The initial event in the play is that our people will be numbered. Ideological and artistic analysis of A.N.’s comedy

“We’ll be our own people” - comedy by A.N. Ostrovsky. Ostrovsky took about four years to create his first major work. An excerpt from the future comedy “The Insolvent Debtor,” processed together with provincial actor D.A. Gorev-Tarasenkov, was published on January 9, 1847 in the “Moscow City List” - signed “A.O. and D.G.” The playwright's semi-accidental co-author did not take part in further work on the play; Ostrovsky continued to work on it alone and according to a new plan. By the middle of 1849, the comedy was finished and called “Bankrupt, or Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!” sent for censorship. Censors banned the comedy for the stage under the pretext that all the characters were “notorious scoundrels” and their “conversations are dirty.”

The censorship ban did not prevent the author from organizing readings of the play in various literary circles and salons (often together with the playwright’s close friend and like-minded person, artist of the Maly Theater P. M. Sadovsky). At one of these readings (December 3, 1849, in the house of M.P. Pogodin) N.V. was present. Gogol, who responded favorably to the play. In 1850, Ostrovsky created a second edition of the play that met censorship requirements: the harsh parts were removed or softened, and a policeman was introduced into the final scene, taking Podkhalyuzin “to the investigative bailiff in the case of concealing the property of the insolvent merchant Bolshov.” First publication: magazine “Moskvityanin”, 1850, No. 6, March. In this edition, the play was published in the first collected works of Ostrovsky and was allowed to be presented.

Ostrovsky's comedy “Our People - Let's Be Numbered” aroused unanimous approval of Russian society; the author was seen as a successor to the traditions of national comedy. V.F. Odoevsky expressed the general opinion, writing: “I consider there to be three tragedies in Rus': “The Minor,” “Woe from Wit,” and “The Inspector General.” On “Bankrut” I put number four.” Classifying the best original Russian comedies as “tragedies” cannot be considered an accidental slip of the tongue. We were talking about a deeply national form of the comic, which does not recognize the elements of “pure comedy” and gravitates towards a complex fusion of the comic with dramatic, touching or pathetic coverage of events. I.A. Goncharov pointed to Ostrovsky's knowledge of "the heart of the Russian man and his skillful introduction of the dramatic element into comedy." L.N. Tolstoy wrote about the “gloomy depth” that can be heard in “Bankrupt” and “Profitable Place”. A.A. Grigoriev emphasized that at the bottom of Ostrovsky’s comedies lies the “bitter and tragic” content of Russian life. In line with this tradition, criticism viewed the main character of the comedy as “King Lear of Zamoskvoretsk.”

Ostrovsky resolved the Shakespearean theme of a father who gave everything to his children and was driven away by them without the slightest compassion within the limits of a national, specific historical, characteristic type. The playwright translated the search for the European spirit into the plane of the spiritual life of the hero of Russian modernity. He revealed the image of the merchant Bolshov as a person in whom the voice of a living soul sounded through the crust of his social “role”.

The source of the drama of the comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was Bolshov’s original, self-sufficient, autocratic “self”, manifested in tyranny that knows no boundaries, no limits, no measures. The “grain” of Bolshov’s personality is in the words of the clerk Podkhalyuzin: “If something gets into their heads, nothing can knock out Ottedov.” Pictures of family life reveal the consequences of his tyrant influence on the characters and behavior of the household members. In the reluctance to pay creditors there is the same breadth of the hero’s nature: “Yes, I’d rather burn everything with fire, and I won’t give them a penny.”

Having conceived a false bankruptcy, Bolshov was exhausted in search of an excuse for his fraud: “Let’s assume that we are not Germans, but Orthodox Christians, and we also eat pies with filling. Is that so, huh?” The appearance of the solicitor Rispozhensky, ready to tar any mechanic for a pittance, the reading of Vedomosti with reports of proliferating bankrupts, the gentle nudge of Podkhalyuzin - this is how the motive of temptation, the “devilish instigation” that darkened Bolshov’s conscience, develops in the play. Having found “his” person in the clerk Podkhalyuzin, Bolshov decides to deceive: “There after judge, Vladyko, at the second coming.”

