Moss family. The history of the Melekhov family

(454 words) The epic novel, as a literary genre, is characterized by a large number of various heroes. In The Quiet Flows the Don, the main semantic characters are presented inseparably from their families. Four such central families can be distinguished - the Melekhovs, the Korshunovs, the Astakhovs, and the Koshevoys.

The main attention is focused on the Melekhovs. This family lives on the outskirts of the farm and received the nickname "Turks" among the people: the father of Panteley Prokofievich brought a captive Turkish wife from the Turkish campaign, and since then "Turkish blood has gone to interbreed with the Cossack." At the beginning of the novel, the family consists of Panteley Prokofievich, his wife Vasilisa Ilyinichna, sons Petro and Grigory, daughter-in-law Daria and daughter Dunyashka. By the end of the work, this family practically ceases to exist: of the survivors, only Grigory and his son Mishutka, as well as Dunyashka, who lives with her husband Mikhail Koshev, remain. On the example of this family, the author wanted to show how large-scale the consequences of the Civil War are - it destroyed destinies, ruined families, and thus changed the traditional way of life of the Don Cossacks.

The Astakhov family lives next door to the Melekhovs. This is a young married couple, but there is no happiness in their marriage. Aksinya suffers from the fact that she lives with the unloved Stepan, and he only shows rudeness towards her, often drinks and rarely spends the night at home. The feeling of Aksinya and Grigory is the main love line of the novel, filled with joy and sadness, moments of rapprochement and parting, constant attempts to fight for one's happiness.

The Korshunov family are wealthy, economic Cossacks. When the Melekhovs came to woo Natalya for Grigory, Miron Grigoryevich and Marya Lukinichna did not immediately decide to give their daughter in marriage. But Natalya insisted on the wedding, convincing her parents that she did not want to marry anyone else. After the wedding, Grigory could not fall in love with Natalya and went to Aksinya. Despite the fact that the Korshunovs took Natalya back to the house, Miron Grigorievich was worried all the time that the neighbors would discuss him. Gossip and lack of support from relatives pushed Natalia to commit suicide. The girl remained alive, but she could no longer live in her parents' house and willingly agreed to the Melekhovs' invitation to live in their house, albeit without Grigory. This moment once again draws attention to how close-knit and friendly the Melekhov family is, because they are able to help each other in any trouble and do not leave their own under any circumstances.

Little is known about the Koshev family. They lived in poverty - Mishka, his mother, sister and two brothers. The bear was with them for the eldest, for the breadwinner. That is why the guy grew up stubborn and hardworking. It can be called stubborn. If he loves, then to the end - he managed to marry Dunyasha Melekhova, despite numerous obstacles; if he defends the side of the Reds, then he no longer leaves this path, and is ready to pursue a great goal, destroying all opponents of the Bolsheviks.

One thing unites all these fundamentally different families - they all suffered from the war. Many died, their houses were destroyed and the entire economy was plundered. The only future is to restore everything, not forgetting the indigenous traditions of the Don Cossacks. Such a message is laid by M.A. Sholokhov in the family theme of "The Quiet Flows the Don".

