How the scene of action is depicted at the bottom. The life of the night shelters before the appearance of Luke (Analysis of the first scene of the play M
Homework for the lesson
2. Collect material for each inhabitant of the shelter.
3. Think about how you can group the characters.
4. What is the nature of the conflict in the play?
Purpose of the lesson: to show Gorky’s innovation; identify the components of genre and conflict in a play.
The main question I wanted to pose is what is better, truth or compassion. What is more necessary? Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This is not a subjective question, but a general philosophical one.
Maksim Gorky
History of the play
For more than 80 years, performances based on the play “At the Lower Depths” have not left the national stage. It has also visited the largest theaters in the world, and interest in it does not wane!
In 1901, Gorky said about the concept of his play: “It will be scary.” The author changed the title several times: “Without the Sun”, “Nochlezhka”, “The Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”. The title “At the Lower Depths” first appeared on art theater posters. What is highlighted is not the location of the action - “the shelter”, not the nature of the conditions - “without the sun”, “the bottom”, not even the social position - “at the bottom of life”. The phrase “At the Bottom” has a much broader meaning than all of the above. What's going on at the bottom? “At the bottom” – what, just life? Maybe even souls?
The ambiguity of Gorky's play led to its various theatrical productions.
The most striking was the first stage adaptation of the drama (1902) by the Art Theater by the famous directors K.S. Stanislavsky, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko with the direct participation of A.M. Gorky.
In 1903, the play was awarded the honorary Griboyedov Prize.
Features of the composition
Question
Where does the play take place?
Answer
In a cave-like basement in which people are forced to lead an antediluvian existence. Separate strokes of the description introduce the symbolism of hell here: the shelter is located below ground level, people are deprived of the sun here, the light falls “from top to bottom”, the characters feel like “dead people”, “sinners”, “thrown into a pit, “killed” by society and in these vaults buried.
Question
How is the scene depicted in the play?
Answer
In the author's remarks. In the first act it is a “cave-like basement”, “heavy, stone vaults, sooty, with crumbling plaster.” It is important that the writer gives instructions on how the scene is illuminated: “from the viewer and from top to bottom,” the light reaches the shelters from the basement window, as if looking for people among the basement inhabitants. Thin partitions screen off Ash's room. Everywhere along the walls there are bunks. Apart from Kvashnya, Baron and Nastya, who live in the kitchen, no one has their own corner. Everything is on display in front of each other, a secluded place is only on the stove and behind the chintz canopy separating the dying Anna’s bed from the others (by this she is already, as it were, separated from life). There is dirt everywhere: “dirty chintz canopy”, unpainted and dirty tables, benches, stools, tattered cardboards, pieces of oilcloth, rags.
Question
List the characters in the play with their brief characteristics. What groups can all the characters be divided into?
Answer
All the inhabitants of the shelter can be conditionally united into four groups, depending on the place they occupy in the clash of different positions, in the philosophical conflict of the play.
The first group includes Actor, Nastya, Ash, Natasha. These characters are predisposed to meeting the wanderer Luke. Each of them lives with some kind of dream or hope. So the Actor hopes to recover from alcoholism and return to the stage, where he had the theatrical name Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky. Now, however, there is no name left, but his thoughts are directed towards artistic glory. Nastya dreams of a French student whom she supposedly loves passionately. Ash dreams of a free and free life, “so that you can... respect yourself.” Natasha vaguely hopes for a happy fate when Vasily will be her strong support. Each of these characters is not too firm in their aspirations and is internally divided.
Luke, which we will talk about in detail in the next lesson, is designed to reveal the essence of everyone.
Baron and Bubnov are the third group. The first of them constantly lives in the past, remembering hundreds of serfs, carriages with coats of arms, coffee with cream in bed in the morning. Completely devastated, he no longer expects anything, dreams of nothing. The second - Bubnov - also sometimes turns to past years, when he suffered from life, but mostly lives in the present and recognizes only what he sees and touches. Bubnov is an indifferent cynic. For him, only facts are clear; they are a “stubborn thing.” The truth of Baron and Bubnov is a hard, wingless truth, far from the real truth.
