Why did Gerasim drown Mumu? Psychological analysis of the work by I.S. Turgenev "Mumu"

Everyone knows that the plot of “Mumu” ​​has a real source: this story took place on Lutovinov’s estate; the heroes, Gerasim and Kapiton, were not invented. The lady was immediately recognizable as Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, who so subtly knew how to torment her serfs. However, the meaning of what is told in “Mumu” ​​significantly exceeds both the content of the plot of the work and Lutovinov’s story itself about the janitor Andrei and his dog.

Turgenev's story was immediately perceived as anti-serfdom. Critics wrote that although its plot is “insignificant,” it makes a strong, stunning impression.

At the same time, some researchers believe that the story contains a broader problem area than the sphere of purely social conflict of the era of serfdom. In particular, S. Brover connects the image of Gerasim with characters from Christian mythology and Russian folklore. By the way, note that Iv. Aksakov, reflecting on Gerasim, wrote that in Turgenev’s character “one can hear... the presence of another, deep thought that lies beyond the scope of the work and is not exhausted by the work.”

How does Gerasim first appear before the reader? He is strong and tall. An inch is 4.45 centimeters. But when in Russian folk speech they talk about height in vershoks, they add them to 2 arshins (arshin - 71.1 cm). Consequently, Gerasim’s height turns out to be 1.95 m, which, of course, is surprising, but still really possible.

Turgenev’s use of popular speech in calculating the hero’s height is quite organic. His Gerasim is a peasant, a plowman. It is appropriate to talk about it in popular language. The author’s depiction of the plowman hero as a two-meter-tall giant is also appropriate. The Slavic tradition is characterized by the exaltation of peasant labor, and with it the image of the farmer.

Previously, his huge palms “leaned” on the plow, his strong hands held a scythe, which he wielded crushingly, and a three-yard flail. Now he has a broom and a shovel in his hands, a symbol of the boring prose of urban civilization (S. Brover).

For Gerasim, who took a broom and shovel in his hands, boredom really becomes an unrelenting companion, since Gerasim’s classes in his new position seemed to him a joke after the hard peasant work; in half an hour everything was ready.

The new position is also boring for him because everything associated with it is imposed labor, made a duty. While hard peasant work, organic to someone born for the land (that’s why Gerasim the Plowman was given heroic strength), gives him true joy.

It was eternal (“tireless”) joyful work in the open air, on a vast land. Nothing hampered the plowman’s movements (no sheepskin coats or caftans!) and he, like a hero, “cut up” with a plow huge chunks of earth that smelled like forbs, mowed with a sweeping sweep, and “non-stop” threshed.

In the city, Gerasim is doomed to monotonous activities that do not correspond to his ideas about work (hence the boredom!): keeping the yard clean,” “bringing a barrel of water twice a day,” “carrying and chopping wood for the kitchen and home,” “Don’t let strangers in and keep watch at night.”

It should be emphasized that in the enclosed space of the hero’s city life, an exceptionally defined movement (back and forth) prevails, while the natural cycle (spring-summer-autumn) does not make peasant life monotonous. This especially confirms the spirituality of Gerasim’s activities.

The lady is a capricious, selfish creature. But at the same time, she is unusually pitiful, if only because she cannot influence much of what is happening in her house, for example, reason with the drunkard Capiton. Gavrila and the housekeeper rob her mercilessly; the lady’s servants are deceitful and lazy. And its power is manifested exclusively in whims and pitiful quirks, but which nevertheless distort the destinies of people.

Endowed with power, a pitiful creature is capable of imposing its own will on others: dooming a girl to a hopeless life with a drunkard, turning a giant, a hero into a janitor, and servants into a crowd of slaves (you can steal from the owner, but still remain his slave)...

Someone else's will not only makes a person powerless. Being a principle unnatural to human nature, it is capable of deforming the qualities of his soul.

The closeness and isolation of Gerasimov’s new life brings him, always alienated by his misfortune from the community of people, face to face with those who are called servants in the manor’s house.

And yet why is Gerasim the most remarkable person in the lady’s courtyard environment? To answer this question, it is necessary to draw up a “collective portrait” of the old lady’s servants.