Answer from Hades[guru]
the mill of the merchant Simonov on the Pleshakov farm, where Sholokhov's father was the manager, and the people who worked on it played a significant role in the fate of the writer and his novel. And the merchant Mokhov is not only a character in The Quiet Flows the Don, but also a real person.
The Mokhovs are a well-known merchant family on the Upper Don, who were in close relations and even related to the merchant family of the Sholokhovs.
The son of a “co-employee”, as Sholokhov appears in the questionnaires he fills out, actually came from an old merchant family of the Sholokhovs, who were not inferior in breed to the Don merchants Mokhov. At the same time, the fates of these two clans, who moved to the Don from central Russia at about the same time, are inseparable from one another.
The history of the family of the merchant Mokhov in The Quiet Don is presented as follows:
“Sergey Platonovich Mokhov traces his genealogy from afar.
In the years of the reign of Peter I, the sovereign's barge with breadcrumbs and firearms once went to Azov along the Don. The Cossacks of the “thieves'” town of Chigonaki, nestled in the upper reaches of the Don, not far from the mouth of the Khoper, attacked this barge at night, cut the sleepy guards, plundered the crackers and the potion, and flooded the barge.
By order of the tsar, troops came from Voronezh, the “thieves’” town of Chigonaki was burned, the Cossacks involved in the robbery attack on the barge were mercilessly defeated in battle, ”but ten years later “the village grew again and was surrounded by battle ramparts. From that time on, an examiner and eye came to her from the Voronezh decree of the tsar and the eye - the peasant Mokhov Nikishka. He traded from the hands of various junk, necessary in Cossack everyday life ... ”(2, 13).
It is from this Mokhov Nikishka, according to the novel, that the merchant family of the Mokhovs was led.
As Sivovolov established, the Zaraisk merchant Miron Mokhov and his son Nikolai moved to the Don in the middle of the 19th century. Sholokhov's grandfather, a merchant of the 3rd guild from the same city of Zaraysk, Mikhail Mikhailovich Sholokhov, came to Vyoshenskaya in the late forties of the 19th century, following, and possibly with the help of Miron Mokhov and his son. Zaraysk local historians launched a search for Sholokhov's roots in the city of Zaraysk, Ryazan, and now the Moscow region. Here is what the Zaraisk local historian V.I. Polyanchev writes in his letter to IMLI: “The first Sholokhovs appeared in Zaraysk long ago, in the second half of the 17th century. Then, judging by the Census (Landrat) book of 1715, the outskirts of Pushkarskaya Sloboda were inhabited by the gunner Firs Sholokhov and his four sons: Vasily Firsovich, Osip Firsovich, Ivan Firsovich and Sergey Firsovich. From the younger Sergei Firsovich - the great-great-great-grandfather of the writer - a branch went, which, four generations later, to the fifth brought the Sholokhovs to the Don: great-great-grandfather Ivan Sergeevich, great-grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich, grandfather Mikhail Mikhailovich, and finally - the father of the writer - Alexander Mikhailovich. The ancestors of the great relative until the end of the XIX century. lived in Zaraysk, and by that time settled almost throughout the city. The surname Sholokhov is full of Zaraysk and still
The merchant families of the Mokhovs and Sholokhovs, connected by family ties, went bankrupt and reborn again, competing with each other, for many decades they traded in Vyoshenskaya and the farms adjacent to the village. So, according to the data of 1852, in the village of Vyoshenskaya and on its farms, five merchants Mokhovs - Miron Avtomonovich, Nikolai Mironovich, Mikhail Yegorovich, Vasily Timofeevich and Kapiton Vasilyevich, and two merchants Sholokhovs - Mikhail Mikhailovich and Ivan Kuzmich were trading. In 1887, seven shops belonged to the merchants Mokhov and eight to the merchants Sholokhov.
As already mentioned, these merchant families were closely related - that is why Sholokhov chose this particular surname for the merchant in Tatarsky: Mokhov.
In the image of Sergei Platonovich Mokhov, a family story was reflected, which was told to G. Ya. Sivovolov by Nikolai Petrovich Sholokhov (son of Pyotr Mikhailovich Sholokhov): : there were, they say, his ups and downs, fires devastated him, but he got back on his feet. Nikolai Petrovich cited the words of Mikhail Alexandrovich: “I seem to have found where our clan stretches to the Don. grandfather was at

In the novel The Quiet Don, M. Sholokhov showed with great skill the tragic moments in the revolution and the civil war and in a completely new way, relying on historical materials, his own experience, reproduced the true picture of Don life, its evolution. "Quiet Flows the Don" is called an epic tragedy. And not only because the tragic character - Grigory Melekhov, is placed in the center, but also because tragic motives permeate the novel from beginning to end. This is a tragedy both for those who did not understand the meaning of the revolution and opposed it, and for those who succumbed to deception. This is the tragedy of many Cossacks who were drawn into the Veshensky uprising in 1919, the tragedy of the defenders of the revolution, who are dying for the cause of the people.

