Essay “Thalberg's Escape. (Analysis of an episode from Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard”)

A literature teacher examines one of the areas of the final essay point by point.

Text: Anna Chainikova, teacher of Russian language and literature, school No. 171
Photo: Culture.RF

Already December 6 eleventh graders will write a final essay, which is a condition for admission to passing the Unified State Exam. In 3 hours 55 minutes they will have to write an essay-argument on one of five topics corresponding thematic areas, announced in September 2017. Today we will look in detail at how to prepare for a possible topic in the first direction - “Loyalty and betrayal.”

FIPI comment

Within the framework of the direction, one can talk about fidelity and betrayal as opposite manifestations of the human personality, considering them from a philosophical, ethical, psychological points vision and referring to life and literary examples.
The concepts of “loyalty” and “betrayal” are at the center of the plots of many works. different eras and characterize the actions of the heroes in situations moral choice both in personal relationships and in a social context.

Vocabulary work

“Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” by S. I. Ozhegov and N. Yu. Shvedova:

LOYALTY- steadfastness and immutability in feelings, relationships, in the performance of one’s duties and duty.

Loyalty is based on love, honesty, perseverance, sacrifice, devotion.

TREASON- violation of loyalty to someone or something (betrayal of the interests of the Motherland, going over to the side of the enemy.

Treason is associated with betrayal, deceit, meanness, treachery.

Synonyms:

Loyalty: devotion, constancy, reliability, immutability, steadfastness, steadfastness, firmness.

Treason: betrayal, infidelity, inconstancy, deception, adultery.

Who or what can you remain faithful to or change?

• Homeland:

Motherland, small homeland, native land;

military duty, oath

• Love:

to a loved one; spouse

• Friendship:

friend, comrades, loved ones

• Beliefs:

to myself,

beliefs, principles,

to your word

• Vera:

Christian commandments

Loyalty and betrayal are opposite manifestations of a person’s personality. Throughout life, everyone faces a moral choice: remain faithful to something or change.

Honor and dishonor are closely related to the concept of fidelity and betrayal.

By betraying principles, promises, or betraying someone, a person not only loses the respect of others, but also loses honor, bringing shame upon himself. You must remain faithful to your ideals, homeland, and loved one, regardless of the circumstances. Loyalty to one's word, honor, responsibility - qualities without which a person cannot be called decent. Fidelity to Christian commandments becomes an important category of a person’s moral assessment. Betrayal of faith and violation of God's commandments is the path to death, both moral and physical.

Treason is one of the lowest, vile and shameful manifestations human nature. This difficult and destructive feeling changes a person, dehumanizes him. An example of this can be found in V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember.”

The events described in the work unfold in the dark Siberian village in winter for 1945. Andrei Guskov, who went through the entire war, did not hide behind the backs of his comrades, but fought “like everyone else - no better, no worse,” ends up in the hospital after being wounded. The closer the end of the war, the more he is afraid of dying, and the more desperately he is pulled into native village: “He was afraid to go to the front, but more than this fear was resentment and anger at everything that brought him back to the war, not allowing him to go home.” Driven by fear, resentment and anger, Guskov, leaving the hospital, deserts instead of going to the front.

Having betrayed his homeland, Guskov understands that “his fate has turned into a dead end” and after that his life will never be the same, now he is a traitor, a traitor to his homeland. Having lost ground under his feet, Guskov, without knowing why, commits another betrayal - he cheats on his wife Nastya with a random acquaintance. Rasputin depicts the extreme loss of the hero, devastated and having lost self-respect: “He somehow became disgusted with himself, hated himself,” something “scraped, tearing his soul,” “this attitude towards himself burdened him for a long time.”

Secretly, Andrei Guskov returns to his native village. He is afraid to appear in front of his parents and opens his terrible secret only to his wife Nastena, who accepts him and, becoming an accomplice to his lies, helps the deserter and traitor. Conscientious Nastena is tormented by her husband’s guilt, reproaches herself for deceiving her father-in-law and mother-in-law, stealing food and supplies from the house for her husband, and secretly running to him in the forest. She has no right to betray Andrei, to abandon him, and is ready to share her husband’s fate: “She loved him, pitying him, and pitying him, loving him - these two feelings inextricably came together in her into one. And Nastena couldn’t help herself. She condemned Andrei, especially now, when the war was over and when it seemed that he would have remained alive and unharmed, like all those who survived, but, condemning him at times to the point of anger, hatred and despair, she retreated in despair: but she is his wife. And if so, we must either completely abandon him... or go with him to the end, even to the chopping block.”

