The essence of the story is Matryonin Dvor. Analysis of Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor”

In the summer of 1956, the hero of the story, Ignatyich, returns to central Russia from the Asian camps. In the story he is endowed with the function of narrator. The hero works as a teacher in a rural school and settles in the village of Talnovo in the hut of sixty-year-old Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva. The tenant and the landlady turn out to be people who are spiritually close to each other. In Ignatyich’s story about Matryona’s daily life, in the assessments of the people around her, in her actions, judgments and memories of her experiences, the fate of the heroine and her inner world are revealed to the reader. The fate of Matryona and her image become for the hero a symbol of fate and the image of Russia itself.

In winter, the relatives of Matryona’s husband take away part of the house from the heroine - the upper room. While transporting a dismantled room, Matryona Vasilievna dies at a railway crossing under the wheels of a steam locomotive, trying to help the men remove a stuck sleigh with logs from the crossing. Matryona appears in the story as a moral ideal, as the embodiment of the lofty spiritual and moral principles of people's life that have been displaced by the course of history. She, in the eyes of the hero-narrator, is one of those righteous people on whom the world stands.

With its genre features, Solzhenitsyn’s story comes close to an essay and goes back to the Turgenev tradition of “Notes of a Hunter.” Along with this, “Matrenin’s Dvor” seems to continue the tradition of Leskov’s stories about Russian righteous people. In the author’s version, the story was called “A village is not worth it without a righteous man,” but was first published under the title “Matrenin’s Dvor.”

The fate of the hero-narrator of Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” is correlated with the fate of the heroes of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Ignatyich, as it were, continues the fate of Shukhov and his fellow camp inmates. His story tells what awaits prisoners in life after release. Therefore, the first important problem in the story is the problem of the hero choosing his place in the world.

Ignatyich, who spent ten years in prison and a camp, after living in exile in a “dusty hot desert,” seeks to settle in a quiet corner of Russia, “where it would not be a shame to live and die.” The hero wants to find a place in his native land that would preserve unchanged the original features and signs of folk life. Ignatyich hopes to find spiritual and moral support and peace of mind in the traditional national way of life, which has withstood the destructive influence of the inexorable course of history. He finds it in the village of Talnovo, settling in the hut of Matryona Vasilievna.

What explains this choice of the hero?

The hero of the story refuses to accept the terrible inhuman absurdity of existence, which has become the norm of life of contemporaries and has diverse manifestations in the everyday way of life of people. Solzhenitsyn shows this with the mercilessness of a publicist in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” One example is the careless, nature-destroying actions of the collective farm chairman, who received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for the successful destruction of centuries-old forests.

The tragic fate of the hero is a consequence of the abnormal course of history and the illogical way of life. The absurdity and unnaturalness of the new way of life is especially noticeable in cities and industrial towns. Therefore, the hero strives to the outback of Russia, wants to “settle... forever” “somewhere away from the railway.” The railway is a traditional symbol for Russian classical literature of a soulless modern civilization that brings destruction and death to people. The railway also appears in this meaning in Solzhenitsyn’s story.

At first, the hero's desire seems impossible. He bitterly notices both in the life of the village of Vysokoye Pole and in the village of Torfoprodukt (“Ah, Turgenev didn’t know that it was possible to compose something like this in Russian!” says the narrator about the name of the village) the terrible realities of the new way of life. Therefore, the village of Talnovo, Matryona’s house and she herself become the last hope for the hero, the last opportunity to fulfill his dream. Matrenin's yard becomes for the hero the desired embodiment of that Russia, which it was so important for him to find.

In Matryona, Ignatyich sees the spiritual and moral ideal of the Russian person. What character traits, personality traits of Matryona allow us to see in her the embodiment of the lofty spiritual and moral principles of people’s life that have been displaced by the course of history? What storytelling techniques are used to create the image of the heroine in the story?

First of all, we see Matryona in an ordinary setting, in a series of daily worries and affairs. Describing the heroine’s actions, the narrator seeks to penetrate their hidden meaning and understand their motives.

In the story about the first meeting of Ignatyich and Matryona, we see the sincerity, simplicity, and unselfishness of the heroine. “I only found out later,” says the narrator, “that year after year, for many years, Matryona Vasilievna did not earn a ruble from anywhere. Because she was not paid a pension. Her family didn't help her much. And on the collective farm she didn’t work for money - for sticks.” But Matryona is not trying to get a profitable tenant. She fears that she will not be able to please the new person, that he will not like it in her house, which she directly tells the hero. But Matryona is happy when Ignatyich still stays with her, because with a new person her loneliness comes to an end.

Matryona is characterized by inner tact and delicacy. Getting up long before the guest, she “quietly, politely, trying not to make noise, heated the Russian stove, went to milk the goat,” “she did not invite guests to her place in the evenings, respecting my activities,” says Ignatyich. Matryona lacks “womanish curiosity”; she “did not annoy the hero with any questions.” Ignatyich is especially captivated by Matryona’s goodwill; her kindness is revealed in a disarming “radiant smile” that transforms the heroine’s entire appearance. “Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience,” the narrator concludes.

“Things called to life,” the narrator says about Matryona. Work becomes for the heroine a way to restore peace in her soul. “She had a sure way to regain her good spirits - work,” notes the narrator.

Working on a collective farm, Matryona did not receive anything for her work; helping her fellow villagers, she refused money. Her work is selfless. For Matryona, working is as natural as breathing. Therefore, the heroine considers taking money for her work inconvenient and impossible.

A new way to create the image of Matryona is to introduce the heroine’s memories into the narrative. They demonstrate new facets of her personality, in them the heroine is fully revealed.

From Matryona’s memoirs we learn that in her youth, like Nekrasov’s heroine, she stopped a galloping horse. Matryona is capable of a decisive, even desperate act, but behind this is not a love of risk, not recklessness, but a desire to avert trouble. The desire to avert trouble and help people will dictate the behavior of the heroine in the last minutes of her life before her death, when she rushed to help the men pull out the sleigh stuck at the railway crossing. Matryona remains true to herself to the end.

“But Matryona was by no means fearless,” notes the narrator. “She was afraid of the fire, she was afraid of the Molonia, and most of all, for some reason, of the train.” Just the sight of the train “makes Matryona feel hot, her knees are shaking.” The panic fear experienced by Matryona from the mere sight of a train, which at first evokes a smile, by the end of the story, after the death of the heroine under its wheels, takes on the meaning of a tragically true premonition.

In the heroine's memories of her experience, it is revealed that she has a sense of self-esteem, cannot bear insults and strongly protests when her husband raised his hand to her.