Podkhalyuzin easily won Bolshov’s trust because in the conversation he used categories that Bolshov understood (“soul,” “conscience,” “feeling,” “heart”) and was able to assure that he had all this in abundance. It is curious that Podkhalyuzin, who decided to “take advantage of something extra” in the case of false bankruptcy, also had to persuade himself. And only by convincing himself that there was “no sin” in this, he was able to get everything he wanted: the house, the shops, and the owner’s daughter Lipochka.

The “compliance” of the characters with their own conscience is a consequence of the “science of trade” learned from childhood. In family life, in matters of matchmaking, in the love aspirations of Lipochka and Podkhalyuzin, there is the same ingrained imprint of the trading business, giving a comic highlight to the action of the play. The ritual parental blessing of the young, distorted by the “economic lining”, turns into a farce. The seriousness of the parental curse (in the last act) comes to naught in the ridiculous family quarrel: the dramatic tension is discharged into “nothing”. And only for Bolshov, deceived by Podkhalyuzin, who went through the “strife” and humiliation of a debt trap, shocked by his daughter’s insensitivity, the time for “bargaining” ended. The awakening of personality in the image is associated with the awakening of conscience - the consciousness and sense of sin. The straightening of the human personality, distorted by mercenary practices, lies in the realization that “Judas, after all, he also sold Christ for money, just as we sell our conscience for money...”.

Least of all at this moment the merchant Bolshov resembles the angry Lear, challenging the world order. Unlike his Shakespearean “prototype,” Bolshov does not rise to the level of awareness of the laws of existence, but resigns himself to his fate. Even Podkhalyuzin was “struck” by the humility of the indomitable Bolshov: “It’s a pity for my darling, by God, it’s a pity, sir!” Putting on “an old frock coat, which is worse,” he goes to “bargain with creditors.” The life of the merchant class appears in the comedy as a “market place” that distorts the natural humanity of the heroes. Ostrovsky later wrote that the outlook on life in this comedy seemed “young and too cruel” to him. This “rigidity” of view does not condemn a person, but there is strict justice of his moral assessment.

Coloring his characters with a motley pattern of “character” and “characteristics” (belonging to class, time, occupation), the playwright shows a merchant and a clerk, an errand boy and a drunken clerk, a merchant’s daughter of marriageable age and a busy mother, a matchmaker from Zamoskvoretsk and an absurd housekeeper - in their typicality. But at the same time, behind the rough shell of sociality, he reveals and makes visible the individual mental life of his characters. The found pattern and tone of the “colored” Old Moscow speech, the completeness and richness of the speech characteristics of the characters recommend Ostrovsky as a “playwright of the word”, recreating the voluminous and colorful Zamoskvoretsky life. The “proverbial” name and “speaking” surnames will be included in Ostrovsky’s arsenal of favorite techniques. Ostrovsky’s constant technique will be to show a certain artistic type in the perspective of growth, in the dynamics of its formation: the boy Tishka - the clerk Podkhalyuzin - the merchant Bolshov (cf.: Borodkin - Rusakov in “Don’t Sit in Your Own Sleigh”, Belogubov - Yusov in “Profitable Place” , Vozhevatov - Knurov in “Dowry”, etc.). The method of resolving the conflict will forever remain the triumph of artistic truth over “bare everyday reality.” In Ostrovsky’s first comedy “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered”, many themes, ideas and images were stated that were developed in his further work: “tyranny” and “the law of house-building”, “trading” and “trading psychology”, “one’s own” and “someone else’s”, “law of conscience”, “soul” and “character” in a person.

