The fate of the inhabitants of the shelter at the bottom. Why does the main action of M. Gorky's play take place in a city shelter? (Based on M. Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths.”)

M. Gorky's drama “At the Lower Depths” was written in 1902. The characters in this play are people who, as a result, social processes that took place at the turn of the century, found themselves thrown to the very bottom of life.

Social conflict is present in the play primarily in the form of a confrontation between the owners of the shelter, the Kostylevs, and its inhabitants. Kostylev appears in the eyes of the night shelters as a rich man who thinks only about money and strives to ask for as much as possible for a place. At the same time, Kostylev pretends to be a pious person and firmly believes that he will use the extra money received from the inhabitants of the shelter for a good cause. “I’ll throw fifty dollars on you, pour oil into the lamp... and my sacrifice will burn in front of the holy icon...” he insinuatingly says to Kleshch. However, the night shelters themselves are kinder and more sympathetic than Kostylev: The actor helps the dying Anna, Vaska Ash sincerely loves Natalya. And Kostylev is sure that “kindness of heart” cannot be equated with money under any circumstances, which he explains to the Actor: “Kindness is above all good things. And your debt to me is indeed a debt! So you have to reimburse me..."

Vasilisa, Kostylev’s wife and owner of the shelter, loves to show her superiority over the shelter. Allegedly keeping order in the rooms, she threatens to call the orderlies, who will “come and impose a fine,” and after that she will kick out all the inhabitants of the shelter. But her superiority and power are imaginary, which, after her angry tirade, Bubnov reminds her of: “How will you live?”

Thus, there is practically no difference between the owners of the shelter and their guests. Kostylev buys a stolen watch from the thief Vaska Pepel; his wife Vasilisa had an affair with the same Vaska. Therefore, the conflict between the Kostylevs and the night shelters has not so much a social basis as moral basis: after all, Kostylev and his wife are people without heart and conscience. Vasilisa persuades Vaska Pepel to kill Kostylev, who, according to her, is torturing her and her sister. Ash condemns her: “...you have no soul, woman.”

Policeman Medvedev, uncle of Vasilisa and Natalya, also does not at all look like a stern representative of the law. He complains about his hectic service, regrets that he has to constantly separate fighters: “If only we would let them beat each other freely, as much as each one wants... they would fight less, because they would remember the beatings longer.” He comes to play checkers with his roommate Bubnov, and proposes to the dumpling seller Kvashnya to marry him. In the play “At the Bottom” they are erased social differences between all the characters. The concept of the bottom is expanding and capturing everyone characters, and not just the inhabitants of the shelter.

Each of the heroes who found themselves at the bottom experienced their own conflict with society in the past. Drunkenness brings the actor to the shelter; he admits that he “drank away his soul.” Because of this, the Actor loses faith in himself and his talent. Only with the arrival of Luka, a wonderful old man at the shelter, who manages to restore faith in the future to many of the shelter’s residents, does the Actor remember his name “from the stage”: Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky. However, in the shelter he has no name, just as he has no past or future. Although the Actor constantly quotes lines from immortal plays, he misinterprets their words, adapts them to nightlife: “I’ll get drunk like... forty thousand drunkards...” (modified line from Hamlet). The Actor commits suicide in his life, not being able to able to resist the oppressive and sucking, depersonalizing reality of the bottom of life.

Occasionally he remembers his past life sharper Bubnov. Previously, he was a furrier, “he had his own establishment.” His wife “contacted” with the master, a “dodgeman,” according to Bubnov himself, and a big fighter. Bubnov planned to kill his wife, but left in time, escaping from hard labor. But Bubnov does not blame Bubnov for the fact that he now has to lead such a lifestyle. treacherous wife, and yourself: your binges and laziness. He looks in surprise at his hands, which he thought would never wash off the yellow paint, and sees that now they are just dirty. If earlier his hands were the hallmark of his profession, now he belongs entirely to the faceless brotherhood of the night shelters, as he himself says: “It turns out that on the outside, no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased... everything will be erased, yes!”

Satin, when he was a boy, worked at the telegraph office. The baron was a real aristocrat, he studied, “wore the uniform of a noble institute,” and then went to prison for embezzlement. The whole life of the baron appears before the readers as a change of several costumes, several masks: from a noble uniform, robe, cap with a cockade to a prisoner's robe and the clothes of a rooming house.

