How is the title of the work reflected in the scenery? A cave-like basement. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster

In what works of Russian literature are the heroes bound not by bonds of friendship or mutual sympathy, but by the irresistible power of events?

A cave-like basement. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. The light comes from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side. The right corner is occupied by Ash’s room, fenced off by thin partitions; near the door to this room is Bubnov’s bunk. In the left corner there is a large Russian stove, in the left, stone wall there is a door to the kitchen where Kvashnya, Baron, and Nastya live. Between the stove and the door against the wall is a wide bed covered with a dirty chintz curtain. Everywhere along the walls there are bunks. On foreground near the left wall there is a stump of wood with a vice and a small anvil attached to it, and another, lower than the first. On the last one - in front of the anvil - sits Kleshch, trying on the keys to the old locks. At his feet are two large bunches of different keys, put on rings made of wire, a damaged samovar made of tin, a hammer, filings. In the middle of the shelter there is a large table, two benches, a stool, everything is unpainted and dirty. At the table, by the samovar, Kvashnya is in charge, the Baron is chewing black bread, and Nastya, on a stool, is reading, leaning on the table, a disheveled book. Anna is coughing on the bed, covered with curtains. Bubnov, sitting on his bunk, tries on old, torn trousers on a hat blank, clamped in his knees, figuring out how to cut them. Near him is a tattered cardboard from under a hat - for visors, pieces of oilcloth, rags. Satin has just woken up, lies on the bunk and growls. On the stove, invisible, the Actor is fiddling and coughing.
The beginning of spring. Morning.
Baron. Further!
Kvashnya. No, I say, darling, get away from me with this. I say, I experienced it... and now - not for a hundred baked crayfish - I won’t walk down the aisle!
Bubnov (to Satin). Why are you grunting?
Satin growls.
Kvashnya. So that I, I say, free woman, I am my own mistress, but I entered 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.
Mite. You're lying!
Kvashnya. Wha-oh?
Mite. You're lying. Get married to Abramka...
Baron (snatching the book from Nastya and reading the title). " Fatal love"... (Laughs.)
Nastya (extending her hand). Give...give it! Well... don't spoil it!
The Baron looks at her, waving the book in the air.
Kvashnya (Tick). You're a red goat! There - you're lying! How dare you say such a bold word to me?
Baron (hitting Nastya on the head with a book). You're a fool, Nastya...
Nastya (takes away the book). Give...
Mite. Great lady!.. And you will get married to Abramka... that’s just what you’re waiting for...
Kvashnya. Certainly! Of course... of course! You beat your wife half to death...
Mite. Shut up, old dog! It's none of your business...
Kvashnya. Ahh! You can't stand the truth!
Baron. Began! Nastya - where are you?
Nastya (without raising her head). Eh?.. Go away!
Anna (poking her head out from behind the curtain). The day has begun! For God's sake... don't shout... don't swear!
Mite. I started whining!
Anna. Every single day! Let me at least die in peace!..
Bubnov. Noise is not a hindrance to death...

