What qualities of a hero make him a weirdo. Characteristics of the image of the main character of Shukshin’s story “The Freak” - Any essay on the topic. How did Chudik stand out from his environment?
Vasily Makarovich Shukshin is known throughout the world not only as a wonderful actor, film director and screenwriter, but above all as a talented writer who, in his short works, showed the life of ordinary people. The story “The Freak,” according to Wikipedia, was written by him in 1967 and immediately published in the magazine “New World.”
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Genre and style features
Vasily Shukshin in his story "Weirdo", which can be read online at any time, shows a small episode of the life of its hero, which reflects his entire fate. From this short passage, his whole life becomes clear and understandable: both what the main character had in the past and what awaits him in the future.
If you compare this story by Vasily Shukshin with the rest of his works presented in print and online, you will notice that there is very little dialogue in it. But in the monologue of the main character, which he constantly pronounces within himself, you can see his idea of the world, find out what he lives by, what emotions overcome him. The ingenuous hero of Shukshin “Weird”, the summary that is in this article appears before the reader in such a way that somewhere he wants to sympathize, but somewhere else he can condemn.
Problems of the story
In the story “The Freak,” Vasily Shukshin raises a problem that can be seen in many of his works. Relations between city and village residents have always been and remain a pressing problem. The main character notices that the people in the village are simple, hard-working. They want to change their life to a different one . Among them there are heroes that the village can be proud of.
The story “Weirdo” raises another important issue - family relationships, which should be built on love, trust and understanding. But unfortunately, this does not always happen.
Heroes of the story
Despite the fact that Shukshin’s story has one main character, there are many minor characters. This allows you to understand the content of the story. Among all the actors, the following can be distinguished:
Plot and composition
The plot of the work - This is the journey of Chudik from his native village to the city where his brother lives. The main character has not seen Dmitry, who misses village life, for 12 years. On the road, something constantly happens to Chudik: either he loses money, or the plane is forced to land in a potato field.
Shukshin's story is divided into three parts:
- Chudik's thoughts about going to see his brother.
- Journey.
- Homecoming.
The main character's wife called him differently. Most often a weirdo, but sometimes affectionately. It was known that the main character had one peculiarity: something was constantly happening to him, and he suffered greatly from this.
One day, having received leave, he decided to go to visit his brother, who lived in the Urals and whom they had not seen for a long time. He took a long time to get ready, packing his bags. And early in the morning he was already walking through the village with a suitcase, answering everyone’s questions about where he was going.
Having arrived in the city and taken a ticket, Chudik decided to go shopping to buy gifts for his daughter-in-law and nephews. When he had already bought gingerbread cookies and chocolate, he walked away and suddenly noticed that 50 rubles remained lying on the floor near the counter. He spoke to people in line, but the owner of the money was not found. The money was placed on the counter in the hope that the loser would soon appear for it.
Walking away from the store, Chudik suddenly remembered that he also had a 50 ruble bill. He put his hand into his pocket where it was, but there was no money there. He never decided to return and take the money, thinking that he would be accused of deception. Then the hero had to return home to withdraw money from the savings book and listen to his wife’s speeches about what a nonentity he was.
Already sitting on the train, Knyazev began to calm down a little. In the carriage, I decided to tell some intelligent friend a story about a drunk guy from a neighboring village. But his interlocutor decided that Chudik himself had come up with this story. Therefore, the hero fell silent before transferring to the plane. The hero was scared to fly, and his neighbor was taciturn and read the newspaper all the time.
When they began to land, the pilot “missed” and instead of the landing strip they ended up on a potato field. The neighbor who decided not to wear a seatbelt when boarding was now looking for his artificial jaw. Knyazev I decided to help him and immediately found her. But instead of gratitude, the bald reader began to scold him for grabbing his jaw with dirty hands.
When he decided to send a telegram to his wife, the telegraph operator scolded him and demanded that he rewrite the text, because he was an adult, and the content of his message was like in kindergarten. And the girl didn’t even want to hear about the fact that he always wrote letters to his wife like that.
The daughter-in-law immediately disliked Vasily. She ruined his entire vacation. The first evening when he and his brother drank, and the Freak decided to sing, she immediately demanded that Vasily stop yelling. But the daughter-in-law did not allow them to sit quietly, remembering their childhood years. The brothers went out into the street and began to talk about what wonderful and heroic people came out of the village.
Dmitry complained about his wife, how she tortured him, demanding responsibility. Wanting to forget that she too grew up in the village, she tortured the piano, figure skating and children. In the morning, Vasily looked around the apartment and, wanting to do something nice for his daughter-in-law, decided to paint the baby stroller. He spent more than an hour on art, but it turned out very beautiful. Vasily went shopping, buying gifts for his nephews. And when he returned home again, he heard his daughter-in-law arguing with his brother.
Vasily hid in a shed that stood in the yard. Late in the evening Dmitry also came there, saying that there was no need to paint the stroller. The weirdo, realizing that his daughter-in-law strongly disliked him, decided to go home. Dmitry did not contradict him.
Arriving home, he walked along a familiar street, and at that time it was raining. Suddenly the man took off his shoes and ran along the wet ground, which was still warm. He, holding his shoes and suitcase, still jumped up and sang loudly as he walked. The rain gradually stopped, and the sun began to peek through.
In one place Vasily Egorovich slipped and almost fell. His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was 39 years old. Chudik worked as a village projectionist. As a child, I dreamed of becoming a spy. That's why his hobby all these years was dogs and detectives.
Gerasimova Nina
The research work raises the question of the relationship between the images of weirdos in V.M. Shukshin and Smolensk writer Sergei Vyazankov
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Municipal budgetary institution secondary school No. 12
Research work on the literature of the Smolensk region on the topic
“Images of weirdos in the works of V.M. Shukshin and S.V. Vyazankova"
9th grade students B
Gerasimova Nina
Teacher Kozlova E.V.
Smolensk, 2012-2013 academic year. year
- Introduction
- Analysis of the images of “freaks” in the works of V.M. Shukshina
- Analysis of the images of “freaks” in the works of S.V. Vyazankova
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
Introduction
The golden peasant Rus' is disappearing into oblivion...Fewer and fewer peasant huts remain in Rus', more and more dead villages are disappearing from the map of Russia. Thickets of bitter repentance - the grass of the skeletons of village houses that have collapsed from old age and are abandoned. In some houses, yellowed photographs, no longer needed by immortal descendants, rot along with ancient spinning wheels and praniks.
How could it be that we have lost the sweet spirit of fresh hay, the bitter spirit of uncut sedge? Where, at what stage of the journey did we lose our roots, which for centuries connected us with our Motherland? Are we Russian now? How many people these days would get their hearts pumped by the smell of freshly cut grass?
And it is no longer important for some modern, certainly talented writers to know how hay differs from silage and how it is mowed in general, it does not matter for them to know all the hardness and bitterness of peasant labor when drying this very hay, but also the joy that your work is not in vain , now, you managed to clean up before the storm, and then the grateful cow will look at you with warm, moist eyes, and then bury her fluffy muzzle in the fragrant hay...