Together with these heroes, under the same roof live the sharper Satin, the thief Ash, the walking girl Nastya, the market cook Kvashnya, Tatar. However, in the shelter, the social differences between them are erased, they all become just people. As Bubnov notes: “...everything faded away, only one naked man remained...” Social conflicts The events that determined their fate remain in the past and are excluded from the main action of the play. We see only the result of social unrest that has had such a tragic impact on people’s lives.

However, the very title of the play “At the Bottom” suggests the presence of social tension. After all, if there is a bottom to life, there must be something above this bottom; there must also be a rapid flow of light, bright, joyful life. The night shelters do not hope to ever find such a life. All of them, with the exception of the Tick, are turned to the past or immersed in worries about the present. But the Tick is also filled not so much with hope as with impotent anger. It seems to him that he lives in a dirty shelter only for the sake of Anna, his dying wife, but after her death nothing changes. The faith of the inhabitants of the shelter in the possibility of a new life is restored by Luka, the “crafty old man,” but it turns out to be fragile and quickly fades away.

“At the Bottom” is not just a social, but a socio-philosophical drama. What makes a person human, what helps and prevents him from living, gaining human dignity - the author of the play “At the Bottom” seeks answers to these questions. Thus, the main subject of depiction in the play is the thoughts and feelings of the night shelters in all their contradictions. Gorky shows that for those who, by the will of fate, have found themselves at the very bottom of life, their situation does not seem tragic, unbearable, hopeless. The fact that their environment, the oppressive atmosphere of the shelter, pushes people to theft, drunkenness, and murder, seems to its inhabitants to be a normal course of life. But the author's point of view differs from the position of his heroes. It shows that the inhuman conditions of the bottom lead to impoverishment spiritual world In a person, even such a sublime feeling as love leads to hatred, fight, murder, hard labor. Among the inhabitants of the shelter, only Satin “awakens” to life and pronounces a furious monologue about the greatness of man. However, the speech of this hero is only the first step towards changing the consciousness of people who have fallen to the bottom of life, the first attempt to overcome social conditions, putting pressure on a free person.

The drama "At the Bottom" is a landmark work in creative biography Gorky. Descriptions of the heroes will be presented in this article.

This work was written at a turning point for the country. In Russia in the 90s of the 19th century, a serious outbreak broke out. Masses of impoverished, ruined peasants left the villages after each crop failure in search of work. Plants and factories were closed. Thousands of people found themselves without means of livelihood and shelter. This led to the appearance big number"tramps" who have sunk to the bottom of life.

Who lived in the dosshouses?

Enterprising slum owners, taking advantage of the fact that people found themselves in a hopeless situation, found how to extract benefit from fetid basements. They turned them into shelters in which beggars, the unemployed, thieves, tramps and other representatives of the “bottom” lived. This work was written in 1902. The heroes of the play "At the Bottom" are just such people.

Maxim Gorky throughout creative path I was interested in personality, man, the secrets of his feelings and thoughts, dreams and hopes, weakness and strength - all this is reflected in the work. The heroes of the play "At the Bottom" are people who lived at the beginning of the 20th century, when the old world, and arose new life. However, they differ from the rest in that they are rejected by society. These are people from the bottom, outcasts. The place where Vaska Pepel, Bubnov, Actor, Satin and others live is unsightly and scary. According to Gorky's description, this is a cave-like basement. Its ceiling is stone vaults with fallen plaster, smoked. Why did the inhabitants of the shelter find themselves “at the bottom” of life, what brought them here?

Heroes of the play "At the Bottom": table

What ruined the lives of these people?

Addiction to alcohol ruined the Actor. By his own admission, he used to have good memory. Now the Actor believes that everything is over for him. Vaska Pepel is a representative of the "thieves' dynasty". This hero had no choice but to continue his father’s work. He says that even when he was little, even then he was called a thief. Former furrier Bubnov left his workshop because of his wife’s infidelity, as well as out of fear of his wife’s lover. He went bankrupt, after which he went to serve in one “treasury chamber”, in which he committed embezzlement. One of the most colorful figures in the work is Satin. He was a former telegraph operator, and went to prison for the murder of a man who insulted his sister.

Who do the shelter's inhabitants blame?

