprofitable is bad. In this case, the way in which the benefit is achieved does not matter. So, trying to eliminate her son's rival - her brother Skotinin, she clings to his neck, etc. Thus, her moral and moral concepts are completely perverted. P.A. Vyazemsky wrote about Prostakova: “A mixture of arrogance and meanness, cowardice and malice, vile inhumanity towards everyone and tenderness, equally vile, to his son, for all that ignorance, from which ... all these properties flow ... ”Fonvizin sees two reasons for the “malice” of the heroine . The first, internal, reason is Prostakova's ignorance, not ennobled by her upbringing. The second, social, is the decree of Catherine II "On the Liberty of the Nobles", which the ignorant nobles understood as complete power over the serfs without any restrictions. At the end of the play, Prostakova is defeated. She loses everything: power over the serfs, the estate, her son. Its collapse is the defeat of the entire previous system of education and the guarantee of the victory of new ideas, declared by the positive characters of the play.

Mitrofanushka- the son of the landowners Prostakov. He is considered undersized, tk. He is 16 years old and has not reached the age of majority. Observing the decree of the king, Mitrofanushka studies. But he does it with great reluctance. He is distinguished by stupidity, ignorance and laziness (scenes with teachers).

Mitrofan is rude and cruel. He does not put his father in anything, mocks teachers and serfs. He takes advantage of the fact that his mother does not have a soul in him, and turns her around as she wants.

Mitrofan stopped in his development. Sophia says about him: “Although he is 16 years old, he has already reached the last degree of his perfection and will not go far.”

Mitrofan combines the features of a tyrant and a slave. When Prostakova's plan to marry her son to a rich pupil, Sofya, fails, the undergrowth behaves like a slave. He humbly asks for forgiveness and humbly accepts "his sentence" from Starodum - to go to serve ("For me, where they are told"). Slave upbringing was instilled in the hero, on the one hand, by the serf nanny Eremeevna, and, on the other hand, by the whole world of the Prostakovs-Skotinins, whose concepts of honor are perverted.
Through the image of Mitrofan, Fonvizin shows the degradation of the Russian nobility: from generation to generation, ignorance increases, and the rudeness of feelings reaches animal instincts. It is not for nothing that Skotinin calls Mitrofan "the damned ingot." The reason for such degradation is in the wrong, disfiguring upbringing.

The image of Mitrofanushka and the very concept of "undergrowth" has become a household word. Now they say that about ignorant and stupid people.

Taras Skotinin- nobleman, brother of Prostakova. Extremely ignorant, stupid. The only interest of his life is the pigs, which he was breeding. For the sake of money, he expected to marry Sophia, Starodum's niece. Because of this, he competed with his nephew Mitrofan, clashed with Prostakova: “It will come to breaking, I will bend, so you will crack.” This hero is a "worthy" representative of his family: he morally and morally degraded, turned into an animal, as his surname says. The reason for such degradation is ignorance, the lack of proper education: “... if it wasn’t for Skotinin, he would want to learn something.”

Starodum Sophia's uncle His surname means that the hero follows the principles of the era of Peter I (the old era): "My father constantly told me the same thing: have a heart, have a soul, and you will be a man at all times."

In the comedy, Starodum appears late (at the end of the apparition). He saves (together with Milon and Pravdin) Sophia from the tyranny of Prostakova, evaluates her and Mitrofan's upbringing. Starodum also proclaims the principles of a reasonable state structure, moral education and enlightenment.
The upbringing of a nobleman, according to Starodum, is the business of the state. It must include both education of the mind and education of the heart. Moreover, education of the heart is in the first place. After all, without a soul, "the most enlightened clever girl is a miserable creature." Education should be based on the strength of a positive and negative example and "set the welfare of the fatherland as its criterion." Starodum has a detailed biography. He is 60 years old, he served at court and retired. After a long time he lived in Siberia, where he made a fortune with his work. Starodum wants to make Sophia happy, finds her a groom and makes her his heiress. This hero is straightforward and insightful. He sees through Prostakova and her family and tells them everything that he thinks about them.

Servants and teachers have in their speech the characteristic features of the estates and parts of society to which they belong. Speech Eremeevna are constant excuses and desires to please.