Satin occupies the fourth position in the play. For all its originality, it is also distinguished by its inconsistency. Firstly, the words spoken by this hero are in sharp contrast to his essence. After all, a swindler by occupation, a prisoner and a murderer in the past speaks about the truth. Secondly, in a number of cases Satin turns out to be close to Luke. He agrees with the wanderer that “people live for the best,” that truth is connected with the idea of a person, that one should not interfere with him and humiliate him (“Do not offend a person!”)
The images should be arranged along the “ladder” of ranks and positions, since we have before us a social cross-section of life in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century: Baron, Kostylev, Bubnov, Satin, Actor; Ashes, Nastya.
Question
What is the conflict of the drama?
Answer
The conflict in this drama is social. Each of the night shelters experienced their own social conflict in the past, as a result of which they found themselves in a humiliating position. Life has deprived the people gathered in this hell. She deprived Kleshch of the right to work, Nastya to have a family, Actor to have a profession, Baron to have her former comfort, Anna was doomed to starvation, Ash to theft, Bubnov to endless drinking, Nastya to prostitution.
A sharp conflict situation, playing out in front of the audience, is the most important feature of drama as a type of literature.
Question
How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict?
Answer
The social conflict is taken off stage, pushed into the past, it does not become the basis of the dramatic conflict. We are only observing the result of off-stage conflicts.
Question
What kind of conflicts, other than social ones, are highlighted in the play?
Answer
The play contains a traditional love conflict. It is determined by the relationships between Vaska Pepla, Vasilisa, the wife of the owner of the shelter, Kostylev and Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister. The exposition of this conflict is a conversation between the night shelters, from which it is clear that Kostylev is looking for his wife Vasilisa in the rooming house, who is cheating on him with Vaska Pepl. The beginning of this conflict is the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, for whose sake Ashes leaves Vasilisa. As the love conflict develops, it becomes clear that the relationship with Natasha revives Ash, he wants to leave with her and start a new life. The culmination of the conflict is taken off stage: at the end of the third act, we learn from Kvashnya’s words that they boiled the girl’s legs with boiling water” - Vasilisa knocked over the samovar and scalded Natasha’s legs. The murder of Kostylev by Vaska Ash turns out to be the tragic outcome of a love conflict. Natasha stops believing Ash: “They are at the same time! Damn you! You both…"
Question
What is unique about the love conflict in the play?
Answer
A love conflict becomes a facet of a social conflict. He shows that inhuman conditions cripple a person, and even love does not save a person, but leads to tragedy: death, injury, murder, hard labor. As a result, Vasilisa alone achieves all her goals: she takes revenge on her former lover Ash and her rival sister Natasha, gets rid of her unloved and disgusted husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows the monstrosity of the social conditions that disfigured both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners. The night shelters are not directly involved in this conflict, they are only third-party spectators.
Question
What does this shelter remind you of?
Answer
The shelter is a unique model of the cruel world from which its inhabitants were thrown out. Here, too, there are “masters”, the police, the same alienation, hostility, and the same vices are manifested.
Teacher's final words
Gorky depicts the consciousness of people at the “bottom”. The plot unfolds not so much in external action - in everyday life, but in the dialogues of the characters. It is the conversations of the night shelters that determine the development of the dramatic conflict. The action is transferred to a non-event series. This is typical for the genre of philosophical drama.
So, the genre of the play can be defined as a socio-philosophical drama.
Homework
Prepare for a debate lesson about Luke. To do this: note (or write down) his statements about people, about truth, about faith. Determine your attitude towards statements about Luke by Baron and Satin (Act IV).
Identify the compositional elements of the play. Why did Chekhov consider the last act unnecessary?
Literature
D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the twentieth century. 11th grade program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001
E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the 20th century / St. Petersburg: Parity, 2002
N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments on Russian literature of the twentieth century. Grade 11. I half of the year. M.: VAKO, 2005
The action of the drama “At the Bottom” takes place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This is a time of economic crisis for Russia, many remain unemployed, lose their status, position in society, and some sink to the “bottom” of life. It is no coincidence that Gorky paints this way of the place where his heroes huddle. Before us is a dirty basement, like a cave: a smoke-stained ceiling, heavy stone vaults with crumbling plaster. And everywhere along the walls there are bunks. The terrible picture is completed by the furniture of the shelter: “a large table, two benches, a stool - everything is unpainted and dirty.” After such descriptions, it becomes scary; is this really how the author sees Russia on the eve of a new century?