Almost all the characters in the play “At the Bottom” tend to blame life circumstances rather than themselves for the current situation. Perhaps, if they had turned out differently, nothing would have changed significantly, and the same fate would have befallen the night shelters anyway. The phrase that Bubnov said confirms this. He admitted that he actually drank the workshop away.

Apparently, the reason for the fall of all these people is their lack of a moral core, which constitutes a person’s personality. You can cite the words of the Actor as an example: “Why did you die? I had no faith...”

Was there a chance to live a different life?

By creating the images of the characters in the play “At the Lower Depths,” the author provided each of them with the opportunity to live a different life. That is, they had a choice. However, for each, the first test ended in the collapse of life. The baron, for example, could improve his affairs not by stealing government funds, but by investing money in profitable businesses that he had.

Satin could have taught the offender a lesson in another way. As for Vaska Ash, would there really be few places on earth where no one would know anything about him and his past? The same can be said about many of the inhabitants of the shelter. They have no future, but in the past they had a chance not to get here. However, the heroes of the play "At the Bottom" did not use it.

How do the heroes console themselves?

All they can do now is live unrealistic hopes and illusions. Baron, Bubnov and Actor live with Dreams of true love Prostitute Nastya is amusing herself. At the same time, the characterization of the heroes of the play “At the Bottom” is complemented by the fact that these people, rejected by society, humiliated, wage endless debates about moral and spiritual problems. Although it would be more logical to talk about since they live from hand to mouth. Author's description heroes of the play "At the Bottom" says that they are interested in such issues as freedom, truth, equality, work, love, happiness, law, talent, honesty, pride, compassion, conscience, pity, patience, death, peace and much more other. They are also even more concerned important problem. They talk about what a person is, why he is born, what his true meaning being. The philosophers of the shelter can be called Luka, Satina, Bubnova.

With the exception of Bubnov, all the heroes of the work reject the “losing” lifestyle. They hope for a lucky turn of fortune that will bring them from the “bottom” to the surface. Kleshch, for example, says that he has been working since he was young (this hero is a mechanic), so he will definitely get out of here. “Wait a minute... my wife will die...” he says. The actor, this chronic drunkard, hopes to find a luxurious hospital in which health, strength, talent, memory and the applause of the audience will miraculously return to him. Anna, an unfortunate sufferer, dreams of bliss and peace in which she will finally be rewarded for her torment and patience. Vaska Pepel, this desperate hero, kills Kostylev, the owner of the shelter, because he believes the latter incarnation evil. His dream is to go to Siberia, where he will start a new life with his beloved girl.

Luke's role in the work

These illusions are supported by Luke, the wanderer. He masters the skill of a comforter and preacher. Maxim Gorky portrays this hero as a doctor who considers all people to be terminally ill and sees his calling in softening their pain and hiding it from them. However, at every step life refutes the position of this hero. Anna, to whom he promises divine reward in heaven, suddenly wants to “live a little more....” Having first believed in a cure for alcoholism, the Actor commits suicide at the end of the play. Vaska Pepel defines true value to all these consolations of Luke. He claims that he “tells fairy tales” pleasantly, because there is so little good in the world.

Satin's opinion

Luka is full of sincere pity for the inhabitants of the shelter, but he cannot change anything, help people live a different life. In his monologue, Satin rejects this attitude, because he considers it humiliating, suggesting the failure and wretchedness of those to whom this pity is directed. The main characters of the play "At the Bottom" Satin and Luka express opposing opinions. Satin says that it is necessary to respect a person and not humiliate him with pity. These words probably express the author’s position: “Man!.. This sounds... proud!”

The further fate of the heroes

What will happen to all these people in the future, will the heroes of Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths” be able to change anything? It's not hard to imagine them future fate. For example, Tick. At the beginning of the work he tries to get out of the “bottom”. He thinks that when his wife dies, everything will magically change for the better. However, after the death of his wife, Kleshch is left without tools and money and gloomily sings along with others: “I won’t run away anyway.” In fact, he will not run away, like the other inhabitants of the shelter.

What is salvation?

