The artistic originality of Ostrovsky's play “The Thunderstorm. Genre uniqueness of the drama “The Thunderstorm” What is unique about the play “The Thunderstorm”

The drama “The Thunderstorm” is the result of the enormous creative work of A. N. Ostrovsky. He is the author of more than a dozen brilliant plays, but even among them “The Thunderstorm” stands out as the main, landmark work. “The Thunderstorm” was to be included in the collection “Nights on the Volga,” conceived by the author during a trip to Russia in 1855, organized by the Ministry of the Navy. True, Ostrovsky then changed his mind and did not unite, as he initially intended, the cycle of “Volga” plays under a common title. “The Thunderstorm” was published as a separate book in 1859. During the work on it, the play underwent great changes - the playwright introduced a number of new characters, but most importantly, he changed his original plan and decided to write not a comedy, but a drama. However, the strength of the social conflict in “The Thunderstorm” is so great that the play can not even be spoken of as a drama, but as a tragedy - the genre of the play can be clearly defined.
The play is written on a social and everyday theme: it is characterized by the author’s special attention to depicting the details of everyday life, the desire to accurately convey the atmosphere of the city of Kalinov, its “cruel morals.” The fictional city is described in detail and in many ways. The landscape concept plays an important role, but a contradiction is immediately visible here: the Kalinovites do not understand the beauty of the nature around them. Pictures of a night walk along the boulevard, songs, picturesque nature, Katerina’s stories about childhood - this is the poetry of Kalinov’s world, which collides with the everyday cruelty of the inhabitants, stories about “naked poverty.” The Kalinovites have preserved only vague legends about the past; news from the big world is brought to them by the wanderer Feklusha. Such attention by the author to the details of the characters’ everyday life allows us to call the play “The Thunderstorm” a drama.
Another feature characteristic of drama and present in the play is the presence of a chain of intra-family conflicts. The conflict between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law develops from a domestic one into a social one. The expression of conflict inherent in drama in the actions and words of the characters is most clearly shown in the monologues and dialogues of the characters. So, we learn about Katerina’s life before marriage from her conversation with Varvara: Katerina lived “not grieving about anything,” like “a bird in the wild.” Nothing is known about the first meeting of Katerina and Boris, or how their love began. In his article, N.A. Dobrolyubov considered the insufficient “development of passion” to be a significant omission, and said that this is why the “struggle between passion and home” is designated “not quite clearly and strongly” for us. But this fact contradicts the laws of drama.
The originality of the Thunderstorms genre is also manifested in the fact that, despite the overall gloomy, tragic flavor, the play also contains comic, satirical scenes: Feklusha’s ridiculous, anecdotal and ignorant stories about the Saltans, about lands where all people “have dog heads”; conversation between Dikiy and Kuligin about the lightning rod. The image of the Dikiy as a whole is ironic: his reluctance to part with money (“Who doesn’t feel sorry for their goods?”), stupidity, confidence in impunity (“Who will stop me?”). After the release of “The Thunderstorm,” A.D. Galakhov wrote in his review of the play that “the action and the catastrophe are tragic, although many places excite laughter.”
The author himself called his play a drama. At that time, when speaking about the tragic genre, we were accustomed to dealing with historical plots, with main characters outstanding not only in character, but also in position, placed in exceptional life situations. It can be assumed that on Ostrovsky’s part calling “The Thunderstorm” a drama was only a tribute to tradition. His innovation lay in the fact that he wrote a tragedy based on real-life material that was completely uncharacteristic of the tragic genre.
The tragedy of “The Thunderstorm” is revealed by a conflict with the environment not only of the main character, but also of other characters. Thus, the fate of Tikhon, who is a weak-willed toy in the hands of a powerful and despotic mother, is tragic. N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that Tikhon’s “grief” lies in his indecision. If life is sickening, what is stopping him from throwing himself into the Volga? Tikhon cannot do anything at all, not even that “in which he recognizes his goodness and salvation.” Tragic in its hopelessness is the situation of Kuligin, who dreams of the happiness of the people, but is doomed to obey the will of the rude tyrant - Dikiy, and repair small household utensils, earning only “his daily bread” by “honest labor”.
A feature of the tragedy is the presence of a hero who is outstanding in his spiritual qualities, according to V. G. Belinsky, “a man of the highest nature,” according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, a person “with a great, not petty character.” Katerina differs from Kalinov’s “dark kingdom” in her morality and willpower. Her soul is constantly drawn to beauty, her dreams are full of fabulous visions. It seems that she fell in love with Boris not the real one, but the one created in her imagination. Katerina could well adapt to the morality of the city and continue to deceive her husband, but “she doesn’t know how to deceive, she can’t hide anything,” honesty does not allow Katerina to continue pretending in front of her husband. As a deeply religious person, Katerina had to have enormous courage in order to overcome not only the fear of the physical end, but also the fear “of the Judge” for the sin of suicide. Katerina’s spiritual strength, “...her desire for freedom, mixed with religious prejudices, creates a tragedy” (V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko).
A feature of the tragic genre is the physical death of the main character. Thus, Katerina, according to V. G. Belinsky, is “a real tragic heroine.” Katerina's fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras. It’s not just her misfortune that she commits suicide, it’s a tragedy of society. She needed to free herself from the heavy oppression, from the fear weighing down her soul. The general coloring of the play is also tragic, with its gloominess, with the every second feeling of an impending thunderstorm: a social, public and thunderstorm as a natural phenomenon.
Another characteristic feature of the tragic genre is its cleansing effect on the audience, which arouses in them noble, sublime aspirations. So in “The Thunderstorm,” as N.A. Dobrolyubov said, “there is even something refreshing and encouraging.” Despite the presence of an undoubted tragic conflict, the play is imbued with optimism. Katerina’s death testifies to the rejection of the “dark kingdom”, resistance, and the growth of forces called upon to replace the boars and wild ones. Even if it’s still timid, the protest is already beginning.
The genre uniqueness of “The Thunderstorm” lies in the fact that it is the first Russian tragedy written on social and everyday material. This is not just a tragedy for Katerina, it is a tragedy for the entire Russian society, which is at a turning point in its development, living on the eve of significant changes.