The conflicts presented in the play are diverse: social and everyday, love, and philosophical. They flare up both between heroes belonging to different social classes, and within themselves. Indeed, people find themselves “at the bottom,” as a rule, experiencing an internal social conflict. Gorky gives the reader a backstory for each character. Thus, the Baron used to lead the intellectual life of a representative of high society: “Before, when my body was not poisoned by alcohol, I, an old man, had a good memory... And now... it’s over, brother!” Vaska Pepel responds to this: “You are a master... there was a time when you didn’t consider our brother to be a person... and all that...” It is clearly shown how arbitrary the division into social classes is in the human world and how easily a former master equaled his position with the sharper Bubnov and the thief Vaska Pepl.
In parallel with social and everyday conflicts, love conflicts also develop. Here the relationship between the Kostylevs and Vaska Pepla with Natalya, the sister of Vasilisa Karpovna Kostyleva, comes to the fore. With the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, Ash is ready to turn to another, new life. For her sake, Vaska leaves Vasilisa, his feelings for her have cooled. A hero cannot lie or be insincere. The climax is the scene in which Natasha is scalded with boiling water, and Vaska kills Kostylev. At first glance, Vasilisa emerges as the winner, having taken revenge on her former lover and harmed her rival. In addition, after the death of her husband, she remains the sovereign mistress of the shelter. However, now it becomes completely clear that there is nothing human left in Vasilisa, she will never be able to find human happiness. And in our eyes, its fall “to the bottom” is happening even more rapidly.
The arrival of Luke provokes the maturation of a philosophical conflict in the society of the night shelters. The reader follows its development through the dialogues and monologues of the characters. Luke reveals the bright sides of their nature in the heroes and encourages them to remember their dreams. According to Luke, people need “sweet lies” more than “bitter truth.” In conversations with a wanderer, a girl of easy virtue, Nastya, begins to dream of pure love, the Actor seriously thinks about returning to the stage, Vaska Ash strives for honest earnings and a life without deception. Gorky believed in man and his ability to control his own destiny. The hero of his play, Luka, does not want to see swindlers and deceivers in the night shelters, he respects them all, believes that “not a single flea is bad: all are black, all are jumping...” The Wanderer sincerely believes that a person becomes overgrown with sins and vices when life itself “dumps him in the mud.” Even when confronted with real thieves, Luka does not hand them over to the police, because he understands that it was not a sweet life that pushed them down this path: “Give me some bread for Christ’s sake!” Let's go, they say, without eating. I tell them: you devils should have just asked for bread. And I’m tired of them, they say... you ask and ask, but no one gives... it’s a shame!.. So they lived with me all winter.” Luka sincerely wishes the best to his interlocutors and shows real paths to a new, better life.
After Luke leaves, everything happens not at all as the heroes who believed in the words of the wanderer expected. Having lost his last hope, the Actor commits suicide. After killing Kostylev, Ash goes to Siberia, not as a free settler, but as a convict. However, the old man's sermon gave impetus to Satin's monologue. It is he, paradoxically, who continues the work of Luke, does not allow people who have lost faith to despair, and offers them a new “philosophy of life” that can raise people from the “bottom.”
Thus, the social concept of “bottom” acquires a philosophical meaning. Gorky tried to consider not only the reasons for the social and moral decline of people, but also to show different ways for people to overcome despair, spiritual desolation and pessimism.
The play “At the Bottom” was written by M. Gorky in 1902. A year before writing the play, Gorky said this about the idea of a new play: “It will be scary.” The same emphasis is emphasized in its changing titles: “Without the Sun”, “Nochlezhka”, “Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”. The title “At the Depths” first appeared on the posters of the Art Theater. The author did not highlight the location of the action - “the flophouse”, not the nature of the living conditions - “without the sun”, “the bottom”, not even the social position - “at the bottom of life”. The final title combines all these concepts and leaves room for reflection: at the “bottom” of what? Is it only life, and maybe even the soul? Thus, the play “At the Bottom” contains, as it were, two parallel actions. The first is social and everyday, the second is philosophical.