Are there any ways to escape from the “bottom” at all, and what are they? A decisive way out of this difficult situation may be outlined in Satin’s speech when he talks about the truth. He believes that the purpose strong man- to eradicate evil, and not to console the suffering, like Luke. This is one of the firmest convictions of Maxim Gorky himself. People can rise from the bottom only by learning to respect themselves and gaining self-esteem. Then they will be able to bear the proud title of Man. It still needs to be earned, according to Gorky.

Declaring his belief in creative forces, abilities and intelligence free man, Maxim Gorky affirmed the ideas of humanism. The author understood that in the mouth of Satin, a drunken tramp, words about free and proud man sound artificial. However, they had to sound in the play, expressing the ideals of the writer himself. There was no one to say this speech to except Satin.

In his work, Gorky refuted the main principles of idealism. These are the ideas of humility, forgiveness, non-resistance. He made it clear what beliefs the future belongs to. This is proven by the fate of the heroes of the play "At the Bottom." The entire work is imbued with faith in man.

The play “At the Lower Depths” was conceived by Gorky as one of four plays in a cycle showing the life and worldview of people from different walks of life. This is one of the two purposes of creating a work. Deep meaning, which the author put into it - an attempt to answer the main questions of human existence: what a person is and whether he will retain his personality, having sunk “to the bottom” of moral and social existence.

History of the play

The first evidence of work on the play dates back to 1900, when Gorky, in a conversation with Stanislavsky, mentioned his desire to write scenes from the life of a flophouse. Some sketches appeared at the end of 1901. In a letter to the publisher K. P. Pyatnitsky, to whom the author dedicated the work, Gorky wrote that in the planned play all the characters, the idea, the motives for the actions were clear to him, and “it will be scary.” Final version The work was ready on July 25, 1902, published in Munich and went on sale at the end of the year.

Things were not so rosy with the production of the play on stages Russian theaters- it is practically prohibited. An exception was made only for the Moscow Art Theater; other theaters had to obtain special permission for the production.

The title of the play changed at least four times during the work, and the genre was never determined by the author - the publication read “At the Bottom of Life: Scenes.” The shortened and familiar name to everyone today first appeared in theater poster at the first production at the Moscow Art Theater.

The first performers were star cast Moscow Art academic theater: K. Stanislavsky played the role of Satin, V. Kachalov played Barona, I. Moskvin played Luke, O. Knipper played Nastya, M. Andreeva played Natasha.

The main plot of the work

The plot of the play is tied to the relationships of the characters and the atmosphere of general hatred that reigns in the shelter. This is the outer outline of the work. A parallel action explores the depth of a person’s fall “to the bottom,” the measure of insignificance of a socially and spiritually degraded individual.

The action of the play begins and ends storyline the relationship between two characters: the thief Vaska Pepel and the wife of the owner of the rooming house Vasilisa. Ash loves her younger sister Natasha. Vasilisa is jealous and constantly beats her sister. She also has another interest in her lover - she wants to free herself from her husband and pushes Ash to murder. During the course of the play, Ash actually kills Kostylev in a quarrel. In the last act of the play, the guests of the shelter say that Vaska will have to go to hard labor, but Vasilisa will still “get out.” Thus, the action loops around the destinies of the two heroes, but is far from limited to them.

The time period of the play is several weeks early spring. The time of year is an important component of the play. One of the first titles given by the author to the work is “Without the Sun.” Indeed, it’s spring and the sea all around sunlight, and in the shelter and in the souls of its inhabitants there is darkness. The ray of sunshine for the overnight shelters was Luka, a tramp whom Natasha brings in one day. Luke brings hope for a happy outcome to the hearts of those who have fallen and lost faith in best people. However, at the end of the play, Luka disappears from the shelter. The characters who trusted him lose faith in the best. The play ends with the suicide of one of them - the Actor.

Play Analysis

The play describes the life of a Moscow flophouse. The main characters, accordingly, were its inhabitants and the owners of the establishment. Also in it appear people related to the life of the establishment: a policeman, who is also the uncle of the hostess of the rooming house, a dumpling seller, loaders.

Satin and Luka

Schuler, the former convict Satin and the tramp, the wanderer Luke - bearers of two opposing ideas: the need for compassion for man, saving lie out of love for him, and the need to know the truth, as proof of the greatness of a person, as a sign of trust in his strength of spirit. In order to prove the falsity of the first worldview and the truth of the second, the author built the action of the play.