Eremeevna, Mitrofan's nanny, is drawn with great artistic power. Fonvizin convincingly shows what a corrupting influence serfdom had on domestic servants, how it disfigures, perverts their inherent good human qualities, develops and educates them in slavish humiliation. For forty years Yeremeevna has been serving Prostakov-Skotinin. She is selflessly devoted to them, slavishly attached to the house, she has a highly developed sense of duty. Not sparing herself, she protects Mitrofan. When Skotinin wants to kill Mitrofan, Yeremeevna, “shielding Mitrofan, going berserk and raising her fists,” as Fonvizin pointed out, shouts: “I’ll die on the spot, but I won’t give the child away. Sunsya, sir, just show yourself if you please. I'll scratch those walleyes." But this devotion and sense of duty acquire a distorted, slavish character from Eremeevna. She has no sense of human dignity. There is not only no hatred for their inhuman oppressors, but even no protest. Serving her tormentors, "not sparing her stomach (i.e., life)," Eremeevna lives in constant fear, trembles before her fierce mistress. "Oh, he's leaving him! Where should my head go? she screams in despair and fear, seeing how Skotinin approaches Mitrofan with threats. And when Milon pushes Eremeevna away from Sofya, Eremeevna yells: “My little head is gone!”
And for such selfless and faithful service, Eremeevna receives only beatings and hears only such appeals from Prostakova and Mitrofan as a beast, a dog's daughter, an old witch, an old grunt. Hard and tragic is the fate of Eremeevna, forced to serve the fiendish landlords, who are unable to appreciate her faithful service.

The comedy "Undergrowth" by Fonvizin is the brightest work of classicism. The influence of the literary method can be traced both on the features of the construction of the plot (the unity of time and place) and on the formation of images. One of the heroes who can rightly be called a traditional classic character is Skotinin. The minor Mitrofan and Mrs. Prostakova, according to the plot of the play, act as his relatives and the same negative characters, however, unlike the image of a man, their images are more complicated by psychologism. Skotinin, on the other hand, is a stereotyped composite character, representing a whole social layer of stupid, uneducated, rude and cruel landowners.

A special place in the analysis of the image of Skotinin is occupied by the characteristics of his surname - in "The Undergrowth" as a classic work, the names are "talking" and allow you to immediately determine the main personal qualities of each hero. The surname "Skotinin" indicates not only the man's love for pigs (remember that pigs were the only living creatures with whom he was pleased to spend time, and for Sophia's inheritance he wanted to redeem all the pigs in the world), but also "bestial", animal qualities of the hero - ignorance, rudeness, disrespect for others, lack of morality and honor. In the image of Skotinin, Fonvizin showed how a person can degrade. Ridiculing the hero's stupidity, the author denounced the real horrors of Russian society of that era - a decline in morals, bordering on likening a person to domestic animals, "cattle". And, as Fonvizin emphasizes, this "malice" is transmitted through bad upbringing from parents to children.

The image of Skotinin in the system of characters "Undergrowth"

Skotinin is an unambiguously negative character, causing only negative emotions in the reader. In the system of characters, he is opposed to Milon, Sophia's fiancé. According to the plot of the play, Skotinin also claimed the girl's hand. However, unlike the officer who loved and respected Sophia from childhood, saw her as an independent person and his future wife, for Skotinin only her inheritance was important. The man did not ask the girl if she wanted to marry him, he was not at all interested in her wishes, character and values ​​\u200b\u200b- Skotinin was not even going to allocate a normal room to Sofya after marrying. At the same time, he is guided by the outdated norms of Domostroy, which he adopted from his landlord parents.

In addition, as a landowner, Skotinin is opposed to Pravdin. Uncle Mitrofan believes that the peasants can be disposed of at their own discretion - to take away their last penny, to beat them regardless of whether they are guilty of something, to create terrible conditions for life. Pravdin, on the other hand, is guided by the opposite, humane attitudes, focused on a fair attitude towards each person, the value of the individual and common sense.

Thus, a detailed characterization of Skotinin in The Undergrowth shows that by bringing a hero of such a plan into the systems of characters, Fonvizin wanted to show the horror of the degradation of his contemporary landowners, stressed the need for changes in the upbringing and education of the entire Russian society.

Artwork test

Skotinin is not a respectable, not educated, boorish and materialistic person. The character's last name speaks volumes about his personality. The hero's fanatical love for the dirtiest and ungrateful animals - pigs - is above his own dignity and, perhaps, all moral qualities combined.