Everyone who was familiar with V.P. Lutovinova and her estate in Spassky could confirm the documentary basis of the picture of courtyard life in the story “Mumu”. Like the writer’s mother (there were up to several dozen families of housekeepers in Spassky), the old lady kept a “numerous” servant: laundresses, seamstresses, carpenters, tailors and seamstresses, a saddler, maids, a shoemaker, the lady’s house doctor, “who constantly brought the lady cherry laurel drops” ( These drops were also used by the family doctor Varvara Petrovna).

As for the atmosphere in the old lady’s house, here, as in Spassky, everything was trembling, moving, fussing, disingenuous, catching signs of approval or anger. And, really, there was a reason. Like Varvara Petrovna, the old lady loved to test her servants for devotion and obedience, while performing a whole theatrical performance: Gerasim is a hard worker; it is labor that constitutes the content of his life both in the village and in the city. The servants are depicted by Turgenev as idle. In the story, the house servants are never shown working; they drink, sleep, gossip, hang around the yard, keep an eye on Gerasim and that’s all. In this regard, the image of the courtyard Broshka, with no specific occupation at all, is clear. The lady considered him a gardener. However, the remark of the butler Gavrila is noteworthy when he instructs Broshka to guard the entrance to Gerasim’s closet: “...What should you do? Take a stick and sit here...” - confirming the absolute inaction of this servant at the lady’s court. The only exception to the rule of idleness established by the servants is Tatyana, who worked for two. It would not be superfluous to emphasize that in this too she is a kindred spirit to Gerasim (in the village he worked for four and in the city he diligently fulfilled... his duty).

It is also significant that even the craftsmen from among the master’s household are either drunkards (like the shoemaker Kapiton Klimov) or do not know how to do their job, like, for example, the house doctor Khariton.

But, of course, the drunken shoemaker Kapiton, who considered himself a creature “offended and not appreciated at his true worth,” especially stood out from among the courtyard servants. How much swagger and arrogance this man carries within himself! Just look at his shaking of his shoulders and complaints about life in Moscow - in some kind of outback! At the same time, we see before us, as the butler Gavrila says, “a bullied man!”, riotous, carefree, in a shabby and tattered frock coat, in “patched trousers,” and, most impressively, in holey boots. Truly a shoemaker without boots, by the way, desperately complaining that he lives without anything to do.

But what the servants have an impeccable command of is the ability to keep in tune with the mood of the hostess. The behavior of the hanger-on, who is at a loss as to the lady’s reaction to Mumu, whom she first saw, is indicative. But the apogee of the servants' servility comes in the events that unfolded around Mumu and her master.

The scene in which it is shown with what fantastic speed the zealous servants pass along the chain the news of the night barking of Gerasim’s dog and, accordingly, the mistress’s suffering, is absolutely stunning. In the picture of the decisive onslaught on the Gerasimovo refuge, Turgenev depicts such a surge of servile zeal that much of the behavior of the servants is difficult to rationally comprehend.

There are several scenes in the work that cause outright bewilderment and even laughter. For example, if it is possible to explain why a whole crowd of people (footmen and cooks led by the butler Gavrila) is advancing on Gerasim’s closet, then it is completely incomprehensible why the butler held his cap during this throw, although there was no wind? One can only imagine the attack on the Gerasimov Shelter so rapid that its participants even tore off their hats as they ran.

Or why, standing under the door of Gerasim’s closet, Gavrila shouted: “Open it... They say open it!”? Perhaps, from excessive zeal, he even forgot about the deafness of the janitor. It is also unclear why, when the door of the closet quickly swung open and all the servants immediately rolled head over heels down the stairs, Gavrila, who, as we know, was standing right next to Gerasim’s door, found himself first on the ground?

In general, from the outside, this whole decisive attack on Gerasim’s closet resembles the attack of hordes of Lilliputians on the sleeping Gulliver. But if Swift’s hero, accepting the laws of the land of Lilliputians and its inhabitants, internally becomes like them, in fact, becomes the same Lilliputian, then Turgenev’s Gerasim was and remains the Man-Mountain. Having forcefully opened the doors of his closet and thereby forcing the servants to slide down the stairs, he, the giant, continued to stand at the top and looked with a grin at the fuss of these little people.