A.N. Ostrovsky gave his play "The Thunderstorm" the genre definition of "drama". However, the nature of the conflict (the external conflict of a freedom-loving personality - the main character of the play Katerina - with the patriarchal order that has outlived its usefulness and degenerated into obscurantism and the internal conflict occurring in Katerina's soul - the confrontation of the will to love and freedom with the concepts of Christian morality) allows us to call "The Thunderstorm" a tragedy . The definition given by Ostrovsky himself is rather a tribute to tradition, which states that persons with low social status (in The Thunderstorm, all the main characters, as in most other plays by Ostrovsky, belong to the merchant class), in general, non-historical characters, cannot be central heroes of the tragedy. In this sense, "The Thunderstorm" is a unique and innovative phenomenon: the play unfolds two conflicts that are traditional for tragedy: the conflict between the individual and society and the conflict between feeling and duty - however, both of these conflicts, undoubtedly tragic, are developed and interpreted by the playwright based on the material of folk life .
"The Thunderstorm" combines signs of social drama and tragedy. Signs of drama include such features of the play as the author’s interest in the life of the city of Kalinov, where the action takes place. The city is depicted in much more detail than was done in Ostrovsky’s comedies that preceded “The Thunderstorm”: the action takes place not only in Kabanova’s house, where Katerina lives, but also in “a public garden on the high bank of the Volga”, on the street; the play depicts nightly festivities of young people, songs are heard; At the same time, Ostrovsky also shows another side of the daily life of the Kalinovites - cruelty and tyranny. In "The Thunderstorm", as in other plays by Ostrovsky, there are many characters who do not directly participate in the main conflict, but are necessary for the author to more fully and clearly depict the way of urban life: Dikoy, Kuligin, Shapkin, Feklusha, etc.. External The side of the conflict - the confrontation between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law - is also domestic.
However, tragic elements play a much more important role in the play. The basis of the tragedy of “The Thunderstorm” is Ostrovsky’s depiction of the collision of two eras, two social systems: the patriarchal ancient Russian way of life, based on the unconditional subordination of the younger to the elders, on strict observance of the ritual side of life (Kabanova forces her son to “teach” his wife before leaving, demands that she “in I bowed my feet" to my husband: "Why are you hanging on your neck, shameless one! You are not saying goodbye to your lover!<...>Don’t you know the rules?” she “howled”, seeing her husband off), and an emerging personal self-awareness, most clearly manifested in the image of the main character.
The world of the city of Kalinov is extremely closed. The inhabitants’ ideas about their own past and about the outside world do not go beyond the stories of the wanderer Feklushi about “Saltans”, about “people with dog heads”, about how “for the sake of speed” “they began to harness a fiery serpent”, or vague legends about “Lithuania”, which “fell from the sky on us.” They are afraid of everything new, no matter how useful it may be: Dikoy, in response to Kuligin’s proposal to install a sundial or “thunder taps,” scolds him as a “robber” or a “Tatar,” and Kabanova says: “Even if you shower me with gold, I won’t I'll go by train. The isolation of Kalinov’s world is also manifested in the residents’ superstitious fear of natural phenomena: “Now every grass, every flower rejoices, but we are hiding, afraid, as if some kind of misfortune! A thunderstorm will kill. It’s not a thunderstorm, but grace!<...>It's all stormy! The Northern Lights will light up, you have to admire and marvel<...>And you are horrified and are imagining whether this means war or pestilence.<...>“You’ve made a scare out of everything,” says Kuligin in the fourth scene of the fourth act.
