Pure and beautiful at the bottom of society. The image of Natasha in the play

In all ages, man has strived to know his “I”. One of the main, perhaps the main goals of art is to reveal this secret. To reveal to a person the depths of his soul, to make him better, stronger - to one degree or another, every writer achieves this. This is especially true of Russian literature with its deepest moral and philosophical roots.

Great minds, people who suffered and experienced a lot - Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky tried to solve the problem of good and evil, strength and weakness of man. M. Gorky encountered this problem very early. Already in the first works of the young writer, not only his extraordinary talent as a storyteller and artist was evident, but also his ability to defend his beliefs. And later, the experience of life did not dull his talent; the belief in his own rightness only grew stronger. In this regard, the most important question arises: how does a truly strong person relate to others? This is one of the main questions, the answer to which all world literature cannot give.

In his later works, Gorky complicates the question: is loneliness among people a consequence of strength or weakness? And he gives the answer: the strong cannot be alone, he is always among people - albeit alien to him in spirit, but suffering. And Satin understands this after meeting Luka. But the views of these heroes still differ on the main thing. Luke believes that the weak must find support in life and the duty of the strong is to help him in this. Satin is sure that in fact the strong do not need support and waiting for a better future in inaction is not for a real person.

He does not come to this conviction immediately. It is quite possible to follow his development over the course of the play. At the first meeting with the inhabitants of the shelter, it is clear that these are people who are deeply suffering and lonely. Having found themselves at the very bottom of life after many hardships, they became ruthless towards themselves and others. Everyone is closed in on their own grief and talks about it endlessly, not listening to anyone and not wanting to be heard. The answer to complaints is laughter and mockery. The Baron, who lives off Nastya, is only amused by her tears and fantasies. The tick despises everyone, he, the “working man,” will break out of the shelter, he is not like all its inhabitants. And only after Anna’s death, having sold all his tools and having lost all hope, he understands and accepts them as comrades in misfortune.

Each character in the play seeks support in escaping cruel reality. Natasha and Vaska Pepel dream about the future. Anna hopes for peace after death. The actor dreams of the past, each time coloring it with ever brighter colors. Nastya, who has neither a past nor a future, leaves the present for the imaginary world of “pure love.” Luke tried to bring their dreams into the real world, and they failed one after another. After all, these dreams do not make reality easier, but only to a small extent replace it. All that remains for all of them is continuous drunkenness, because awakening is scary.

Only a strong person, Gorky argued, is able to face reality. But without a goal in life, without confidence in his ability to change the world, he is not capable and cannot withstand adversity. And we see people who are strong in spirit, but who do not know their duty to themselves and others. Bubnov, to whom much has been given, has already lost himself. The Baron mocks everyone and quickly loses his human traits. Satin is only at the beginning of this path. Who knows what fate awaited him if Luka had not appeared in the shelter. It is not for nothing that Satin will later say that Luke acted on him like acid on a tarnished coin. Satin understands that the purpose of the strong is not to console the suffering, but to eradicate suffering and evil. This is one of Gorky’s firmest convictions.

For Gorky, strength lies in striving forward, “towards freedom, towards light.” Only a warm heart and a strong will, faith in victory will help you go this path. And the memory of those who sacrificed themselves for the sake of others along this path, like stars - the sparks of Dan-ko’s heart will illuminate the road for those who follow.

The creative concept of the play “At the Lower Depths” dates back to the very beginning of 1900. M. Gorky was going to create a “cycle of dramas” of four plays, each of which is dedicated to the depiction of a certain layer of Russian society. About the last of them he writes in mid-1901 to K.P. Pyatnitsky: “Another one: tramps. Tatar, Jew, actor, hostess of a rooming house, thieves, detective, prostitutes. It will be scary. I already have ready-made plans, I see faces, figures, I hear voices, speeches, motives for actions - everything is clear, everything is clear!..” Conceiving the play as a description of the life of the poorest population of Russian cities, Gorky first of all defined it as a socio-philosophical drama, in which the main thing is the conflict between people who find themselves at the bottom of their lives and the outside world. In one of the handwritten editions the play was called: “At the Bottom of Life.” But at the same time, these people are also at the bottom of feelings and thoughts, each of them has to fight the decline in themselves. These conflicts develop in parallel throughout the play.