The outbreak of the First World War separates her from her beloved man, Thaddeus, and predetermines the entire subsequent tragic course of Matryona’s life. In three years, new tragedies have occurred in the life of Russia: “And one revolution. And another revolution. And the whole world turned upside down." Matryona’s life also turned upside down. Like the whole country, Matryona faces a “terrible choice”: she must choose her destiny, answer the question: how to live further? Thaddeus’s younger brother, Efim, wooed Matryona. The heroine married him - started a new life, chose her destiny. But the choice was wrong. Six months later, Thaddeus returns from captivity. In the disastrous game of passions that gripped him, Thaddeus is ready to kill Matryona and her chosen one. But Thaddeus is stopped by a moral prohibition that still exists in life - he does not dare to go against his brother.

There is no turning back for the heroine. Matryona's choice does not bring her happiness. The new life does not work out, her marriage is fruitless.

In 1941, the world war began again, and the tragedy experienced in the First World War repeated itself in Matryona’s life. Just as Matryona lost her beloved in the first war, so in the second she loses her husband. The inexorable passage of time dooms Matryona’s courtyard to death: “The once noisy, but now deserted hut rotted and grew old - and the deserted Matryona grew old in it.”

Solzhenitsyn strengthens this motive, showing that the terrible inhuman absurdity of existence, which has become the norm of life for people in a new historical era and from which the hero sought salvation in Matryona’s house, did not escape the heroine. The new way of life relentlessly invades Matryona’s life. The eleven post-war years of collective farm life were marked by aggressive, inhuman stupidity and cynicism of the collective farm order. It seems that a survival experiment was carried out on Matryona and her fellow villagers: on the collective farm they did not pay money for work, they “cut off” personal gardens, did not provide mowing for livestock, and were deprived of fuel for the winter. A triumph of the absurdity of collective farm life appears in the story in the listing of the property of Matryona, who worked on the collective farm for many years: “a dirty white goat, a lanky cat, ficus trees.” But Matryona managed to overcome all the hardships and hardships and keep the peace of her soul unchanged.

Matryona's house and its mistress appear as opposed to the surrounding world and the illogical and unnatural way of life that has established itself in it. The human world feels this and takes cruel revenge on Matryona.

This motif receives plot development in the story of the destruction of Matrenin's yard. Despite fate, which doomed her to loneliness, Matryona raised Thaddeus’s daughter, Kira, for ten years and became her second mother. Matryona decided: after her death, half the house, the upper room, should be inherited by Kira. But Thaddeus, with whom Matryona once wanted to unite her life, decides to take the upper room while its mistress is still alive.

In the actions of Thaddeus and his assistants, Solzhenitsyn sees a manifestation of the triumph of a new way of life. The new way of life formed a special attitude towards the world and determined a new nature of human relationships. The terrible inhumanity and absurdity of human existence is revealed by the author in the substitution of concepts that has become established in the minds of contemporaries, when “our language fearfully calls our property our property” as “good.” In the plot of the story, this “good” turns into all-crushing evil. The pursuit of such “good”, which “is considered shameful and stupid to lose in front of people,” turns out in the story into a different, immeasurably greater loss of genuine and enduring good: the world loses a kind, wonderful person - Matryona, high spiritual and moral principles are lost in life. A desperate and reckless pursuit of “good property” brings death to the human soul and brings to life the terrible destructive properties of human nature - selfishness, cruelty, greed, aggressiveness, greed, cynicism, pettiness. All these base passions will manifest themselves in the people surrounding Matryona, determining their behavior in the story of the destruction of her house and the death of herself. Matryona's soul, her inner world is contrasted with the souls and inner world of the people around her. Matryona's soul is beautiful because Solzhenitsyn believes that the goal of Matryona's life was not goodness-property, but goodness-love.

Matryona's house in Solzhenitsyn's story becomes a symbol of the harmonious traditional way of peasant life, high spiritual and moral values, the keeper of which is Matryona. Therefore, she and the house are inseparable. The heroine intuitively senses this: “it was terrible for her to start breaking the roof under which she had lived for forty years. ...for Matryona this was the end of her entire life,” the narrator concludes. But Thaddeus and his assistants think differently. The hero’s disastrous passions are no longer restrained by anything—there are no longer any previously existing moral prohibitions standing in their way. They “knew that her house could be broken during her lifetime.”

Matryona's yard, in which the hero of the story found spiritual and moral support, becomes the last stronghold of the traditional national way of life, which was unable to withstand the destructive influence of the inexorable course of history.

The destruction of Matryona's house becomes in the story a symbol of a violation of the natural course of historical time, fraught with catastrophic upheavals. Thus, the death of Matryonin’s court becomes an indictment of a new historical era.

The final chord in creating the image of the heroine comes at the end of the story, after the death of Matryona, by comparing her with the people around her. The tragic death of Matryona was supposed to shock people, make them think, awaken their souls, shake off the scales from their eyes. But this doesn't happen. The new way of life has devastated the souls of people, their hearts have become hardened, there is no place in them for compassion, empathy, or true sorrow. Solzhenitsyn shows this at the farewell ceremonies, funerals, and wakes of Matryona. The rituals lose their high, mournful, tragic meaning; all that remains of them is a ossified form, mechanically repeated by the participants. The tragedy of death is not able to stop people’s mercantile and vain aspirations.

Matryona's loneliness during life after her death takes on a special and new meaning. She is lonely because Matryona’s spiritual and moral world, objectively, against the will of the heroine, opposes the values ​​of the world of the people around her. Matryona's world was alien and incomprehensible to them, causing irritation and condemnation. Thus, the image of Matryona allows the author to show in the story the moral troubles and spiritual emptiness of modern society.

The narrator's acquaintance with the people surrounding Matryona helps him fully understand her high purpose in the world of people. Matryona, who did not accumulate property, endured cruel trials and remained strong in spirit, is “the very righteous man without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.

Neither the city.

Neither the whole land is ours.”

The magazine “New World” published several works by Solzhenitsyn, among them “Matrenin’s Dvor”. The story, according to the writer, is “completely autobiographical and reliable.” It talks about the Russian village, about its inhabitants, about their values, about goodness, justice, sympathy and compassion, work and help - qualities that fit in the righteous man, without whom “the village is not worth it.”

“Matrenin’s Dvor” is a story about the injustice and cruelty of human fate, about the Soviet order of post-Stalin times and about the life of the most ordinary people living far from city life. The narration is told not from the perspective of the main character, but from the perspective of the narrator, Ignatyich, who in the whole story seems to play the role of only an outside observer. What is described in the story dates back to 1956 - three years passed after the death of Stalin, and then the Russian people did not yet know or understand how to live on.

