Petya Rostov in a partisan detachment (Analysis of an episode from Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”).
In L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" Petya Rostov is not the main character. But it was precisely the chapters describing his stay in Denisov’s detachment and tragic death fully demonstrate the inhumanity and cruelty of any war. We offer summary“Peti Rostova” - chapters 7-9, parts 3, volumes 4.
In Denisov's detachment
Ever since Petya Rostov joined his regiment, and then the active army, he was in an excited and joyful state. However, it always seemed to him that all the most heroic things were happening somewhere out there, without him. Therefore, having learned about the sending of a person to Denisov, Petya began to tell the general that it should be him. The request was granted, but with the condition that in no case should he participate in the actions of the detachment and, having completed the task, immediately return back. This is how “Petya Rostov” begins, an excerpt from the novel “War and Peace”.
When Denisov asked the hero if he could stay, the hero became confused. Going to the detachment, Petya was sure that he would indeed return immediately. But seeing the French and learning that there would certainly be an attack that night, the young man decided that the general he had respected until that day was rubbish, and Denisov and his comrades were heroes. Therefore, there is no way to leave the detachment at a difficult time for it.
During the dinner
In the hut, the officers set up a table on which there was vodka and rum, bread and fried lamb. Petya ate the fragrant meat, and it seemed to him that at that moment he was in love with all people. The young man turned to Davydov and asked to send him to the main one... and give him a command. During the conversation, he gave one of his officers and then remembered the raisins that he had brought with him: “I’m used to chewing something sweet.” He also promised to send a coffee pot, which he recently purchased from a sutler.
Visenya - that’s what the soldiers called the prisoner - was sitting by the fire. Petya invited him to the guardhouse, assuring him that nothing bad would be done to him. Indeed, the boy was fed, dressed in a caftan and decided to remain with the party. All this time, the hero tried not to pay attention to the Frenchman, but was wondering whether it was appropriate to give him money.
Meeting with Dolokhov: summary
Petya Rostov heard a lot about this man, and when he entered the hut, the hero was amazed at his simplicity appearance. The guards officer was shaven, the buttonhole of his coat was decorated with George, and a simple cap was on his head. Dolokhov took off his cloak and began asking Denisov about the state of affairs. We talked about the arrival of Rostov, answers to the generals, and the state of the enemy troops. After listening, Dolokhov said that it was necessary to find out exactly the composition of the latter, so he invited one of those present to go with him on reconnaissance. Petya immediately cried out: “Me!”, which displeased Denisov.
Noticing the drummer, the officer began to talk about the unwiseness of leaving prisoners alive. Denisov, who held a different point of view, entered into an argument with him, during which Petya thought. He did not understand much of what he heard and attributed everything to the fact that the big ones know everything. At the same time, he certainly decided to confront Denisov and go on reconnaissance. Finally, Dolokhov directly asked Rostov: “Are we going?” And the young man immediately gave an affirmative answer.
In intelligence: summary
Petya Rostov and Dolokhov changed into French uniforms and, having passed the camp, headed to the bridge. “If we get caught, we won’t be lost alive,” the young man whispered. Suddenly a shout was heard in French. Dolokhov confidently explained that he and a friend had fallen behind his regiment and would like to find the colonel. The sentry replied that the command was at the master's estate, and the riders moved on.
There was a fire burning in the farmyard, with several people sitting around it. Dolokhov started a conversation with them. Are there many Russians on the road, what is the state of affairs in the army, how many prisoners are there in the detachment - here is its summary. Petya Rostov - Tolstoy repeatedly emphasizes this - was afraid that their deception would now be revealed, but he held firm. And the officer kept asking questions. Finally, he said goodbye, and the riders moved on. At the bridge, Dolokhov asked to tell Denisov that in the morning he would need to advance on the signal, but he himself remained on this side.