Due to the censorship ban on the stage performance of “Our People...”, the first productions of the comedy were carried out by amateur forces. The author participated in some of them, playing the role of Podkhalyuzin (in a home performance in the house of S.A. Panova, in the theater at the Red Gate). The first public performance took place in Irkutsk in November 1857, but, having been banned, it was removed from the stage. The premiere took place at the Alexandrinsky Theater (St. Petersburg) on ​​January 16, 1861, at the Maly Theater (Moscow) on January 31, 1861 (the play was in its second edition). In the performance of the Maly Theater P.M. Sadovsky created the image of Podkhalyuzin, which has become classic. Without censorship distortions, the play was first performed on April 30, 1881 at the A.A. Theater. Brenko “Near the Pushkin Monument” (Moscow). The most significant production in the stage history of comedy was the play by A.A. Goncharov at the Mayakovsky Theater (1974, Moscow).

In 1846-1849 Ostrovsky is working hard to create a great comedy, the name of which changed during the creative process: “Insolvent Debtor” - “Bankrupt” - “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” But the impetus for intensive work in the dramatic kind was the success of the first experiment - “Pictures of Family Happiness”, read on February 14, 1847 in front of very competent connoisseurs at the apartment of Professor Shevyrev.

If Ostrovsky’s first dramatic experience brought him recognition, then the comedy “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!” placed him among the best Russian playwrights. On March 17, 1850, immediately after the comedy was published (it was published in the March book of the Moskvityanin magazine), Herzen wrote from Paris to Georg Herwegh about Granovsky’s letter from Russia: “He writes that a new comedy has appeared, written by a young man, a certain Ostrovsky... his comedy is a cry of anger and hatred against Russian morals: he speaks of this work as a devilish success; The play was banned; its title was “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!”

Indeed, Ostrovsky's play was published with great difficulty, and there could be no talk of its stage implementation. The play received the highest condemnation: “... it was printed in vain, it’s forbidden to play...” Naturally, the re-release of the comedy became possible only after the death of Nicholas I, in 1859, and even then with significant changes and a new happy ending, in which the "vice" was punished. In this softened form, the play appeared on stage in the 60s (first of all - on April 18, 1860 - in the Voronezh Cadet Corps). In 1861, it was staged by the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Maly Theater in Moscow, and only in 1881 was the performance of Ostrovsky’s comedy based on the text of the first edition allowed.

Naturally, the main reason for such a difficult path to the reader and viewer was the sharpness of the content and the moral uncompromisingness of the young author. According to the fair remark of V. Ya. Lakshin, the author of a monograph on Ostrovsky, the key word for understanding comedy is deception: “Deception in Bankrupt acts as the secret spring of all life.”

The wealthy Moscow merchant Samson Silych Bolshov, trying to become even richer, decides to declare himself an insolvent debtor and simulate bankruptcy. So that the false (“malicious”) nature of the bankruptcy is not established, he rewrites his fortune - the house and shops in the name of the main clerk - Lazar Elizarych Podkhalyuzin, whom, in his own words, “he gave water, fed in place of his own father, and brought him into the public eye.” Podkhalyuzin, however, is not as simple as he seems to his benefactor. At least he knows well two features of Bolshov - an experienced, seasoned man and very intelligent in everyday life, which make him extremely vulnerable. Firstly, Samson Silych is susceptible to flattery, and Podkhalyuzin never tires of flattering him. Secondly, (and this is the main thing) Bolshov, as a true tyrant, does not like to change his decisions and admit mistakes.