“Matrenin’s Dvor” is divided into three parts:

1. The first tells the story of Ignatyich, it begins at the Torfprodukt station. The hero immediately reveals his cards, without making any secret of it: he is a former prisoner, and now works as a teacher at a school, he came there in search of peace and tranquility. In Stalin's time, it was almost impossible for people who had been imprisoned to find a job, and after the death of the leader, many became school teachers (a profession in short supply). Ignatyich stays with an elderly, hardworking woman named Matryona, with whom he finds it easy to communicate and has peace of mind. Her dwelling was poor, the roof sometimes leaked, but this did not mean at all that there was no comfort in it: “Maybe to someone from the village, someone richer, Matryona’s hut did not seem friendly, but for us that autumn and winter it was quite good."
2. The second part tells about Matryona’s youth, when she had to go through a lot. The war took her fiancé Fadey away from her, and she had to marry his brother, who still had children in his arms. Taking pity on him, she became his wife, although she did not love him at all. But three years later, Fadey, whom the woman still loved, suddenly returned. The returning warrior hated her and her brother for their betrayal. But hard life could not kill her kindness and hard work, because it was in work and caring for others that she found solace. Matryona even died while doing business - she helped her lover and her sons drag part of her house across the railroad tracks, which was bequeathed to Kira (his daughter). And this death was caused by Fadey’s greed, avarice and callousness: he decided to take away the inheritance while Matryona was still alive.
3. The third part talks about how the narrator learns about Matryona’s death and describes the funeral and wake. Her relatives are not crying out of grief, but rather because it is customary, and in their heads there are only thoughts about the division of the property of the deceased. Fadey is not at the wake.

Main characters

Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva is an elderly woman, a peasant woman, who was released from work on the collective farm due to illness. She was always happy to help people, even strangers. In the episode when the narrator moves into her hut, the author mentions that she never intentionally looked for a lodger, that is, she did not want to make money on this basis, and did not profit even from what she could. Her wealth was pots of ficus trees and an old domestic cat that she took from the street, a goat, as well as mice and cockroaches. Matryona also married her fiancé’s brother out of a desire to help: “Their mother died...they didn’t have enough hands.”

Matryona herself also had six children, but they all died in early childhood, so she later took in Fadey’s youngest daughter, Kira, to raise her. Matryona rose early in the morning, worked until dark, but did not show fatigue or dissatisfaction to anyone: she was kind and responsive to everyone. She was always very afraid of becoming a burden to someone, she did not complain, she was even afraid to call the doctor again. As Kira grew up, Matryona wanted to give her room as a gift, which required dividing the house - during the move, Fadey’s things got stuck in a sled on the railroad tracks, and Matryona got hit by a train. Now there was no one to ask for help, there was no person ready to unselfishly come to the rescue. But the relatives of the deceased kept in mind only the thought of profit, of dividing what was left of the poor peasant woman, already thinking about it at the funeral. Matryona stood out very much from the background of her fellow villagers, and was thus irreplaceable, invisible and the only righteous person.

Narrator, Ignatyich, to some extent, is a prototype of the writer. He served his exile and was acquitted, after which he set out in search of a calm and serene life, he wanted to work as a school teacher. He found refuge with Matryona. Judging by the desire to move away from the bustle of the city, the narrator is not very sociable and loves silence. He worries when a woman takes his padded jacket by mistake, and is confused by the volume of the loudspeaker. The narrator got along with the owner of the house; this shows that he is still not completely antisocial. However, he doesn’t understand people very well: he understood the meaning by which Matryona lived only after she passed away.

Topics and issues

Solzhenitsyn in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” talks about the life of the inhabitants of the Russian village, about the system of relationships between power and people, about the high meaning of selfless work in the kingdom of selfishness and greed.

Of all this, the theme of labor is shown most clearly. Matryona is a person who does not ask for anything in return and is ready to give herself all for the benefit of others. They don’t appreciate her and don’t even try to understand her, but this is a person who experiences tragedy every day: first, the mistakes of her youth and the pain of loss, then frequent illnesses, hard work, not life, but survival. But from all the problems and hardships, Matryona finds solace in work. And, in the end, it is work and overwork that leads her to death. The meaning of Matryona’s life is precisely this, and also care, help, the desire to be needed. Therefore, active love for others is the main theme of the story.

The problem of morality also occupies an important place in the story. Material values ​​in the village are exalted over the human soul and its work, over humanity in general. The secondary characters are simply unable to understand the depth of Matryona’s character: greed and the desire to possess more clouds their eyes and does not allow them to see kindness and sincerity. Fadey lost his son and wife, his son-in-law faces imprisonment, but his thoughts are on how to protect the logs that were not burned.

In addition, the story has a theme of mysticism: the motive of an unidentified righteous man and the problem of cursed things - which were touched by people full of self-interest. Fadey made the upper room of Matryona's hut cursed, undertaking to knock it down.

Idea

The above-mentioned themes and problems in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” are aimed at revealing the depth of the main character’s pure worldview. An ordinary peasant woman serves as an example of the fact that difficulties and losses only strengthen a Russian person, and do not break him. With the death of Matryona, everything that she figuratively built collapses. Her house is torn apart, the remains of her property are divided among themselves, the yard remains empty and ownerless. Therefore, her life looks pitiful, no one realizes the loss. But won't the same thing happen to the palaces and jewels of the powerful? The author demonstrates the frailty of material things and teaches us not to judge others by their wealth and achievements. The true meaning is the moral character, which does not fade even after death, because it remains in the memory of those who saw its light.

Maybe over time the heroes will notice that a very important part of their life is missing: invaluable values. Why reveal global moral problems in such poor settings? And what then is the meaning of the title of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”? The last words that Matryona was a righteous woman erase the boundaries of her court and expand them to the scale of the whole world, thereby making the problem of morality universal.

Folk character in the work

Solzhenitsyn reasoned in the article “Repentance and Self-Restraint”: “There are such born angels, they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even if their feet touch its surface? Each of us has met such people, there are not ten of them or a hundred of them in Russia, these are righteous people, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), took advantage of their goodness, in good moments answered them in kind, they disposed - and immediately immersed again to our doomed depths.”

Matryona is distinguished from the rest by her ability to preserve her humanity and a strong core inside. To those who unscrupulously used her help and kindness, it might seem that she was weak-willed and pliable, but the heroine helped based only on her inner selflessness and moral greatness.