This hermetically sealed little world of the city of Kalinov is opposed by the external world: Siberia, where Boris leaves at the end of the play, Moscow, where life is in full swing (“promenades and games”), where there is a railway and other manifestations of progress; the world into which Tikhon is so eager to break out (“for two weeks there will be no thunderstorm over me, there are no shackles on my feet,” he tells his wife before leaving). A huge role in the play is played by landscape and nature, which are also opposed to the city: the Volga, the high bank, space, beauty, inextricably linked with the image of Katerina - all this creates a contrast between the city, closed in its inertia, and the endless world, from which Kalinov has fenced himself off.
Only three characters in "The Thunderstorm" are opposed to all the other Kalinovites: Katerina, Boris and Kuligin. Boris does not belong to the city world by birth and upbringing, he is not like the rest of the townspeople in appearance and manners: the list of characters says about him: “a young man, decently educated” (Boris not only does not share the Kalinovites’ fear of a thunderstorm, but also knows about the impossibility “find a perpetuum mobile,” without, however, telling Kuligin about this: “It’s a pity to disappoint him!”), dressed in European dress, unlike all the other characters. However, despite my alienness to this world (“Eh, Kuligin, it’s painfully difficult for me here without a habit!” Everyone looks at me somehow wildly, as if I’m superfluous here<...>I don’t know the customs here,” he complains to Kuligin), Boris has to accept his laws, obeying his tyrant uncle, Dikiy.
Both Katerina and Kuligin are poetic and dreamy natures, capable of deep experiences and admiration for nature, to which other residents of the city are indifferent. However, both of them are included in this world and generated by it. Kuligin’s education is very archaic: he writes poetry “in the old-fashioned way.”<...>I've read a lot of Lomonosov and Derzhavin." His technical ideas - a sundial, a lightning rod, a "perpetu mobile" - are a clear anachronism for the middle of the 19th century. Although Kuligin is a person of a new type, his novelty is rooted in Kalinov's world. Kuligin is a contemplative personality. passive warehouse, and this gives him the opportunity to live in Kalinov.
Katerina, for all her exclusivity, also belongs to this world. Telling Varvara about her life as a girl, she describes the same patriarchal way of life as in Kabanova’s house; it’s not for nothing that Varvara says: “But it’s the same with us.” However, this is the reason and meaning of the main conflict of the play: the world in which Katerina lived before her marriage was based on love and mutual understanding: “I lived without grieving about anything, like a bird in the wild<...>whatever I want, I do.” This “will” did not at all contradict the patriarchal system of life, based on homework and religion, and did not go beyond it. In this world there was no violence and coercion, since man did not think of himself outside of it , did not oppose himself to him. The reason for this state of affairs lies in the fact that in Katerina’s family the inner meaning of the patriarchal way of life, the harmony between the individual will of a person and the moral and ethical ideas of society, dominated.
However, in Kalinov, old social relations have lost their spiritual content, remaining only in the form of frozen forms, supported only by tyranny and coercion. “It’s like everything here is from under captivity,” says Katerina. The basis of the tragic confrontation between Katerina and Kabanova - persons similar in their moral maximalism, uncompromisingness and religiosity - is that if Kabanova needs only external manifestations of humility, and not at all love, trust and respect from the younger ones, if the internal spiritual side of the patriarchal way she is indifferent, then Katerina embodies the spirit of this world, its dream of justice and beauty. The discrepancy between the form and content of social relations is one of the foundations of the “Thunderstorm” conflict.