The tragedies of the heroes unfold against the backdrop of turning points for our country - the old world is completely destroyed by the revolution, it is being replaced by a new social system. All this led to a qualitatively new solution to such "eternal" issues as man and history, war and peace, personality and the masses. A person for Sholokhov is the most valuable thing on our planet, and the most important thing that helps to form a person’s soul is, first of all, his family, the house in which he was born, grew up, where he will always be expected and loved and where he will definitely come back.

“Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farm,” this is how the novel begins, and throughout the story Sholokhov talks about the representatives of this family. The life of the inhabitants of the house appears from the pages of the epic in the interweaving of contradictions and struggle. The whole Melekhov family found itself at the crossroads of great historical events, bloody clashes. The revolution and the civil war bring drastic changes to the established family and everyday life of the Melekhovs: the usual family ties are collapsing, new morality and morality are born. Sholokhov, with great skill, managed to reveal the inner world of a man from the people, to recreate the Russian national character of the era of revolutionary times. A line of defense passes through the Melekhovs' courtyard, it is occupied either by the Reds or the Whites, but the father's house will forever remain the place where the closest people live, always ready to receive and warm.

At the beginning of the story, the author introduces the reader to the head of the family, Pantelei Prokofievich: “Under the slope of the slipping years, Pantelei Prokofievich began to grow: he was wide, slightly stooped, but still looked like an old man folding. He was dry in bones, chrome (in his youth he broke his leg at the imperial review at the races), wore a silver crescent-shaped earring in his left ear, until old age his beard and hair did not fade on him, in anger he went unconscious ... "Pantelei Prokofievich - a true Cossack, brought up on the traditions of valor and honor. On the same traditions, he raised his children, sometimes showing traits of a tough character. The head of the Melekhov family does not tolerate disobedience, but at heart he is kind and sensitive. He is a skilled and industrious owner, he knows how to manage the economy diligently, he works from dawn to dusk. On him, and even more so on his son Grigory, falls a reflection of the noble and proud nature of grandfather Prokofy, who once challenged the patriarchal customs of the Tatarsky farm.

Despite the intra-family split, Pantelei Prokofievich tries to combine pieces of the old way of life into one whole, at least for the sake of his grandchildren and children. More than once he arbitrarily leaves the front and returns home, to his native land, which was the basis of his life for him. With inexplicable force, she beckoned him to her, as she beckoned all the Cossacks, tired of the tense and senseless war. Pantelei Prokofievich dies in a foreign land, far from his native home, to whom he gave all his strength and endless love, and this is the tragedy of a man whose time has taken away the most precious thing - family and shelter.

The father passed on the same all-consuming love for his home to his sons. His eldest, already married son, Petro, resembled his mother: big, snub-nosed, brown-eyed, with a lush, wheat-colored hair, and the youngest, Gregory, went to his father - “Gregory stooped just like his father, even in a smile both had something in common, brutal." Grigory, like his father, loves his house, where Pantelei Prokofievich made him nurse his horse, loves his wedge of land behind the farm, which he plowed with his own hands.

With great skill, M. Sholokhov portrayed the complex character of Grigory Melekhov - an integral, strong and honest personality. He never sought his own benefit, did not succumb to the temptation of profit and career. Being mistaken, Gregory shed a lot of blood of those who affirmed a new life on earth. But he realized his guilt, sought to atone for it with an honest and faithful service to the new government.

The path of the hero to the truth is thorny and difficult. At the beginning of the epic, this is an eighteen-year-old guy - cheerful, strong, handsome. The author comprehensively reveals the image of the protagonist - here is the code of Cossack honor, and intense peasant labor, and daring in folk games and festivities, and familiarization with the rich Cossack folklore, and a feeling of first love. Courage and courage, nobility and generosity towards enemies, contempt for cowardice and cowardice, brought up from generation to generation, determined Grigory's behavior in all life circumstances. In the troubled days of revolutionary events, he makes many mistakes. But on the path of searching for the truth, the Cossack is sometimes unable to comprehend the iron logic of the revolution, its internal laws.