It doesn’t matter... They don’t sing about the village these days, it almost no longer exists, and only the memory of an exclusive minority does not allow us to completely forget that it was, peasant Rus', where all problems were solved peacefully, where there was no place for evil and vulgarity, and even if they met on the path of people, they always received a well-deserved punishment.
Sergei Vyazankov, a Smolensk writer, also belonged to such an exceptional minority of talents. In his first and, unfortunately, last book, “Repentance is Grass,” he draws vivid images of simple villagers, not very literate, not at all teetotalers, but pure in soul and noble in their inner folk intelligence...
V. Rasputin spoke extremely kindly about S. Vyazankov, because the topics raised by the Smolensk writer were close to Rasputin himself: “...S. Vyazankov is a strong and fully accomplished writer. At his age, not everyone is capable of feeling life and words this way, of conducting psychological actions so accurately, or rather, rarely anyone is capable.”
The heroes of S. Vyazankov live in a world in which everything is interconnected, in which the connection with nature is still so strong that the cattleman Ivan can beat the unlucky livestock specialist - a dropout for the death of a first-calf, and the groom Timofey can lose the joy of life after the death of his beloved horse Beli.
They are eccentrics, somewhat reminiscent of Shukshin’s eccentrics, they cannot calmly pass by the beauty: they will definitely fall in love; They cannot calmly endure injustice: they will definitely be indignant, and this attention to the little things in life sometimes even saves them from death itself.
Shukshin's characters are living people, bright, memorable characters. One of the central images in the stories of V.M. Shukshin is the image of a “eccentric” - a person “with oddities”, slightly out of this world, constantly in search of something incomprehensible and unknown to him.
That's why I put forward hypothesis - heroes of the stories of the Smolensk writer Vyazankov S.V. live by the same principles as the “freak” heroes V.M. Shukshina.
The purpose of this workis an analysis of the features of artistic images of “eccentrics” in the stories of V.M. Shukshin and S.V. Vyazankova.
Job Objectives include:
1. Revealing the image of the “eccentric” as one of the central ones in the work of writers;
2. Analysis of artistic means of creating images of “freaks” in the stories of V.M. Shukshin and S.V. Vyazankova.
The work was carried out using a descriptive method with elements of literary analysis. The theoretical basis of the work was the work of modern Russian literary scholars and critics who paid attention to the work of V.M. Shukshin, as well as the works of Smolensk researchers of creativity S.V. Vyazankova. The research material is the texts of stories by V.M. Shukshin and S.V. Vyazankova.
Part 1
The work of the writer V. M. Shukshin attracts attention with the urgency of posing the eternal problem about the meaning of life, about the enduring spiritual values of man - his moral ideals, honor, duty, conscience. In his works, one of the leading places is occupied by the fates of unusual people, with complex characters, the so-called eccentrics, striving to comprehend the movements of their own souls, the meaning of life. This is the main character of the story “Freak”. The author emphasizes his eccentricity, which distinguishes the hero from other, “correct” people. This technique helps to show his best human qualities: love of truth, conscientiousness, kindness.
The talent of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin is outstanding, standing out strongly among other talents of that era. He is looking for his heroes among the common people. He is attracted to unusual destinies, the characters of extraordinary people, sometimes contradictory in their actions. Such images are always difficult to understand, but at the same time they are close to every Russian person.
This is precisely the character Shukshin portrays in the story “Crank”. The main character's wife calls him a weirdo. He is a typical villager. This is how the eccentricity clearly noticeable to others becomes his main problem and misfortune: “The eccentric had one peculiarity: something constantly happened to him. He didn’t want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got involved in some kind of story - minor, however, but annoying.”
The story is constructed in the form of a presentation of the events that happened during Chudik’s vacation trip to his brother in the Urals. The hero gets ready to go on the road, buys gifts for his nephews, and then an episode occurs in which the wonderful qualities of his soul are revealed: honesty, modesty, shyness. The weirdo looked, “...and at the counter, where there’s a queue, there’s a fifty-ruble piece of paper lying at people’s feet.” A problematic situation is created for the hero: to secretly appropriate the piece of paper or announce to everyone about the find and give it to the owner, because she, “such a green fool, lies to herself, no one sees her.” By using the word “fool” in relation to an inanimate object, Shukshin conveys the nuances of the hero’s state of mind: the joy of the find and the knowledge that no one but him sees the piece of paper. At the same time, the main question - what Chudik will do - remains open.
The weirdo announces his discovery to everyone. The owner of the lost fifty-ruble note was not there, and they decided to put it in a prominent place on the counter. The hero leaves the store in the most pleasant mood. He is pleased with himself, with how easy and fun it turned out for him. But then it turns out that the money found belonged... to himself. “It was my piece of paper! - Weird said loudly. “But why am I like this?” - Chudik reasoned bitterly out loud. The hero’s conscientiousness and shyness do not allow him to reach out for the damned piece of paper, although he understands that he will punish himself for a long time for his absent-mindedness, that at home he will have to explain himself to his wife. It is significant that the author, both in his own narration and in Chudik’s speech, calls the fifty-ruble note nothing more than a piece of paper, emphasizing his disdainful attitude towards it.
In this seemingly insignificant episode, Shukshin’s view of one of the most important problems of a person’s spiritual life is revealed - petty-bourgeois hoarding. However, the author does not idealize his hero. Idealization contradicts the very essence of Shukshin’s work, for whom the highest measure of artistry was the desire to speak about everything simply and directly.
Biographers claim that a similar incident happened to Shukshin himself in the spring of 1967 in Biysk, when he was traveling to Srostki on a Pravda business trip to write an article about youth. The question arises: is there any “signature” of such a hero in V. Shukshin himself?
An eccentric is an absent-minded person, he may seem ill-mannered, he has not reached the greatest heights of literacy. But all of the hero’s listed shortcomings seem insignificant compared to his “bright soul” (V. M. Shukshin called one of his stories: “Bright Souls”). And what prompts him to do strange things are positive, non-selfish motives, they make even eccentricity, imaginary or real, excusable.
Revealing the best moral qualities of characters in moments of difficult trials that befall them. The author puts his hero, a man of conscience, in conditions that require all the spiritual reserves of goodness and fortitude, so as not to break down, not to lose faith, seeing that ultra-modern impudent rubbish is supposedly the face of our time, and conscience and decency seem to be hopelessly outdated.
Despite its simplicity, Chudik reflects on problems that concern humanity at all times: what is the meaning of life? What is good and evil? Who is “right, who is smarter” in this life? And with all his actions he proves that he is right, and not those who consider him an eccentric, a “crank”. The works of Vasily Shukshin and their heroes are truthful both in social and everyday terms and in artistic terms.
It is worth noting that the heroes are never idealized by Shukshin. It shows a person as he is. The hero was taken from the village environment, because, the author believes, only a simple person from the outback retained all the positive qualities originally given to man. A village resident has that sincerity, kindness and naivety that modern city people so lack, with characters generated by progress and criteria for assessing a person dictated by a degrading society.
