Analysis of “Deadline” Rasputin. The main characters of the work 'Deadline'

Family relationships in V. G. Rasputin’s story “The Deadline” Author of the work: Alena Odnopozova, 10th grade

Objectives of the study: To identify the reasons for the weakening of family ties between parents and children as understood by the author of the story.

Plot of the story The main character of the story is the eighty-year-old old woman Anna, who lives with her son. Her inner world is filled with worries about children who have long since moved away and lead lives separately from each other. Anna only thinks that she would like to see them happy before she dies. And if not happy, then just to see them all one last time.

But her grown-up children are children of modern civilization, busy and businesslike, they already have their own families, and they can think about many things - and they have enough time and energy for everything, except their mother. For some reason, they hardly remember her, not wanting to understand that for her the feeling of life remains only in them, she only lives in thoughts about them.

Varvara's innocence and insincerity; falseness, selfishness and pseudo-intelligence Lucy Varvara is the eldest in the family, knows folk rituals better than others, but due to her narrow-mindedness and excessive zeal, she begins to fulfill her duties earlier than expected. Varvara is one of those people about whom they say: “unresponsive.” She, unlike Anna, did not manage to become a real housewife and mentor, she got used to constantly crying about her life and thus taught her loved ones not to pay attention to these complaints. Lucy is an important character in the novel. Unlike Varvara, Lyusya, who left for the city a long time ago, claims to be intelligent and cultured and therefore opposes herself to others. This happens not thanks to the subtle mental organization, but in spite of it, due to its absence.

“... a city girl from head to toe, she was born from an old woman by mistake”

Internal disorder, facelessness of Ilya; human thoroughness, spiritual tact of Mikhail. The change of face is most clearly visible in the appearance of the eldest son Ilya. There was nothing left in her son of the naive, eccentric child that Anna remembered him as.

Moral issues of Valentin Rasputin's story “The Deadline” The writer explains the main reason for the moral decline among the people by the loss of a person’s spiritual connection with his roots.

Having left the village, their small homeland, the old woman’s children stopped seeing their mother and each other often, and that sense of kinship, responsibility of each for everyone that had united them before gradually dried up. And now they already love their mother from afar, and all they care about is occasionally writing a letter of a few lines. Without realizing it, they live by the principle: “Out of sight, out of mind.” Tanchora, as the old woman affectionately calls another of her daughters, not only did not come to say goodbye to her mother, but did not make herself known at all! And in the village they are already only guests, surprised by the changes that have taken place that are not for the better. Having lost contact with home, with their native land, with their roots, with that invisible, barely perceptible heritage left from their ancestors, they no longer feel like “family”, becoming just “relatives”, and they understand this with their minds, but do not feel heart.

The meaning of the title of the story “The Deadline” Not only Anna is given a deadline for realizing her soul. The last deadline for forgiveness and farewell was given to her children - to stop and think.

Suddenly Mikhail will say about his mother: “It seemed like she was blocking us, we didn’t have to be afraid...” It was the mother who was blocking her big, long-mature children from death! And as long as she is on earth, there is hope and protection for them. It’s a pity that Anna’s children understand this only in short moments of enlightenment. But in general, three days in their native village are filled with mild annoyance for them. After all, the sons and daughters arrived almost for the funeral, and the fact that the mother came to life with their appearance seems incomprehensible and unnecessary to them. They suffer, not realizing that fate has given them the last chance to talk with their mother about the most important things, to receive the last blessing and parting words, to fall into the loving arms of their family for the last time. Someday, Anna's sons and daughters will understand that the only moral yardstick for them will remain their mother, they will understand and be ashamed of the fact that they missed her last term.

Conclusions In the story by V.G. Rasputin's "The Deadline" poses the problem of family relationships acutely and mercilessly. The main problems of society are caused by the breakdown of the family and the weakening of family relationships between children and parents.

If a family collapses, the elementary fundamental moral foundations of the individual collapse, and a person’s inner world turns into ruins.