The night before the fight
Denisov was very worried while waiting for the young man, so after making sure that the reconnaissance went well, he fell asleep. And Petya, still under the impression, went to the yard, where he told the Cossack sitting under the truck about the trip. Then he asked to sharpen his saber and sat down next to him. It suddenly seemed to Rostov that he was in some kind of magical world, where instead of a guardhouse there was a cave, instead of a fire there was the eye of a monster, and he himself sat on a high tower. Everything around was unreal, and Petya closed his eyes. Solemn music sounded in his head, which became louder and clearer. Finally, he realized that it was a dream. Through his slumber, he guided the sounds, listening to their beauty. Just a boy, kind, open and far from the world of cruelty in which he finds himself - this may be the characterization of a hero at this moment.
In battle
Sitting in the saddle, Rostov again asked Denisov to give him some task, and he ordered him to stay close and not interfere anywhere. However, when the signal shot rang out, Petya rushed forward. He crossed the bridge and could no longer tell where his friends were and where his enemies were. Jumping up to the crowd, he saw the Frenchman clutching the shaft of a pike aimed at him. This encouraged the young man even more, and with a cry of “Hurray!” he rushed to where the most shots were heard. In the courtyard of the manor house I noticed Dolokhov, ordering the infantry to wait. But Petya had the feeling that he had not listened to the officer, but still rushed on with the same scream. Suddenly the young man began waving his arms strangely, letting go of the reins, and falling off the saddle. The moment the horse stopped in front of the smoldering fire, Petya fell. His legs and arms twitched, although his head did not move: a bullet had pierced it. This is how the very young Petya Rostov died.
The excerpt from the novel “War and Peace” ends with Dolokhov approaching the already dead boy and, after saying: “Ready,” he gave the order not to take the wounded. And Denisov, who arrived, turned the young man’s pale face towards him, then quickly turned away and walked away, emitting sounds reminiscent of a dog barking.
In the last parts of L.N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" a majestic picture of popular resistance to the French invasion is reproduced. The outcome of the war was decided by “the incitement of hatred towards the enemy in the Russian people,” which resulted in a partisan movement that began before it was officially recognized by the government. The main features of the partisan movement were folk character, special patriotic inspiration, pronounced initiative and difference from the usual conduct of battles with their rules.
The partisans "destroyed great army in parts... There were parties... small, prefabricated, on foot and on horseback, there were peasants and landowners, unknown to anyone. The head of the party was a sexton who took several hundred prisoners a month. There was the elder Vasilisa, who beat a hundred Frenchmen." Even little Petya Rostov sought to benefit his fatherland.
Petya "was taken as an orderly to a general who commanded a large detachment." After he was promoted to officer, he entered the active army and took part in the Battle of Vyazemsky. “Petya was in a constantly happy and excited state of joy...” He was in a hurry “not to miss any case of real heroism.” Petya “was very happy with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time it seemed to him that where he was not, that’s where the real heroic things were now happening.” And the boy “was in a hurry to get to where he was not.”
When the general decided to “send someone to Denisov’s detachment, Petya asked so pitifully to send him that the general could not refuse.” But, remembering how Petya in the Battle of Vyazemsky, instead of going “to where he sent, rode into the fire of the French that day,” the general forbade Petya to “participate in any of Denisov’s actions.”
When the boy saw the French, “he learned that they would certainly attack at night,” he, as happens with young people, instantly decided for himself that everyone around him was heroes and “that he would be ashamed to leave them in difficult times.”
Having arrived at the partisan detachment, Petya was eager to help and did not rest, but “immediately began to assist the officers in setting up the dinner table.” Sitting at the table, “Petya was in an enthusiastic childish state of tender love for all people and, as a result, confidence in the same love of other people for himself.” He himself had already allowed himself to remain in the partisan detachment and help Denisov in all his actions: “...is it okay if I stay with you for a day?.. Only you will let me into the most... main thing... I don’t need awards ... But I want...” Petya completely lost his temper, became brave and continued: “Just please, give me a complete command, so that I can command, what’s it worth to you?”