This discrepancy also gives rise to an internal conflict that occurs in Katerina’s soul and leads to her death. Katerina cannot, like Tikhon or Varvara, who live according to the principle "<...>Do whatever you want, as long as it’s safe and secure,” outwardly obey Kabanova, listen to her instructions and teachings, and then slowly violate them, without attaching any significance to them. She “deceive<...>“she doesn’t know how, she can’t hide anything,” she herself is not able to forgive herself for “sinful” thoughts, feelings or actions. At the same time, it is in her that a vague feeling awakens, which she herself cannot understand and explain: “<...>Something bad is happening to me, some kind of miracle! This has never happened to me. There is something so unusual about me. It’s as if I’m starting to live again,” she says to Varvara in the seventh scene of the first act. This feeling is an awakening personal self-awareness, which in Katerina’s soul takes the form of love for Boris, love “criminal”, “sinful” both from the point of view of patriarchal morality and in the perception of Katerina herself. The love of a married woman for a stranger is seen by Katerina, for whom the moral essence of the patriarchal system is not an empty phrase, like a violation of moral duty, a crime. She wants to remain morally impeccable, and her demands on herself are limitless. Katerina resists her to the last feeling, but does not find support in this internal struggle: “It’s as if I’m standing over an abyss and someone is pushing me there, but I have nothing to hold on to.”
Having not yet fully realized the nature of her feeling, Katerina already understands that it is leading her to death: “I will die soon,” she says to Varvara in the same seventh scene of the first act. Feeling the power of “sinful” passion over her, Katerina can no longer pray as before: the sanctimonious gap between the external formal fulfillment of the commandments and their everyday violation is deeply alien to her. The thought of suicide appears at the beginning of the second act: “And if I get really tired of it here, they won’t hold me back by any force. I’ll throw myself out the window, throw myself into the Volga.” The painful atmosphere of violence on the part of the mother-in-law, on the one hand, and the painful and ever-increasing internal struggle, which does not find understanding and sympathy from those around her and is aggravated by the thunderstorm, the possessed speeches of the cliquey lady and the picture of “fiery Gehenna” depicted where Katerina wants to pray , on the other hand, lead her first to a fatal confession, and then to the decision to commit suicide - a sin even more serious from the point of view of Christian morality than adultery.
The motif of flight, jump, "pool", the Volga, associated with Katerina's suicide, runs through the entire play. It opens and ends with a view of the “high bank of the Volga”; in the seventh scene of the first act, Katerina dreams: “I wish I could run up like that, raise my arms and fly,” and the lady’s words: “That’s where beauty leads.<...>Here, here, into the very pool,” what she said in the next scene sounds like a formidable warning, repeating itself in the form of a direct impulse in the sixth scene of the fourth act: “It’s better to go into the pool with beauty! Yes, quickly, quickly!" These words express the tragic fate of Katerina - spiritual beauty and purity, the will of a strong personality for happiness has no place in this stuffy world where suffering and death reign.
The death of Katerina is a harbinger of the imminent collapse of the patriarchal way of life of the city of Kalinov and the entire old social system in general. The tragedy ends with a kind of catharsis: Katerina’s death relieves her of suffering: “Good for you, Katya!” - says Tikhon, and forces the latter to rebel against the oppression of his mother: “You ruined her! You! You!” Thus, the collision of two eras - an outdated, ossified patriarchal way of life and a new life based on freedom of personal will, ends in favor of the latter, although it costs Katerina’s life. The global, universal nature of the conflict makes “The Thunderstorm” a tragedy.