Anna wants all her children to have time to say goodbye to her. Unexpectedly for those around her, the old woman feels better. She can now leave the house and eat. Anna's children, who expected the worst, feel bewildered. Sons Ilya and Mikhail decide to get drunk so that the vodka prepared for the funeral does not “stand idle.” Intoxicated, the brothers begin to talk about life. It turns out that she stopped bringing them joy. Work is no longer fun. Hopes for a bright future have long been abandoned; routine absorbs more and more every day. Mikhail and Ilya love and know how to work. But for some reason, right now, work does not bring the desired satisfaction. Their sister Lucy, taking advantage of the fact that her mother has temporarily stopped needing outside help, goes for a walk around the neighborhood. She remembers her childhood and her favorite horse. Having become an adult, the woman left her native place. It seems to Lucy that she left something very important in her native village, without which it is impossible to live.

Anna continues to wait for her beloved daughter Tanchora. She is saddened that Tanya did not come. Tanchora was sharply different from her sisters Vari and Lucy. My beloved daughter had a very kind and gentle character. Without waiting, the old woman decides to die. She doesn't want to linger in this world. Anna does not find a place for herself in her new life.

Old woman Anna

The elderly woman lived a long and difficult life. A mother of many children raised her children to be worthy people. She is confident that she has fully fulfilled her purpose.

Anna is the real master of her life. And not only life, but also death. The old woman herself made the decision about when to leave this world. She does not tremble before death, does not beg her to prolong her earthly existence. Anna awaits death as a guest, and does not feel any fear of it.

Old woman Anna considers children her main asset and pride. The woman does not notice that she has long become indifferent to them. Each of them has their own life, each is busy with themselves. What upsets the old woman most of all is the absence of her beloved daughter Tanchora. Neither the main character nor the reader knew the reason why she did not come. Despite everything, Tanya remains her mother’s beloved daughter. If she couldn't come, then there were good reasons for that.

Invisible girlfriend

Death is Anna's invisible and silent interlocutor. The reader feels her presence throughout the entire story. Anna does not see death as an enemy from which she needs to hide or defend. The old woman managed to make friends with her constant companion.

Death as a natural phenomenon
Death is presented without the slightest horror or tragedy. Its arrival is as natural as the arrival of winter after autumn. This inevitable phenomenon in the life of every person cannot be assessed positively or negatively. Death serves as a conductor between two worlds. Without it, it is impossible to move from one state to another.

The invisible friend shows mercy to the one who does not reject or curse her. She agrees to make concessions to each of her new friends. Wise Anna understands this. Friendship with the most terrible phenomenon for every person gives the old woman the right to choose. Anna chooses how to leave this world. Death willingly agrees to come to her in a dream and carefully replace the worldly dream with an eternal dream. The old woman asks for a delay so she can say goodbye to her beloved daughter. Death again yields to the old woman and gives the necessary amount of time.

Despite the fact that every reader understands how the story will end, the author leaves one of the main participants in his work behind the scenes, which further emphasizes the lack of tragedy of death.

Anna's children

Anna's sons and daughters have long lived their own lives. The approaching death of the old woman forces attention to the mother. However, none of the children were able to maintain this attention for too long. Noticing that Anna is feeling better, they strive to return to their thoughts and activities. The brothers immediately drink the vodka left for the wake and begin to complain to each other about life. The sisters, who shared the inheritance at the dying woman’s bedside, disperse in different directions to also plunge into their own worries.

Anna's children try to conscientiously fulfill their duties to their mother. Lucy sews a funeral dress for the old woman. Varvara mourns her mother, as Anna herself wanted. The sons are also ready to do everything necessary to see off the old woman on her final journey. In the depths of their souls, each of them is waiting for that moment when the most unpleasant things will remain in the past and they can return to their daily affairs and responsibilities. Ilya and Mikhail are not so much saddened by the upcoming death of their mother as they are concerned about their own. After their parents pass away, they will be the next generation to pass away. This thought horrifies the brothers so much that they empty one bottle of vodka after another.

main idea

There are no good or bad events in life. A person himself gives one or another assessment to each event. Despite her difficult existence, full of suffering and hardship, Anna does not seek to exaggerate. She intends to leave this world calm and peaceful.