Some people take the wrong path unwittingly, because the straight path does not exist for them.
Thomas Mann
The one who has nothing left to lose is terrible.
Goethe
Despite the fact that the play by A.M. Gorky’s “At the Lower Depths” was written at the beginning of the last century (in 1902); for more than a hundred years, famous stage directors have been turning to it. In the characters of the play, who have sunk to the “bottom” of life, one can find traits of contemporary people who were unable to adapt to the emerging capitalism in Russia and, by the will of fate, found themselves on the sidelines of life, mired in poverty and human vices.
Let's talk about human destinies Gorky's heroes using the example of the first act of the play. Dramatic work intended for performance on stage, there are no descriptions of a portrait, landscape, or interior, and the reader can judge the character of the characters only by their remarks. And the landscape and interior are replaced by the author's remarks. Let us pay attention to how Gorky describes the Kostylevs’ shelter: “A basement like a cave. The ceiling is heavy stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster.” From the first lines of the play, we are struck by the miserable conditions: in the basement there is dirt, unsanitary conditions, disease. And it’s the beginning of spring, morning outside. Apparently the light sun rays will never penetrate these stone walls.
But Gorky’s heroes do not pay attention to the dirt and stench, they are accustomed to such a life, to each other, and almost do not notice those around them. Each hero exists as if on his own, living his own life. Therefore, at the beginning of the play, everyone present speaks at once, without expecting an answer, weakly reacting to the comments of others. In parallel, several dialogues take place at once: Kvashnya and Kleshch, Nastya and Baron, etc. Kvashnya is proud that she is a free woman, not bound by marriage, and this causes anger in Klesh. He has a dying wife in his arms. Nastya, fallen woman, reads the novel “Fatal Love,” which causes the Baron to laugh ironically. Behind the screen is the seriously ill Anna, whom no one seems to notice except Kvashnya. Drunkenness, swearing, foul language - this is normal, everyone is used to such a life and does not pay attention to each other.
Who are they, these miserable inhabitants of the human “bottom”? Many heroes have only a nickname instead of a first and last name, for example, Actor, Baron. No one calls them anything else in the play.
The former Actor, who lost his name, constantly remembers his past life in the theater, his remarks contain quotes from famous plays. But now his “body is poisoned by alcohol.” Talking about purpose creative people, The actor believes that “talent is faith in yourself, in your strength.” But he himself lost this faith, became an alcoholic, lost his job and found himself “at the bottom.”
Prostitute Nastya dreams of a bright and pure love, but this only causes laughter from others. The girl is trying to get out of the vicious circle, leave the shelter and start new life, but these are just her dreams.
Bubnov, a former furrier, recalls that he once “had his own establishment”, worked, and now he is one of the inhabitants of the “bottom”, a useless person.
His nickname speaks about the Baron's past. He was a wealthy man, born in rich family, but he also became an alcoholic, squandered his fortune, ended up in a poor shelter and lives supported by Nastya. Many of the inhabitants of the basement do not even believe his stories about past prosperity.
Locksmith Klesch makes his living by fitting keys to old locks. And yet he is proud of this: “I am a working man... I am ashamed to look at them... I have been working since an early age.” The tick dreams of breaking out of the shelter and starting a new life as soon as Anna dies.
Satin - “intellectual”, “philosopher”. His speech differs from the inhabitants of the shelter. There are many words in it, sometimes not understandable either to those around him or to himself. “Macrobiotics”, “oranon”, “sicambrus”, etc. He considers himself educated person Since he served in the telegraph office, he read a lot of books. Satin talks a lot, sometimes speaking in aphorisms: “Many people get money easily, but few easily part with it.” He explains his reluctance to work this way: “When work is pleasure, life is good! When work is a duty, life is slavery!” And one cannot but agree with him. But the natural mind did not find use for itself. Who is Satin in the present? Just one of the poor drunkards living in the shelter.
And Vaska Pepel never had a profession. There are no ideals for him, he does not strive to work, since he lives by theft: “... every person wants his neighbor to have a conscience, but, you see, it is not beneficial for anyone to have one... the rich need honor and conscience.” He cannot live differently, since he is a thief and the son of a thief. However, this person also retains kindness and naivety; he strives for purity and goodness. But Vaska Ash falls into slavery " powerful of the world this." The owner of the shelter, Kostylev, turns out to be an even lower person: he does not give Vasily the money for the stolen watch, believing that Ash already owes him a lot. His wife Vasilisa is also in bondage to her husband, who is twice her age: “You will become brutal with such a life... Tie every living person to a husband like hers...” She is also unhappy, and her love for Vaska Ash is a challenge to family despotism. For the sake of Vasilisa, the thief is ready to commit a crime - to kill Kostylev. Vasilisa was inflamed with terrible hatred for her sister Natalya when she learned about her lover’s betrayal. She is ready to kill her, just to keep Vasily for herself.
Like this terrible life the inhabitants of the shelter live. What they have in common is that almost all of them are “former”: former Actor, former Baron, former furrier, former telegraph operator... Their present is continuous drunkenness, a miserable existence in a damp basement. They live only with nostalgic memories of the past, sometimes idealizing it. But they have no future either. It's just as terrible as the real thing. But the worst thing is that the heroes do not strive to change themselves and their lives. This play has so much in common with contemporary Russia at the end of the 20th century. beginning of the XXI centuries! And yet I believe that each person himself is the “smith of his own happiness”, it is his own fault that he could not find a way out difficult situation, mired in drunkenness and thrown “to the bottom.” After all, “you can’t go far in the carriage of the past.” You need to be stronger than circumstances and not depend on weaknesses.

Maxim Gorky wrote his play “At the Lower Depths” in 1902. In this work, a “naked” person appears before the reader. He is deprived of all external layers (cultural, class, professional) acquired in human society. The study of the behavior of a “naked” person, faced with the need to live and act in extremely difficult circumstances for him, is the play “At the Bottom.”