The theme of the bottom is not new for Russian literature: Gogol, Dostoevsky, Gilyarovsky addressed it. Gorky himself wrote about his play: “It was the result of my almost twenty years of observations of the world of “former” people, among whom I saw not only wanderers, inhabitants of the night shelters and “lumpen-proletarians” in general, but also some of the intellectuals, “demagnetized ", disappointed, insulted and humiliated by failures in life."
Already in the exposition of the play, even at the very beginning of this exposition, the author convinces the viewer and reader that before him is the bottom of life, a world where a person’s hope for human life must fade away. The first action takes place in Kostylev’s rooming house. The curtain rises and one is immediately struck by the depressing atmosphere of beggarly life: “A basement like a cave. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. The light is from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side... In the middle of the shelter there is a large table, two benches, a stool, everything is painted, dirty...” In such terrible, inhuman conditions, a variety of people gathered, thrown out of normal human life due to various circumstances. This is the worker Kleshch, and the thief Ash, and the former Actor, and the dumpling seller Kvashnya, and the girl Nastya, and the cap-maker Bubnov, and Satin - all “former people”. Each of them has their own dramatic story, but they all have the same common fate: the present of the boarding house guests is terrible, they have no future. For most sleepovers, the best is in the past. This is what Bubnov says about his past: “I was a furrier... I had my own establishment... My hands were so yellow - from paint: I tinted the furs - so, brother, my hands were yellow - up to the elbows! I thought that I wouldn’t wash it until I die... so I’ll die with yellow hands... And now here they are, my hands... just dirty... yes! The actor loves to remember his past, how he played a gravedigger in Hamlet, and loves to talk about art: “I say talent, that’s what a hero needs. And talent is faith in oneself, in one’s strength...” Locksmith Kleshch says about himself: “I am a working man... I’m ashamed to look at them... I’ve been working since an early age...” A few words convey the picture Anna’s fate in life: “I don’t remember when I was full... I was shaking over every piece of bread... I was trembling all my life... I was tormented, so as not to eat anything else... All my life I walked around in rags... all my miserable life..." She is only 30 years old, and she is terminally ill, dying of tuberculosis.,
Night shelters view their situation differently. Some of them have resigned themselves to their fate, because they understand that nothing can be changed. For example, Actor. He says: “Yesterday, in the hospital, the doctor told me: your body, he says, is completely poisoned with alcohol...” Others, for example Kleshch, firmly believe that with honest work he will rise from the “bottom” and become a man: “ ...Do you think I won't break out of here? I’ll get out... I’ll rip off the skin, and I’ll get out...”
The gloomy atmosphere of the shelter, the hopelessness of the situation, the extreme degree of poverty - all this leaves an imprint on the inhabitants of the shelter, on their attitude towards each other. If we turn to the dialogues of Act 1, we will see an atmosphere of hostility, spiritual callousness, and mutual hostility. All this creates a tense atmosphere in the shelter, and disputes arise in it every minute. The reasons for these disputes at first glance are completely random, but each is evidence of disunity and lack of mutual understanding of the heroes. So, Kvashnya continues the useless argument she started behind the scenes with Kleshch: she defends her right to “freedom.” (“For me, a free woman, to be my own mistress, but to fit into someone’s passport, so that I would give myself to a man in a fortress - no! Even if he were an American prince, I wouldn’t think of marrying him.”) Kleshch himself constantly fences himself off from his long-term and terminally ill wife Anna. From time to time he throws rude and callous words at Anna: “I’m whining”, “It’s okay, maybe you’ll get up - it happens”, “Wait a minute... my wife will die.” The Baron habitually mocks his partner Nastya, who is devouring another tabloid novel about "fatal love". His actions towards her: “... snatching the book from Nastya, reads the title... laughs... hitting Nastya on the head with the book... takes the book away from Nastya” indicate the Baron’s desire to humiliate Nastya in the eyes of others. Satin growls, not scaring anyone, having slept through his usual intoxication. The actor tediously repeats the same phrase that his body is poisoned by alcohol. The night shelters constantly bicker among themselves. The use of abusive language is the norm in their communication with each other: “Be silent, old dog!” (Mite), “Uh, unclean spirit...” (Kvashnya), “Scoundrels” (Satin), “Old devil!.. Go to hell!” (Ashes), etc. Anna can’t stand it and asks: “The day has begun! For God’s sake... don’t shout... don’t swear!”