Grigory Melekhov is a proud, freedom-loving personality and at the same time a philosopher-truth seeker. For him, the greatness and inevitability of the revolution must be revealed and proved by the entire subsequent course of life. Melekhov dreams of such a system of life in which a person would be rewarded by the measure of his mind, labor and talent.

The women of the Melekhov family - Ilyinichna, Dunyashka, Natalya and Daria - are completely different, but they are united by sublime moral beauty. The image of the old Ilyinichna personifies the difficult lot of the Cossack woman, her high moral qualities. The wife of Panteley Melekhov, Vasilisa Ilyinichna, is a native Cossack woman of the Upper Don region. Unsweetened life fell to her lot. It was she who suffered the most from her husband's quick-tempered nature, but patience and endurance helped her save her family. She grew old early, suffered from illnesses, but despite this she remained a caring, energetic housewife.

The image of Natalya, a woman of high moral purity and feeling, is filled with high lyricism. Strong in character, Natalya put up with the position of an unloved wife for a long time and still hoped for a better life. She curses and loves Gregory endlessly. Even if not for long, she nevertheless found her female happiness. Thanks to patience and faith, Natalia managed to restore her family, restore harmony and love. She gave birth to twins: a son and a daughter, and turned out to be just as loving, devoted and caring mother as she was a wife. This beautiful woman is the embodiment of the dramatic fate of a strong, beautiful, selflessly loving nature, ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of a high feeling, even her own life. The strength of spirit and the conquering moral purity of Natalya are revealed with unprecedented depth in the last days of her life. Despite all the evil that Gregory caused her, she finds the strength to forgive him.

A prominent representative of the family is Dunyashka. Nature endowed her with the same hot and firm character as Gregory. And this was especially clearly manifested in her desire to defend her happiness at any cost. Despite the dissatisfaction and threats of loved ones, she, with her characteristic tenacity, defends her right to love. Even Ilyinichna, for whom Koshevoy forever remained a "murderer", the murderer of her son, understands that nothing will change her daughter's attitude towards Mikhail. And if she fell in love with him, then nothing will tear this feeling out of her heart, just as nothing could change Grigory's feelings for Aksinya.

The last pages of the novel return readers to where the work began - to "family thought". The friendly Melekhov family suddenly broke up. The death of Peter, the death of Daria, the loss of the dominant position in the family by Panteley Prokofievich, the death of Natalya, the departure of Dunyashka from the family, the destruction of the economy during the offensive of the Red Guards, the death of the head of the family in retreat and the departure of Ilyinichna to another world, the arrival of Mishka Koshevoy in the house, the death of Polyushka - all these are stages of the collapse of what at the beginning of the novel seemed unshakable. Noteworthy are the words once said by Panteley Prokofievich to Grigory: “Everyone has collapsed the same way.” And although we are talking only about fallen wattle fences, these words take on a wider meaning. The destruction of the family, which is why the house, affected not only the Melekhovs, it is a common tragedy, the fate of the Cossacks. They perish in the novel of the Korshunov, Koshevoy, Mokhov family. The age-old foundations of human life are crumbling.

The story in The Quiet Don, like in Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, is based on the image of family nests. But if Tolstoy's heroes, having gone through severe trials, come to create a family, then Sholokhov's heroes painfully experience its disintegration, which emphasizes the tragedy of the era depicted in the novel with particular force. Talking about the collapse of the Melekhov family, Sholokhov sets for us, descendants, the task of reviving the family and confidently convinces us that there is always something to start with. In Grigory's tormented soul, many life values ​​have lost their meaning, and only the feeling of family and homeland has remained indestructible. It is no coincidence that Sholokhov ends the story with a touching meeting between father and son. The Melekhov family broke up, but Grigory will be able to create a hearth where the flame of love, warmth and mutual understanding will always glow, which will never go out. And despite the tragedy of the novel, which reflected the events of one of the most cruel periods in the history of our country, the reader is left to live with hope in this vast world shining under the cold sun.

In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don", as in "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy, the "family thought" found its embodiment. What families are depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov?