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“Matrenin's Dvor” is one of the most famous stories by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The essence of the work lies in the idea of ​​​​the injustice of human fate. As a result of his life, a person does not always get what he deserves. The events of the story unfold after the death of Stalin. According to the author, this is the most suitable period of history to reveal the essence of the story. The leader died and the people did not know how to live now. The past government was not always fair, so many people suffer from arbitrariness.

There are many heroes in the work. The story is told from the perspective of Ignatyich, a former prisoner who now works as a teacher in a rural school. He decided to take a break from the bustle of the city, so he moved away from large populated areas. In some ways, his image is autobiographical. Ignatyich lives with Matryona. Matryona is a simple rural woman, a peasant. In her youth, she loved a man, but he disappeared in action during the war. Then the girl married his brother, Fadey, whom she did not love. He had children, whom Matryona took up raising. Then Matryona’s fiancé, whom she loved, showed up. He was offended by his lover and brother. Matryona is always ready to help friends and strangers. She is very kind and merciful. However, the peasant woman does not receive any kindness in return. She bequeaths her upper room to Kira, daughter of Thadeus. The girl insists that the property be transferred to her immediately, before Matryona’s death. When half of the house is moved, the peasant woman dies.

In the work "Matrenin's Dvor" the themes of morality are raised primarily. This, of course, is a question of exalting material values ​​over spiritual ones. All of Matryona’s relatives are concerned only with their material well-being, including inheritance. This continues to occupy them even after the woman’s death. The second important topic is the topic of labor. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the importance of work in a person’s life using the example of Matryona. Using this image as an example, the problem of active love that a woman showed to everyone around her is also considered. She strived to make their lives better, took care of them, and fulfilled all their desires.

The idea of ​​the story is that throughout her life Matryona created a special cozy atmosphere in the house, took care of those around her, and after her death everything she created perished. Her relatives did not support the hearth created by the deceased. Thus, the author emphasizes the insignificance of material values ​​compared to spiritual ones, as well as their meaninglessness compared to death.

This work is distinguished by its national flavor. For Solzhenitsyn, Matryona is the people's ideal. For him, as a person and as a citizen, a person must first of all be active, active and hardworking. Hard work is a distinctive feature of the Russian people, according to the writer, on which the well-being of citizens and the future of the country depend.

The story “Matrenin's Dvor” is a diverse, colorful, original work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

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A comprehensive analysis of the work "Matrenin's Dvor" by A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
In the work “Matryona’s Dvor,” Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn describes the life of a hardworking, intelligent, but very lonely woman, Matryona, whom no one understood or appreciated, but everyone tried to take advantage of her hard work and responsiveness.
The very title of the story "Matrenin's Dvor" can be interpreted in different ways. In the first case, for example, the word “yard” can simply mean Matryona’s way of life, her household, her purely everyday worries and difficulties. In the second case, perhaps, we can say that the word “yard” focuses the reader’s attention on the fate of Matryona’s house itself, Matryona’s household yard itself. In the third case, the “yard” symbolizes the circle of people who were one way or another interested in Matryona.
Each of the meanings of the word “yard” that I have given above certainly contains the tragedy that is inherent, perhaps, in the way of life of every woman similar to Matryona, but still in the third meaning, it seems to me, the tragedy is greatest, since here we are talking it is not about the difficulties of life and not about loneliness, but about the fact that even death cannot make people think one day about justice and proper attitude towards human dignity. The fear for themselves, their lives, without the help of someone else, whose fate they never cared about, prevails much more strongly in people. “Then I learned that crying over the deceased is not just crying, but a kind of marking. Matryona’s three sisters flew in, seized the hut, the goat and the stove, locked her chest, gutted two hundred funeral rubles from the lining of her coat, and explained to everyone who came that They were the only ones close to Matryona."
I think that in this case all three meanings of the word “yard” are combined, and each of these meanings reflects one or another tragic picture: the soullessness, deadness of the “living courtyard” that surrounded Matryona during her life and later divided her household; the fate of Matryona’s hut itself after Matryona’s death and during Matryona’s life; the absurd death of Matryona.
The main feature of Solzhenitsyn’s literary language is that Alexander Isaevich himself gives an explanatory interpretation of many of the remarks of the heroes of the story, and this reveals to us the veil behind which lies Solzhenitsyn’s very mood, his personal attitude towards each of the heroes. However, I got the impression that the author’s interpretations are somewhat ironic in nature, but at the same time they seem to synthesize the remarks and leave in them only the ins and outs, undisguised, true meaning. “Oh, aunty, aunty! And how you didn’t take care of yourself! And, probably, now they are offended by us! And you are our darling, and the fault is all yours! And the upper room has nothing to do with it, and why did you go there, where did death guard you? And no one called you there! And how you died - I didn’t think about it! And why didn’t you listen to us? E (And from all these lamentations the answer stuck out: we are not to blame for her death, but we’ll talk about the hut later !)".
Reading between the lines of Solzhenitsyn’s story, one can understand that Alexander Isaevich himself draws completely different conclusions from what he heard than those that could be expected. “And only here - from these disapproving reviews of my sister-in-law - did the image of Matryona emerge before me, as I did not understand her, even living with her side by side.” “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand.” One involuntarily recalls the words of the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the meaning of which is that in reality everything is not as it is in reality.
Matryona is a contrast to the reality that in Solzhenitsyn’s story is expressed through the anger, envy and acquisitiveness of people. With her way of life, Matryona proved that anyone who lives in this world can be honest and righteous if he lives by a righteous idea and is strong in spirit.

The story “Matryonin’s Dvor” was written by Solzhenitsyn in 1959. The first title of the story is “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” (Russian proverb). The final version of the title was invented by Tvardovsky, who at that time was the editor of the magazine “New World”, where the story was published in No. 1 for 1963. At the insistence of the editors, the beginning of the story was changed and the events were attributed not to 1956, but to 1953. that is, to the pre-Khrushchev era. This is a bow to Khrushchev, thanks to whose permission Solzhenitsyn’s first story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1962) was published.

The image of the narrator in the work “Matryonin’s Dvor” is autobiographical. After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated, actually lived in the village of Miltsevo (Talnovo in the story) and rented a corner from Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova (Grigorieva in the story). Solzhenitsyn very accurately conveyed not only the details of the life of the prototype Marena, but also the features of life and even the local dialect of the village.

Literary direction and genre

Solzhenitsyn developed Tolstoy's tradition of Russian prose in a realistic direction. The story combines the features of an artistic essay, the story itself and elements of life. The life of the Russian village is reflected so objectively and diversely that the work approaches the genre of “novel-type story.” In this genre, the character of the hero is shown not only at a turning point in his development, but also the history of the character and the stages of his formation are illuminated. The fate of the hero reflects the fate of the entire era and country (as Solzhenitsyn says, the earth).