The “bottom” itself is a place that seems to be outside the world of people. The shelter resembles hell: “The basement looks like a cave. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster.” The shelter is located below ground level. The heroes of the play are as if already dead people. This is emphasized at the beginning of the work by Satin’s remark: “You cannot kill twice.”

In Gorky's "hell" Satin plays very important role. It is no coincidence that his name is consonant with the name “Satan”. The first sounds this character makes on stage are growls. Satin says about himself that in the past he was an educated person and worked as a telegraph operator. From the very beginning of the play, words such as “macrobiotics”, “Sardanapalus”, etc. are heard from his lips.

This hero is different from the rest of the inhabitants of the “bottom”. He says about himself: “I’m tired, brother, of human words... all our words are tired! I heard each of them... probably a thousand times...", "I was an educated person...", "I read a lot of books...".

So what happened to him? How did he become an inhabitant of the shelter? “I served four years and seven months in prison... but after prison there was no progress!” We learn that Satin was in prison for murder; he killed the offender of his sister. And then my beloved sister died.

By his own free will, having sunk to the very bottom of life, Satin burns through his abilities and capabilities. This hero contributes to the final death of some characters. Satin half-jokingly persuades Vaska Pepel to kill Kostylev, and then largely provokes this murder. He himself beat Kostylev, calling, inflaming passions: “Beat him... Beat them!..”.

Satin is indifferent to people, he preaches contempt for moral values. Hard work is the only opportunity for homeless shelters to earn their own food in an honest way. Satin rejects the job. He is a card sharper, that's what he lives on. Satin covers up his corrupting influence on his cohabitants with lofty phrases: “Work? For what? To be full?.. Man is higher! Man is above satiety!..”

This character says the following about his moral character: “Those who have power and strength need honor and conscience... the rich need honor and conscience, yes!” Apparently, it was not for nothing that Gorky made his hero a cheater. With his phrases, Satin helps the night shelters justify their own immorality.

Satin himself is a strong man with at least some education. He could, if not get out of the bottom, then at least earn his living by honest work. He neglects this opportunity, deliberately choosing criminal activity. Satin preaches philosophy " free man", pushing her to the edge. In his case, this is already a person free from everything. Therefore, this hero affirms the “bottom” as the norm of existence, the only one worthy of a real person.

It is very interesting that this particular character gets the role of a preacher. It is he who pronounces the most famous monologue about Man: “Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and brain! Human! It's great! It sounds... proud!”; “What is a person?.. It’s not you, not me, not them... no! - it’s you, me, them, the old man, Napoleon, Mohammed... in one!”; “We must respect a person! Don’t feel sorry... don’t humiliate him with pity...”; “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters...”; “Truth is the god of a free man!”; “man – that’s the truth!” Satin's monologues are separated from his image. What is unusual is that the truth is sung by none other than a sharper, a man who lives a lie. To this the hero himself replies: “Why doesn’t a sharper sometimes speak well if decent people...they say like a sharper?”

Satin expresses in many ways author's position. Gorky himself wrote that, in addition to this character, in the play there is simply no one to say all this. It is important to note that the image of Satin is similar to a number of heroes early works Gorky. These heroes turned away contemptuously human society with its dullness, dirt, petty vanity. Above all, they placed their own freedom, including freedom from morality. Satin is similar to them, but he not only voluntarily sinks to the bottom of life, but also prevents other characters from throwing off the shackles of poverty and moral decay. He corrupts the night shelters and interferes with their attempts to leave the “bottom”. Satin is indeed similar to Satan in many ways. Thus, through the image of this character, Gorky seems to be settling scores with his former heroes.

Of course, the image of Satin is extremely important. Satin's monologues contain a grain of truth, but they all contradict the lifestyle of this hero. The importance of this character is also emphasized by the fact that the last terrible phrase belongs to him - the reaction to the death of the Actor: “You ruined the song... fool!”

AT THE BOTTOM

Maria Anufrieva. Cornice. - Moscow: “Eksmo”, 2015.