The appearance of the hero Shukshin in the early sixties was somewhat unexpected. The author himself understood thatherohe doesn’t look like the accepted form, but he passionately argued that there was nothing strange about his hero. "HeHumanalive, able to suffer and perform actions, and if his soul is sick, if his actions, from a generally accepted point of view, are absurd, then you try, try to figure out why this happened, ask yourself if you envy him.” This is the author's point of view on his hero. It’s a pity, but not all the characters who know the “eccentric” and are close to him agree with her. So who is he, the “eccentric”, what is it about him that arouses anxiety and conscience in us and evokes almost lost, nostalgic sympathy for him, a man of by no means the best rules and regulations?
“Freaks on the contrary” are callous, soulless people, shifted to the bad side - they see neither sadness in their eyes, nor a hot shine, their soul is dead. And the “eccentric” himself, as mentioned above, is not interested in appearance, he is worried about his sick soul. All the heroes - “freaks”, absolutely everyone, have a soul, it is this that makes them strange, does not give them peace. This soul is toiling. Shukshin himself says: “The eccentricity of my heroes is a form of manifestation of their spirituality.” “Lately, something was completely wrong in Timofey Khudyakov’s soul - he was disgusted with everything in the world. So he would stand on all fours, and growl, and bark, and shake his head. Maybe I would cry." (“Ticket to the second session”)
We see that the souls of the “freaks” hurt, dry out, something is wrong, their souls are bad. In the first two contexts, we learn about this from the author, because he knows his heroes very well. In the last two contexts, the “freaks” themselves tell us about their inner experiences, concerns, and anxieties. Other characters (“weirdos” and “anti-weirdos”) are not the subjects of assessing the soul of the “eccentric” hero. They do not notice the pain that the character experiences, because this is the internal state of the hero. This state can only be understoodauthorand the hero himself who experiences this. We have identified the following pattern: emotional experiences are conveyed by verbs. These are the verbs to get sick - “to experience pain”, to become disgusted - “to become hateful, very tired”, to cry - “to shed tears from pain, grief”, to feel - “to sense” and others. Experts on the soul argue: let a person search for the soul; he will probably not find it, because no one has ever managed to find something that does not exist, but, busy with this search, he will be distracted from worse and even more empty activities that would only bring him harm. But that's not true. The soul, which cannot be grasped by any means or side, means a lot to a person.
The soul is the essence of personality, the life that continues in it of a permanent, historical person, not broken by temporary adversity. The main character traits of the “eccentric” are courage and conscientiousness. First we will talk about courage. “And he lived with the watchwoman alone, she was an old woman.” (“There lived a man”). For Shukshin, combative means brave. And courage, as Ozhegov S.I. interprets it, is “bold behavior, determination.” Therefore, respect arises for the hero who possesses it. In the following example, the subject of assessing the character of a “crank” is another “crank”. We see that the assessment remains positive. “He’s a brave man, dad. I respect him". (“From the childhood years of Ivan Popov”). The qualitative adjective “brave” has a private evaluative meaning and refers to normative evaluations. The assessment of the “anti-weirdo” and the self-assessment of the courage of the “weirdo” are not presented in the stories. When two characters (the “weirdo” and the “anti-weirdo”) collide, the “eccentric” constantly experiences a feeling of fear, afraid of his opponent. That’s why the author gives his hero courage, so that he fights fear and overcomes it.
Shukshin’s hero is always ashamed, at least a little, at least to a small extent, but still ashamed. That’s why the author loves his “freak” heroes, because they can understand and admit their injustice and wrongness. This is also indicated by the example below: “He felt ashamed that he was in a hurry: he really decided that his brother-in-law wanted to hit him when he reached out with his fist.” (“Brother-in-law Sergei Sergeevich”).
In the following context, the subject of the assessment is another character (“eccentric”): “As I now understand, he was a good-natured person, of great patience and conscientiousness. He lived with us on the arable land, repaired the rope harness himself, and swore at length during the process.” (“From the childhood years of Ivan Popov”).
V. M. Shukshin’s conscientious hero comes from the common people, he appears “without makeup and without hair.” The assessment of conscientiousness by the “anti-weirdo” is not presented, because this character trait is alien to him. This happens because they cannot closely examine the turmoil of the hero’s soul and necessarily search for a way out of this turmoil, these doubts. This can only be done by the author and the “weirdos” themselves, who declare the turmoil of their souls. “To hell with her, with this Larisa!.. Maybe she’ll tell, or maybe she won’t tell. But he's still at home. And it didn’t hurt as much as last night. Well, what’s wrong with that?.. It’s just a shame. Well, maybe it will pass somehow.” (“Medicic Volodya”). “Volodya even liked how he began to brazenly show off his belt, he secretly envied his fellow city-dwellers, especially senior students, but he himself did not dare to pretend to be the same - he was ashamed.” (“Medicic Volodya”).
Conscience is the main character trait of a “weirdo.” He is always ashamed, ashamed, embarrassed from the consciousness of wrongness or a feeling of embarrassment. The “weirdo” himself is aware of this, and therefore experiences a feeling of shame and remorse. He admits this to himself. Conclusions. Thus, having examined the “eccentric” hero, we came to the following conclusions: firstly, the “eccentric” as Shukshin’s main favorite character is analyzed by the author in different aspects, and therefore is the object of an axiological description; secondly, both the external portrait characteristics of the character and his inner world are subject to evaluative analysis.
Now let’s ask ourselves a question: is it possible to take the title of the story “Crank” at face value, that is, does Shukshin consider his hero a “crank” in the proper sense of the word? At first glance it seems that yes, he does. “The weirdo had one peculiarity: something always happened to him. He didn’t want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got involved in some kind of story - minor, however, but annoying.” Given such a warning, one should kind of imagine one of those people about whom they say: “twenty-two misfortunes,” well, something like Chekhov’s Epikhodov. And the first adventures that happen to him during a trip to his brother seem to confirm this opinion - the story with the fifty-ruble note, for example, is one of the pure, so to speak, “fatal” accidents.
However, already the conversation with the neighbor on the plane and the story with the telegram contain a certain subtext that encourages us to think that everything is not as simple as it seems, and that Vasily Yegorych’s bad luck is not so much his fate as his nature. First of all, it is clear to us: the kindest Vasily Yegorych is simple-minded and spontaneous to the point of... stupidity. Yes, exactly to the point of stupidity - we have to admit it, because both the text of his telegram and the conversation with the telegraph operator are quite on the level of his “joke” about fried spoons,
One more touch and also very significant. On the train, having heard a lot of different travel stories, Chudik decides to make his own contribution to the general conversation and tells a story, in his opinion, also quite funny: “We have a fool in our neighboring village too... He grabbed a firebrand and went after his mother. Drunk. She runs from him and shouts: “Hands,” she shouts, “don’t burn your hands, son!” He also cares about him. And he rushes, a drunken mug. To the mother. Can you imagine how rude and tactless it is to be..."
Vasily Yegorych, of course, does not know that his “story” is a legend widely known among many peoples of the world, a poetic and wise parable about a mother, about the holiness of maternal feelings. But the point is not that he doesn’t know. What’s worse is that, as we see, he doesn’t even feel the meaning of what he’s talking about, since this whole story in his eyes is nothing more than a funny incident, almost an anecdote. The kind and spontaneous Vasily Yegorych is dull, definitely dull...