Rasputin shows how betrayal and betrayal change a person, using the example of Guskov. During his time living in the forest winter hut, he not only changed outwardly beyond recognition: he grew a thick beard and became haggard, but also internally lost his human appearance. Andrei learned to howl like a wolf, so much so that the owner of the taiga himself retreated: “When it became completely sickening, he opened the door and, as if fooling around, amusingly, let out a plaintive and demanding animal howl over the taiga. And he listened to how everything froze and froze far around him.” The hero from afar watches the cow and calf like an animal and then kills it extremely cruelly. Sometimes Guskova is overwhelmed by an “uncontrollable, fierce desire to set fire to the mill” or to harm people in some other way. Of all the feelings he had left only fear for own life, animal instinct of self-preservation.

According to Rasputin, treason and betrayal are destructive for humans.

Guskov, who deserted and betrayed his homeland and his people, turns into a beast, completely losing his human appearance. However, because of his betrayal, not only he himself, but also Nastena dies: “More and more often Nastena imagined that she was being forcefully pulled into some narrow neck and would be pulled in until she could breathe, and then, crushed, suffocating , half alive, in last moment will take it somewhere. Here's a look at this new life she did not succeed, for her it was as dark, as hidden, as the peace of the grave.” A traitor has no future, the author claims, cowardice and betrayal are not forgotten and forgiven, it is impossible to live with them. That is why at the end of the story Nastena dies, becoming an eternal reproach to her husband: live and remember.

Aphorisms and sayings of famous people:

• Without constancy there can be no love, no friendship, no virtue. (D. Addison)
• In this world I value only loyalty. Without this, you are nothing and you have no one. In life it's the only currency, which will never depreciate. (V. Vysotsky)
• Treason begins in the heart before it manifests itself in action. (J. Swift)
• Traitors are despised even by those they served. (Publius Cornelius Tacitus)
• Everyone’s duty is to love their homeland, to be incorruptible and courageous, to remain faithful to it, even at the cost of their lives. (J.-J. Rousseau)
• The basis of love, its primary condition, is faith, unconditional loyalty and devotion. True love she is not blind, on the contrary, she, perhaps, opens a person’s eyes for the first time. The slightest betrayal of a loved one, whether it happens sooner or later, is a complete betrayal of everything, from the very beginning, it destroys not only the future, but also the past, because it means that every day of a life full of trust was a lie and the heart was deceived. Anyone who turns out to be unfaithful at least once will never be faithful. (David Scott)
• True love helps you endure all hardships. (F. Schiller)
• An unfaithful friend is like a shadow that follows you while the sun shines. (K. Dossey)
• Loyalty is the commandment of friendship, the most precious thing that can be given to a person. (E. Thelma)
• Be true to yourself, and then, as surely as night follows day, loyalty to others will follow. (W. Shakespeare)

What questions are worth thinking about?

• Can loyalty be learned or is it an innate quality?
• Can fidelity be a criterion of love?
• Is it possible to call betrayal a betrayal of oneself?
• What can push a person to cheat?
• How can cheating affect people's relationships?
• Is it acceptable to fight on the side of your enemies?
• Is it possible to forgive betrayal?
• How important is being true to your word?

The novel The White Guard opens with an image from 1918. Precisely in the image of those terrible and majestic days. This year the summer was very sunny, the winter was full of snow, and two stars stood high in the sky. The house and the city are the two main inanimate characters of the book. The house is replete with family idyll, and the city one day, far from wonderful, crosses out its existence with a terrible war.

In his book, the author avoids direct opposition between whites and reds, emphasizing that they are all united, regardless of which camp they belong to. He tries to convey all the horror in the idea of ​​senseless fratricide. With sadness and regret, he empathizes with both warring sides and does not fully sympathize with either one.

The author brings to the fore the basic human values: home, homeland, family. But not all of his heroes agreed to recognize these values. With terrifying realism, he was able to convey the mental anguish of people and the tragedy of the situation. The novelty of the novel also lay in the fact that five years after completion civil war, he was able to show the officers of the White Guard not in the guise worst enemy, but as ordinary people, among whom there are good and bad, smart and misguided, honest and selfish. He showed them from the inside, helped to imbue them with sympathy and understanding.

For example, in Alexey, in Malyshev, in Nai-Turs, he valued loyalty to honor, masculinity and directness. For them, the symbol of faith was an unshakable core, which was shaken with the abdication of the throne of Nicholas II.

Nai-Tours is a man of honor. He tears off the young cadet's shoulder straps and covers his retreat with only a machine gun. Nikolka also turns out to be a man of honor. He rushes through the bullet-ridden streets, looking for Nai-Tours' relatives to inform them of his death. And then, risking himself, he steals the body of the murdered commander, removing it from the mountain of frozen corpses, from the basement of the anatomical theater. Malyshev takes a risky step, sending the cadets home when he realizes that this battle is lost, and they are still too young and want to live.