At the beginning of the play, we see the inhabitants of the shelter, dissatisfied with life, with themselves, with each other. Many of them used to live better, but ended up here because of some misfortune. So, Baron and Satin ended up here after prison, Bubnov left his wife, leaving her his workshop, the Actor became an alcoholic. Some, for example Nastya, have never seen another life. Some have already come to terms with this situation and understand that it is impossible to rise from the bottom, while others hope that all this is happening to them temporarily. So, Kleshch thinks that after his wife’s death he will work hard and be able to provide himself with a better existence. He believes that if you live “honorably,” you can achieve anything. The actor, on the contrary, tries to find peace in alcohol, thereby further aggravating his plight.

He no longer expects to leave this shelter and remembers his former life with bitterness. And now, among these oppressed people, an outsider appears - Luka, a wandering old man without a passport.

Full of compassion for all people, he brings hope to many of the shelter's inhabitants. Anna, Kleshch's wife, lies dying and experiences terrible suffering. And this old man makes her last hours easier. Expecting the same torment after death, she hopefully hears his words: “Nothing will happen! Nothing! Believe it! Calm down and - nothing more!..” He tells the actor about the existence of a free hospital for alcoholics, and he even abstained from drinking for one day and worked, sweeping the street. Luke advises Ash to go with Natasha to Siberia and start a new life there. The inhabitants of the shelter begin to feel confident that they can break free from the captivity of a hard life. And here the author raises a deeply philosophical question: “Do these people need lies?” After all, most of Luke’s words are lies spoken out of pity, with the goal of comforting and helping. He also supports Nastya in her stories about “true love,” although it is quite obvious that nothing like this happened to her, that all this was read from books. The answer to this question can be found in the words of Satin: “Whoever is weak at heart... and who lives on other people’s juices - those who need lies... some are supported by it, others hide behind it... And who is their own master... who is independent and doesn’t eat someone else’s food - why would he lie? Lies are the religion of slaves and masters... Truth is the god of a free man!”

The response is the entire development of the action. We see the collapse of all hopes: Anna dies, and Kleshch’s instruments are sold out for her funeral - he is left without a livelihood; Vaska Pepel kills Kostylev in a fight, which, apparently, will lead him to prison; The Tatar crushed his hand and lost his job. It seems that Luke brought only worse changes into their lives, since after his departure the situation in the shelter becomes even more deplorable than at the beginning of the play. These tramps sank even deeper to the “bottom”, they lost another clash with their fate, and finally lost faith in their strength.

All this is emphasized at the end of the play. The actor, deprived of Luka's support and constantly convinced by Satin that all the talk about a free hospital for alcoholics is a lie, commits suicide. And, as an illustration of the hopelessness of the situation of the night shelters, Satin’s everyday words sound: “Eh.

Natasha is the sister of the hostel owner's wife. She was an extremely honest, kind and wonderful girl. The author treated this heroine very well, endowing her with the most wonderful and good qualities. As very often happens, people with good dispositions face a difficult fate.

This girl had a hard time. Natasha lived in absolute poverty, living from penny to penny; in addition, she was a victim of constant ridicule from her older sister, who constantly undeservedly reproached her for all sorts of little things.

Even despite the fact that her sister behaved inappropriately with Natasha, she did not get angry, did not hatch a plan for revenge, she also strongly and sincerely loved the whole world around her, not blaming anyone for her troubles and problems.

The thief Vaska Pepel falls in love with the girl. He seriously invites the girl to move to Siberia and be with him for the rest of her life. He even gives his word that he will completely change his lifestyle, become completely different - honest, real, he was sincerely ready to change radically.