Issues

At the center of the story is a moral issue. Are many human lives worth a captured site or a decision dictated by human greed not to make a second trip with a tractor? Material values ​​among the people are valued higher than the person himself. Thaddeus's son and his once beloved woman died, his son-in-law is threatened with prison, and his daughter is inconsolable. But the hero is thinking about how to save the logs that the workers did not have time to burn at the crossing.

Mystical motives are at the center of the story. This is the motive of the unrecognized righteous man and the problem of curse on things touched by people with unclean hands pursuing selfish goals. So Thaddeus undertook to demolish Matryonin’s upper room, thereby making it cursed.

Plot and composition

The story "Matryonin's Dvor" has a time frame. In one paragraph, the author talks about how at one of the crossings and 25 years after a certain event, trains slow down. That is, the frame dates back to the early 80s, the rest of the story is an explanation of what happened at the crossing in 1956, the year of the Khrushchev Thaw, when “something started to move.”

The hero-narrator finds the place of his teaching in an almost mystical way, having heard a special Russian dialect at the bazaar and settling in “kondovaya Russia”, in the village of Talnovo.

The plot centers on the life of Matryona. The narrator learns about her fate from herself (she talks about how Thaddeus, who disappeared in the first war, wooed her, and how she married his brother, who disappeared in the second). But the hero finds out more about the silent Matryona from his own observations and from others.

The story describes in detail Matryona's hut, located in a picturesque place near the lake. The hut plays an important role in the life and death of Matryona. To understand the meaning of the story, you need to imagine a traditional Russian hut. Matryona's hut was divided into two halves: the actual living hut with a Russian stove and the upper room (it was built for the eldest son in order to separate him when he got married). It is this upper room that Thaddeus dismantles in order to build a hut for Matryona’s niece and his own daughter Kira. The hut in the story is animated. The wallpaper that has fallen off the wall is called its inner skin.

The ficus trees in the tubs are also endowed with living features, reminding the narrator of a silent but living crowd.

The development of action in the story is a static state of harmonious coexistence between the narrator and Matryona, who “do not find the meaning of everyday existence in food.” The climax of the story is the moment of destruction of the upper room, and the work ends with the main idea and bitter omen.

Heroes of the story

The hero-narrator, whom Matryona calls Ignatich, makes it clear from the first lines that he came from prison. He is looking for a teaching job in the wilderness, in the Russian outback. Only the third village satisfies him. Both the first and the second turn out to be corrupted by civilization. Solzhenitsyn makes it clear to the reader that he condemns the attitude of Soviet bureaucrats towards people. The narrator despises the authorities who do not grant Matryona a pension, who force her to work on the collective farm for sticks, who not only do not provide peat for the fire, but also forbid asking about it. He instantly decides not to extradite Matryona, who brewed moonshine, and hides her crime, for which she faces prison.

Having experienced and seen a lot, the narrator, embodying the author’s point of view, acquires the right to judge everything that he observes in the village of Talnovo - a miniature embodiment of Russia.

Matryona is the main character of the story. The author says about her: “Those people have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.” At the moment of meeting, Matryona’s face is yellow, and her eyes are clouded with illness.

To survive, Matryona grows small potatoes, secretly brings forbidden peat from the forest (up to 6 bags a day) and secretly mows hay for her goat.

Matryona lacked womanly curiosity, she was delicate, and did not annoy her with questions. Today's Matryona is a lost old woman. The author knows about her that she got married before the revolution, that she had 6 children, but they all died quickly, “so two didn’t live at once.” Matryona's husband did not return from the war, but disappeared without a trace. The hero suspected that he had a new family somewhere abroad.

Matryona had a quality that distinguished her from the rest of the village residents: she selflessly helped everyone, even the collective farm, from which she was expelled due to illness. There is a lot of mysticism in her image. In her youth, she could lift bags of any weight, stopped a galloping horse, had a presentiment of her death, being afraid of steam locomotives. Another omen of her death is a cauldron with holy water that disappeared to God knows where at Epiphany.

Matryona's death seems to be an accident. But why are the mice running around like crazy on the night of her death? The narrator suggests that 30 years later the threat of Matryona’s brother-in-law Thaddeus struck, who threatened to chop Matryona and his own brother, who married her.

After death, Matryona's holiness is revealed. The mourners notice that she, completely crushed by the tractor, has only her right hand left to pray to God. And the narrator draws attention to her face, which is more alive than dead.

Fellow villagers speak of Matryona with disdain, not understanding her selflessness. Her sister-in-law considers her unscrupulous, not careful, not inclined to accumulate goods; Matryona did not seek her own benefit and helped others for free. Even Matryonina’s warmth and simplicity were despised by her fellow villagers.

Only after her death did the narrator understand that Matryona, “not chasing after things”, indifferent to food and clothing, is the basis, the core of all of Russia. On such a righteous person stands the village, the city and the country (“the whole land is ours”). For the sake of one righteous person, as in the Bible, God can spare the earth and save it from fire.

Artistic originality

Matryona appears before the hero as a fairy-tale creature, like Baba Yaga, who reluctantly gets off the stove to feed the passing prince. She, like a fairytale grandmother, has animal helpers. Shortly before Matryona’s death, the lanky cat leaves the house; the mice, anticipating the death of the old woman, make a particularly rustling noise. But cockroaches are indifferent to the fate of the hostess. Following Matryona, her favorite ficus trees, like a crowd, die: they are of no practical value and are taken out into the cold after Matryona’s death.

To Central Russia. Thanks to new trends, a recent prisoner is now not refused to become a school teacher in the Vladimir village of Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). Solzhenitsyn settles in the hut of a local resident, Matryona Vasilievna, a woman of about sixty who is often ill. Matryona has neither a husband nor children. Her loneliness is brightened up only by the ficus trees planted throughout the house and a languid cat picked out of pity. (See Description of Matryona's house.)