“The basement is like a cave. The ceiling is heavy stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster... The right corner is occupied by Ash’s room, fenced off with thin partitions, near the door to this room is Bubnov’s bunk. In the left corner there is a large Russian stove; in the left - stone - wall there is a door to the kitchen, where Kvashnya, Baron, Nastya live ... "

No, I didn't mix up the books. The play “At the Bottom” was created by Maxim Gorky. Maria Anufrieva wrote the novel “The Cornice”. About another time, other people. Perhaps even about another country. Although everything is about the same lonely Russia, in which people live who are not needed by anyone except themselves, and sometimes they are not needed by themselves either. A whole century separates the two works, and yet a thread stretches, trying to connect such different worlds. It's not far from the ledge to the bottom. Take just one step and it will be your last. The gray St. Petersburg well will accept its next victim. The twilight in the gray gateways will become even darker...

And as if to confirm - St. Petersburg Communal apartment, the habitat of the heroes of “The Cornice”, a house of 1905 - “a long row of dark windows”, “one side is a blank wall, and on the second - the doors of closed rooms like the teeth of a comb”, “second floor, under the kitchen there is an arch, above the arch there is a bathtub , there is a rotten floor under the bathroom.” Dark slurry in the “eternally damp, smoking, musty basement,” where, according to legend, they once “threw the bodies of a professor and his wife, who somehow displeased the new government in revolutionary Petrograd.” And like a warning - driven into the corridor opposite entrance doors There is an iron hook in the ceiling. “This is to make hanging yourself more convenient when it’s really unbearable.”

Interest is fueled by rumors. “Speak badly about me, speak well about me, most importantly, talk about me,” a journalist friend taught me many years ago in the basics of PR and promotion. " A book about lesbians!” - whispered those who had not yet read “The Cornice”, but were told about it. And they waited, as if in a cheap home video for adults, for a strawberry, bright, exciting, sweet... The novel turned out to be about something completely different. Formally, everything about those non-traditional ones is correct. But only formally...

The main character of the novel is Iya. Young, twenty-something year old. Arrived in St. Petersburg. Rented apartment, “there are drunks behind the wall, and nearby there are hordes of cockroaches.” Work... some kind of work, about which there is a lot and nothing. Faceless office plankton. They are doing something, reports, plans, corporate meetings. There is a crack in the heart, and in the soul too. But there is a dream. The dream is to love him. "White trousers, striped shirt, leather bag on the shoulder, a crew cut.” And... for some time Anufrieva holds a theatrical pause, who is he? Daddy. Thirty years old, handsome, brutal, whom all the women run after, and he chooses, he has the right to choose. He?! Well, or her. By gender characteristics - a woman, by internal content - a man.

Love turns out to be mutual, but complex and difficult. “I warn everyone that this is a male, but they still don’t listen. Women are fools, what can I do,” Mukha, the pimp, throws up his hands. Iya moves in with Daddy in that same communal apartment, waits for him in the evenings, tolerates his cheating with other women, cheats on him with a woman herself, but there’s nothing serious there. They swear, come together, separate, cut their wrists, wave kitchen knives, live their own lives, incomprehensible to most people. They live and understand that somewhere this life will end. “They both had cracks inside.” The cracks are superimposed. Anufrieva heats up the situation, bringing the heroes closer and closer to the edge of the cornice. And now it seems that a denouement must come. Sad, gloomy, gloomy, like an abandoned, old St. Petersburg courtyard. But here it’s as if someone is wiping cloudy glass. You always want to believe in the best. The feminine begins to regain its temporarily abandoned positions. “Will there be children?” - unexpectedly for herself, Iya asks the fortune teller. “If there is a man, there will be children,” she answers evasively. Something must change, the reader understands. It’s just that there’s still an obstacle. "Queen of spades between you and the king." That lady is Daddy.

About same-sex love in Russian literature It is not customary to write frankly. And Anufrieva’s merit is that she does this extremely correctly. I would even say chaste. There is not a single scene of carnal love in the novel. The reader looking for a strawberry, tearing the cellophane packaging off the book with a shaking hand, will be disappointed. Anufrieva closes the door to lovers of “lesbian” cinema. Both directly and figuratively. Almost the only scene of this very love is separated from the viewer (reader) by a balcony door. And we, along with Iya and Mukha, are on the same balcony, smoking, not even trying to peek through the drawn curtain, waiting “for the groans coming from the depths of the apartment through the open window to subside.” No need to peek. This is your personal life, don’t trample there with dirty boots.