The girl acts very correctly in this situation. She honestly says that she does not love Vaska enough to take such a responsible and decisive step. She admits that she is not indifferent to him, but not to such an extent that she would change her life for his sake.

Then Natasha’s older sister, Vasilisa, finds out about this and, naturally, becomes angry. In a verbal skirmish, terrible things happen - Natasha is doused with boiling water by Vasilisa, but as a result of the skirmish Kostylev dies. After this fight, Natasha begins to scream and express dissatisfaction with her sister for the first time.

After this, the author writes that the girl ends up in the hospital. After this whole situation, the girl simply disappears. She probably doesn’t want to return to the shelter to such an extent that she is ready to do anything to avoid repeating what happened to her for such a long time.

Natasha is an amazingly pure and kind girl, she has a kind heart. She does as her heart tells her, is not angry with anyone and lives honestly and correctly, unlike her older sister, who bullies her more defenseless younger sister with complete impunity, who does not have the courage to fight back.

Life is not easy for people like Natasha, they are too sacrificial and honest, and other people begin to think that they can take advantage of this.

Essay Natasha in the story At the Bottom

In Gorky’s wonderful work “At the Lower Depths” we can see many very interesting images that the author created with the goal of conveying to the reader whatever idea he presented in his, in this case “At the Lower Depths”, work. It should highlight the image of a girl named Natasha.

Natasha is a young beautiful girl who is the sister of the hostess of the shelter, and therefore helps her manage and monitor this enterprise, although she is not at all happy about this, since she constantly becomes the object of ridicule from her sister and her husband.

Natasha’s character stands out very much from the rest of her environment. She is a kind, sympathetic, always ready to help girl who believes in goodness and miracles. In contrast to other characters and images of the work, her image stands out very, very much, since everyone else is the complete opposite of her character and her way of life in general. Therefore, she becomes an object of ridicule, simply because she is so different from all the other people around her. This is the idea that Gorky is trying to convey to us. He says that they always try to belittle such kind and good people as Natasha, since they do not like manifestations of weakness and tenderness, and especially simple human feelings.

Also in her character, the reader can see exorbitant honesty in front of all the people around her. For her, honesty is one of the fundamental factors of a good person and good manners, since she believes that there is nothing worse than a lie, in any of its manifestations. By telling everyone the truth, she may offend someone, but still she tries to tell only the truth, and nothing but the truth, letting a person know only dry facts. She is guided by this throughout her life, which is why she is also attacked by others, but she still speaks only the truth. This earns respect for the character, and gives us the characterization of her as a very good and principled person.

I believe that the author made her exactly like this in order to convey to the reader the idea that even in such an unsightly, even disgusting place, you can meet such a wonderful person who, in contrast to everyone else, adds her own ray of goodness and positivity to this unpleasant place , which gives the attentive reader food for thought.