In the first act, the owner of the flophouse, Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev, appears. He comes to check if Ash is hiding his young wife Vasilisa. From the first remarks, the hypocritical and deceitful character of this character emerges. He says to Kleshch: “How much space do you take up from me per month... And I’ll throw half a buck at you, I’ll buy oil for the lamp... and my sacrifice will burn in front of the holy icon...” Talking about kindness, he reminds the Actor about duty: “Kindness is above all blessings. And your debt to me is indeed a debt! So, you must compensate me for it...” Kostylev buys up the stolen goods (he bought a watch from Ash), but does not give all the money to Ash.
By individualizing the speech of the heroes, Gorky creates colorful figures of the inhabitants of the “bottom”. Bubnov came from the lower social classes, so his attraction to proverbs and sayings is understandable. For example, “Whoever is drunk and smart has two lands in him.” Satin loves verbal play, uses foreign words in his speech: “Organon... sicambre, macrobiotnka, traiscendental...”, sometimes without understanding their meaning. The speech of the hypocrite and money-grubber Kostylev is full of “pious” words: “good”, “good”, “sin”.
The first act of the play is extremely important for understanding the entire play. The intensity of the action is manifested in human clashes. The desire of the heroes to escape from the shackles of the “bottom”, the emergence of hope, the growing feeling in each of the inhabitants of the “bottom” of the impossibility of living as they lived until now - all this prepares the appearance of the wanderer Luke, who managed to strengthen this illusory faith.
In his play “At the Lower Depths,” M. Gorky opened up to the viewer a new, hitherto unknown world on the Russian stage - the lower classes of society.
It was evidence of the dysfunction of the modern social system. The play raised doubts about the right of this system to exist and called for protest and struggle against the system that made the existence of such a “bottom” possible. This was the source of the success of this play, about which contemporaries said that no epithets - colossal, grandiose - could measure the true scale of this success.
Bitter. At the bottom 1. How is the scene of action depicted in the play? 2. What kind of people are the inhabitants of the shelter? What brought them there? 3. What is the subject of the play? 4. What is the conflict of the drama? How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict? What other conflict is highlighted in the play? What makes it unique? 5. How do the inhabitants of the shelter perceive their situation before Luke appears? 6. What is the meaning of using the past tense in the characters’ self-characteristics? 7. Which characters contrast themselves with the others? 8. Who is Luke? How does Luka behave with each of the inhabitants of the shelter? How does it affect night shelters? Is he lying to them? How do the inhabitants of the shelter react to his words? 9. What groups can the characters of the play be divided into? 10. What is the sacred meaning of the name “Luke”? What is the author’s position in relation to Luke? 11. Gorky contrasts not truth and lies, but truth and compassion. How justified is this opposition? 12. What is Luke’s influence on the homeless shelters? How strong is the self-confidence awakened by Luke? 13. Is truth necessary at all? 14. Which character’s position is opposed to Luke’s? Find Bubnov’s remarks that characterize his worldview and comment on them. 15. What is Satin’s position in the play? Whose position does Satin express in his monologue about man? Bitter. At the bottom 1. How is the scene of action depicted in the play? 2. What kind of people are the inhabitants of the shelter? What brought them there? 3. What is the subject of the play? 4. What is the conflict of the drama? How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict? What other conflict is highlighted in the play? What makes it unique? 5. How do the inhabitants of the shelter perceive their situation before Luke appears? 6. What is the meaning of using the past tense in the characters’ self-characteristics? 7. Which characters contrast themselves with the others? 8. Who is Luke? How does Luka behave with each of the inhabitants of the shelter? How does it affect night shelters? Is he lying to them? How do the inhabitants of the shelter react to his words? 9. What groups can the characters of the play be divided into? 10. What is the sacred meaning of the name “Luke”? What is the author’s position in relation to Luke? 11. Gorky contrasts not truth and lies, but truth and compassion. How justified is this opposition? 12. What is Luke’s influence on the homeless shelters? How strong is the self-confidence awakened by Luke? 13. Is truth necessary at all? 14. Which character’s position is opposed to Luke’s? Find Bubnov’s remarks that characterize his worldview and comment on them. 15. What is Satin’s position in the play? Whose position does Satin express in his monologue about man? Bitter. At the bottom 1. How is the scene of action depicted in the play? 2. What kind of people are the inhabitants of the shelter? What brought them there? 