In addition to honor and duty to the fatherland, the author was also concerned with the topic of the afterlife. For some, this faith was persistent and unshakable, for others it faded. The most a shining example pure faith in higher power are Elena's prayers to save her brother's life. An appeal to the Mother of God performs a miracle: Alexey recovers. The semantic climax of the novel ends with Alexey Turbin’s dream about faith in God. He shows that all people are equal before him and sooner or later, someone will have to answer for the blood shed.

The suffering and torment of the fratricidal war forced Bulgakov to write a novel, which is essentially non-religious, but with obvious features of the Christian faith. Although, despite the lack of faith in the Almighty, people did not forget about true values their lives and continued to observe them sacredly.

In complex events of a turning point, in the tragic days of war, a person most often faces the problem of moral choice, and then the character of the hero is revealed especially fully and deeply. This is the situation in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov's "The White Guard", which describes the events of the terrible fratricidal Civil War. Without condemning either the “whites” or the “reds,” the author shows how, even in such a tragic time, people managed to remain faithful to the moral criteria of honor, goodness and justice. Such people in the novel are the Turbins, Colonel Malyshev, Colonel Nai-Tours. But always, at all times, there were people who cared not about the spiritual and not about preserving their unsullied military honor, but about your personal well-being. This is captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, the husband of Elena Turbina. This man entered the Turbin family, but he is alien to her in spirit, and the brothers tolerate him only for the sake of Elena. Just to keep her from worrying, the brothers worry about him being late and justify his delay as a “revolutionary ride.” And they feel joy that he has returned only for Elena. Since her marriage, “some kind of crack has formed in the vase of Turbino’s life,” says the author, explaining the reason through the “double-layer eyes” of Captain Thalberg. Already in the portrait of the hero one can feel the insincerity of this person: “two-story eyes” do not express sincere feeling, as well as the “eternal patented smile.” He stands straight and firm, turning like an automaton. “Slowly and cheerfully” he tells the Turbins about the attack on the train that he was escorting, but his self-confidence is false - he skillfully masks his anxiety and only, having called Elena to the bedroom, admits to her the real state of affairs: he needs to escape.

The essence of Sergei Ivanovich Talberg's character lies in the ability to adapt. He changes his beliefs depending on the changing political situation. In March 1917, Thalberg was the first “to come to military school with a wide red bandage on his sleeve,” immediately becoming a member of the military revolutionary committee. When did they arrive? Ukrainian nationalists, “Thalberg became irritable and dryly declared that this is not what is needed, this is a vulgar operetta,” and the roots of these people are in Moscow, “even though these roots are Bolshevik.” He repeats the same words about “operetta” both when the hetman arrives, but referring them to Moscow, and when he leaves German occupation, attributing them to the Hetman's ministry. It’s as if Talberg doesn’t want to notice that this is not just an “operetta”, “but with a lot of bloodshed” - the main thing for him is to join the winners in time. He has not served for two months, saying that the nationalists who came after the Germans “have no roots” - he sees “roots” in the regular German army, well armed and strong. At the same time, he slowly learns Ukrainian grammar and then takes part in the elections of “hetman of all Ukraine.” After this, “the water poured out of the vessel”: the Turbin brothers lost mutual language with Sergei Ivanovich, and Talberg became irritated and “very angry” when Nikolka “tactlessly” reminded him of his previous convictions. People of honor, the Turbins do not change their views under this or that government, but Captain Talberg is not like that, for whom it is important to successfully adapt in this life. Now he must flee: after his articles in the Vesti newspaper, he cannot stay in the City where Petliura’s troops will come. They take him on a train to Germany - “Thalberg found connections...”. But when he leaves, he does not take Elena with him, and this is not a departure, but a hasty flight. The author depicts the chaos of a ruined room, scattered things and considers this unworthy: “never run like a rat into the unknown from danger.” It is more worthy to wait “until they come to you,” even if “a blizzard is howling.” But Talberg flees like a rat from a sinking ship, and actually betrays Elena. He explains this by saying that he cannot take her “on wanderings and the unknown,” and Elena remains silent out of pride. But it is already clear that it is more dangerous not to leave in a German staff carriage to Germany, but to stay in the City, where Petliura’s troops arrive, and then the government will change again, and no one is protected from the violence and bloody tyranny of this element. Thalberg doesn’t even want to tell his brothers that the Germans are leaving the City, leaving this to Elena. Just for a moment, Sergei Ivanovich’s eyes were filled with one feeling - tenderness for Elena as he said goodbye. Parting with the Turbins' house, with the immortal "Faust", which Talberg will no longer have to hear performed by Elena, Talberg loses last contact with people of a different spiritual culture, different life principles than himself. Now he has to “politely and ingratiatingly” smile at the German officers, look for a new place in life, winning it at the cost of betrayal.

M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” is dedicated to tragic events 1918-1919 in Kyiv - hometown writer. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, power in the city changed from 12 to 18 times over the years, and A.M. Bulgakov argued that coups...