The main theme of the story is the passing of an elderly person, summing up the results. However, there are other topics in the work that the author prefers to talk about less openly.

Valentin Rasputin wants to tell the reader not only about the personal feelings of the characters. “The Deadline,” a brief summary of which tells only how each character relates to death, is, first of all, a story about the change of historical eras. Anna and her children observe the destruction of the old order. Collective farms cease to exist. Young people are forced to leave the village due to lack of work and go in search of work in an unknown direction.

Valentin Rasputin’s story “Money for Maria” contains at the heart of the plot the idea of ​​human relationships, mutual assistance and indifference, which are especially clearly manifested in the grief of others.

Another wonderful work by Valentin Rasputin, “French Lessons,” talks about human kindness, fortitude and patience.

Humane socialism will be replaced by ruthless capitalism. Previous values ​​have been devalued. Anna's sons, accustomed to working for the common good, must now work for the survival of their families. Not accepting the new reality, Ilya and Mikhail try to drown out their pain with alcohol. Old woman Anna feels superior to her children. Her death has already come to her and is just waiting for an invitation to enter the house. Mikhail, Ilya, Lyusya, Varvara and Tatyana are young. They will have to live for a long time in a world unfamiliar to them, which is so different from the one in which they were once born. They will have to become different people, abandon their previous ideals, so as not to perish in the new reality. None of Anna's four children expresses a desire to change. Only Tanchora’s opinion remains unknown to the reader.

People's dissatisfaction with the new life is not able to change the course of events. The merciless hand of history will put everything in its place. The younger generation is obliged to adapt in order to raise their offspring differently than they themselves were raised. The old generation will not be able to accept the new rules of the game. He will have to leave this world.

5 (100%) 2 votes

Many works of modern Russian writers are based on moral and ethical problems. Indeed, despite social, political, and economic changes, the spiritual values ​​of both the people as a whole and the individual individual must remain eternal. One of the modern writers who raises these themes in his works is V. Rasputin. He is the author of such famous works as “Money for Maria”, “Fire”, “Farewell to Matera”. But the writer calls the story “The Deadline” the most important of his books.

This work is based on a simple situation - at the bedside of a dying mother, brothers and sisters meet who have long left her in search of a better life. Having tuned into the mournful and solemn mood appropriate for the moment, they appear before the face of the old mother, living out her last days in the house of one of her sons, Mikhail. But you can’t plan the hour of death, and old woman Anna, contrary to all forecasts, is in no hurry to die. “Whether it was a miracle or not, no one can say, only when she saw her guys did the old woman begin to come to life.” Being on the edge, she either weakens or comes back to life. The adult children, who had prudently prepared both mourning clothes and a box of vodka for the wake, are discouraged. However, they are in no hurry to take advantage of the hours of delaying death that have fallen to their lot and communicate with their mother. The tension that shackled everyone in the first minutes of being next to the sick Anna gradually subsides. The solemnity of the moment is disrupted, conversations become free - about earnings, about mushrooms, about vodka. Ordinary life is being revived, revealing both the complexity of relationships and the difference of views. The story intertwines tragic and comic moments, the sublime, the solemn and the ordinary. The author deliberately refrains from commenting on what is happening, conveying only the course of events. And it is unlikely that this situation may require explanation. What about Anna, who is living her last days? Days of summing up, filled with reflections on the experience. Before the eyes of a dying woman, her whole life with its joys and sufferings passes. Although did she have many joys? Unless this is something I remember from my youth: a warm steamy river after rain, darkened sand. “And it’s so good, so happy for her to live at this moment, to look at his beauty with her own eyes... that she feels dizzy and has a sweet, excited ache in her chest.” Sins are also remembered, as in confession. And the most serious sin is that in times of famine she secretly milked her former cow, which, out of habit, wandered into the old yard. She milked what was left after the collective farm milking. But perhaps for yourself? She saved the guys. That’s how she lived: she worked, suffered unfair insults from her husband, gave birth, mourned her sons who died at the front, and accompanied her surviving and grown children to distant lands. In a word, she lived the way millions of women of that time lived - she did what was necessary. She is not afraid of death, because she fulfilled her destiny, she did not live in vain.