These are the middle-class Cossacks Melekhovs, the rich Cossack Korshunov family, the poor Koshevs, the neighbors of the Melekhovs Astakhovs (Stepan and Aksinya), the merchants Mokhovs - they are all residents of the Tatarsky farm, as well as the father and son Listnitsky - nobles, whose estate Yagodnoe is located nearby.

Some families have background stories, such as the Melekhovs. The author explains how "the hawk-nosed, wildly handsome Cossacks Melekhovs, and in the street - the Turks" came from in the farm.

At first, family ties are determined by traditional social and living conditions: the marriage of Grigory and Natalya brought the families of the Melekhovs and Korshunovs together. Young Cossacks are friends with each other, even the young Listnitsky participates in horse races with the “farm boys”. But quite rare for farm customs was the departure of Grigory from the family with his beloved woman to hired workers for the Listnitskys.

The older generation is connected by a common "service" past; so, the retired General Listnitsky is a colleague of Prokofy Melekhov. Only the Mokhovs and Listnitskys are noticeably separated by social barriers from the rest. When Mitka Korshunov cheated on Liza Mokhova, his guilty matchmaking was rejected with contempt by her father.

The First World War, it seems, only rallied representatives of different families. Most of the young Cossacks are fighting, all on the same side. And when Grigory was the first in the farm to earn the St. George Cross, it was a joy for all of Tatar. But the psychology of people forced to kill is changing. Yevgeny Listnitsky allows himself to seduce Aksinya, as he “risked his life” at the front: “I can do anything!”

Tragically, the relationship between people changed when the civil war began. Mikhail Koshevoy (red) kills Pyotr Melekhov, burns down the houses of wealthy farmers, including the Korshunovs, and kills grandfather Grishaka. Mitka Korshunov, who served in the punitive detachment, in retaliation strangled Koshevoy's old mother, burned down his little house along with the children of Mikhail's sister, Marya. The farm ataman Miron Korshunov, who recently helped Koshevoy, as the only breadwinner, to be freed from military service, was shot.

But in war, people manifest themselves in different ways. Mitka Korshunov admits: “I love war!” Gregory (if we exclude revenge for his brother) did not shoot the prisoners, he was against looting, for which he was demoted. Stepan Astakhov, whom Grigory saved during the battle, admitted that he shot him three times in the back, avenging Aksinya. Koshevoy is guided only by a straightforward political dogma: "What a policy, evil, damn it! .. He (Grigory) is like a brother to me." But "under the conversation and you can kill." Gregory thinks differently: "If you remember everything, you have to live like wolves." For Dunyashka, Ilyinichna, Natalya, consanguinity is an enduring value.

By the end of the story, from six families (the Mokhovs left for the Donets, Stepan for the Crimea), the sister and son of the protagonist and three Cossacks of the middle generation survived: the chairman of the Revolutionary Committee, Mikhail Koshevoy, Mitka Korshunov, who had not yet returned from the war, and Grigory Melekhov. In the open ending, there is no clear prospect of their possible future.

Searched here:

• families in quiet valley
• the Korshunov family in the novel The Quiet Don
• families in the novel Quiet Don

THE HISTORY OF THE MELEKHOV FAMILY AS A REFLECTION OF SOCIAL CATACLYSMS OF THE EPOCH

One of the main themes of the epic novel "Quiet Don" is the family, a simple, "private" person in the whirlpool of history. For the first time in Russian literature, not representatives of the upper classes and the intelligentsia, but ordinary people from the people, were at the center of a large work. Soldiers and farmers. For the Russian reader, it has become almost an axiom (literature taught this) that the depth of feelings and the strength of passions are the privilege of the chosen, intelligent natures, with a fine organization of the psyche, high culture. Sholokhov, on the other hand, demonstrated that powerful passions are inherent in people from the earth, that they too tremblingly perceive earthly joys and really suffer. Sholokhov describes in detail the life and customs of the Cossacks, their well-established patriarchal morality, of course, not without remnants.

In this patriarchal system of values, the main thing is comradeship, friendship, mutual assistance, respect for elders, care for children, honesty and ingenuity, decorum in everyday life, integrity, aversion to lies, duplicity, hypocrisy, arrogance and violence.