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There are five female characters in the play. Anna is the wife of Kleshch, who humbly dies in the second act, the compassionate and economical Kvashnya, the young Vasilisa is the wife of the owner of the shelter and the mistress of Vaska Pepla, the young and downtrodden Natasha, and Nastya, designated in the author’s remark by the bashful word “maiden”.
In the semantic context of the work, female images are represented by two pairs of opposite characters: Kvashnya - Nastya and Vasilisa - Natasha. Outside of these pairs is Anna, who personifies pure suffering in the play. Her image is not clouded by passions and desires. She dies patiently and obediently. He dies not so much from a mortal disease, but from the consciousness of his uselessness to the world. She is one of those “naked people” for whom the truth of existence is intolerable. “I’m sick,” she admits to Luka. The only aspect of death that worries her is: “What’s it like there – is it also torment?” Downtrodden, unsuitable for anything in this world, it resembles a thing. She doesn't move around the stage - she gets moved. They take him out, leave him in the kitchen, and forget about him. Just like a thing, it is treated after death. “We have to drag it out!” “We’ll pull it out...” She passed away - as if a prop had been taken away. “That means I’ve stopped coughing.”
Not so with the others. In the first pair, Kvashnya represents the semantic dominant. She almost always does housework. He lives from his labors. Makes dumplings and sells them. What these dumplings are made of and who eats them, only God knows. She has been married for a long time and now it’s a no-brainer for her: “I did it once, it’s memorable for the rest of my life...” And when her husband “died,” she “sat alone” all day out of happiness and joy. She is always alone in the play. Conversations and events touch the edge, as if the inhabitants of the shelter are afraid of her. Even Medvedev, the personification of law and power, her roommate, talks with Kvashnya respectfully - there is too much incurious reason, common sense and hidden aggression in her.
Her opposite is Nastya - unprotected and accessible. She's not busy, she's not doing anything. She is a "maiden". She hardly reacts to the realities of the world around her. Her mind is not burdened with reflection. She is as self-sufficient as Kvashnya. Gorky implanted in her a strange, not invented by him, world of “women’s novels,” a meager and meaningless dream of a beautiful life. She is literate and therefore reads. “There, in the kitchen, a girl is sitting, reading a book and crying,” Luka is surprised. This is Nastya. She weeps over a fiction that miraculously seems to her to be her own life. She resembles a little girl who dreamed of a toy. Having woken up, she fiddles with her parents and demands this toy for herself. At a tender age, children do not separate dreams from reality. This happens later, in the process of growing up. Nastya not only doesn’t grow up, she doesn’t wake up. In reality she dreams of these confectionery, sinless dreams: “And his left-hander is huge, and loaded with ten bullets... My unforgettable friend... Raoul...” The Baron rolls over her: “Nastya! But... after all, last time it was Gaston! Nastya behaves like a child. Having poked her nose into reality, she becomes capricious, gets excited, throws a cup on the floor, threatens the inhabitants: “I’ll get drunk today... So I’ll get drunk.” Getting drunk means escaping reality again. Forget yourself. Judging by the indirect hints, the Baron is a gigolo with her, but she is not aware of this either. The rays of reality only glare on the surface of her consciousness, without penetrating inside. One day Nastya opens up, and it becomes clear that her life is fueled by the energy of hatred. Running away, she shouts to everyone: “Wolves! May you breathe out! Wolves! She utters this line at the end of the fourth act, and therefore there is hope of waking up.
Vasilisa represents the authoritative beginning of the play. She is the Pallas Athena of the flophouse, her evil genius. She alone acts - all the others exist. The criminal and melodramatic intrigues of the plot are connected with her image. For Vasilisa there are no internal prohibitions. She, like everyone else in the shelter, is a “naked person”, “everything is allowed” to her. And Vasilisa takes advantage of this while the others are just talking. The author gave her a cruel and merciless character. The concept of “impossible” lies beyond her moral consciousness. And she thinks consistently: “To enjoy is to kill to enjoy.” Her antipode Natasha is the purest and brightest image of the play. Out of jealousy for Vaska Ash, Vasilisa constantly beats and tortures Natasha; her husband, old Kostylev, helps her. The pack instinct kicks in. Natasha alone believes and still hopes, waits not for haberdashery, but for real love, and searches for it. But,
Unfortunately, the geography of its search takes place on the part of the bottom where Spanish galleons loaded with gold do not rest. The dim light coming “from above, from the viewer” allows one to see only the faces of the permanent inhabitants. Natasha doesn't trust anyone. Neither Luke nor Ash. It’s just that she, like Marmeladov, “has nowhere to go.” When Kostylev is killed, she shouts: “Take me too... throw me in prison!” It is clear to Natasha that Ash did not kill. Everyone has wine. Everyone was killed. This is her truth. Hers, not Satina. Not the truth of a proud, strong person, but the truth of the humiliated and insulted.
The female characters in Gorky's play “At the Depths” carry a serious semantic load. Thanks to their presence, the damaged world of the inhabitants of the shelter becomes closer and clearer. They are like guarantors of its reliability. It is through their voices that the author openly speaks about compassion and the unbearable boredom of life. They have their own book predecessors; many literary projections from the previous artistic tradition converged on them. The author does not hide this. Another thing is more important: they are the ones who evoke the most sincere feelings of hatred or compassion among readers and spectators of the play.