You can’t help but be amazed at the skill of the writer who managed to so subtly reflect the experiences of an old woman.

The story “The Deadline” is a work that is ambiguous in its themes. The death of a mother becomes a moral test for her adult children. A test they failed. Callous and indifferent, they not only do not experience joy at the unexpected hope of their mother’s recovery, but they are also annoyed, as if she deceived them, violated plans, and wasted time. As a result of this frustration, quarrels arise. The sisters accuse Mikhail of not treating his mother well enough, taking out nervous tension on him, demonstrating superiority over his uneducated brother. And Mikhail gives his sisters and brother a merciless exam: “What,” he shouts, “maybe one of you will take her? Which of you loves your mother the most?" And no one accepted this challenge. And this betrayal has its roots - callousness, indifference, selfishness. For the sake of their own interests, people for whom the mother sacrificed her life abandoned what makes a person human - kindness, humanity, compassion, love. Using the example of one family, the writer revealed the features inherent in the entire society, reminding us that by betraying our loved ones, abandoning the ideals of goodness bequeathed to us by our ancestors, we, first of all, betray ourselves, our children, who are brought up in nature. degree of moral degeneration.

The work belongs to the philosophical work of the writer and is one of his main creative creations.

The compositional structure of the story lies in the action, presented in the form of three days, the time given by heaven to the main character of the work for the last meeting with children before her death.

The main character of the story is the image of an eighty-year-old old woman named Anna, living in an abandoned Russian village with the family of her youngest son, Mikhail. As a prototype for the main character, the writer uses his own grandmother, who personifies folk wisdom, spirituality, and generous maternal love.

The storyline of the story is built around the arrival of Anna's children, summoned by Mikhail's telegram about the approaching death of their mother, whom the woman delays to say goodbye to her relatives. Anna has a calm attitude toward death, understanding the nature of natural human decay, but the premonition of the hour of death makes the woman want only a momentary meeting with her daughters and sons, who, by the will of fate, are scattered throughout the country.

For most of the story, the writer describes the behavior of Anna's children, revealing their characters through actions, words and giving them his own author's assessment.

One of the daughters, Lucy, appears in the story as a firm, consistent person who lives not in accordance with feelings, but according to the law of rigid reason. In contrast, Varvara is a kind woman, but stupid, lacking emotional tact. The eldest son Ilya spends his whole life searching for his path in life, moving around Russia a lot, but, being characterless, does not acquire practical experience and worldly wisdom. The youngest child, Mikhail, who lives with his dying mother, is portrayed as a rude man and an alcoholic. The writer mentions another daughter of Anna, Tanchora, who lives in distant Kyiv and did not come to say goodbye to her mother for unknown reasons.

The writer uses images of children to reveal typical representatives of modern society, demonstrating their own busyness, a huge number of everyday and work problems that require a lot of time and effort, remembering only occasionally their elderly parents, who live in this world exclusively with thoughts about children. The author focuses the reader's attention on the absurdity and insincerity of the actions of Anna's family, characterized by soulless callousness, heartlessness and gloomy selfishness.

The semantic load of the story conveys the author's intention, which lies in the title of the work, which literally emphasizes not only the last days of the life of an old village woman, but also gives the last chance for her children to correct the mistakes they have made in life, including in relation to their mother.

The story is a deeply moral work, depicting the realities of modern reality, touching on pressing psychological problems of human relationships.

Option 2

The problem of generations has always worried writers. And many writers talk about this. But what's wrong with this? V.G. Rasputin is trying to answer this question.

The story tells us about the old woman Anna and her family. The old woman already sees death, even considers it her friend. And when she felt that death was about to take her, she decided to call her children, of whom there were five. Varvara already wants to mourn her mother, she does this, first on the bed, and then moves to the table, because it is more convenient there.