Grishak's grandfather Korshunov and grandfather Maxim Bogatyrev can serve as a genuine role model. The first one visited a Turkish company, the second - even in the Caucasus. Sitting at the wedding table, they remember the years of their youth. However, grandfather Maxim is gnawed by remorse: once upon a time, with a fellow soldier, they took away the carpet: “Before that, I never took someone else’s ... it used to take a Circassian village, an estate in sacks, but I don’t envy ... Someone else’s, in other words, from the unclean ... And then you go ... A carpet got into my eyes ... with terrycloths ... Here, I think, there will be a blanket for the horse ... "

And Grishak's grandfather recalls how he took a Turkish officer prisoner in battle: “He fired and missed. Here I crushed the horse, catching up with him. I wanted to cut it down, but then changed my mind. Man itch…”
Or an even more telling example. An experienced warrior, a participant in the Turkish campaign, whose Cossacks spend the night in a kuren on their way to the front, tells them: “- Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, get out of a mortal battle whole, you must observe human truth.
– What? asked Stepan Astakhov, who was lying on the edge...
- And here's what: don't take someone else's in the war - once. God forbid touching women ...
The Cossacks stirred, they all started talking at once ... Grandfather fixed his eyes severely, answered everyone at once:
“Women are not to be touched. Not at all! If you can’t stand it, you’ll lose your head or you’ll get a wound, then you’ll realize it, but it’s too late.

The most important value, the stronghold of patriarchal morality, which brought up the best qualities in people, was the family. A striking example of such a family is the Melekhov family. It is headed by Pantelei Prokofievich, a tough and wayward person, but behind him there is a great rightness, since he protects the peace and well-being of his loved ones. Not out of tyranny, Pantelei Prokofievich is trying to persuade Grigory when he began dating Aksinya, but because, in his own way, he is worried about the future of his son and the family of the Astakhovs' neighbors. After the son's marriage, Natalia and the children should have been protected from suffering. The same feelings are experienced by the wise, strong-willed Ilyinichna, who is also the keeper of the hearth.

Pantelei Prokofievich is absolutely right when he rushed at a gallop to separate his sons who had quarreled in earnest. The point is not the rapnik, which he holds in his hand with the aim of allegedly punishing the guilty (this just did not happen), but the fact that there is the head of the family, the father, who keeps order and does not allow the family to dissolve.

It is difficult to object to Ilyinichna and Pantelei Prokofievich when they see to it that Natalia and Darya, the wives of their sons, carry out equal work in the household.

Speaking about the Melekhov family, Sholokhov is talking about folk morality, about the rational and human in it. The writer is for a strong family in which there is peace, harmony, and order.

Grigory is the first to break this peace, leaving his lawful wife and leaving with Aksinya to Yagodnoye, to the estate of Pan Listnitsky. Gregory's act serves as a harbinger of future tragic events.

And they did not keep themselves waiting. The First World War broke out, the February Revolution, the October Revolution, the civil war. With the onset of cataclysms and upheavals, gradual burning began, which led to the death of most of the Melekhovs. Only Dunyashka, Grigory and his son survived. Yes, and Grigory returns to his native farm before the amnesty, to certain death.

How a tragic, critical time affected the family, causing the collapse of centuries of established foundations, is especially clearly seen in the example of the image of Panteley Prokofievich.
At the beginning of the work, we see Panteley Prokofievich as the sovereign master in his house. Even with his mother's milk, he absorbed the patriarchal foundations and stands guard over them. He does not disdain to raise his hand against his household in order to cool their ardor.

However, in the context of that time, this was part of his duties, it was considered a duty to the children. The Bible says: “He who spares his rod, he hates his son, and whoever loves, he punishes him from childhood”, “punish your son, and he will give you peace and bring joy to your soul.”

At the same time, this is a very hardworking person, economic, in whose kuren prosperity reigns.