3. What is the subject of the play? 4. What is the conflict of the drama? How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict? What other conflict is highlighted in the play? What makes it unique? 5. How do the inhabitants of the shelter perceive their situation before Luke appears? 6. What is the meaning of using the past tense in the characters’ self-characteristics? 7. Which characters contrast themselves with the others? 8. Who is Luke? How does Luka behave with each of the inhabitants of the shelter? How does it affect night shelters? Is he lying to them? How do the inhabitants of the shelter react to his words? 9. What groups can the characters of the play be divided into? 10. What is the sacred meaning of the name “Luke”? What is the author’s position in relation to Luke? 11. Gorky contrasts not truth and lies, but truth and compassion. How justified is this opposition? 12. What is Luke’s influence on the homeless shelters? How strong is the self-confidence awakened by Luke? 13. Is truth necessary at all? 14. Which character’s position is opposed to Luke’s? Find Bubnov’s remarks that characterize his worldview and comment on them. 15. What is Satin’s position in the play? Whose position does Satin express in his monologue about man?
Purpose of the lesson: to show Gorky’s innovation; identify the components of genre and conflict in a play.
Methodical techniques: lecture, analytical conversation.
Lesson equipment: portrait and photographs of A.M. Gorky from different years, illustrations “At the Bottom”.
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During the classes.
- Conversation on the content of the play “At the Depths”.
Some of Nietzsche's philosophical and aesthetic works were reflected in Gorky's early romantic works. The central image of early Gorky is a proud and strong personality, embodying the idea of freedom. Therefore, Danko, who sacrifices himself for the sake of people, is on a par with the drunkard and thief Chelkash, who does not perform any feats for the sake of anyone. “Strength is virtue,” Nietzsche asserted, and for Gorky, the beauty of a person lies in strength and even aimless feats: a strong person has the right to be “beyond good and evil,” to be outside of ethical principles, like Chelkash, but a feat, from this point view, is resistance to the general flow of life.
In 1902, Gorky created the drama “At the Lower Depths”.
How is the scene depicted?
The location of the action is described in the author's remarks. In the first act it is a cave-like basement, heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. It is important that the writer gives instructions on how the scene is illuminated: “from the viewer and from top to bottom,” the light reaches the shelters from the basement window, as if looking for people among the basement inhabitants. Thin partitions screen off Ash's room. “Everywhere along the walls there are bunks.” Apart from Kvashnya, Baron and Nastya, who live in the kitchen, no one has their own corner. Everything is on display in front of each other, a secluded place is only on the stove and behind the chintz canopy separating the dying Anna’s bed from the others (by this she is already, as it were, separated from life). There is dirt everywhere: a dirty chintz canopy, unpainted and dirty tables, benches, stools, tattered cardboards, pieces of oilcloth, rags.
The third act takes place in an early spring evening in a vacant lot, “littered with various rubbish and a yard overgrown with weeds.” Let's pay attention to the coloring of this place: the dark wall of a “barn or stable”, the “gray wall of a shelter covered with the remains of plaster”, the red wall of a brick firewall covering the sky, the reddish light of the setting sun, black elderberry branches without buds.
In the setting of the fourth act, significant changes occur: the partitions of Ash’s former room are broken, the Tick’s anvil has disappeared. The action takes place at night, and light from the outside world no longer penetrates into the basement - the scene is illuminated by a lamp standing in the middle of the table. However, the last act of the drama takes place in a vacant lot - the Actor hanged himself there.
What kind of people live in the shelter?
People who have sunk to the bottom of life end up in a shelter. This is the last refuge for tramps, marginalized people, “former people.” All social strata of society are here: the bankrupt nobleman Baron, the hostel owner Kostylev, the policeman Medvedev, the locksmith Kleshch, the cap maker Bubnov, the merchant Kvashnya, the sharpie Satin, the prostitute Nastya, the thief Ash. Everyone is equalized by the status of the dregs of society. Here live very young (shoemaker Alyoshka is 20 years old) and not yet old people (the oldest, Bubnov, is 45 years old). However, their life is almost over. Dying Anna appears to us as an old woman, and she is 30 years old.