The reasons for Chudik’s “fatal” bad luck, therefore, begin to become clearer to us: they are that his ideas about the surrounding reality largely do not correspond to the order of things that is objectively present in it. But who is to blame for this? Does the eccentric need to rise to the level of reality, or should she herself show some special, additional “understanding” so that all sorts of stories will finally stop happening to Vasily Yegorych? There is no escape from these questions, because the answer to them essentially determines the assessment of the very ideological and humanistic orientation of the story.
Vasily Yegorych will not change - that’s clear. As before, he will poke his nose around people with his joyful readiness to communicate, with his sincere lack of understanding that people do not always enjoy communicating with him. But not all of his actions are ridiculous! In some cases, can he count, if only on understanding, then at least on simple human condescension? Understanding of his aspirations, his good intentions must, in some cases, prevail over the habitual rejection of their curious results. And isn’t this habitual rejection, especially in those cases when it is just habitual, a sin incomparably greater than the inept and stupid kindness of the Freak?
This is the question that Shukshin poses, leading Sofya Ivanovna, Chudik’s daughter-in-law, to the stage. And he answers it absolutely unambiguously. No matter how absurd the story with the baby stroller may seem, absolute human correctness is undoubtedly on the side of the Chudik. The “mitigating circumstances” of his clumsy helpfulness are much more serious than his guilt. And Vasily Yegorych suffers here not so much as a result of his next mistake, but because people this time did not show elementary human sensitivity. A hundred times misunderstood, as they say, “serves it right,” in this case he himself judges human misunderstanding.
So who is he, Vasily Yegorych Knyazev? “Natural man”, who, by the very fact of his existence, reproaches a society that has hardened in the course of civilization? An “eccentric” whose eccentricity is revealed more clearly the more obvious his eccentricity is?
Let us not rush to imagine him as some kind of righteous man, whose kindness and spontaneity should make us think about our own moral imperfection, which is still quite noticeable. We will not make him either Akaki Akakievich or Prince Myshkin. Moreover, Shukshin himself does not end the story on this “compassionate” note. The dramatic climax is followed by an epilogue, and this epilogue adds the final and extremely characteristic touch to the portrait of the Freak. “Creepy came home when it was pouring with steamy rain. The weirdo got off the bus, took off his new shoes, and ran along the warm wet ground - a suitcase in one hand, boots in the other.
And what can we say about him in conclusion, if not what Shukshin himself said: “His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was thirty-nine years old. He worked as a projectionist in the village. He loved detectives and dogs. As a child I dreamed of being a spy." Sounds like an epitaph, doesn't it? And there are the same contrasts in her as in his nature. And the same unity. He adored dogs - out of his natural kindness and also because, of course, he met complete “understanding” on their part; he adored detectives - due to his complete inability to be like them; and for the same reason - “as a child I dreamed of being a spy.” The nature, as we see, is quite ordinary. In ordinary everyday life, we might not notice it, as, in fact, we did not notice it before Shukshin’s story. And if here, in the story, he still looks like a very colorful figure, it is mainly because the writer, as it were, put him “under high voltage,” which revealed his nature in all its contradictory unity and specificity.
The two situations described in this story are typically Shukshin’s: a person is thrown out of balance by something or someone, or is struck or offended by something, and he wants to somehow resolve this pain by returning to the normal logic of life.
The impressionable, vulnerable, feeling the beauty of the world and at the same time awkward Chudik is compared in the story with the bourgeois world of the daughter-in-law, the barmaid of the department, in the past a village woman, striving to erase everything rustic in her memory, to transform into a real city woman. But this is not the opposition between city and countryside that critics found in the writer’s stories of the 60s. (“Ignakha has arrived”, “Snake venom”, “Two letters”, “Nylon Christmas tree”, etc.). Objectively speaking, this opposition as such did not exist in his stories at all. Shukshin explored the serious problem of a marginal (intermediate) person who left the village and did not fully acclimatize to the city (“I choose a village to live”) or settled down at the cost of losing something important in himself, as in the case of Chudik’s daughter-in-law and other heroes.
This problem was deeply personal for the writer himself: “So it turned out for me by the age of forty that I am neither fully urban nor rural. It’s a terribly uncomfortable position. It’s not even between two chairs, but rather like this: one leg on shore, the other in the boat. And it’s impossible not to swim, and it’s kind of scary to swim... But this position of mine has its “advantages”... From comparisons, from all sorts of “from here to here” and “from there to there” one involuntarily comes thoughts not only about the “village” and “city” – about Russia.”
In an awkward, strange person, according to Shukshin, the truth of his time is most fully expressed.
“There is another type of person in Rus' in whom time, the truth of time, cries out just as furiously as in a genius, just as impatiently as in a talented one, just as secretly and ineradicably as in a thinking and intelligent person... This man is a fool,” - This is what V. Shukshin wrote in his article “Morality is Truth.” For Shukshin, “eccentric” and “fool” are phenomena of time, very instructive; the truth of time cries out in them in their own way. And who are they, the heroes of his stories, these “freaks”, if not the bearers of pure goodness, opposed to rationality and mechanics. They, these “strange people,” have the most important “strangeness”: they love everyone like fools. Natural purity, conscientiousness, talent - these are the main qualities for Shukshin, and make his heroes similar to the hero of a Russian fairy tale. In Shukshin’s artistic world, the slightest sign of disrespect for one’s own or another’s human dignity is of fundamental importance; the writer’s heroes, for the most part, nervously and painfully react to evil, to the humiliation of man by man, to insults... It is the hero of the story “The Freak” who is one of the first to set a deeply personal, a truly Shukshin question: “I don’t understand: why did they become evil?” The brother's wife, who fiercely hated the ingenuous Freak; a neighbor on the plane, rustling a newspaper and uttering just one phrase: “Children are the flowers of life, they should be planted with their heads down”; a stern, dry telegraph operator who contemptuously suggested to Chudik that a telegram is a type of communication. There are many of these in other stories by Shukshin. And they are opposed by weirdos, wonderful people in their kindness and responsiveness. Heroes whose actions are perceived as eccentricity act this way due to internal moral concepts, perhaps not yet realized by themselves. In his heroes, who do not act “like everyone else,” Shukshin tries to discern the facets of human spontaneity and talent. A natural craving for creativity is characteristic of these heroes: be it Vasya (“Stenka Razin”), who feels talent in himself, or Bronka Pupkov, an artist by nature (“Mil pardon, madam!”), or Semka Lynx (“Master”), or the Chudik, who took and painted the stroller: “...on the top of the stroller, the Chudik let out a flock of cranes in a corner, at the bottom there were various flowers, an ant grass, a couple of cockerels, chickens...” Shukshin spoke about his strange people more than once, talking about sympathy and affection to them, was convinced that “their destinies are merged with the fate of the people.” Another characteristic feature of Shukshin’s stories is that he constantly, tirelessly, wherever possible, exalted Pity. This feeling, along with Good, underlies Shukshin’s worldview. It is impossible to imagine him not only without Truth, Conscience, Goodness, but without Pity. In his works this word appears at every step; it is a sign that helps to understand the hero. “To regret... Should you feel sorry or should you not regret - this is how false people pose the question. You still find the strength to regret. Weak, but feigned, invents what needs to be respected. To pity means to respect, but even more.”