Petya wanted to be in the thick of things, just as a child always wants to be new toy. Through the heroism, the childish spontaneity in Petya could not hide and asked to come out: “Fathers! I completely forgot. I have wonderful raisins, you know, the ones without seeds. We have a new martin - and such wonderful things. I bought ten pounds. I’m used to something sweet... Don't you need a coffee pot?.. Or maybe you've got a lot of flints - after all, this happens... Please take as much as you need, or that's all... “And then Petya was afraid, “whether he was lying,” “he stopped and blushed.” “He started to think about whether he had done anything else stupid.”
The boy suddenly remembered the same little French drummer as he: “Where did they take him? Did they feed him? Did they hurt him?” Petya felt sorry for the boy, at first he was embarrassed to ask where he was, but then he was not afraid and asked if he could call and feed the boy who was captured. But Denisov did not find anything wrong with Petya’s memory of the boy, and ordered Petya to call the “pathetic boy” here.
Petya could not contain his joy that he was allowed to call the Frenchman, and kissed Denisov: “Let me kiss you, my dear. Oh, how wonderful! how good!”
French boy's name is Vincent! have already been altered in the Russian manner: “the Cossacks - into Vesenny, and the men and soldiers - into Vesenya. In both alterations, this reminder of spring coincided with the idea of a young boy.” Petya heard that the boy had already been fed: “He was hungry!” He called the boy and reassured him that he was in no danger. The drummer answered “in an almost childish voice”; he, like Petya, was also very young, and therefore was very close to the hero. “Pete wanted to say a lot to the drummer, but he didn’t dare. He, shifting, stood next to him in the hallway. Then in the dark he took his hand and shook it.”
Petya really wanted to help in some way. little drummer: “Oh, what should I do to him!” “When the drummer entered the hut, Petya sat away from him, considering it humiliating for himself to pay attention to him” - under Denisov, Petya considered it a sign of weakness and cowardice to feel sorry for the French boy. But for himself, Petya had already decided everything and “just felt the money in his pocket and was in doubt whether it would be a shame to give it to the drummer.”
A small episode in a small destiny. But it is also of great importance. Everything in Tolstoy's novel is subordinated to one main idea: all the best that lives in the soul of Russian people manifests itself in extreme situations.
IN hard days everyone, from small to large, submitting to the main patriotic feeling that governs and motivates them, strives to make their feasible contribution to the common noble cause. So young Petya Rostov does not imagine himself apart from him, and all the best, all the most beautiful that he absorbed in family of origin: humanity, sincerity, kindness, "spontaneous purity moral sense“Neither the volleys of guns nor the hard work of war can drown out.
Reflections of Andrei Bolkonsky on the road to Otradnoye (analysis of an episode from Chapter 1 of Part 3 of Volume 2 of L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”)
The appearance of the child and the death of his wife shocked Prince Andrei. Disappointed in his previous aspirations and ideals, having experienced grief and repentance, he comes to the conclusion that living for himself and for his loved ones is the only thing left for him. At the bed of the sick Nikolushka, together with his sister, Prince Andrei stands for a long time “in the dull light of the canopy, as if not wanting to part with this world in which the three of them were separated from the whole world.”
Can Bolkonsky’s active, ebullient nature be content with only his family circle? It was not for nothing that his gaze was “extinguished, dead,” and even his smile expressed “concentration and depression.” Tolstoy shows how difficult it is for his hero to return to life, to people, to new quests.
The first milestone on this path of rebirth is meeting Pierre and talking with him on the ferry. In the heat of an argument with a friend, Bolkonsky says unfair words, expresses extreme judgments, but for himself draws the right conclusion. “You have to live, you have to love, you have to believe” - these words of Pierre sank deeply into the soul of Prince Andrei. His extinguished gaze came to life and became “radiant, childish, gentle.” Right now, “for the first time since Austerlitz, he saw that high eternal sky which he saw lying on the Field of Austerlitz, and something that had long fallen asleep, something better that was in him, suddenly joyfully and youthfully woke up in his soul... The meeting with Pierre was for Prince Andrei the era with which the same in appearance, but in inner world his new life". The first step on this path was transformations in the village, which eased the lot of his peasants. “This was one of the first examples in Russia,” says Tolstoy. “In addition to classes on the estates, in addition to general activities, reading a wide variety of books, Prince Andrei was engaged in This is the time for a critical analysis of our two last unfortunate campaigns and drawing up a project for changing our military regulations and regulations."