Daughter Lyusya is already sewing her mourning dress, and the rhythm of the typewriter falls in time with Varya’s tears. Varvara came to her mother from the swarming center, Lyusya and Ilya from nearby provincial towns. Tanya lives in Kyiv, and Anna can’t wait for her arrival. And in Anna’s native village, her son Mikhail lived with his family. The day after her arrival, the old woman felt life, and the children did not believe in it.

On the same day, Mikhail and Ilya began to drink, they drank so much that they ran out of ideas for what to drink, and they just got drunk. Thanks to alcohol, they escaped the knowledge that their mother could die at any moment. Also, Mikhail and Ilya never worked, and do not know happiness from this, the only thing they saw happiness in was drinking. Lucy recalled how as a child she had a horse, but it was harnessed too much, and he could not cope with it, and died. While the children drank and remembered their youth, Anna remembers Tatyana, who was not like everyone else, who was soft, gentle, humane. But she didn’t come, and the old woman decided to die while the children were here, and to bury them all at once. Anna goes to bed, but for the last time.

With this story, V.G. Rasputin showed us that today’s children, no matter what they are, are always busy with something of their own, and not with their parents. Using Anna's example, we see that everyone is okay with their mother, they are more worried about their own problems, and some do not come at all, as Tatyana did. Mikhail and Ilya are afraid of their mother’s death, but instead of spending time with her, they drink and try to drown their pain in alcohol. There is essentially nothing connecting the children now, like the death of their mother, which is upsetting, because before, the children maintained communication with each other. From this work we can take away the moral that we need to spend time with loved ones, otherwise sooner or later it will be too late, and we should never put work above family problems.

Rasputin ("The Deadline") tests the village's moral strength in his story. An analysis of the work is presented in this article. The action here lasts only three days: this is the time given by God to the dying village old woman Anna in order to see the children who came to their native village to say goodbye to their weakened mother before her death.

Old woman Anna, whose prototype is the writer’s own grandmother, is the personification of folk wisdom, spirituality, and generous maternal love. This is the key character of the peasant universe. “I am especially struck by old women’s calm attitude towards death, which they take as a matter of course,” said the writer in an interview with the magazine “Voprosy Liieratura” (1970. No. 9). A village person perceives the fact of his own death as a natural withering. Shukshin was also interested in the attitude of a village person to death (“How the old man died”). The heroes of both writers “sense” their hour of death and are in a hurry to finish their worldly affairs without unnecessary fuss. And at the same time, they are uniquely individual - even at their last feature: the old man in Shukshin’s story represents death soberly and visibly; Old woman Anna is poetic in a feminine way, moreover, sometimes death seems to her like her own double.

The image of Anna in the story is associated with eternal problems (death, the meaning of life, the relationship with nature, the relationship between fathers and children), and the images of children are topical (city and countryside, the moral essence of the younger generation, loss of connection with the earth).

Half of the text of the story is occupied by images of children: they are revealed through action, speech, and the author’s assessments. Lucy is a firm, consistent, but tough person, living according to the laws of reason, not feelings; Varvara is kind, but stupid, she has no emotional tact. Son Mikhail is a rude man and a drunkard, but his mother lives with him and his wife. The spineless Ilya, who traveled a lot around the world, never acquired either intelligence or experience. But Tanchora, who was the most affectionate child in childhood, did not come at all. The author does not explain her action in any way, hoping that a kind reader will justify her by finding his own evidence for this, and an unkind one will condemn her. Before us is an attempt to apply the variable principle in depicting the actions of characters, which V. Rasputin and A. Bitov experienced in different forms in their work in the 70s.

The author shows that the moral potential of the generation replacing the village elders is much lower: leaving the village is fraught with irreversible consequences for it. The global process of change is also affecting those few young people who remain in the countryside: their attachment to the land and responsibility towards it are decreasing, and family ties are weakening. These are elements of the phenomenon that will later be called de-peasantization.