Chapter 2
Viktor Smirnov wrote in June 1997: “Having returned to Smolensk from the Caucasus, where I was on literary business, I learned from my tear-stained wife terrible, unthinkable, implausible news: my best, my most gifted, my the most vocal student, my Russian pride, my Smolensk joy, my great hope - Sergei Vyazankov. His first and, alas, now his last book, remarkable in language, imagery and depth of prose, “Repentance Grass,” has just been published. It has just been adopted in Smolensk, and then in Moscow - unanimously and with inspiration! - to the Writers' Union of Russia. He died in the prime of his life, never having received widespread recognition, success, fame - all that, without a doubt, awaited him in the near future.
At our first meeting, Seryozha gave me his story “They Don’t Give Water to a Hot Horse” to read. I was shocked, amazed by the piercing artistic power of a work written and breathed out not just by a young man, but, consider it, by a boy. I was especially delighted, or rather caused some kind of secret, prophetic pain, I’m not afraid of this important word, by the brilliantly written scene of the death of a young horse drowning in a deep river, running away from the bees with a plow and jumping in horror down from a cliff.
_____ Seryozha! Didn’t you already see yourself drowning in a bubbling abyss of water?! This is truly Lermontov’s, Yesenin’s and, finally, Rubtsov’s premonition of one’s own fate...
___ He constantly, for many years, wrote to me and came to visit. He became like a member of our family. We loved him. We were waiting for him. Anna Trifonovna Tvardovskaya, the sister of our great poet, having once met Seryozha, later told me with tears in her eyes that this was a real heavenly angel...
I walked at his village wedding. Played the harmonica. I admired him, somehow especially proudly, with dignity, in a popular way, bearing the cheerful and serious title of the groom. He didn’t have a child: they didn’t have time... Only his spiritual children - stories, stories - remained with us.”
The fate of the Smolensk writer Sergei Vyazankov, the author of the talented, lyrical-epic-fairy-tale book “Repentance is Grass”, a member of the Writers' Union of Russia, is truly tragic. Born in the village of Zimnitsy, Pochinkovsky district in 1964, died tragically in 1994.
Yes, they are weirdos, somewhat reminiscent of Shukshin’s weirdos: they are conscientious, compassionate, they cannot calmly endure injustice: they will definitely be indignant, and this attention to the little things in life sometimes even saves them from death itself. This is what happened to Venya Sorokin, the hero of the parable story “Venya Mowed the Stable.” Passion, truly a collector's passion for folk crafts, saved Venya during his meeting with Death. Venya notices, as soon as he glances at Death’s scythe, that “the scythe is rubbish: it’s not planted correctly, and it’s riveted off badly, and the cape is lowered, and the blade needs to be sharper... It’s a nonsense scythe: the metal is not hardened, it’s soft, it needs to be edited in three strokes.” . Venya offered to change Death’s scythe, but bought a rake instead, on which Death then stepped and crumbled...
Yes, by modern standards the heroes of the Smolensk writer are unusually pure, and the same flame that S. Vyazankov described in his story “The Grove of the Birch Drop” burns in them. This light stands in a tearful cup, and those who suck a lot of tears from their neighbors destroy their light ahead of time. And for others, candles burn even after death: “this is someone who is loved and remembered very much, who has done a lot of good on earth. Every candle is a fire of love.”
Somewhere, probably, the candle of Sergei Vyazankov himself is still burning, not extinguished after his tragic death, because with his stories he instills love for the Motherland, tells us about historical memory, that we should not lightly forget about where your roots are . And it is no coincidence that his father’s grave on the river bank in the story “Zhuravkin Corner” is so important not only to the main character, Lenka, but also to his friends, simple village peasants. And it is no coincidence that the hero of the story “Medal” Borka Stasov buries his honestly earned medal “For Courage in a Fire” along with his medal “For Courage” accidentally stolen from a veteran, and the main character of the fairy tale “Silver Fish” gives his last life to someone else’s child. The heroes of S. Vyazankov have a conscience; it does not allow either the heroes of the stories or those who will read these stories to live in peace. And who knows, maybe one of them will mow down the bitter repentance - the grass that has filled the dying Russian villages...
CONCLUSION
As a result of the study, I confirmed my hypothesis thatheroes of the stories of the Smolensk writer Vyazankov S.V. live by the same principles as the “freak” heroes V.M. Shukshina.
During the research work on this problem, the following conclusion was made: the weirdos S.V. Vyazankov is somewhat reminiscent of Shukshin’s weirdos: they are conscientious, compassionate, they cannot calmly endure injustice: they will definitely be indignant, and this attention to the little things in life even sometimes saves them from death itself. Theybearers of pure goodness, opposed to rationality and mechanics. They, these “strange people,” have the most important “strangeness”: they love everyone like fools. Natural purity, conscientiousness, talent - these qualities, the main ones for Shukshin, are also important for the heroes of S.V. Vyazankova. Heroes whose actions are perceived as eccentricity act this way due to internal moral concepts, perhaps not yet realized by themselves.
T.G. Sverbilova
The stories of Vasily Shukshin (1929-1974), an actor, director, screenwriter, writer, a native of the Siberian hinterland, who knew the Russian village not by description, are usually classified as so-called “village prose”. However, Shukshin’s strange heroes, eccentrics and philosophers, only meet the parameters of “village prose” in their place of residence.
“Freak” is the name of one of the writer’s stories. He always invents some stories that, in his opinion, can somehow brighten up the gray everyday life. When in town, on a visit, he paints a new baby stroller with watercolors to make it more fun. The child’s mother, immersed in this “evil” way of life, is naturally dissatisfied. The “weirdo” has to return home to the village ahead of time.
Or the carpenter Semka from the story “The Master”, who was struck by the beauty of an ancient church in a neighboring village. The unknown architect of the seventeenth century did not place it in an inconspicuous place for the sake of fame, but for the sake of that feeling of beauty that united him with Semka. And the Shukshin eccentric goes to persuade church and state authorities to restore and repair this wonderful church. The eccentric, as always in Shukshin’s stories, was let down by his lack of education. It turns out that the church has no historical or artistic value, since it is only a later repetition of the Vladimir churches of the 19th century. But Semka, of course, did not know about these temples.
The tragedy of Shukshin’s “eccentric” is that, by the will of fate, he is cut off from world human civilization, he is simply not familiar with it, and he has to “reinvent the wheel” because he does not want to live on his daily bread, like his neighbors and relatives. So his searching mind struggles with the secret of a perpetual motion machine (“Persistent”) or with the creation of a means to destroy all “microbes” (“Microscope”). Or even the village “eccentric” spends his entire life writing a treatise “On the State,” which no one will ever appreciate (“Strokes to the Portrait”). “Crank” is an adult child, although according to the conditions of his life he is as rude as everyone else. But when he has an “idea”, he becomes spontaneous and inquisitive, like children. Andrey Erin from the story “Microscope” stops drinking and, together with his fifth-grader son, spends hours looking at everything under a microscope, not trusting scientists. When the “eccentric’s” dream of reorganizing the world is shattered, he usually returns back to the beaten path of physical, mind-numbing labor and a general soulless life. Exposed, Andrei Erin gets drunk again, since his wife’s decision to sell the microscope in order to return money to the family that, in her opinion, was spent for nothing, kills the dream of some other life, meaningful and spiritual. The hero does not know what kind of life this is, but he feels that there are other interests in the world besides concern for physical survival. But he meekly returns to his usual, boring everyday life.