Bolshov’s daughter, Olimpiada Samsonovna, Lipochka, a girl of marriageable age, is so focused on thoughts about her groom that, in her own words, “melancholy ripples in her eyes,” but she needs a noble groom, preferably a military man, and not a merchant: “ Then, is this how I was brought up: I learned French, and the piano, and how to dance!” However, Samson Silych, touched by Podkhalyuzin’s flattering speeches, decides to be a benefactor to the end and gives Lipochka to his clerk. As for Lipochka’s own desires, Bolshov doesn’t care much about them: “My brainchild: I want to eat it with porridge, I want to churn butter.” However, Lipochka quickly changes her anger to mercy, having received from Podkhalyuzin a promise of complete independence from her parents and the opportunity to buy the most expensive clothes. Bolshov gives the house and shops, registered in the name of the clerk, instead of a dowry, advising him not to rush in settlements with creditors, seeking the greatest benefit.

Very soon, however, Bolshov will have to reap the fruits of tyranny. When it comes to the “pit” - the debt prison, Podkhalyuzin is in no hurry to help out his father-in-law, following his own advice - to bargain with creditors. Lipochka does not feel the slightest sign of pity for her father, enjoying the position of a married woman. The ending of the play expressively confirms the ironic meaning of its title “Our people - we will be numbered!” Moral rudeness, backwardness, primitivism, self-interest - this is the underside of patriarchal merchant life as depicted by the young playwright. The first comedy was evidence of the spiritual maturity of the writer.

Source (abbreviated): Russian literary classics of the 19th century: Textbook / Ed. A.A. Slinko and V.A. Svitelsky. - Voronezh: Native Speech, 2003

/ / / What is the meaning of the title of Ostrovsky’s play “Our own people - we will be numbered!”?

The meaning of the title of Ostrovsky's play is revealed in the plot. Bolshov trusted Lazar, betrothed his daughter to him, entrusted him with his money with the words: “Our people - we will be numbered!” This means that when the moment comes and Lazarus has money, he will return it.

Bolshov had hope for the preservation of humanity in people, although he himself deceived many, not thinking that he himself would soon be in their place. But the return of the money did not happen, and should not have happened. This was not part of the plans. A typical egoist, going over his head, a liar and a deceiver. His main weapon is flattery. “Our people” don’t act like that. Anyone can find themselves in such a situation.

In a play with speaking names, every person can see themselves. This is the purpose of literary works - to convey to the reader how a person should behave both in society and in the family, how to become a respected person, to cultivate a personality. So is this play “Our people - let’s be numbered!” is instructive. Treat others with respect, be positive, and grateful. Be a man of honor. This is, first of all, your upbringing. You are a reflection of your parents.

Which people do you think are more numerous? Those who trust or allow you to trust? Of course, there are more deceivers. These people are too lazy to make an honest living. They are not respected, not appreciated, in most cases, they are erased from their lives. If you have already had a negative experience, do not set yourself up again. Be vigilant and act quickly, do not become deceived. Such an unprincipled person will deceive you again and will deceive you until you either go bankrupt and become unnecessary, or you yourself realize that you are making a big mistake by letting such a person into your life.

After reading and analyzing this play, think about whether there are such people in your environment? And how often they helped you, and not vice versa. There must be mutual assistance and mutual assistance, for which a sincere “thank you” is enough.

You can only trust a person who has been proven through years and deeds. Due to the weakness of human character, we sometimes give the last, worrying about the one asking. But is it worth it? Are you helping the right person?

People who fawn over you clearly do it for a reason. All relationships between people are not an accident or a coincidence. We consciously choose our friends. A person appreciates attention and care, but we already know how this can end. As they say: “Trust, but verify.” It is best to discern a decomposed personality before introducing negativity into your life.

It is through actions that a person is beautiful. Actions that come from the heart, which do not need to be directed, but the person himself finds the right direction and acts. There is no need to ask for such actions, there is no need to encourage them. They go their own way. All relationships must be mutual. It doesn't matter who the relationship is between. Nothing and no one dares to disrupt our plans, worsen living conditions and become the cause of such a nightmare. Think about it, is this the right person next to you?