"The Thunderstorm" is a folk social and everyday tragedy.

N. A. Dobrolyubov
"The Thunderstorm" stands out as the main, landmark work of the playwright. "The Thunderstorm" was supposed to be a look into the collection "Nights on the Volga", conceived by the author during a trip around the Russian Federation in 1856, organized by the Ministry of the Navy. True, Ostrovsky later changed his mind and did not unite, as he originally intended, the cycle of “Volga” plays under a common title. "The Thunderstorm" was published as a separate book in 1859. During the time Ostrovsky worked on it, the play underwent great changes - the author introduced a number of new characters, but most importantly, Ostrovsky changed his original project and decided to write not a comedy, but a drama. However, the power of social conflict in “The Thunderstorm” is so great that the play can even be described not as a drama, but as a tragedy. There are arguments in defense of both opinions, so the genre of the play is difficult to determine unambiguously.

Of course, the play was written on a social and everyday theme: it is characterized by the author’s special sensitivity to depicting the details of everyday life, the desire to accurately convey the atmosphere of the city of Kalinov, its “cruel morals.” The fictional city is described in detail and in many ways. The landscape concept plays an important role, but a contradiction is immediately visible here: Kuligin speaks of the beauty of the distances beyond the river, the high Volga cliff. “Nothing,” Kudryash objects to him. Pictures of a night walk along the boulevard, songs, picturesque nature, Katerina’s stories about childhood - this is the poetry of Kalinov’s world, which collides with the everyday cruelty of the inhabitants, stories about “naked poverty.” The Kalinovites have preserved only vague legends about the past - Lithuania “fell to us from the sky”, news from the big world is brought to them by the wanderer Feklusha. Undoubtedly, such sensitivity of the author to the details of the characters’ everyday life makes it possible to talk about drama as a genre of the play “The Thunderstorm”.

Another feature characteristic of drama and present in the play is the presence of a chain of intra-family conflicts. At first it is a conflict between the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law behind the locks of the house gate, then the whole city learns about this conflict, and from an everyday one it develops into a social one. The expression of conflict in the actions and words of the characters, characteristic of drama, is most clearly shown in the monologues and dialogues of the characters. So, we learn about Katerina’s life before marriage from a conversation between young Kabanova and Varvara: Katerina lived “not worried about anything,” like “a bird in the wild,” spending the whole day in pleasures and household chores. We know nothing about the first meeting of Katerina and Boris, or how their love began. In his article, N.A. Dobrolyubov considered the insufficient “development of passion” to be a significant omission, and said that precisely therefore the “struggle between passion and duty” is indicated for us “not completely clearly and strongly.” But this very fact does not contradict the laws of drama.

The originality of the “Thunderstorms” genre is also manifested in the fact that, despite the gloomy, tragic overall coloring, the play also contains comic and satirical scenes. Feklushi’s anecdotal and ignorant stories about the Saltans, about lands where all the people “have dog heads,” seem ridiculous to us. After the release of “The Thunderstorm,” A.D. Galakhov wrote in his review of the play that “the action and tragedy are tragic, although many places excite laughter.”

The author himself called his play a drama. But could it have been otherwise? At that time, when speaking about the tragic genre, we were accustomed to dealing with a historical plot, with main characters outstanding not only in character, but also in position, placed in exceptional life situations. Tragedy was usually associated with images of historical figures, even legendary ones, such as Oedipus (Sophocles), Hamlet (Shakespeare), Boris Godunov (Pushkin). It seems to me that on Ostrovsky’s part calling “The Thunderstorm” a drama was only a tribute to tradition.

The innovation of A. N. Ostrovsky lay in the fact that he wrote a tragedy using only real-life material, completely uncharacteristic of the tragic genre.