Other characters

All the other characters form the background for this battle of ideas. In addition, they are designed to show and measure the depth of the fall to which a person is capable of falling. The drunkard Actor and the terminally ill Anna, people who have completely lost faith in their own strength, fall under the power of wonderful fairy tale, to which Luke takes them. They are the most dependent on it. With his departure, they physically cannot live and die. The rest of the inhabitants of the shelter perceive Luka's appearance and departure as the play of a spring sunbeam - he appeared and disappeared.

Nastya, who sells her body “on the boulevard,” believes that there is bright love, and it was in her life. Tick, husband dying Anna, believes that he will rise from the bottom and begin to earn a living by working again. The thread that connects him with his working past remains a toolbox. At the end of the play, he is forced to sell them in order to bury his wife. Natasha hopes that Vasilisa will change and stop torturing her. After another beating, after leaving the hospital, she will no longer appear in the shelter. Vaska Pepel strives to stay with Natalya, but cannot get out of the networks of the powerful Vasilisa. The latter, in turn, expects that the death of her husband will untie her hands and give her the long-awaited freedom. The Baron lives on from his aristocratic past. The gambler Bubnov, the destroyer of “illusions,” the ideologist of misanthropy, believes that “all people are superfluous.”

The work was created in conditions when, after the economic crisis of the 90s of the 19th century, factories shut down in Russia, the population was rapidly becoming poor, many found themselves on the bottom rung of the social ladder, in the basement. Each of the characters in the play experienced a fall to the bottom, social and moral, in the past. Now they live in the memory of this, but they cannot rise “to the light”: they don’t know how, they don’t have the strength, they are ashamed of their insignificance.

Main characters

Luke became a light for some. Gorky gave Luka a “speaking” name. It refers both to the image of St. Luke and to the concept of “cunning.” It is obvious that the author seeks to show the inconsistency of Luke’s ideas about the beneficial value of Faith for man. Gorky practically reduces Luka’s compassionate humanism to the concept of betrayal - according to the plot of the play, the tramp leaves the shelter just when those who trusted him need his support.

Satin is a figure designed to voice the author’s worldview. As Gorky wrote, Satin is not quite a suitable character for this, but there is simply no other character with equally powerful charisma in the play. Satin is the ideological antipode of Luke: he does not believe in anything, he sees the ruthless essence of life and the situation in which he and the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter find themselves. Does Satin believe in Man and his power over the power of circumstances and mistakes made? The passionate monologue that he delivers, arguing in absentia with the departed Luka, leaves a strong but contradictory impression.

There is also a bearer of the “third” truth in the work - Bubnov. This hero, like Satin, “stands for the truth,” only it is somehow very scary for him. He is a misanthrope, but, in essence, a murderer. Only they die not from the knife in his hands, but from the hatred that he has for everyone.

The drama of the play increases from act to act. The connecting outline is Luke's comforting conversations with those suffering from his compassion and Satin's rare remarks, indicating that he listens attentively to the speeches of the tramp. The climax of the play is Satin’s monologue, delivered after Luke’s departure and flight. Phrases from it are often quoted because they have the appearance of aphorisms; “Everything in a person is everything for a person!”, “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters... Truth is the god of a free person!”, “Man - this sounds proud!”

Conclusion

The bitter result of the play is the triumph of the freedom of fallen man to perish, disappear, leave, leaving behind neither a trace nor memories. The inhabitants of the shelter are free from society, moral standards, family and livelihood. By and large, they are free from life.

The play “At the Lower Depths” has been around for more than a century and continues to be one of the most strong works Russian classics. The play makes you think about the place of faith and love in a person’s life, about the nature of truth and lies, about a person’s ability to resist moral and social decline.

How did the heroes end up in the shelter?

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 the most gathered different people thrown out from the normal due to various circumstances, human life. This is the worker Mite, and the thief Ash, and 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 already 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: 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 yourself, in your strength...” The locksmith Kleshch says about himself: “I am a working person... I’m ashamed to look at them... I’ve been working since an early age...” In a few words, Anna’s life’s fate is depicted. “I don’t remember when I was full...,” she says. “I was shaking over every piece of bread... I was trembling all my life... I was tormented... so as not to eat anything else... I walked around in rags all my life... 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: “...You Do you think I won't get out of here? I’ll get out... I’ll rip off the skin, and I’ll get out...”