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In the play, the author, with his characteristic humor, describes the merchant environment with its habits and aspirations. The main characters of the work are both narrow-minded and arrogant, stubborn and short-sighted. Each of the characters in the play deserves close attention.
Samson Silych Bolshov, a merchant, the head of the family, is above all concerned with his financial affairs. He is ignorant and selfish, it was these qualities that played a cruel joke on him. His wife, Agrafena Kondratievna, is a typical merchant's wife. Having not received any education, she, nevertheless, has a very high opinion of herself, but lives only with pressing, everyday problems. Her daughter Olympiada Samsonovna, or Lipochka, is poorly brought up, uneducated, and does not even know how to dance properly. But at the same time, she is firmly convinced that she deserves the most profitable groom. Lipochka’s reasoning about her desire to marry a noble man is especially funny and absurd. The clerk Lazar Elizarych Podkhalyuzin, whom Lipochka eventually marries, is selfish, selfish, he does not have the slightest gratitude to the merchant Voltov, to whom Podkhalyuzin, one might say, owes everything. Podkhalyuzin values ​​his own person above all else. And as a result, he achieves what is so important to him.
The remaining characters complement the picture of merchant life drawn by the author. All the characters in the play are equally primitive; there is not the slightest hint of nobility or desire for the beautiful and sublime in them. The ultimate dream for them is to provide for everyday, everyday needs.
The relationship between “fathers” and “children” is interesting. The daughter does not show the slightest respect for her mother. During a quarrel, they exchange unflattering characteristics for each other. Lipochka is completely devoid of such a quality as respect for elders. She is indifferent to her mother and father and thinks only of herself. She is petty, stupid and completely matches the family atmosphere that is depicted in this play.
“Fathers” also treat their “children” with complete indifference. For the merchant Bolshov's daughter is only a means to increase capital.

The play “Our People - Let's Be Numbered” shows a world of unspiritual people, in which everyone lives according to their own laws. “Children”, growing up, adopt the attitude of their “fathers” to life, so they do not have the slightest doubt about what to do in the future.

The antagonism of rich and poor, dependent, “younger” and “elder” (Dobrolyubov’s expression) is deployed and demonstrated here not in the sphere of the struggle for equality or freedom of personal feelings, but in the sphere of the struggle of selfish interests, the desire to get rich and live “of one’s own free will.” All the high values ​​towards which the dreams and actions of the leading people of the era are directed have been replaced by their parodic counterparts. Education is nothing more than a desire to follow fashion, contempt for customs and a preference for “noble gentlemen” over “bearded” grooms. In Ostrovsky’s comedy there is a war of all against all, and in the very antagonism the playwright reveals the deep unity of the characters: what was obtained by deception is retained only by violence, the coarseness of feelings is a natural product of the coarseness of morals and coercion.

The play reached a very high level of generalization. Based on individualization, the playwright created types that gave flesh and appearance to the whole phenomenon of Russian life, which entered the cultural memory of the nation as “Ostrovsky types.”

8.2.Analysis of the play “Thunderstorm”

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The drama takes place in the provincial town of Kalinov, located on the banks of the Volga. In merchant houses, behind high fences, behind heavy locks, invisible tears are shed, dark deeds are happening. The tyranny of tyrants reigns in the stuffy merchant mansions. It is immediately explained that the cause of poverty is the unscrupulous exploitation of the poor by the rich. The play features two groups of inhabitants of the city of Kalinov. One of them personifies the oppressive power of the “dark kingdom”. These are Dikoy and Kabanikha, oppressors and enemies of everything living and new. Another group includes Katerina, Kuligin, Tikhon, Boris, Kudryash and Varvara. These are victims of the “dark kingdom”, but they express their protest against this force in different ways.

Drawing images of representatives of the “dark kingdom” - Wild and Kabanikha, the author clearly shows that their despotism and cruelty are based on money. This money gives Kabanikha the opportunity to control her own house, to command the wanderers who constantly spread her absurd thoughts to the whole world, and in general to dictate moral laws to the entire city. The main meaning of the Wild's life is enrichment. The thirst for money disfigured him and turned him into a reckless miser. The moral foundations in his soul are thoroughly shaken.