Sometimes the “eccentric’s” dream does not go further than a good bath on Saturdays (“Alyosha Beskonvoiny”), but the meaning of his life can also be concentrated in it. After all, the essence of a dream does not change depending on how big or small it is. It is important that a person devotes himself to it with all his soul. For Alyosha Beskonvoyny, the bathhouse is a sacred rite, a ritual, a rite of passage, and magic. He is like primitive man who worships water and fire. All that is left in him from a civilization that is unnecessary to him is the worship of the bathhouse.
Country life is usually contrasted with city life as natural, healthy and complete. Shukshin was one of the first to dare to show the horror of stultifying, hard physical labor, devoid of any spiritual basis. Life in the outback breaks even the greatest optimists. The story “Step wider, maestro!” written in the tradition of Bulgakov's Notes of a Young Doctor. A young surgeon at a regional hospital, a graduate of the capital's medical institute, dreams of a professional career, of brilliant operations, but the exhausting everyday life of the province will grind him down too. Bulgakov’s hero, a village doctor, eventually manages to move to the city, so the stories in “Notes of a Young Doctor” are not only humorous, but also light. Shukshin shows how rural life destroys a person’s best intentions.
The writer managed in his stories to portray that eternal hostile attitude of the village towards the city, which was not customary to talk about in the literature of his time. In the story “Cut,” the image of the village eccentric undergoes a transformation: he loses the charm of a handsome dreamer. This is a demagogue who is specially kept so that he can shame and “cut off” the visiting townspeople who have become “the people” and left the village forever. His erudition is a lecture and a set of loud phrases devoid of meaning. In their structure (a combination of trivial judgments expressed with incredible aplomb), the speech exercises of the “erudite” go back to the “works” of the Bolshevik leaders. This is the “Soviet language” as a special form, inaccessible to a normal person’s understanding of the language of the absurd. That is why two candidates of sciences in Shukshin’s story turn out to be “cut off”. But, despite this, the demagogue does not enjoy the love of his fellow villagers: “In the voices of the men one could even hear a kind of pity for the candidates, sympathy. Gleb Kapustin continued to invariably surprise. Amazing. I even admired it. At least there was no love here. No, there was no love. Gleb is cruel, and no one has ever loved cruelty anywhere.”
Although some illusions regarding rural life remain with Shukshin. Compared to its traditional thousand-year-old culture, the younger urban culture is clearly inferior. Thus, in the story “The Hunt to Live,” the old hunter, who warmed up a fugitive killer, in his worldview descends into an older and more humane folk tradition than this guy, rushing to the city and not stopping before killing his savior. But, at the same time, the hero’s gullibility looks like helplessness, weakness, although he, a hardy Siberian hunter, is capable of physically surpassing the young one.
In the story “How the Old Man Died,” Shukshin relies on the tradition of Leo Tolstoy, who in his story “Three Deaths” contrasts the selfish death of a lady with the natural and calm death of a tree and a man. Shukshin's old man dies with great dignity, which deserves admiration.
However, not all Shukshin old people are so close to the mythological, original human consciousness. In one of the writer’s best stories, “In Autumn,” an old ferryman sees off his ex-bride, his first love, on his last journey. Due to the stupidity of the hero, who got involved with atheist activists, his fiancee married someone else. My whole life has passed, and now, when “you can’t turn anything back,” the quarrel between two old rivals at the coffin looks stupid. Here, in his initial thoughts about the meaning of human life, the writer’s prose also approaches myth: there is an analogy with the plot of Charon, who transports the souls of the dead by boat across the River Styx. In the writer’s story of the same name, Timofey Khudyakov, a storekeeper at the base, who drunkenly mistook his own father-in-law for Nikolai Ugodnik, asks to “give birth to him again”: “I lived like I sang a song, but I sang it poorly. It’s a pity - the song was good.”
Regrets about a poorly lived life arise not only among villagers, but also among city dwellers who left the village and made a career. In the story “Two Letters” we see a night and day letter from a factory boss to a childhood friend. In the first - melancholy and pain, and in the second - an attempt to imagine your real life as prosperous, without regrets.
Where is the real, sincere hero?
But in the story “How the Bunny Flew on Balloons,” the city boss has to urgently call his brother from the province by plane so that he can remind him of a forgotten fairy tale for his seriously ill little daughter. But the girl felt better even without her uncle’s fairy tale. So the brothers are sitting in the kitchen. Life passed, but there was no great joy. Only this internal trouble is carefully hidden by the hero and he repents of his nightly frankness in the morning.
Perhaps the writer’s most optimistic story is written on the topic of overcoming loneliness. This is “Space, the nervous system and a lot of fat.” The outer outline of the story is the conversation between a tight-fisted old man and his young tenant, tenth-grader Yurka. Yurka's life is quite hungry, and there is no prosperity in it. But the study of science supports him and makes him optimistic. He is a great rationalist and believes in progress. How Yurka tells the owner the story of Academician Pavlov, who dictated to students his feelings at the moment of his own dying. This story struck the old man so much that he gave the eternally hungry Yurka a load of lard from his reserves. At first glance, this is a story about the beneficial influence of positive knowledge and science on a person: even the greedy old man was moved. In fact, this is a story about overcoming loneliness. Yurka is a lonely teenager from a dysfunctional family living far from home. But in his youth, he easily copes with his difficulties with the help of studies. The old man, although inferior to Yurka in education, still surpasses him in everyday experience and life lived. And the conclusion of this life is “one is bad.” Even Academician Pavlov, according to the old man, would not be able to dictate how he dies if he did not have relatives. It turned out funny: the old man learned a completely non-traditional lesson from the story with Pavlov. Instead of concluding: “Science ennobles human life,” he concluded: “It’s bad for the lonely.” And he was right.
Shukshin, more than the achievements of science, valued people’s ability to overcome loneliness, to establish mutual understanding and dialogue. But Shukshin always stands in the way of dialogue with boors, such as a hospital janitor who beats a patient and does not allow his mother to see him (“Vanka Teplyashin”). Exactly the same janitor darkened the last days of the writer himself by not allowing his friends into the hospital. Such boors, like the saleswoman in the story “Resentment” or like the mother-in-law suing her son-in-law in the story “My son-in-law stole a car of firewood,” are scary because they are confident in their right to insult and humiliate the dignity of another person. The Shukshinsky hero is always very vulnerable, easily susceptible to provocation from boors. This is his weakness, as well as the weakness of the government system in which boors triumph at all levels of life.