With warm, lyrical sympathy, A.I. Solzhenitsyn describes the difficult life of Matryona. For many years she has not earned a single ruble. On the collective farm, Matryona works “for the sticks of workdays in the accountant’s dirty book.” The law that came out after Stalin’s death finally gives her the right to seek a pension, but not for herself, but for the loss of her husband, who went missing at the front. To do this, you need to collect a bunch of certificates, and then take them many times to social services and the village council, 10-20 kilometers away. Matryona's hut is full of mice and cockroaches that cannot be removed. The only livestock she keeps is a goat, and feeds mainly on “kartovy” (potatoes) no larger than a chicken egg: the sandy, unfertilized garden does not produce anything larger than it. But even in such need, Matryona remains a bright person, with a radiant smile. Her work helps her to maintain her good spirits - trips to the forest for peat (with a two-pound sack on her shoulder for three kilometers), cutting hay for the goat, and chores around the house. Due to old age and illness, Matryona has already been released from the collective farm, but the formidable wife of the chairman every now and then orders her to help at work for free. Matryona easily agrees to help her neighbors in their gardens without money. Having received a pension of 80 rubles from the state, she buys herself new felt boots and a coat from a worn railway overcoat - and believes that her life has noticeably improved.

“Matryona Dvor” - the house of Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova in the village of Miltsevo, Vladimir region, the setting of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn

Soon Solzhenitsyn will learn the story of Matryona’s marriage. In her youth, she was going to marry her neighbor Thaddeus. However, in 1914 he was taken to the German war - and he disappeared into obscurity for three years. Without waiting for news from the groom, in the belief that he was dead, Matryona went to marry Thaddeus’s brother, Efim. But a few months later, Thaddeus returned from Hungarian captivity. In his hearts, he threatened to chop Matryona and Efim with an ax, then he cooled down and took another Matryona, from a neighboring village, as his wife. They lived next door to her. Thaddeus was known in Talnovo as a domineering, stingy man. He constantly beat his wife, although he had six children from her. Matryona and Yefim also had six, but none of them lived for more than three months. Efim, having left for another war in 1941, did not return from it. Friendly with Thaddeus’s wife, Matryona begged her youngest daughter, Kira, for ten years she raised her as her own, and shortly before Solzhenitsyn’s appearance in Talnovo, she married her to a locomotive driver in the village of Cherusti. Matryona told Alexander Isaevich the story about her two suitors herself, worrying like a young woman.

Kira and her husband had to get a plot of land in Cherusty, and for this they had to quickly erect some kind of building. In the winter, Old Thaddeus suggested moving the upper room attached to Matryona’s house there. Matryona was already going to bequeath this room to Kira (and her three sisters were aiming for the house). Under the persistent persuasion of the greedy Thaddeus, Matryona, after two sleepless nights, agreed during her lifetime, breaking part of the roof of the house, to dismantle the upper room and transport it to Cherusti. In front of the hostess and Solzhenitsyn, Thaddeus and his sons and sons-in-law came to Matryona’s yard, clattered with axes, creaked with the boards being torn off, and dismantled the upper room into logs. Matryona's three sisters, having learned how she succumbed to Thaddeus's persuasion, unanimously called her a fool.

Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova - the prototype of the main character of the story

A tractor was brought from Cherusti. The logs from the upper room were loaded onto two sleighs. The fat-faced tractor driver, in order not to make an extra trip, announced that he would pull two sleighs at once - it was better for him in terms of money. The disinterested Matryona herself, fussing about, helped load the logs. Already in the dark, the tractor with difficulty pulled the heavy load from the mother’s yard. The restless worker did not stay at home either - she ran away with everyone to help along the way.

She was no longer destined to return alive... At a railway crossing, the cable of an overloaded tractor broke. The tractor driver and Thaddeus’s son rushed to get along with him, and Matryona was carried there with them. At this time, two coupled locomotives approached the crossing, backwards and without turning on the lights. Suddenly flying in, they smashed to death all three who were busy at the cable, mutilated the tractor, and fell off the rails themselves. A fast train with a thousand passengers approaching the crossing almost crashed.

At dawn, everything that was left of Matryona was brought from the crossing on a sled under a dirty bag thrown over it. The body had no legs, no half torso, no left arm. But the face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead. One woman crossed herself and said:

“The Lord left her her right hand.” There will be a prayer to God...

The village began to gather for the funeral. Female relatives wailed over the coffin, but self-interest was evident in their words. And it was not hidden that Matryona’s sisters and her husband’s relatives were preparing for a fight for the deceased’s inheritance, for her old house. Only Thaddeus’s wife and pupil Kira wept sincerely. Thaddeus himself, who had lost his once beloved woman and son in that disaster, was clearly only thinking about how to save the logs of the upper room that had been scattered during the crash near the railroad. Asking for permission to return them, he kept rushing from the coffins to the station and village authorities.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the village of Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). October 1956

On Sunday Matryona and son Thaddeus were buried. The wake has passed. In the next few days, Thaddeus pulled out a barn and a fence from his mother’s sisters, which he and his sons immediately dismantled and transported on a sled. Alexander Isaevich moved in with one of Matryona’s sisters-in-law, who often and always spoke with contemptuous regret about her cordiality, simplicity, about how “stupid she was, she helped strangers for free,” “she didn’t chase after money and didn’t even keep a pig.” For Solzhenitsyn, it was precisely from these disparaging words that a new image of Matryona emerged, as he did not understand her, even living side by side with her. This non-covetous woman, a stranger to her sisters, funny to her sisters-in-law, who had not accumulated property before her death, buried six children, but did not have a sociable disposition, pitied a lanky cat, and once at night during a fire she rushed to save not a hut, but her beloved ficus trees - and there is that very righteous man, without which, according to the proverb, the village cannot stand.

ANALYSIS OF A.I. SOLZHENITSYN’S STORY “MATRENIN’S Dvor”

The purpose of the lesson: to try to understand how the writer sees the phenomenon of a “common man”, to understand the philosophical meaning of the story.

Methodological techniques: analytical conversation, comparison of texts.

DURING THE CLASSES

1.Teacher's word

The story "Matrenin's Dvor", like "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", was written in 1959 and published in 1964. “Matrenin’s Dvor” is an autobiographical work. This is Solzhenitsyn’s story about the situation in which he found himself after returning “from the dusty hot desert,” that is, from the camp. He “wanted to worm his way in and get lost in the very interior of Russia,” to find “a quiet corner of Russia away from the railways.” The former camp inmate could only get hired for hard work, but he wanted to teach. After his rehabilitation in 1957, Solzhenitsyn worked for some time as a physics teacher in the Vladimir region, living in the village of Miltsevo with the peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova (there he completed the first edition of “In the First Circle”). The story “Matrenin’s Dvor” goes beyond ordinary memories, but acquires deep meaning and is recognized as a classic. It was called “brilliant,” “a truly brilliant work.” Let's try to understand the phenomenon of this story.