June 12 2011

At the heart of Maxim Gorky's play “At the Depths” (1902) is a dispute about Man and his capabilities. The action of the work takes place in the Kostylevs' shelter - a place located outside the world of people. Almost all the inhabitants of the shelter are aware of their situation as abnormal: all the most important connections between them and the world are severed - social, professional, spiritual, public family. There is nothing connecting the night shelters themselves - they are just people who accidentally came together in one place and do not want to know anything about each other. Each of them knows the truth about themselves, and each has their own.

The characters in the drama conduct philosophical debates without ultimately coming to a single conclusion. Gorky’s work shows the “bottom” of human life and souls. And in this mud, in the darkness of hopelessness, women, glorified by many poets and writers, traditionally described as lovely, gentle and airy creatures, are forced to exist.

In the ongoing dispute about man, three positions are especially important - Bubnova, Luka and Satin. Bubnov's position is fatalistic. powerless to change anything in his fate. Hence, indifference not only to the suffering of others, but also to one’s own fate. In his opinion, all people are “superfluous”, since the world is dominated by ruthless laws that govern and dominate man. People float with the flow, like chips, powerless to change anything. Bubnov's truth is the truth of the external circumstances of life. Satin is an exponent of a different life position: “Everything is in man, everything is for man. Only man exists; everything else is the work of his hands and brain.” A person must be respected, Satin believes, pity only humiliates. Luke is the most difficult in. It is with this that the main philosophical question of the work is connected: “What is better: truth or compassion? Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke?” In essence, Luke with his theory of pity is the main image of the play. With his appearance, the actual dramatic development of the plot begins. Luke stirred up the stagnant swamp of the “bottom” and made people think and reason.

And female characters in Gorky’s play also take part in this dispute. And they, too, must find the answer to the question “What is more important - the bitter truth or the hope-giving lie?”

In the play “At the Bottom”, five women stand out among the heroes. This is Vasilisa Karpovna, the wife of the owner of the shelter Kostylev, her sister, Kleshch’s wife Anna, the dumpling seller Kvashnya and the girl Nastya. Judging by the lines from the “Characters” of the play, these are all young women - aged from 20 (Natasha) to 30 (Anna) years, with the exception of Kvashnya, who is 40 years old. What are they? Why are they included in the action of the play?

Vasilisa - her image is usually assessed with the following epithets: “immoral”, “cynical”, etc. Her behavior indeed seems to be like that. Vasilisa systematically beats her sister, she cheats on her husband and tries to persuade Ash to kill her husband, in the end she puts Ash under arrest, accusing him of killing Kostylev, and scalds her sister Natasha with boiling water. But it’s worth re-reading the pages and wondering: is it only Vasilisa’s nature that is the reason for this? And at the very beginning we see that Vasilisa’s husband is 54 years old, she is 26, that is, almost thirty years of age difference. This to some extent explains Vasilisa’s infidelity.

From the pages of the play it becomes clear what the owner of the shelter, Kostylev, is like. He is the owner of the shelter and considers himself the master of life. From the description of the rooming house environment, we see what conditions he creates for his “stayers.” In general, as Nastya says, with a husband like Kostylev, everyone will go wild.

Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister, is a gentle and spiritually pure creature. Natasha is kind, and this becomes clear from the pages of the play. Natasha tells Klesch to come for Anna later and be kind to her, she is dying and she is scared. When Anna dies, Natasha is surprised that no one feels sorry for her. Natasha is the only one who sympathizes with Nastya's fantasies. She herself dreams that tomorrow a special stranger will come and something very special will happen. But unlike the romantic Nastya, she understands that there is nothing to wait for - a miracle will not happen to her, no matter how much she wants it.