Vasily Shukshin is known as a film director, author of the film scripts “Stoves and Benches”, “Kalina Krasnaya”, “I came to give you freedom” (about Stepan Razin). In “Kalina the Red” the hero also falls under the power of boors who take his life. In this film, Shukshin was perhaps the first to openly tell the truth about the criminal world, which represents an alternative to the legal world. Mutual responsibility does not allow a person to leave the mafia clan. Although the death of the hero seems quite random and conditional, we understand that evil plays no less important role in our lives than light and good. The artist himself probably could not stand this discovery. But he was able to speak better than others about the border culture of that segment of the country's population that separates city and countryside - first-generation city dwellers, former villagers.
In one of his last stories, “Uncle Ermolai,” the author thinks about simple village workers, kind and honest people. Was there any greater meaning to their lives, or was it just work? Their children, who have received an education and live in the city, understand their lives differently. But which one is right? The author doesn't talk about that.
Keywords: Vasily Shukshin, criticism of the works of Vasily Shukshin, criticism of the works of Vasily Shukshin, analysis of the stories of Vasily Shukshin, download criticism, download analysis, download for free, Russian literature of the 20th century.
Analysis of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin’s story “Crank”.
The story explores the eternal images of the prodigal son, Satan (reptile), and fool. The fool, whom the writer examines especially closely, has his own modification - the eccentric. For the first time such an image appears in a story from 1967, which is called “Freak”.
This is an unusual person, with a complex character, striving to comprehend the movements of his own soul, the meaning of life.
This is the main character of the story “Freak”.
How did we see the main character?
-How did Chudik stand out from his environment?
First of all, “something was constantly happening to him,” “he kept getting involved in some kind of story.” These were not socially significant actions or adventurous adventures. "The Freak" suffered from minor incidents caused by his own missteps.
Examples of such incidents and oversights.
No. | Situation | Weird behavior | Attitude of others |
Losing money | shy, conscientious, absent-minded | my wife called me a nonentity and even hit me |
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told a story to some intelligent friend, pesters strangers with conversations | turned away, doesn't speak |
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ill-mannered, annoying, | don't pay any attention to him |
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Jaw story | The desire to joke, to help | screams in surprise |
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Telegram | writes a telegram with a cheerful text | strict dry woman, doesn’t understand |
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Meeting with daughter-in-law | desire to please, timidity | anger, misunderstanding |
His wife “sometimes affectionately” calls the main character a weirdo. The whole story is a description of Chudik's vacation trip to his brother in the Urals. For him, this becomes a big, long-awaited event - after all, he and his brother have not seen each other for 12 years.
The weirdo is a typical villager. But he “had one peculiarity: something constantly happened to him. He didn’t want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got stuck in some kind of story - minor, however, but annoying.”
The first incident happens to the hero on the way to the Urals. In the district store, where Chudik buys gifts for his nephews, he accidentally notices a fifty-ruble note on the floor: “The Chudik even trembled with joy, his eyes lit up. In a hurry, so that no one would get ahead of him, he began to quickly think about how to say it in a more fun, witty way, in a queue, about the piece of paper.” The hero doesn’t have the nerve to raise it silently...
Natural honesty, often inherent in all rural residents, pushes him to make a bad joke. I began to quickly think about how to say it in a more fun, witty way, in line, about the piece of paper.” But the hero doesn’t have the conscience to raise it silently. And how can he do this when he even “didn’t respect hooligans and salesmen. I was afraid." But, meanwhile, he “respected city people.”
The hero drew everyone’s attention to himself and ended up being misunderstood - the line was silent...
The weirdo put the money on the counter and left. But on the way he discovers that the “piece of paper” was his. But the hero is embarrassed to return and pick it up, although this money was taken from the book, which means it has been accumulating for quite a long time. Their loss is a great loss, so much so that they have to return home. The weirdo scolds himself out loud for a long time when he walks down the street, quietly when he rides on the bus. “Why am I like this?” - the hero is perplexed. At home I got hit on the head by my wife with a slotted spoon, withdrew the money again and went to my brother again.
But the money was taken from the book, accumulated for a long time, and its loss is a great loss for the hero. So big that he has to go home. Chudik wanted to return to the store, explain the queues, and somehow justify his absent-mindedness. But instead, he scolds himself for a long time: “Why am I like this?” At home, Chudik “got hit on the head” by his wife with a slotted spoon, withdrew the money again and went to his brother.
The main character finds the reaction that he evokes in almost all the people he meets on his life path strange and incomprehensible. According to his ideas, he behaves naturally, the way he should behave. But people are not used to such openness and sincerity, so they look at the hero as a real weirdo.
And now Chudik is finally on the plane. He is a little afraid, because he doesn’t quite trust this miracle of technology. He tries to talk to his new neighbor, but he is more interested in the newspaper. Landing is soon, the flight attendant asks you to fasten your seat belts. Although the neighbor treated the Chudik with hostility, the hero, touching him carefully, says that it would be worthwhile to buckle up. But the self-confident “reader with a newspaper” did not listen and fell... And he should have thanked Chudik for his concern, but instead he yelled at him because he, while helping to look for his false jaw, touched it with his hands (what else?). If someone else were in the hero’s place, he would have been offended - such gratitude for the care. And he invites his neighbor to his brother’s house to boil and disinfect his jaw. “The reader looked at the Freak in surprise and stopped shouting” - he did not expect such a response to his rudeness.
At the airport, Chudik writes a telegram to his wife: “We have landed. A lilac branch fell on my chest, dear Pear, don’t forget me. Vasyatka." The telegraph operator forwards the text to the short “We’ve arrived. Basil". And again, Chudik does not understand why he should not write something similar to his beloved wife in telegrams. The hero is extremely open, even when communicating with complete strangers.
Chudik knew that he had a brother and nephews, but he couldn’t even think about the fact that he also had a daughter-in-law. He also could not have thought that she would dislike him from the very first day of their acquaintance. But the hero is not offended. He again wants to do a good deed, and one that will please his inhospitable relative. The next day after his arrival, Chudik paints a baby stroller. And then, pleased with himself, he goes to buy a gift for his nephew.
For this “eccentricity” the daughter-in-law kicks the hero out of the house. Neither he himself, nor even his brother Dmitry understands why Sofya Ivanovna is so angry with ordinary people. They conclude that she is "obsessed with her people in charge." It seems that this is the lot of all city people. Position, position in society - this is the measure of human dignity for the “educated”, and spiritual qualities come last for them. The weirdo left... Dmitry didn’t say anything...
The hero arrived home when it was pouring rain. The weirdo got off the bus, took off his new shoes, and ran along the warm wet ground.
Only at the very end of the story does Shukshin say that the Chudik’s name is Vasily Yegorych Knyazev, that he works as a projectionist in the village, that he adores detectives and dogs, that as a child he dreamed of being a spy. Yes, and it’s not that important. The important thing is that he acts as his heart tells him, for this is the only correct and sincere decision.
Shukshin describes all this touchingly and extremely simply. Only a tender smile, sad but kind, can appear on our face. Sometimes I feel sorry for the Weird. But this is not because the author is trying to evoke sympathy. No, Shukshin never idealizes his heroes. It shows a person as he is.