The young forces of life rebel against the “fathers” of the city. Katerina, the main character of the play, is a strong and free nature, pure and bright, loving and sincere, but in the world where she has to live, these qualities are not only not inherent in most people, they simply cannot understand them. Her tragedy is that the girl is forced to live in captivity, forced to change her moral convictions. Inner purity and truthfulness do not allow her to lie in love, deceive, or pretend. Dobrolyubov called Katerina “a ray of light in a dark kingdom.” Her suicide seemed to momentarily illuminate the endless darkness of the “dark kingdom.”

This work was published in 1860, during a period of social upsurge, when the foundations of serfdom began to crumble, and a thunderstorm was really brewing in the stuffy, anxious atmosphere. In Russian literature, a thunderstorm has long been the personification of the struggle for freedom, and for Ostrovsky it is not just a majestic natural phenomenon, but a social upheaval.

N.A. Dobrolyubov, speaking about the innovation of Ostrovsky the playwright, believed that his works did not fit the usual rules, and called them “plays of life.” They develop actions and characters in a new way. Following Griboedov and Gogol, Ostrovsky acts as a master of dramatic conflict, realistically reflecting the social contradictions of the era.

In The Thunderstorm, the conflict does not at all come down to the story of the tragic love of Katerina and Boris. This story itself reflects the typical conflicts of the era of the 60s of the 19th century: the struggle between the obsolete morality of tyrants and their unrequited victims and the new morality of people in whose souls a sense of human dignity is awakening.

Emphases in understanding the tragic fate of Katerina can be placed in different ways. From a social point of view, her tragedy is determined by the conditions of her existence, the inability to escape from the city of Kalinov, despite the fact that this desire has turned into an all-consuming passion for her. The victory of the “dark kingdom” in the conflict with Katerina is predetermined. The challenge she poses to the Kalinov world dooms her to defeat: after all, in order for her dreams to come true, either she must leave Kalinov (which is impossible), or the entire social and everyday structure must collapse. A “captive” of Kalinov’s world, Katerina is thus faced with a solid “stone wall”: “cracks” have already formed on it, but it is still unshakable. Many characters (Tikhon, Kuligin, Kudryash and Varvara) are dissatisfied with the patriarchal way of life, but their discontent does not develop into open protest.
The philosophical aspect of Katerina's tragedy is her opposition to fate. In this conflict, the heroine also cannot win: she must either submit to the will of fate, resigning herself to her fate as a victim of the “dark kingdom,” or resolve the dispute at the cost of dying.
The psychological side of her tragedy is the insoluble contradiction between the consciousness of sin and the indomitable will that prompts her to commit actions contrary to the internal moral prohibition
To understand the tragic fate of the heroine, all three interconnected aspects of her tragedy are important: social, philosophical and psychological. Only taking into account all the complexity of the tragic contradictions that arose in “The Thunderstorm” can one correctly assess Katerina’s position. In the banal situation of betrayal of a merchant’s wife, significant social, everyday, philosophical and psychological content is “packed.” Adultery from a purely everyday fact has turned into a tragedy of the individual, for whom love relationships have become not the cause, but the consequence of her opposition to the world around her. Katerina’s “sin” is not that she violated a household ban, but that she dared to question the inviolability of the existing order of things. Its fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras.
For the first time in Ostrovsky’s drama, the quagmire of everyday existence became not only the subject of satirical ridicule, but also the source of high tragedy. Thus, the tragic and the comic in “The Thunderstorm” are two poles of the author’s attitude towards the patriarchal merchant life.

8.3. Analysis of the play "Dowry"

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Satirical comedies and psychological dramas are two areas of Ostrovsky’s creativity that are most closely related to post-reform reality.