The whole meaning of Panteley Prokofievich's life lies in the family. He is immensely proud of his sons who have risen to officer ranks. Likes to brag about their successes. For example, he takes Grigory, who came on vacation, from the station through the whole farm, bypassing his alley. “I saw off my sons to the war as ordinary Cossacks, and they curried out as officers. Well, am I not proud to take my son around the farm? Let them look and envy. And my heart, brother, is poured with oil! Pantelei Prokofievich confesses.

Some researchers, in particular, Yakimenko, condemns Panteley Prakofievich for this feature, but, I think, in vain. Is it bad when a father is proud of his children, rejoices in their success as his own?

But then the civil war begins. Either one side or the other wins. Powers are changing. More than once Pantelei Prokofievich has to leave his house and flee. And, returning, he sees more and more destruction and devastation.

At first, Pantelei Prokofievich tries to repair something, to restore it. But not everything could be restored. And the stingy Pantelei Prokofievich, who had previously taught his family to take care of every match, to do without a lamp in the evening (since "kerosene is expensive"), now, as if defending himself from heavy losses and devastation, he gave up on everything. He is trying, at least in his own eyes, to devalue what he has acquired with such difficulty. Increasingly, funny and pathetic consolation sounds in his speeches: “He and the piglet were like that, one grief ...”, “he and the barn was ...” Sholokhov writes: “Everything that the old man lost, according to him, was nowhere fit. He has such a habit of comforting himself."

But property losses were only part of the problem. Before the eyes of Panteley Prokofievich, a strong, friendly family was being destroyed. No matter how hard he tried, Pantelei Prokofievich could not keep the old order in the house.

Dunyashka was the first to break away from the family. In her love for Mikhail Koshevoy, the murderer of her brother, Dunyashka went against the whole family. Alienated by the old people and Natalya, acutely experiencing a new rapprochement between Grigory and Aksinya. Daria, after the death of Peter, strove, under any pretext, to leave home in order to take a walk in the wild. Pantelei Prokofievich, seeing all this discord and confusion in the family, could not do anything. Everything familiar and settled around was collapsing, and his power as a master, elder, father dissipated like smoke.

The character of Panteley Prokofievich is changing dramatically. He still shouts at his family, but he knows well that he no longer has either the former strength or power. Daria constantly argues with him, Dunyashka, Ilyinichna does not obey, and she more and more often contradicts her old man. His heavy temper, which once plunged the whole house into fear and confusion, now does not pose a serious danger to others and therefore often causes laughter.
Over time, something miserable and fussy appears in the guise of Panteley Prokofievich. With simulated vivacity, boastfulness, he seems to be trying to protect himself from the merciless blows of fate.

And life did not spare either him or the other Melekhovs. In a short period of time, Peter and Natalya die, who could not bear the betrayal of Gregory, did not want to give birth from him and after an abortion died from blood loss. Buried from loved ones, Pantelei Prokofievich bitterly mourned this death, because he loved Natalya like his own daughter. Less than a month later, the smell of "incense" in the Melekhovs' house again began to smell. Daria drowned herself, not wanting to live with a "bad disease".

Pantelei Prokofievich thinks with horror about the danger to which Grigory's life is exposed at the front. So much grief and loss fell on the lot of the old man that he could no longer endure them.
This new state of Panteley Prokofievich Sholokhov expresses in that feeling of being driven out, fear of misfortune, which did not leave the old man. He became afraid of everything. He flees from the farm when the killed Cossacks are brought there. “In one year, death struck down so many relatives and friends that at the mere thought of them, his soul became heavy and the whole world grew dim and seemed to be dressed in some kind of black veil.”

In reflections, experiences of Pantelei Prokofievich, a feeling of approaching death begins to sound. In the autumn forest, everything reminds Pantelei Prokofievich of death: “both a falling leaf, and geese flying screaming in the blue sky, and dead grass…” When they were digging Darya’s grave, Pantelei Prokofievich chose a place for himself. But he happened to die far from his native places. After the next offensive of the Red Army, Pantelei Prokofievich went on the run. He fell ill with typhus and died in the Kuban. Grigory Melekhov and Prokhor Zykov, Melekhov's orderly, buried him in a foreign land.