Moreover, Skotinin himself does not deny his essence, he is even proud of himself in many statements. For him, self-education, realization and behavior accepted in a normal society are all that is not characteristic of his “beautiful” and long-lived surname. Neither parents, nor grandparents, and, moreover, Taras himself never studied anything, and in their family this process is considered unnecessary and humiliating. All that is needed for this man to be happy: dues from the peasants, with the most cruel, assault, satiety and dishonor, and ... more pigs.

Characteristics of the hero

Taras is a beautiful and ancient name, denoting a big bull, a warrior, a wall - protection. However, it is in this comedy that the most negative side of his name is projected onto the character of Skotinin: confusion and discord, inflexibility, strength in the name of his own benefit. As you know, in Fonvizin's comedy "Undergrowth" the names and surnames of the characters speak literally about the characters. And Skotinin in this work is the most negative of all possible people. Perhaps there is no better name for such a person.

Sadly, the image of Taras is not an invention. For many centuries in the history of Russia, people have manifested their existence, in which the gene of swinishness is simply laid down. All for yourself and for yourself. Absolutely everyone owes it. Everyone is to blame, except for him, everyone around is fools, freaks and moral freaks including, and Taras Skotinin is the one who adequately perceives his essence and therefore is the best. Most likely, there will be no explanation for such persistence of character. This is sheer arrogance and selfishness.

From this person there is no life either for him or for other peasants. His behavior and goals confuse (to put it mildly) even his own sister, who speaks about him that the pig is more important to him than his own wife and the cattle in his yard live many times better than peasant workers. Skotinin does not deny this fact and continues to rip people to the bone, does not forget to hand out cuffs indiscriminately to both men and women.

The image of the hero in the work

Skotinin is a pig, a relative of pigs - that's what he calls himself. Even the craving for Sophia, as a family hearth, is based on her inheritance. Neither she, nor the land itself, which belongs to her, are needed by Skotinin. Base desires to receive money, with which he would buy even more pigs - the superficial thinking of an uneducated person. Like a sick alcoholic who is given a chance to reform, pay for treatment and growth, and he drinks the help. In the case of Skotinin, only the tribal rank saves him, to stay afloat.

According to the scenario, there is a complete degradation of the personality, not a desire to increase the mind, but a thirst for money. As a rule, one fictional character in the works of the great authors of those times is none other than a society whose lifestyle is the character of this hero

Where he raised various problems and created different heroes, representatives of a kind. One of the characters in the work of classicism is Skotinin in the Undergrowth, whose characterization we need to do on assignment.

Characteristics of Skotinin briefly with quotes

Skotinin is one of the negative characters, in whose image a generalized characteristic is collected not only of the character of Skotinin, but also of all landowners who were rude, uncouth and cruel. And in order for the characterization of Skotinin to be accurate, in my essay I will make a characterization of Skotinin, taking out quotes from the work.

So, working on the characterization of Skotinin from the comedy Undergrowth, it is impossible not to dwell on his last name. She is very talkative. Already the surname tells a lot and says about what and who this character is. Here we can conclude that this person has a bestial attitude towards the peasants and towards others. He is rude, he is despotic, stern, in whom "every fault is to blame", that is, without understanding what's what, he is ready to punish the peasants for any offense. It's easy for him to beat a peasant. As Skotinin says, isn't he a nobleman who is allowed to beat the servants when he pleases. In addition, the author named the character Skotinin, and because he is very fond of breeding pigs, it even got to the point that he is ready to marry Sophia, but not for love, but because the girl has pigs.

Skotinin himself is a representative of a noble family. As the writer writes, the Skotinins are a great and ancient family. He is a poor landowner who has a small income from his farm. True, he is not only poor in terms of material, he is also poor in terms of moral, spiritual, in terms of education. This is a representative of a society that has degraded, a representative of the ignorant and ignorant. This ignoramus has no human qualities, and here again the surname speaks for itself, because this person is like an animal. Skotinin is looking for profit everywhere, he is cunning and mean.

Creating such a character in the work, the writer showed the degradation of the people of that time, focusing on the fact that it is time to start changes, it is time to start educating people, their education, otherwise the country simply will not have a future.

The image and characteristics of Skotinin in the comedy "Undergrowth"

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Fonvizin, Undergrowth. What do you see as the conflict of the comedy "Undergrowth"? Essay on the topic: the problem of education in D.I. Fonvizin "Undergrowth"


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