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M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard,” written in 1925 about the Civil War, covers the period from December 1918 to February 1919. Old world collapses, and the heroes of the novel, Russian intellectuals, shocked by events that change the usual way of life...

The son of a professor at the Kyiv Academy, who absorbed the best traditions Russian culture and spirituality, M. A. Bulgakov graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Kyiv, from 1916 he worked as a zemstvo doctor in the village of Nikolskoye, Smolensk province, and then in Vyazma, where he found...

From 1917 to 1922, Russia was wracked by a terrible civil war. The number of those killed in battles, executed, died from hunger and epidemics reached 19-21 million people, 12-13% of the population. 2 million emigrated to foreign lands.

The films show us a truly heroic era, selfless commissars and security officers, “boomers” and “elusive avengers.” But legends were created by the victors, in fact, the romantics great tragedy there was little. And even more so in the Red camp.

The 1917 revolution was the result of a dirty conspiracy. Russia's opponent in the World War, Germany, participated in its preparation and financing. Allies also took part: governments, intelligence services and banking circles in England and the USA. Russia was their main competitor in the world economy, and so it was thrown into chaos.

The Bolsheviks, having seized power, showed themselves to be the most cruel and unprincipled of the revolutionary parties. By demagoguery they attracted the mob, selfish people, and criminals to their side. It was proclaimed: “Rob the loot”! Hooligans and boors were given complete permissiveness, setting them against their opponents. The country was overwhelmed by terror, pogroms, and violence. But not all Russian people cowardly tucked their tails between their legs and submitted to the usurpers. The White Guard rose up in opposition to the Reds. And so the best sons of Russia, the most ardent, sincere patriots, ready to sacrifice themselves for the honor and greatness of their homeland: officers, students, high school students, Cossacks, were drawn into its ranks.

Their struggle was the highest feat. They started from scratch, acquiring weapons and ammunition in battles. Hungry and ragged, they performed miracles and defeated hordes of enemies twenty times greater. They liberated province after province, and the inhabitants of the tormented cities met the deliverers ringing bells, were thrown with flowers. In the areas occupied by whites, law and order were established, normal human life. Kiev professor A. Goldenweiser wrote: “The era of volunteers was an era of revival and restoration of everything destroyed by the Soviet regime.”

And yet the White Guards were unable to gain the upper hand. There were too few of them. At the time of their greatest success, in the fall of 1919, their troops numbered 260-270 thousand bayonets and sabers, and the Red Army - 3.5 million. Moreover, the small White Guards were divided into several fronts. When Kolchak advanced from Siberia, Denikin suffered defeats in the south. When Denikin tried to break through to Moscow, and Yudenich to Petrograd, Kolchak had already been defeated.

The White Guards were not united ideologically either. They themselves found themselves infected with all sorts of revolutionary theories and became entangled in politics. They had to fight not only with the Reds, but also with anarchists, with “greens”, with Caucasian and Ukrainian separatists. Whites were able to return to the idea of ​​a monarchy only in exile, after they had tried other ideological fluff on themselves. And during the years of the civil war, they agreed only on the fact that Russia should remain “united and indivisible.” They introduced democratic, liberal orders. But the more democratic the white government was, the faster it died. But the Bolsheviks did not play at democracy, they tightened the screws of dictatorship. They made alliances with anyone, with the Makhnovists, nationalists, as long as they were needed. Then they easily crushed them.

Finally, the White Guards remained chivalrously faithful to their Entente allies - England, France, America. After all, Russia saved them more than once in the First World War, and it was believed that the allies would reciprocate and help free the country from the red “barbarians.” But the Western powers did not at all want the revival of powerful Russia. English Prime Minister Lloyd George openly stated in parliament: “The advisability of assisting Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin is all the more controversial because they are fighting for united Russia. It is not for me to say whether this slogan is consistent with British policy.”
The Whites were given assistance with weapons, but not much - only to make the war flare up more abruptly. And on the sly, the allies did everything to prevent them from winning. At critical moments, assistance was stopped and agreements were broken down. Moreover, stabs were organized in the back of Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich. When the defeated remnants of the white armies found themselves in a foreign land, they met with a disgusting reception. They starved and died in refugee camps, scattered around the world in search of work...

Problematics of M. Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" PROBLEMATICS OF M. BULGAKOV'S NOVEL
"WHITE GUARD"
All will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, famine and pestilence.
The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain when the shadows
our bodies and deeds will not remain on earth. No neither
one person who would not know this. So
why don’t we want to turn our gaze to them?
Why?
M. Bulgakov “White Guard”

The problem of moral choice

The problem of duty, honor

The problem of courage and bravery

The problem of betrayal, selfishness, dishonor

The problem of lack of morality

The problem of returning the departed

10. The problem of the value of home

11. The problem of equality of all people before God