Many night shelters do not have names; only nicknames remain, expressively describing their bearers. The appearance of the dumpling seller Kvashnya, the character of Kleshch, and the Baron’s ambition are clear. The actor once bore the sonorous surname Sverchkov-Zadunaisky, but now there are almost no memories left - “I forgot everything.”
What is the subject of the play? What is the conflict of the drama?
Reference: A sharp conflict situation that plays out in front of the audience is the most important feature of drama as a type of literature.
The subject of the drama is the consciousness of people thrown to the bottom of life as a result of deep social processes. Social conflict has several levels in the play. The social poles are clearly indicated: on one, the owner of the shelter, Kostylev, and the policeman Medvedev, who supports his power, on the other, the essentially powerless roomies. Thus, the conflict between the authorities and the disenfranchised people is obvious. This conflict hardly develops, because the Kostylevs and Medvedevs are not so far from the inhabitants of the shelter.
Each of the night shelters experienced their own social conflict in the past, as a result of which they found themselves in a humiliating position.
What brought its inhabitants - Satin, Baron, Kleshch, Bubnov, Actor, Nastya, Ash - to the shelter? What is the backstory of these characters?
Satin hit rock bottom after serving time in prison for murder; The Baron went bankrupt; Mite lost his job; Bubnov left home “out of harm’s way” so as not to kill his wife and her lover, although he himself admits that he is lazy, and even a heavy drunkard; The actor drank himself to death; Ash’s fate was predetermined already at his birth: “I have been a thief since childhood... everyone always told me: Vaska is a thief, Vaska’s son is a thief!” The Baron talks in more detail than others about the stages of his fall (act 4). Each stage of the life of the 33rd Baron seems to be marked by a certain costume. These disguises symbolize a gradual decline in social status, and there is nothing behind these disguises; life passed as if in a dream.
What is the peculiarity of the social conflict of each inhabitant of the shelter?
How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict?
These social conflicts are taken off stage, pushed into the past, they do not become the basis of a dramatic conflict.
What kind of conflicts, other than social ones, are highlighted in the play?
The play contains a traditional love conflict. It is determined by relationships
Vaska Pepla, Vasilisa, the wife of the owner of the shelter, Kostylev and Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister. The exposition of this conflict is a conversation between the night shelters, from which it is clear that Kostylev is looking for his wife Vasilisa in the rooming house, who is cheating on him with Ash. The beginning of this conflict is the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, for whose sake Ashes leaves Vasilisa. As the love conflict develops, it becomes clear that the relationship with Natasha revives Ash, he wants to leave with her and start a new life. The culmination of the conflict is taken off stage: at the end of the third act, we learn from Kvashnya’s words that “they boiled the girl’s legs with boiling water” - Vasilisa knocked over the samovar and scalded Natasha’s legs. The murder of Kostylev by Ash turns out to be the tragic outcome of a love conflict. Natasha stops believing Ash: “They are at the same time! Damn you! You both…"
What is unique about a love conflict?
A love conflict becomes a facet of a social conflict. It shows that anti-human conditions cripple a person, and even love does not save a person, but leads to tragedy: death, injury, murder, hard labor. As a result, Vasilisa alone achieves all her goals: she takes revenge on her former lover Ash and her sister - rival Natasha, gets rid of her unloved and disgusted husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows the monstrosity of the social conditions that disfigured both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners. The night shelters are not directly involved in this conflict, they are only third-party spectators.
- Teacher's word.
The conflict in which all the heroes participate is of a different kind. Gorky depicts the consciousness of people at the bottom. The plot unfolds not so much in external action - in everyday life, but in the dialogues of the characters. It is the conversations of the night shelters that determine the development of the dramatic conflict. The action is transferred to a non-event series. This is typical for the genre of philosophical drama.
Bottom line. The genre of the play can be defined as a socio-philosophical drama.
D.Z.
Identify Luke's role in the play. Write down his statements about people, about life, about truth, about faith.