an old oak helped him understand new things state of mind. The personification that Tolstoy used here subtly and accurately depicts man’s immersion in the natural world. Looking at the oak tree, Prince Andrei sees not branches, not bark, not growths on it, but “hands” and “fingers”, “old sores”. At the first meeting, the oak tree appears to him as an “old, angry and contemptuous freak”, who is endowed with the ability to think, persist, frown and despise the cheerful family of “smiling birches”. Prince Andrei attributes his thoughts and feelings to the oak tree, and, thinking about it, uses the pronouns “we”, “ours”.
Meeting in Otradnoe with Natasha, feeling her sincerity in moonlit night strengthens Andrey's faith in himself, love for surrounding life. And in a new way he meets the spreading oak on way back from Otradnoye: both of them now seem transformed.
“No, life is not over at thirty-one,” Prince Andrei suddenly decided, definitively, without fail. “Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary for everyone to know it: both Pierre and this girl, who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary for everyone to know me, so that my life does not go on for me alone, so that they do not live like this girl, regardless of my life, so that it is reflected on everyone and so that they all live with me !"
The fourth volume of the novel “War and Peace” is dedicated to the partisan war of 1812, which began with the enemy’s entry into Smolensk. But before it was officially adopted by our government, “thousands of people in the enemy army had already been exterminated by the Cossacks and peasants, who beat these people as unconsciously as dogs unconsciously kill a runaway rabid dog.”
Tolstoy, calling guerrilla warfare “a terrible club that, without asking the rules of military art, destroyed the French,” prepares us for a realistic description of the horrors of war. The writer does not directly express his attitude towards these historical events. He tries to give us an objective historical description, but, at the same time, we can feel his position through the characters he chose not by chance.
Better understand author's attitude Episode 7 of Chapter 3 of Part 4 of Volume 4 will help us towards war.
This episode highlights one of the goodies novel - Petya Rostov. By the time it started guerrilla warfare Petya Rostov had already been promoted to officer and entered the active army, where he participated in the Battle of Vyazemsky. He “was in a constantly happily excited state of joy at the fact that he was big, and in a constantly enthusiastic haste not to miss some occasion of real heroism.” This small remark alone suggests that it is not the “husband” who is participating in the war, but the child, with his characteristic enthusiasm and impetuosity, as evidenced by his “crazy act” in the battle of Vyazemsky: “Petya... rode in a chain under fire the French and fired there twice from his pistol.”
So, this impetuous, brave boy persuades the general to let him join Denisov’s detachment and finds himself in the circle of partisans. In this episode, L.N. Tolstoy reveals to us the soul of a boy who, despite the experience gained in battle, is unlikely to fully understand all the tragedy and horror of the war.
Petya admires absolutely everything that surrounds him: the table set for dinner, the food, the officers. He “was in an enthusiastic childish state of tender love for all people and, as a result, confidence in the same love of other people for himself.” The hero is ready to do everything for these people, just as a child is ready to do everything for friends or parents who praised him. This is shown both in the scene with the penknife and in the scene with raisins and flint, which Petya offers to the officers.
At the same time, he feels a sense of shame that he said something too impulsively or exaggerated. He naively asks Denisov, the commander of the detachment, to let him “into the very… main…”, obviously meaning the battle. With his suggestions and requests, Petya makes those around him smile. No one gets annoyed by his emotionality because everyone understands that he is a child.
Petya Rostov is a hero who stands on the side of “peace”. He is no stranger to mercy and compassion, which he shows to the French boy, a drummer, who was taken prisoner. He asks Denisov for permission to feed him, tries to cheer up the prisoner and even give him money.