The past year, perhaps, turned out to be one of the most depressing in terms of content in modern Russian literature. It’s easy to verify this; just put in front of you the books of last year’s Russian Booker finalists. Danikhnov, Ganieva, Pokrovsky, Snegirev, Yakhina, Senchin. Somewhere to a lesser extent, somewhere to a greater extent, but their books do not breathe optimism, adding one fly in the ointment after another to our not so sweet life. And at first I want to put “The Cornice” in the same row, but the desire unexpectedly disappears after reading it. “The Cornice,” as strange as it may sound, is a surprisingly life-affirming novel. You close the last page and feel how much you want to live. You want to love, raise children, be needed by someone, have family, friends, know that there are people you can call Hard time to vent your own sadness. And let the bitterness that fills every page of the book not frighten the reader. Anufrieva fills her with the book consciously, so that Iya understands that she needs to rejoice in the simple, in ordinary life we don’t notice and consider it ordinary. Big things can be seen from a distance. Happiness is known in grief. The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. Truths are banal. So what…

“Cornice” - about people living, it would seem, enough life to the fullest, but in reality thrown out by fate deserted shore. About people whose glances every now and then stumble upon “an iron hook in the hallway near the entrance doors.” Same-sex love in the novel is only a background against which events develop, and not at all a trick to attract the reader’s attention. If the author really wanted a scandal and heated public discussion in the literary and especially literary circles, first places in sales rankings, she would not have written “The Cornice” at all, but “Fifty Shades of Pink.”

"The Cornice" is in many ways a feminist novel about a sexless country in which sexless men live. They have surrounded Iya since childhood. Of course, they have all the necessary sexual characteristics. But can we call them men? Primitive “kid from the area” Horned. The drunken sailor Lucien, whose existence his family forgot. Somebody completely random, who wandered to Mucha to satisfy his needs. A proud gay man who seriously dreams of procreation (“It would be nice to have a Labrador. What a child, I have a good gene pool." Arnold Alexandrovich, the pompous founder of the company where Iya works. Mikhail, “a thin, wrinkled man like a baked apple, with ever-watery eyes,” who left behind “several hundred bottles of hawthorn tincture from the pharmacy.” And to top it all off, HE, the geek, is love. main character, love seemed to be real, lasting for a long time, but disappeared after the miscarriage and the indifference that was born. M. Anufrieva never mentions the name of this man, who claimed to radically change the heroine’s life. He doesn't have a name. Did not deserve. Asexual, nameless man.

No, not a panopticon - these are the most ordinary people. Men, men, boys... we see them every day. On the streets, in the subway, shops, offices. They live next to us, they live next to Oia. They live in our country, which is so similar to a communal apartment-comb, in which the tenants are constantly changing. You look at them, read these images from the pages of the novel and it’s as if you begin to understand where and why Daddies come into this life and why they are loved by Eeyores.

And yet happiness, with thin sprouts, makes its way through this twilight world, balancing on the ledge and at risk of falling to the bottom. It is necessary to be needed by someone, otherwise the meaning is lost, the thread of human existence on earth is broken. What to live for? The answer is simple. People cannot live alone. Children are the salvation from it. Old bark falls off from a growing tree, peels off pebbled leather. Random fellow travelers pass away. Another one opens up to her, new world, the world of “mysterious people - heterosexuals”. It makes sense. And the world of women suddenly opens up. Women expecting a child. Women with mysterious and solemn faces. With other persons. It’s as if I’m breaking through a difficult and unbearable existence in order to finally find simple human happiness, banal in a woman’s way, but so understandable - loving husband and son. The family she probably always dreamed of, but she didn’t realize it right away. First, two thin stripes on the test, and a few months later, “a black and white image of a monitor displayed on a large wall screen... a living ocean, like on the planet Solaris, in the waves of which a curled-up creature of the newly established sex was rocking.” And she wants to repeat more and more often, dreaming, “my boy, my boy, my boy...” One thing is bad, the St. Petersburg downpours wash away not only fellow travelers, but also real friends.

“...Bring me some wine! We wake you up to drink, we wake you up to go for walks, death has come - we wake you up to die!” - Maxim Gorky’s hero smiles, sitting on a bunk in the basement of a flophouse. But there is no one to drink in the old communal apartment-comb. There are no more residents in it, not one. Some simply left, others passed away. How long... just to walk. And only Daddy walks along the long dark corridor, “afraid to raise his head to the iron hook near the entrance doors and listening to the rustling in the silence of the empty house.” Or maybe it’s not Daddy at all, but his shadow. And the shadows of other residents of the communal apartment. Former, present, future. “The shadows remaining in the line, in the loop, in the palace of their city built on the swamps of their own free will, are unable to part with its bewitching, poisonous beauty, slowly flowing into the soul and turning it into shadow.”