The tragedy of "The Thunderstorm" is revealed by a conflict with the environment not only of the main character, Katerina, but also of other characters. Here “the living envy... the dead” (N. A. Dobrolyubov). So, the fate of Tikhon, who is a weak-willed toy in the hands of his powerful and despotic mother, is tragic here. Regarding Tikhon’s final words, N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that Tikhon’s “grief” lies in his indecision. If existing is sickening, what is stopping him from throwing himself into the Volga? Tikhon cannot do anything at all, moreover, “in which he recognizes his goodness and salvation.” Tragic in its hopelessness is the situation of Kuligin, who dreams of the happiness of the working people, but is doomed to obey the will of the rude tyrant - Dikiy and repair small household utensils, earning only “his daily bread” by “honest labor”.

A feature of the tragedy is the presence of a hero, outstanding in his spiritual qualities, according to V. G. Belinsky, “a man of the highest nature,” according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, a person “with a great, not petty character.” Turning from this position to “The Thunderstorm” by A. N. Ostrovsky, we certainly see that this feature of the tragedy is dazzlingly manifested in the character of the main character.

Katerina differs from Kalinov’s “dark kingdom” in her morality and willpower. Her human essence is constantly drawn to beauty, her dreams are full of fabulous visions. It seems that she fell in love with Boris not the real one, but the one created by her imagination. Katerina could fully adapt to the morality of the city and continue to deceive her husband, but “she doesn’t know how to deceive, she can’t hide anything,” honesty does not allow Katerina to continue pretending in front of her husband. As a person of strong faith, Katerina had to have enormous courage to overcome not only the fear of physical death, but also the fear of “being judged” for the offense of suicide. Katerina’s spiritual strength “...and the desire for freedom, mixed with religious prejudices, create a tragedy” (V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko).

A feature of the tragic genre is the physical death of the main character. Thus, Katerina, according to V. G. Belinsky, is “a real tragic heroine.” Katerina's fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras. It’s not just her misfortune that she commits suicide, it’s a misfortune, a tragedy of society. She needs to free herself from the heavy oppression, from the fear weighing down her soul.

Another characteristic feature of the tragic genre is its cleansing effect on the audience, which arouses in them noble, sublime aspirations. So, in “The Thunderstorm,” as N.A. Dobrolyubov said, “there is, moreover, something refreshing and encouraging.”

The general coloring of the play is also tragic, with its gloom and every second feeling of an impending thunderstorm. Here the parallelism of a social, public thunderstorm and a thunderstorm as a natural phenomenon is obviously emphasized.

Despite the presence of an undoubted tragic conflict, the play is imbued with optimism. Katerina’s death testifies to the rejection of the “dark kingdom”, resistance, and the growth of forces called upon to replace the Boars and Wild Ones. Even if they are still timid, the Kuligins are already beginning to protest.

So, the genre uniqueness of “The Thunderstorm” lies in the fact that it, without a doubt, is a tragedy, the first Russian tragedy written on social and everyday material. This is not only the tragedy of Katerina, but the tragedy of the entire Russian society, which is at a turning point in its development, living on the eve of significant changes, in a revolutionary situation that contributed to the individual’s awareness of self-esteem. One cannot but agree with the opinion of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who wrote: “If some merchant wife cheated on her husband and hence all her misfortunes, then it would be a drama. But for Ostrovsky this is only the basis for a high life theme ... Here everything rises to tragedy."

Contents of the essay:

The genre of A. N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm” is a controversial issue in Russian literature. This play combines the features of both tragedy and drama (i.e., “everyday tragedy”).
The tragic beginning is associated with the image of Katerina, who is presented by the author as an extraordinary, bright and uncompromising person. She is contrasted with all the other characters in the play. Compared to other young heroes, she stands out for her moral maximalism - after all, everyone except her is ready to make a deal with their conscience and adapt to circumstances. Varvara is convinced that you can do whatever your heart desires, as long as everything is “sewn and covered.” Katerina, on the other hand, does not allow remorse to hide her love for Boris, and she publicly confesses everything to her husband. And even Boris, whom Katerina fell in love with precisely because she thought he was not like the others, recognizes the laws of the “dark kingdom” over himself and does not try to resist him. He meekly endures the bullying of the Wild for the sake of receiving an inheritance, although he perfectly understands that at first he “will be abused in every possible way, as his heart desires, but will still end up not giving anything or just a little.”
In addition to the external conflict, there is also an internal conflict, a conflict between passion and duty. It manifests itself especially clearly in the scene with the key, when Katerina delivers her monologue. She is torn between the need to throw the key and the strong desire not to do so. The second one wins: “Come what may, I will see Boris.” . Almost from the very beginning of the play it becomes clear that the heroine is doomed to death. The motif of death is heard throughout the entire action. Katerina says to Varvara: “I will die soon.”
Catharsis (the cleansing effect of tragedy on the audience, the excitement of noble, sublime aspirations) is also associated with the image of Katerina, and her death shocks not only the viewer, it forces the heroes who had hitherto avoided conflicts with the powers that be to speak differently. In the last scene, Tikhon lets out a cry addressed to his mother: “You ruined her! You! You!"
In terms of strength and scale of personality, only Kabanikha can be compared with Katerina. She is the main antagonist of the heroine. Kabanikha puts all her strength into defending the old way of life. External conflict goes beyond everyday life and takes the form of social conflict. Katerina’s fate was determined by the collision of two eras - the era of a stable patriarchal structure and the new era. This is how the conflict appears in its tragic guise.
But the play has features and drama. Accuracy of social characteristics: the social position of each hero is precisely defined, largely explaining the character and behavior of the hero in different situations. One can, following Dobrolyubov, divide the characters in the play into tyrants and their victims. For example, Dikoy is a merchant, the head of the family, and Boris, who lives as his dependent, is a tyrant and his victim. Each person in the play receives a share of significance and participation in events, even if it is not directly related to the central love affair (Feklusha, the half-crazy lady). The daily life of a small Volga town is described in detail. “In the foreground I always have the environment of life,” said Ostrovsky.
Thus, we can conclude that the author’s definition of the genre of Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm” is to a large extent a tribute to tradition.

“The Thunderstorm” is a folk social and everyday tragedy.

N. A. Dobrolyubov

“The Thunderstorm” stands out as the main, landmark work of the playwright. “The Thunderstorm” was supposed to be included in the collection “Nights on the Volga,” conceived by the author during a trip to Russia in 1856, organized by the Ministry of the Navy. True, Ostrovsky then changed his mind and did not unite, as he initially intended, the cycle of “Volga” plays under a common title. “The Thunderstorm” was published as a separate book in 1859. During Ostrovsky's work on it, the play underwent great changes - the author introduced a number of new characters, but most importantly, Ostrovsky changed his original plan and decided to write not a comedy, but a drama. However, the power of social conflict in “The Thunderstorm” is so great that the play can not even be spoken of as a drama, but as a tragedy. There are arguments in defense of both opinions, so the genre of the play is difficult to determine unambiguously.

Of course, the play was written on a social and everyday theme: it is characterized by the author’s special attention to depicting the details of everyday life, the desire to accurately convey the atmosphere of the city of Kalinov, its “cruel morals.” The fictional city is described in detail and in many ways. The landscape concept plays an important role, but a contradiction is immediately visible here: Kuligin speaks of the beauty of the distances beyond the river, the high Volga cliff. “Nothing,” Kudryash objects to him. Pictures of night walks along the boulevard, songs, picturesque nature, Katerina’s stories about childhood - this is the poetry of Kalinov’s world, which collides with the everyday cruelty of the inhabitants, stories about “naked poverty.” The Kalinovites have preserved only vague legends about the past - Lithuania “fell to us from the sky”, news from the big world is brought to them by the wanderer Feklusha. Undoubtedly, such attention by the author to the details of the characters’ everyday life makes it possible to talk about drama as a genre of the play “The Thunderstorm”.