P. Checking homework.

Let's compare the stories "Matrenin's Dvor" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

Both stories are stages in the writer’s understanding of the phenomenon of the “common man,” the bearer of mass consciousness. The heroes of both stories are “ordinary people”, victims of a soulless world. But the attitude towards the heroes is different. The first was called “A village does not stand without a righteous person,” and the second was called Shch-854 (One Day of One Prisoner).” “Righteous” and “convict” are different assessments. What appears to Matryona as “high” (her apologetic smile in front of the formidable chairwoman, her compliance in the face of the insolent pressure of her relatives), in Ivan Denisovich’s behavior is indicated by “working extra money,” “serving a rich brigadier with dry felt boots right on his bed,” “running through the quarters, where someone needs to serve someone, sweep or offer something.” Matryona is depicted as a saint: “Only she had fewer sins than her lame cat. She was strangling mice...” Ivan Denisovich is an ordinary person with sins and shortcomings. Matryona is not of this world. Shukhov belongs to the world of the Gulag, he has almost settled down in it, studied its laws, and developed a lot of devices for survival. During the 8 years of his imprisonment, he became accustomed to the camp: “He himself didn’t know whether he wanted it or not,” he adapted: “It’s as it should be - one works, one watches”; “Work is like a stick, it has two ends: if you do it for people, give it quality; if you do it for a fool, give it show.” True, he managed not to lose his human dignity, not to sink to the position of a “wick” who licks the bowls.

Ivan Denisovich himself is not aware of the surrounding absurdity, is not aware of the horror of his existence. He humbly and patiently bears his cross, just like Matryona Vasilievna.

But the heroine’s patience is akin to the patience of a saint.

In “Matryona’s Dvor” the image of the heroine is given in the perception of the narrator; he evaluates her as a righteous woman. In “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” the world is seen only through the eyes of the hero and is assessed by him himself. The reader also evaluates what is happening and cannot help but be horrified and shocked by the description of the “almost happy” day.

How is the character of the heroine revealed in the story?

What is the theme of the story?

Matryona is not of this world; the world, those around her condemn her: “and she was unclean; and I didn’t chase the factory; and not careful; and she didn’t even keep a pig, for some reason she didn’t like to feed it; and, stupid, helped strangers for free...”

In general, he lives “in desolation.” Look at Matryona’s poverty from all angles: “For many years, Matryona Vasilyevna did not earn a ruble from anywhere. Because she was not paid a pension. Her family didn't help her much. And on the collective farm she did not work for money - for sticks. For sticks of workdays in a littered accountant’s book.”

But the story is not only about the suffering, troubles, and injustice that befell the Russian woman. A.T. Tvardovsky wrote about it this way: “Why is the fate of the old peasant woman, told on a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet, her spiritual world is endowed with such a quality that we talk to her as if we were talking to Anna Karenina.” Solzhenitsyn responded to Tvardovsky: “You pointed out the very essence - a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism was always scouring the top, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones.” Writers go to the main theme of the story - “how people live.” To survive what Matryona Vasilievna had to go through and remain a selfless, open, delicate, sympathetic person, not to become embittered at fate and people, to preserve her “radiant smile” until old age - what mental strength is needed for this!

The movement of the plot is aimed at understanding the secrets of the character of the main character. Matryona reveals herself not so much in the everyday present as in the past. Remembering her youth, she says: “It’s you who haven’t seen me before, Ignatich. All my bags were five pounds, I didn’t consider them heavy. The father-in-law shouted: “Matryona, you’ll break your back!” The Divir didn’t come near me to put my end of the log on the front.” It turns out that Matryona was once young, strong, beautiful, one of those Nekrasov peasant women who “stopped a galloping horse”: “Once the horse was frightened and carried the sleigh to the lake, the men jumped away, but I, however, grabbed the bridle and stopped...” And at the last moment of her life, she rushed to “help the men” at the crossing - and died.

And Matryona reveals herself from a completely unexpected side when she talks about her love: “for the first time I saw Matryona in a completely new way,” “That summer... we went with him to sit in the grove,” she whispered. - There was a grove here... I didn’t get out without a little, Ignatich. The German war has begun. They took Thaddeus to war... He went to war and disappeared... For three years I hid, waited. And no news, and not a bone...

Tied with an old faded handkerchief, Matryona’s round face looked at me in the indirect soft reflections of the lamp - as if freed from wrinkles, from an everyday careless outfit - frightened, girlish, faced with a terrible choice.

These lyrical, bright lines reveal the charm, spiritual beauty, and depth of Matryona’s experiences. Outwardly unremarkable, reserved, undemanding, Matryona turns out to be an extraordinary, sincere, pure, open person. The more acute is the feeling of guilt that the narrator experiences: “There is no Matryona. A loved one was killed. And on the last day I reproached her padded jacket.” “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours.” The final words of the story return to the original title - “A village is not worth it without a righteous man” and fill the story about the peasant woman Matryona with a deep generalizing, philosophical meaning.

What is the symbolic meaning of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”?

Many of Solzhenitsyn’s symbols are associated with Christian symbolism, images-symbols of the way of the cross, a righteous man, a martyr. The first title “Matryonina Dvora2” directly points to this. And the name “Matrenin’s Dvor” itself is general in nature. The courtyard, Matryona’s house, is the refuge that the narrator finally finds in search of “inner Russia” after many years of camps and homelessness: “I didn’t like this place any more in the whole village.” The symbolic likening of the House to Russia is traditional, because the structure of the house is likened to the structure of the world. In the fate of the house, the fate of its owner is, as it were, repeated, predicted. Forty years have passed here. In this house she survived two wars - German and World War II, the death of six children who died in infancy, the loss of her husband, who went missing during the war. The house is deteriorating - the owner is getting old. The house is being dismantled like a person - “rib by ribs”, and “everything showed that the breakers are not builders and do not expect Matryona to have to live here for a long time.”

It’s as if nature itself resists the destruction of the house - first a long snowstorm, enormous snowdrifts, then a thaw, damp fogs, streams. And the fact that Matryona’s holy water inexplicably disappeared seems like a bad omen. Matryona dies along with the upper room, with part of her house. The owner dies and the house is completely destroyed. Until spring, Matryona's hut was stuffed like a coffin - buried.

Matryona’s fear of the railway is also symbolic in nature, because it is the train, a symbol of a world and civilization hostile to peasant life, that will flatten both the upper room and Matryona herself.

Sh. TEACHER'S WORD.