In this episode, L. N. Tolstoy also depicts little boy, which is very far from the cruel reality surrounding him. Thus, the writer expresses his sharply negative attitude towards the war, which takes the lives of young people who do not yet know anything, as will happen to Petya Rostov.
War is cruel and inhumane in Tolstoy’s depiction, and this is manifested not only in relation to Petya, but also to the drummer boy. The image of “spring,” as the officers called him, was also not accidentally introduced into this episode. Through him, Tolstoy also proves the senselessness and cruelty of war, which turns children, no matter whether they are Russian or French, into “pathetic boys” suffering because of the orders of superiors alien to them.
Thus, this episode becomes very important for revealing the writer’s attitude towards the war, his sharply negative attitude towards it. He is trying to prove that a war started by a group of high-ranking officials who place their personal interests much higher than the people’s interests makes people suffer ordinary people, confident that they are fighting the enemy for objective reasons. Tolstoy shows real grief, which is the fruit of war, poisoning the lives of everyone who participates in it.
This is Tolstoy’s philosophy, which is based “on non-resistance to evil through violence” and the assertion that war should not concern children, since it highest degree manifestations of inhumanity.
Peter, younger son in the Rostov family (he was only fifteen years old), succumbing to a patriotic impulse, he begged his parents to let him go into the army. After much persuasion and threats to run away, the parents agreed. Petya did not yet understand that his departure meant constant worry and daily anxiety for his mother. He was completely overwhelmed by the desire to fight, he was inspired by the example of Nikolai, his older brother. Petya could not even imagine that he could be wounded or killed: “Petya was in a constantly happily excited state of joy at the fact that he was big, and in a constantly enthusiastic haste not to miss some case of real heroism.” That is why Petya asks the general, for whom he was an orderly, to let him go to Denisov’s partisan detachment. When he arrives there and sees Denisov and Tikhon Shcherbaty, he decides that they are real heroes and he must imitate them in everything.
Petya’s state of mind in Denisov’s detachment reminds us of what his brother Nikolai experienced when, during the war of 1805, while in an Austrian village, he felt brotherly love for everyone and shouted: “And long live the whole world!” Petya also loves everyone and wants to do something nice for everyone: “Petya was in an enthusiastic childish state of tender love for all people and, as a result, confidence in the same love of other people for himself.” Petya’s conversation with the officers of Denisov’s detachment at dinner shows us a sweet, kind child who wanted to play in a real war. Petya touches not only Denisov, who loves the entire “Rostov breed,” but also everyone present. He asks Denisov to send him on a mission: “Only you will let me into the very ... main one. I don’t need awards... But I want...” Petya’s words make Denisov smile. Petya gives one of the officers his folding knife, runs after his bag to bring raisins: “I have wonderful raisins, you know, the kind without seeds. I bought ten pounds. I'm used to something sweet." He offers his coffee pot and flints, and then falls silent, afraid that they will laugh at him, that he is behaving childishly.
Petya is characterized even better by his attitude towards the French boy taken prisoner. He worries about how he feels, whether he was fed, whether he was offended. At first he thinks like this: “You could ask, but they will say: the boy himself felt sorry for the boy,” but he still asks, although he expects ridicule from the officers. Denisov takes Petya’s question quite seriously, orders the prisoner to be called, and Petya runs up to him and kisses him, childishly expressing his joy that they understood him and are not laughing at him. Petya worries in vain about the captive boy: the soldiers have already fed him and renamed him Vesenny. Petya calls him to the table, trying to encourage him: “Pete wanted to say a lot to the drummer, but he didn’t dare. He stood next to him in the hallway, shifting. Then in the dark I took his hand and shook it.”
Despite the fact that in the novel Petya does not main character, Tolstoy managed to create a wonderful image of a boy who embodied the best traits of the Rostov family: kindness, sensitivity, attention to others, openness, love of life and people. People like him are called to bring joy to everyone around them. The fate of Petya, who died during the liberation of prisoners, seems all the more tragic.
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