Another feature characteristic of drama and present in the play is the presence of a chain of intra-family conflicts. At first it is a conflict between the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law behind the locks of the house gate, then the whole city learns about this conflict, and from an everyday one it develops into a social one. The expression of conflict in the actions and words of the characters, characteristic of drama, is most clearly shown in the monologues and dialogues of the characters. So, we learn about Katerina’s life before marriage from a conversation between young Kabanova and Varvara: Katerina lived “not worried about anything,” like a “bird in the wild,” spending the whole day in pleasures and household chores. We know nothing about the first meeting of Katerina and Boris, or how their love began. In his article, N.A. Dobrolyubov considered the insufficient “development of passion” to be a significant omission, and said that this is why the “struggle between passion and duty” is designated “not quite clearly and strongly” for us. But this fact does not contradict the laws of drama.

The originality of the “Thunderstorms” genre is also manifested in the fact that, despite the gloomy, tragic overall coloring, the play also contains comic and satirical scenes. Feklushi’s anecdotal and ignorant stories about the Saltans, about lands where all the people “have dog heads,” seem ridiculous to us. After the release of “The Thunderstorm,” A.D. Galakhov wrote in a review of the play that “the action and the catastrophe are tragic, although many places excite laughter.”

The innovation of A. N. Ostrovsky lay in the fact that he wrote a tragedy based on exclusively life-like material, completely uncharacteristic of the tragic genre.

The tragedy of “The Thunderstorm” is revealed by a conflict with the environment not only of the main character, Katerina, but also of other characters. Here “the living envy... the dead” (N. A. Dobrolyubov). So, the fate of Tikhon, who is a weak-willed toy in the hands of his powerful and despotic mother, is tragic here. Regarding Tikhon’s final words, N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that Tikhon’s “grief” lies in his indecision. If life is sickening, what is stopping him from throwing himself into the Volga? Tikhon cannot do anything at all, not even that “in which he recognizes his goodness and salvation.” Tragic in its hopelessness is the situation of Kuligin, who dreams of the happiness of the working people, but is doomed to obey the will of the rude tyrant - Dikiy and repair small household utensils, earning only “his daily bread” by “honest labor”.

A feature of the tragedy is the presence of a hero, outstanding in his spiritual qualities, according to V. G. Belinsky, “a man of the highest nature,” according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, a person “with a great, not petty character.” Turning from this position to “The Thunderstorm” by A. N. Ostrovsky, we certainly see that this feature of the tragedy is clearly manifested in the character of the main character.

Katerina differs from Kalinov’s “dark kingdom” in her morality and willpower. Her soul is constantly drawn to beauty, her dreams are full of fabulous visions. It seems that she fell in love with Boris not the real one, but the one created by her imagination. Katerina could well adapt to the morality of the city and continue to deceive her husband, but “she doesn’t know how to deceive, she can’t hide anything,” honesty does not allow Katerina to continue pretending in front of her husband. As a deeply religious person, Katerina had to have enormous courage to overcome not only the fear of physical death, but also the fear of “being judged” for the sin of suicide. Katerina’s spiritual strength “...and the desire for freedom, mixed with religious prejudices, create a tragedy” (V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko).

A feature of the tragic genre is the physical death of the main character. Thus, Katerina, according to V.G. Belinsky, is “a real tragic heroine.” Katerina's fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras. It’s not just her misfortune that she commits suicide, it’s a misfortune, a tragedy of society. She needs to free herself from the heavy oppression, from the fear weighing down her soul.

Despite the presence of an undoubted tragic conflict, the play is imbued with optimism. Katerina’s death testifies to the rejection of the “dark kingdom”, resistance, and the growth of forces called upon to replace the Boars and Wild Ones. The Kuligins may still be timid, but they are already beginning to protest.

So, the genre uniqueness of “The Thunderstorm” lies in the fact that it, without a doubt, is a tragedy, the first Russian tragedy written on social and everyday material. This is not only the tragedy of Katerina, but the tragedy of the entire Russian society, which is at a turning point in its development, living on the eve of significant changes, in a revolutionary situation that contributed to the individual’s awareness of self-esteem. One cannot but agree with the opinion of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who wrote: “If some merchant’s wife cheated on her husband and hence all her misfortunes, then it would be a drama. But for Ostrovsky this is only the basis for a high life theme... Here everything rises to tragedy.”

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.ostrovskiy.org.ru/