"Dowry" is rightfully considered the best psychological drama by A. N. Ostrovsky. It is often compared to "The Thunderstorm", and to a certain extent this is fair. “The Thunderstorm” is the main work of Ostrovsky’s pre-reform drama, while “Dowry” absorbs many motifs from the playwright’s post-reform work. The comparison of these plays is also suggested by the fact that in both we see a drama of an extraordinary female nature unfolding, leading to a tragic denouement. Finally, it is also important that in both plays a significant role is played by the collective image of the Volga city in which the action takes place. But the difference in the eras depicted in these plays led to a complete dissimilarity in the artistic worlds of “The Thunderstorm” and “Dowry.”

"Dowry" is a drama of the bourgeois era, and this has a decisive influence on its problems. If Katerina’s soul in “The Thunderstorm” grows out of folk culture, inspired by the moral values ​​of Orthodoxy, then Larisa Ogudalova is a man of new times, who has broken ties with a thousand-year-old folk tradition, freeing a person not only from the principles of morality, but also from shame, honor, and conscience. Unlike Katerina, Larisa lacks integrity. Her human talent, spontaneous desire for moral purity, truthfulness - everything that comes from her richly gifted nature raises the heroine high above those around her. But Larisa’s everyday drama itself is the result of the fact that bourgeois ideas about life have power over her and influence her understanding of people. The motive of bargaining, which runs through the entire play and is concentrated in the main plot event - the bargaining for Larisa, covers all male heroes, among whom Larisa must make her choice. And Paratov is not only not an exception here, but, as it turns out, he is the most cruel and dishonest participant in the bargaining. Responding to his bride’s enthusiastic stories about the courage of Paratov, who fearlessly shot at the coin that Larisa was holding, Karandyshev correctly remarks: “He has no heart, that’s why he was so brave.” And Ostrovsky agrees with this opinion, although Karandyshev is not the spokesman for the author’s assessments. In general, there is no such hero in the play, but almost every character at one time or another correctly assesses the situation and the people participating in it.

The complexity of the characters' characters - be it the inconsistency of their inner world, like Larisa's, or the discrepancy between the hero's inner essence and external behavior, like Paratov's - is the psychologism of Ostrovsky's drama. For everyone around him, Paratov is a great gentleman, a broad-minded person, a reckless brave man, and the author leaves all these colors and gestures to him. But, on the other hand, he subtly, as if by the way, shows us another Paratov, his true face. In the very first meeting with him, we hear a confession: “What “pity” is, I don’t know. I, Mokiy Parmenych, have nothing treasured; if I find a profit, I’ll sell everything, whatever.” And we immediately learn that Paratov is selling not only “Swallow”, but also himself to a bride with gold mines. Ultimately, the scene in Karandyshev’s house subtly compromises him, because the decoration of his apartment and the attempt to arrange a luxurious dinner is a caricature of Paratov’s style and lifestyle. And the whole difference lies in the amounts that each of the heroes can spend on it. The scene characterizing both rivals seeking Larisa’s love is deeply significant. Thus, the means of Ostrovsky’s psychological characteristics are not the self-recognition of the heroes, not reasoning about their feelings and properties, but mainly their actions and everyday dialogue. None of the characters changes during the dramatic action, but is only gradually revealed to the audience. Even the same can be said about Larisa: she begins to see the light, learns the truth about the people around her, and makes the terrible decision to become “a very expensive thing.” And only death frees her from everything that everyday experience has endowed her with. At this moment, she seems to return to the natural beauty of her nature. The finale of the drama - the death of the heroine amid the festive noise, accompanied by gypsy singing - amazes with its artistic audacity. Larisa’s state of mind is shown by the author in the style of “strong drama” and at the same time with impeccable psychological accuracy. She is softened, calmed down, she forgives everyone, because she is happy that she has finally caused an outbreak of human feeling - Karandyshev’s reckless, suicidal, thoughtless act, which freed her from the humiliating life of a kept woman.