A giant and little people - this is the result of Turgenev’s thoughts about the hero-plowman and the strangers among whom he found himself by the will of the master.

It should be especially emphasized that if for the author Gerasim is a hero, a mighty man, then among the lady’s entourage he is associated with the unclean (“God forgive this devil”, “a devil of this kind”, “forest kikimora”)..

In the world of little people, Gerasim falls into the category of outcasts, outcasts. Following the morality formed by society, “little people” at all times refused to accept people different from them. They constantly spy on the "giants". So in Mumu the servants are watching Gerasim (“From all corners, from under the curtains outside the windows they looked at him”; “Soon the whole house learned about the tricks of the dumb janitor”; “Antipka spied on Gerasim through a crack”).

But the most important thing is not even this, but the indifference of the majority of the servants to Gerasim’s suffering. When he tries to find the Mumu stolen by Stepan, those who knew only laughed at him in response...! All this is so reminiscent of a scene from Pushkin’s fairy tale about the seven heroes, in which Prince Elisha goes to the people in search of his bride. “But who laughs in his face, who would rather turn away...” And then Elisha turns to the forces of nature - the wind, the moon, the sun...

And isn’t the story of Ivan Ivanovich (G. Troepolsky. “White Bim, Black Ear”), whose loneliness was also shared by a dog, not people, similar to the friendship of a lonely man with a dog described by Turgenev? But Turgenev shows the hero’s attempts to become part of the world into which he was forcibly plunged. For this, the writer needed Tatiana's story in the story "Mumu".

With great pleasure and literally in one breath I read Turgenev’s work “Mumu”. The story is very easy to read and the essence of the text you read is quickly captured. It reveals the theme of the lack of rights of peasants and the cruel treatment of them. The main character is a deaf-mute fellow named Gerasim.

The story tells about a serf peasant and his difficult life and how the people around him treated him. It seems to me that Gerasim is a very kind and gentle person, although at first glance he looks like a formidable man. He was very attached to Tatyana, who served with him, and was ready to do a lot for her sake. After the lady married the poor young lady to an alcoholic and evicted her from the yard.

Gerasim found the poor, chilled dog and saw in it an outlet after surviving a separation from his beloved. But even here the lady decided that Mumu should be drowned. She did not care about his reverent and gentle nature and the torment to which she subjected the servant with her orders. If she wanted something or was in the way, she did as she pleased, regardless of the feelings of the peasants who worked for her. The main idea of ​​the story is directed against serfdom. Gerasim personifies the entire Russian people.

You need to act according to your conscience, even if circumstances are against you.

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How should we treat our pets? Are we obligated to take responsibility for their lives? I thought about these questions after reading B. Emelyanov’s text “How I bought a dog.” The work raises the important issue of the relationship between people and animals.

The author, discussing this topic, gives an example from the life of the main character. A man who considered dogs to be true friends decided to buy an adult and trained dog. The writer draws our attention to the worried state of the dog, which has lost its former friend: “Tomka lay motionless near the table all day,” thereby Emelyanov admires Tomka’s love for his friend. After receiving the telegram, the dog’s owner, without hesitation, immediately went to pick him up. The publicist notes the importance of the hero’s awareness of the fact that “friends are not for sale,” thereby the prose writer illustrates to us the devotion not only of pets to humans, but also vice versa. The author leads us to the idea that friendship and devotion between man and animal must be protected.

One cannot but agree with B. Emelyanov’s point of view.

Indeed, there are no barriers to friendship between man and animal.

A clear proof is the story of I.S. Turgenev "Mumu". The main character took care of his pet, protected him, and gave him all his tenderness and affection. Mumu became Gerasim's best friend, the closest creature he could trust. The forced killing of his dog broke the hero and caused severe mental pain.

Confirmation of this problem can be found in L.N. Andreev’s story “Bite”. The writer shows the irresponsible attitude of people towards dogs. The unfortunate animal lost trust in those around her, became embittered and wild, as her previous owners left her at the dacha and repeatedly abused her. This example shows us the inhumane treatment of animals.

Thus, the problem raised by the prose writer makes each of us think about the importance of people’s kind attitude towards their pets, because it’s not for nothing that there is such a saying: “We are responsible for those we have tamed.”