The author, of course, admires him, and we, the readers, share this Shukshin admiration. The weirdo admires everything that surrounds him in life, loves his land, through which he runs happily in the rain barefoot and returns home excited and joyful. And the writer in the end reveals the true name and surname of the hero, his eccentric passions (“he dreamed of being a spy” and “adored detectives”) and age. And it turns out that he is Vasily Knyazev.
The hero of the story is taken from a village environment, because, Shukshin believes, only a simple person from the outback retained all the positive qualities originally given to man. Most of all, he is characterized by that sincerity, kindness and naivety, which is so lacking in modern urban people, disfigured by progress and so-called civilization.
In Shukshin’s story “The Freak,” which we will analyze, the conflict between city and village is presented, as in many other stories of this author. In essence, the internal conflict of the village world is revealed here: all three characters in the story (Chudik himself, whose real name the reader learns only at the end - Vasily Egorovich Knyazev, his brother Dmitry and his wife Sofya Ivanovna) come from the village.
The plot of the story “The Eccentric” by Shukshin is found many times in literature and folklore: these are the unsuccessful adventures of a village eccentric in the city. All comic situations and misunderstandings are due to his ignorance of the standards, conventions, and orders of city life. But it is he who turns out to be the bearer of true ideas about the values of life, which are not understood and rejected by the evil, arrogant city. Most often, in works with a similar plot, the bearer of true ideas about the values of life, the bearer of the true mind turns out to be a village man. Shukshin is close to the same interpretation.
The most serious conflict awaits Chudik in the house of his brother Dmitry. It is caused by the unmotivated, as it seems to him, hatred of his daughter-in-law, Sofia Ivanovna, to which neither Chudik himself nor his brother Dmitry can oppose anything.
The reason for the rejection is, according to Dmitry, that Chudik is “not responsible at all, not a leader. I know her, stupid. Obsessed with those in charge. And who is she? Barmaid in management, big shot out of nowhere. She looks at it enough and starts... She hates me too - that I’m not responsible, from the village.” These words clarify the cause of the conflict between the brothers and Sofia Ivanovna: from her point of view, the measure of success in life becomes a leadership position in the department, the name of which Dmitry cannot remember. This pushes the brothers, forced out onto the streets by Sofia Ivanovna, to try to identify the origins of the emerging confrontation and compare rural and urban lifestyles.
The culmination of the conflict in Shukshin’s story “Chudik” is precisely Chudik’s attempt to extinguish it - to somehow appease his daughter-in-law, an attempt, as always, quite ridiculous. He decided to paint his youngest nephew's stroller with children's paints, probably watercolors. This leads to a new outburst of anger on the part of Sofia Ivanovna, this time, it seems, quite justified: it is unlikely that the stroller could have been decorated with Chudik’s drawings (“On the top of the stroller, Chudik sent cranes - a flock of corners, on the bottom - different flowers, an ant grass, a couple cockerels, chickens..."), quite appropriate, for example, on a stove, but not on a standard factory-made item, which has a fundamentally different aesthetic nature, which the hero does not realize at all: “And you say - a village. Weirdo. - He wanted peace with his daughter-in-law. “The child will be like in a basket.” However, the daughter-in-law of “folk art”, as Chudik interprets his actions, did not understand, which led to a speedy resolution of the conflict - the expulsion of Chudik in the helpless, bitter silence of his brother Dmitry, who, apparently, does not have the right to vote in his own home.
What is the meaning of Sofia Ivanovna’s dissatisfaction with her husband’s brother? Yes, because she has lost the ability to appreciate a person who is in the traditional value system, living in the countryside, satisfied with this life, who does not want to accept city standards due to the fact that he is satisfied with his own - the way he understands them. He does not strive to be “responsible”, he is satisfied with the work of the village projectionist, he is at peace with himself, with the rural world that gave birth to and raised him, and therefore causes Sofia Ivanovna not just indifference, but active rejection and irritation. Why?
Shukshin, thinking about what happens if a person leaves for the city (even worse, to an urban village), came to the most disappointing conclusions, believing that the village loses the mistress of the house, mother, wife, and the city gains another boorish saleswoman. This is exactly what we see in the image of Chudik’s daughter-in-law, Sofia Ivanovna, in the past a village girl, in the present - a barmaid in a certain department. The point is probably that she lost precisely those qualities that Chudik did not lose: harmony with the village, satisfaction with its world, harmony with himself. Having left the village and rejected its moral values, not being satisfied with the criteria for success in life that the rural world offers, she rushed to the city, perceiving the “management” in which she works as a barmaid, the “responsible” in this management as people who have achieved the highest successes in life, realizing their life potential. Any other scenario of life's path - whether Chudikov, Dmitry's husband - is interpreted by her as a loss, failure, a manifestation of human failure. Therefore, the delights of village life that the brothers reflect on are perceived by her as a pathetic attempt to justify her own inadequacy to herself and cause sharp rejection, almost hatred in relation to the “losers” who have almost suffered a collapse in life - her own husband and his village brother. But the point is that Sofya Ivanovna herself suffers a collapse: having abandoned previous values, such a person does not acquire new ones, but does not realize this, believing that “responsible” work in “management” is the highest goal of a person’s life path. This is the very moral vacuum in which the village man finds himself, having lost contact with his world and not having gained new social connections.
If Dmitry’s life can really be perceived as a failure (“Here it is, my life! Have you seen it? How much anger there is in a person!.. How much anger!” - he complains about his wife to his brother), then the same cannot be said about Chudik. Despite the difficult relationship with his own wife, who from time to time explains to her husband his insignificance with the help of a slotted spoon, which hits him on the head, the hero is in complete internal harmony with the world of the village that gave birth to him, with the world in which he lives and will live . Show this by referring to the episode of Chudik’s return to his village after his unsuccessful city voyage. Why exactly at this moment does the hero cease to be a “weirdo” and acquire his true name?
The confrontation between city and village in Shukshin’s stories is most often presented from the point of view of a villager - it is he who carries hidden aggression against the city. City dwellers (those for whom the culture of the city is natural, native), on the contrary, are peace-loving, most often described either neutrally or with sympathy, like the “candidates” of the Zhuravlevs. Sometimes the opposition of the village to the city is reflected in the desire of the villager to assert his importance, his wealth and superiority over the city dweller, as in the story “Cut”, sometimes in hatred of a fellow villager who has lost his former roots and has not found new ones, as in “The Freak”, sometimes in the desire to surprise a city dweller with something incredible, impossible, exceptional, as in the story “Mille pardon, madam!” All these attempts, however, turn out to be completely ridiculous and reveal only one thing: the peasant’s discord with himself and the world of the village, dissatisfaction with his own life, a vague desire for something exceptional, which is based on the tragic destruction of the countryside as a form of social life, which is tragic for the national destiny. life and national existence. Shukshin records a tragic stage in the development of Russian destiny: in the middle of the 20th century, the rural world lost harmony with itself and ceased to satisfy the person who grew up and was brought up in it. At the same time, new ideals, surrogates for city life, of course, could not fill the cultural and moral vacuum created as a result of the peasants leaving the village. This concludes the analysis of Shukshin’s story “Freak”.