A curtain. The novel has been read. Those who have taken their last step from the ledge are taken away by a “children’s car honking with a siren.” She rushes through the city, growing in size. Either in a dream or in reality. Those inside cannot be helped. But there were others left, living. There are more of them, they can be saved. Move away from the cornice. Don't let yourself end up at the bottom...

The play “At the Bottom” is a deep, ambiguous work, in which the author poses complex philosophical and moral problems. Among them is the problem of truth and lies, true and false compassion, the problem of personality degradation, the problem of relationships between people. Revealing last problem, the author cannot help but turn to the theme of love, which even in such inhumane conditions, like life in a flophouse, still exists and forces the characters to do crazy things to prove their feelings.

Life in a shelter, the inhabitants of which are trying to somehow exist, seems unreal and fantastic, because people are initially placed in conditions where nothing normal can happen. “The basement is like a cave. The ceiling is heavy stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. The light comes from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side. The right corner is occupied by Ash’s room, fenced off by thin partitions; near the door to this room is Bubnov’s bunk. In the left corner there is a large Russian stove; in the left, stone wall there is a door to the kitchen where Kvashnya, Baron, Nastya live,” this is how the author describes the place of events. Dirt, cramped space, overcrowding, dampness, squalor, men in the same room with women - this is the interior against which the characters’ love unfolds. The wife of the owner of the shelter, Vasilisa, runs on dates with the thief Ash, which causes the constant jealousy of her hypocritical and greedy husband, Ash loves her sister Natasha, and Nastya, who earns her daily bread with the most humiliating craft in the world, dreams of a pure, selfless love. Human feelings have not died even in such terrible conditions: and here there is a place for compassion, empathy, hope and love.

Probably the most significant for the development of the plot of the play is the relationship between Ash and Natasha. Ash, the thief, the son of a thief, sees in the modest and kind Natasha, whom her sister constantly mocks, a symbol of something beautiful, bright, for which it is not a pity to give her life: “Even now, I will accept death! Take a knife, strike against the heart... I’ll die without a sigh! Even - with joy, because - from clean hand...” At the same time, Ash does not understand that Vasilisa, a powerful and evil woman, will not give up hers so easily. The first act of the play ends with Vasilisa beating Natasha. Vasilisa tries to persuade Ash to kill her husband, to free her from him, and for this she promises to give him Natasha as his wife. But Natasha herself doesn’t like Pepla, she also lives in dreams: “I think, tomorrow... someone... someone... special will come... Or something will happen... also - unprecedented ... I wait for a long time... I always wait... And so... in reality - what can you wait for?”

Elder Luke persuades Ash to take Natasha from the shelter and go with her to Siberia, which he presents to Ash as an earthly paradise. Ash, trusting Luka, believes that life can be changed, he is ready to do anything for the sake of his love: “I said, I’ll give up stealing! By God, I'll give it up! If I said it, I’ll do it! I am literate... I will work... Do you think my life doesn’t disgust me? But I feel one thing: we must live... differently! We need to live better! I have to live like this... so that I can respect myself...” Natasha is also not averse to leaving with Ash, realizing that she has no other choice. But the heroes do not have time: the third act ends with Vasilisa throwing a boiling samovar over her sister, and Ash in this turmoil kills Kostylev with one blow. At the end of the play, we learn that Natasha has disappeared from the hospital, and Ash faces prison. What is further fate These heroes are not known, but they are unlikely to find their happiness in a world of violence and oppression.

But the fate of another heroine of the play, Nastya, unfortunately, is quite definite. Nastya earns her bread on the street, all the shelters laugh at her, everyone despises her. Nastya goes into dreams, fantasies about great love, which she never had and never will have. She is the only one of the night shelters who reads books, however, these are pulp novels, from which she draws the plots of her fantasies: “By God... it happened! Everything was! He was a student... he was French... his name was Gastoshi... with a black beard... he wore patent leather boots... strike me with thunder in this place! And he loved me so much... he loved me so much!” Only Luka sympathizes with Nastya, saying: “If you believe, you had real love... that means she was!” In that scary world Nastya can only dream, forgetting about the humiliations and insults that she suffers in the real world.

In his play, Gorky shows how tragic are the fates of people who by nature cannot be predators. In the world of profit, they get the role of the victim, and all of them human feelings, including love, are shattered by a terrible reality. But people remain people because they cannot help but suffer, sympathize with each other and love.