Updated: 2017-06-09

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Useful material on the topic

• The problem of human responsibility towards a pet. Why is it necessary to treat domesticated animals responsibly? (according to the text by B. Emelyanov)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was a brave author, whose works often came under careful review by censorship authorities. The story “Mumu,” known to every schoolchild today, was banned from publication for a long time. And if it weren’t for the author’s diplomatic skills, the world would never have known about this touching and tragic story.

History of creation

In the mid-50s of the XIX century. Turgenev was under house arrest, and then sent into exile for writing an obituary on the death of Gogol. While under the supervision of private bailiffs, in the spring of 1855 Turgenev wrote the story “Mumu”. He shares this thing with the family of the publisher Aksakov, who react positively to the work, but cannot publish it due to censorship protests. A year later, “Mumu” ​​still appears in the Sovremennik magazine, which becomes the reason for the report of the official and the official reviewer of the magazine. Representatives of the censorship authorities are unhappy that the audience can feel compassion for the characters, and therefore do not allow the story to be distributed to other publications. And only in the spring of 1956, in the main department of censorship, after numerous petitions from Turgenev’s friends, a decision was made to include the decision to include “Muma” in the collected works of Ivan Sergeevich.

Analysis of the work

Story line

The story is based on real events that took place in the house of Turgenev’s mother in Moscow. The author tells about the life of a lady in whose service is the deaf-mute janitor Gerasim. The servant begins to court the washerwoman Tatyana, but the lady decides to marry her to her shoemaker. To resolve the situation, the lady’s butler invites Tatyana to appear drunk before Gerasim in order to turn him away from her. And this trick works.

A year later, the washerwoman and shoemaker leave for the village on the orders of the lady. Gerasim brings with him a puppy caught from the water and gives him the nickname Mumu. The lady is one of the last to learn about the presence of a dog in the yard and cannot establish a relationship with the animal. Having received an order to get rid of the dog, the butler tries to secretly sell Mumu, but she runs back to Gerasim. When the janitor receives information that the lady is unhappy, he goes to the pond, where he drowns the dog, and he decides to return to his village, and not to the lady’s house in the capital.

Main characters

The real prototype of the character was Varvara Turgeneva's servant Andrei Nemoy. The author paints an image of a reserved person who is unusually hardworking and has a fairly positive attitude towards people. This village peasant was capable of the most real feelings. Despite his external power and gloominess, Gerasim retained the ability to love and keep his word.

Tatiana

This portrait of a young servant includes all the features of a typical woman from a 19th century Russian estate. Downtrodden, unhappy, without her own opinion, this heroine receives protection only during the period of Gerasim’s love. Having no moral right and no real opportunity to contradict her mistress, Tatyana with her own hands ruins her chances for a happy destiny.

Gavrila

(The butler Gavrila on the right in the illustration)

The butler in the story appears as a simple-minded and stupid little man who, through ingratiation, strives to stay in the black and find benefits for himself. It cannot be said that Turgenev portrays Gavrila’s character as evil, but his direct role in the death of the dog and the destruction of the lives of Tatyana and Gerasim leaves a significant negative imprint on the perception of him as a person.

Kapiton

(The footman Kapiton in the illustration stands on the left next to the seated Gavrila)

The image of a shoemaker can be described as a portrait of an educated lackey. This person considers himself smart, but at the same time does not have the proper willpower and high aspirations in life. Ultimately, he turns into a drunkard and a slacker, whom even marriage cannot change.

Of all the characters in Mumu, the elderly lady is the main negative character. It is her actions and decisions that lead to a series of suffering and irreversible tragedies. Turgenev describes this heroine as a capricious and hot-tempered woman who is stubborn and capricious in her desire to decide the destinies of other people. The only positive traits of the lady can be considered her thriftiness and ability to manage the house.

Conclusion

The story “Mumu” ​​by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev cannot be considered a simple work about the hardship of peasant life. This is a philosophical text that helps the reader understand the issues of good and evil, hatred and love, unity and separation. The writer pays great attention to the issue of human attachment and the importance of the presence of loved ones, both in the lives of the rich and in the lives of the poor.

Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was the son of Varvara Petrovna, a domineering woman and a cruel serfdom. Having experienced the early departure of her mother and the hatred of her stepfather in childhood, she received an inheritance from her uncle after a quarrel with him, so the second half of her life is revenge for her irretrievably ruined youth, for the slavery she endured. Having become a sovereign mistress, she gave freedom to her whims and capricious actions.

The children were also afraid of their mother: Ivan recalled that rarely a day passed without being punished with rods. Subsequently, the youngest son called his mother “Saltykha” and made her the prototype of the old lady in the story "Mu Mu". The events underlying the plot of the story actually took place in the Turgenev family. Later, Varvara Zhitova’s younger sister (born out of wedlock with Ivan’s father and living in the house as a pupil) recalled that Varvara Petrovna saw a burly man in the field plowing the land and ordered him to be taken into her caretaker duties. It was Andrei, nicknamed Mute. He wore red shirts and was considered one of the mistress's favorites.

He really had a dog Mumu, which Andrei drowned. Zhitova claimed that Turgenev described Andrei in his work. The portrait resemblance is obvious, but the ending in her memories is strikingly different from the ending of the story of the janitor Gerasim from the story “Mumu”.

Andrei is a submissive and downtrodden creature, content with his slave existence. When the owner orders him to take the life of his beloved little dog, he not only does this, but also continues to live with his owner, having forgiven her for her moment of anger. Turgenev portrayed a man capable of strong and deep feelings, a man who did not want to humbly endure bullying and realized his human dignity.

It is very difficult for a free person living in the 21st century to imagine what it meant at that time to leave his master. A serf who was the property of the owner could be sold, given away, lost at cards, and for escaping he could be returned in the stocks and pinned to death. Gerasim's departure from his mistress meant that he realized that he was a human being and no longer felt like a dumb brute.

Why did Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev change the ending of his story? What idea did you want to convey to the reader?

So, his deaf-mute hero from the village, finding himself in the conditions of the city, endures his new existence very hard, which the author emphasizes with the help of detailed comparisons. He compares Gerasim either to a tree torn out of its usual habitat, or to a bull that was taken from free fields and put on a chain, or to a captured animal. It is no coincidence that all the furniture in Gerasim’s closet is distinguished by its durability and quality, designed for heroic strength.

The writer created Gerasim in the image of his ideas about the Russian people and their future. Turgenev endowed the mute serf with a sense of justice, a thirst for independence, a sense of self-worth - everything that, according to the writer, the Russian people possessed. He turned out to be a completely different person - not Andrei, meek, downtrodden, who meekly accepted the death of his beloved being. His hero had to rebel, which is what Gerasim does.

Deprived of his homeland, deprived of the right to love the meek and downtrodden washerwoman Tatyana, it would seem that Gerasim finally warms his heart near a tiny living bundle - a rescued puppy named Mumu. But an absurd accident, due to which everyone’s favorite becomes enemy number one for the capricious old lady, deprives Gerasim of his last opportunity to remain happy.

Realizing that his dog cannot live in the same house as his owner, Gerasim makes the difficult decision to get rid of his pet himself. This becomes something of a sacrifice for him. There is a festive caftan and a luxurious lunch for your beloved dog. Having drowned Mumu with his own hands, Gerasim crosses the line beyond which the feeling of dependence and fear ends. Having lost everything that was dear to him, the deaf-mute janitor gained freedom. He had nothing to lose, so, going back to the village, Gerasim experiences "invincible courage, desperate and joyful determination". But until he drowned Mumu, he did not cross this line and did not gain inner freedom.

The composition emphasizes how protest in Gerasim is steadily growing, how the hero is moving towards internal liberation from the bonds of serfdom, how a man awakens in him, living by his own will. In the finale, the author shows leaving the lady and returning to her homeland. However, the hero has changed: naive gullibility and simplicity left him, and the strength of human dignity defeated slavish devotion to his mistress. Only the taste of this victory is bitter: the hero continues his life alone - “stopped hanging out with women” And “doesn’t keep a single dog”.

• “Mumu”, a summary of Turgenev’s story
• “Fathers and Sons”, a summary of the chapters of Turgenev’s novel