The righteous Matryona is the writer’s moral ideal, on which, in his opinion, the life of society should be based. According to Solzhenitsyn, the meaning of earthly existence is not prosperity, but the development of the soul.” Connected with this idea is the writer’s understanding of the role of literature and its connection with the Christian tradition. Solzhenitsyn continues one of the main traditions of Russian literature, according to which the writer sees his purpose in preaching truth, spirituality, and is convinced of the need to pose “eternal” questions and seek answers to them. He spoke about this in his Nobel lecture: “In Russian literature, we have long been ingrained in the idea that a writer can do a lot among his people - and should... Once he has taken up his word, he can never evade: a writer is not an outside judge of his compatriots and contemporaries, he is a co-author of all the evil committed in his homeland or by his people.”

Analysis of the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Matrenin Dvor"

A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s view of the village of the 50s and 60s is distinguished by its harsh and cruel truth. Therefore, the editor of the magazine “New World” A.T. Tvardovsky insisted on changing the time of action of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” (1959) from 1956 to 1953. This was an editorial move in the hope of getting Solzhenitsyn’s new work published: the events in the story were transferred to the time before the Khrushchev Thaw. The picture depicted leaves too painful an impression. “The leaves flew around, snow fell - and then melted. They plowed again, sowed again, reaped again. And again the leaves flew away, and again the snow fell. And one revolution. And another revolution. And the whole world turned upside down."

The story is usually based on an incident that reveals the character of the main character. Solzhenitsyn also builds his story on this traditional principle. Fate threw the hero-storyteller to a station with a strange name for Russian places - Torfoprodukt. Here “dense, impenetrable forests stood before and have survived the revolution.” But then they were cut down, reduced to the roots. In the village they no longer baked bread or sold anything edible - the table became meager and poor. Collective farmers “everything goes to the collective farm, right down to the white flies,” and they had to gather hay for their cows from under the snow.

The author reveals the character of the main character of the story, Matryona, through a tragic event - her death. Only after death “the image of Matryona floated before me, as I did not understand her, even living side by side with her.” Throughout the entire story, the author does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - Matryona’s “radiant”, “kind”, “apologetic” smile. But by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. The author’s attitude towards Matryona is felt in the tone of the phrase, the selection of colors: “The frozen window of the entryway, now shortened, was filled with a slightly pink color from the red frosty sun, and this reflection warmed Matryona’s face.” And then - a direct author’s description: “Those people always have good faces, who are in harmony with their conscience.” One remembers Matryona’s smooth, melodious, native Russian speech, beginning with “some low warm purring, like grandmothers in fairy tales.”

The world around Matryona in her darkish hut with a large Russian stove is like a continuation of herself, a part of her life. Everything here is organic and natural: the cockroaches rustling behind the partition, the rustling of which was reminiscent of the “distant sound of the ocean,” and the languid cat, picked up by Matryona out of pity, and the mice, which on the tragic night of Matryona’s death darted about behind the wallpaper as if Matryona herself was “invisibly rushed about and said goodbye to her hut here.” Her favorite ficus trees “filled the owner’s loneliness with a silent but lively crowd.” The same ficus trees that Matryona once saved during a fire, without thinking about the meager wealth she had acquired. The ficus trees froze by the “frightened crowd” that terrible night, and then were taken out of the hut forever...

The author-narrator unfolds the life story of Matryona not immediately, but gradually. She had to endure a lot of grief and injustice in her lifetime: broken love, the death of six children, the loss of her husband in the war, hellish work in the village, severe illness, bitter resentment towards the collective farm, which squeezed all the strength out of her and then wrote her off as unnecessary. , leaving without pension and support. In the fate of Matryona, the tragedy of a rural Russian woman is concentrated - the most expressive, blatant.

But she did not become angry with this world, she retained a good mood, a feeling of joy and pity for others, and a radiant smile still brightens her face. “She had a surefire way to regain her good spirits - work.” And in her old age, Matryona knew no rest: she either grabbed a shovel, then went with a sack into the swamp to cut grass for her dirty white goat, or went with other women to secretly steal peat from the collective farm for winter kindling.

“Matryona was angry with someone invisible,” but she did not hold a grudge against the collective farm. Moreover, according to the very first decree, she went to help the collective farm, without receiving, as before, anything for her work. And she did not refuse help to any distant relative or neighbor, without a shadow of envy later telling the guest about the neighbor’s rich potato harvest. Work was never a burden to her; “Matryona never spared either her labor or her goods.” And everyone around Matryonin shamelessly took advantage of Matryonin’s selflessness.

She lived poorly, wretchedly, alone - a “lost old woman”, exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, apparently fearing that Matryona would ask them for help. Everyone condemned her in chorus, that she was funny and stupid, that she worked for others for free, that she was always meddling in men’s affairs (after all, she got hit by a train because she wanted to help the men pull their sleighs through the crossing). True, after Matryona’s death, the sisters immediately flocked in, “seized the hut, the goat and the stove, locked her chest, and gutted two hundred funeral rubles from the lining of her coat.” And a friend of half a century, “the only one who sincerely loved Matryona in this village,” who came running in tears with the tragic news, nevertheless, when leaving, took Matryona’s knitted blouse with her so that the sisters would not get it. The sister-in-law, who recognized Matryona’s simplicity and cordiality, spoke about this “with contemptuous regret.” Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona’s kindness and simplicity - and unanimously condemned her for it.

The writer devotes a significant place in the story to the funeral scene. And this is no coincidence. In Matryona’s house, all the relatives and friends in whose surroundings she lived her life gathered for the last time. And it turned out that Matryona was leaving this life, not understood by anyone, not mourned by anyone as a human being. At the funeral dinner they drank a lot, they said loudly, “not about Matryona at all.” According to custom, they sang “Eternal Memory,” but “the voices were hoarse, loud, their faces were drunk, and no one was putting feelings into this eternal memory.”

The death of the heroine is the beginning of decay, the death of the moral foundations that Matryona strengthened with her life. She was the only one in the village who lived in her own world: she arranged her life with work, honesty, kindness and patience, preserving her soul and inner freedom. Popularly wise, sensible, able to appreciate goodness and beauty, smiling and sociable in disposition, Matryona managed to resist evil and violence, preserving her “court,” her world, the special world of the righteous. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: her house is torn apart log by log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona’s yard, no one even thinks that with Matryona’s departure something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, is leaving life.

“We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Neither the city. Not our whole land."

The ending of the story is bitter. The author admits that he, who became related to Matryona, does not pursue any selfish interests, nevertheless did not fully understand her. And only death revealed to him the majestic and tragic image of Matryona. The story is a kind of author's repentance, bitter repentance for the moral blindness of everyone around him, including himself. He bows his head before a man of a selfless soul, absolutely unrequited, defenseless.

Despite the tragedy of the events, the story is written on some very warm, bright, piercing note. It sets the reader up for good feelings and serious thoughts.