The final fate of the heroine remains in question. After Vasilisa scalded her legs, Natasha was taken to the hospital. And in the last act it turns out that Natasha left the hospital a long time ago and disappeared. Maybe she has found hers? But, unfortunately, such an outcome is hard to believe.

Anna, a woman sick with consumption and tired of life, dies. She says that “she was shaking all over every piece of bread... she was tormented... All her life she walked around in rags.” For this heroine, Luke's theory paid off. Luke calms and encourages the dying woman with the hope that for her earthly torments, after death she will find peace and eternal bliss in heaven. The miserable, meaningless, joyless existence on earth is compensated by eternal bliss in heaven.

The fallen woman Nastya is naive, touching and helpless at heart. She dreams of pure and devoted love, and in these illusions she strives to hide from the surrounding dirt, darkness and hopelessness. Her fantasies do not evoke understanding. The Baron, who exists at her expense, only laughs in response to her tears and fantasies. Nastya loves to read novels, the content of which constitutes most of her dreams.

Kvashnya - Kvashnya, a forty-year-old dumpling seller, seems to be a kind of optimist. Perhaps she has already gotten used to the life of the “bottom”. But this woman is strikingly different from all the other heroines of the play. A refrain that runs through the entire play is her thought that she is a free woman and will never agree to “give herself up to the fortress,” that is, to get married. And in the finale, he begins to cohabit with Medvedev, Vasilisa and Natasha’s uncle, a policeman. Kvashnya is the only heroine who was not affected by the “coming” of Luke. The rest came under his influence in one way or another.

Anna dies, reassured by Luke’s lies about the bright and gentle “other world.” Nastya, even without Luka’s influence, created a “saving lie” for herself - in her fantasies. And she still remains in the shelter, not outwardly striving for any achievements. Vasilisa is taken under arrest along with Vaska Pepl, and the night shelters are arguing about who will put whom behind bars for a longer term. In essence, everything remains virtually unchanged. Only Natasha's fate seems incomprehensible. After leaving the hospital, she disappeared. But where and why? Maybe she decided to seek her happiness?

In my opinion, with the female characters in the play “At the Lower Depths,” Gorky sought to show both the depth of moral decline and the spiritual purity of “tender, lovely creatures.” Here, as in the entire play, polyphony sounds. Gorky does not have a single answer to the question of how to live, is it possible to get out of a difficult situation? But even in difficult, gloomy conditions of life, not every one of Gorky’s heroines finally sinks to the bottom. Someone is trying to adapt, someone does not lose faith in the future, trying to retain at least tiny particles of goodness and light and love.

Natasha is one of the female characters in Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”, the sister of the hostess of the shelter, a kind and kind-hearted girl. Her image is noticeably different from the other guests. Natasha combines kindness, purity, dignity and pride. It was with these qualities that she charmed Vaska Pepla. The intrigue of the play is whether she will be able to maintain these qualities under the influence of a rough and cruel environment. She is essentially a victim of her ruthless sister and her husband. She endured difficult trials, ranging from poverty to constant bullying from her sister.

She is also characterized by honesty and directness. When Vaska invites her to leave everything and go with him to Siberia for a new life, she openly admits that she doesn’t really love him and doesn’t fully trust his intentions. The sister, having learned that Vaska is in love with Natasha and wants to leave with her, locks her at home and severely beats her, even dousing her with boiling water. The girl is saved in time, but then Vaska accidentally kills Kostylev during a fight. Natasha believes that this is an evil plot between her sister and Vaska and leaves him.

Unable to withstand such tests, she ends up in the hospital. The girl is broken physically and mentally. She never returns to the shelter and disappears in an unknown direction.