Andrey Platonov, "Pit": analysis. Platonov's "Pit": the problems of the work
In the story "Pit" A.P. Platonov depicted the construction of a "general proletarian house" in which all the working people of the city would live.
"The construction of socialism" is considered by Platonov in the context of the biblical legend about tower of babel How new attempt humanity to build "a city and a tower as high as the heavens." The story tells about the construction of a foundation pit for this symbolic structure. It is known how important it is to build the basement of the house so that it does not collapse from time and natural disasters. Thus, digging a pit is very milestone in construction and storytelling.
The diggers involved in the creation of the foundation pit are lonely people. The meaning of their life is reduced only to a heavy, exhausting physical labor. These diggers are building the foundation of future happiness, being unhappy people. So, Prushevsky "was afraid of empty home time, he did not know how to live alone."
Chiklin (one gets the impression) seems to be deliberately trying to exhaust himself with work as much as possible so that fatigue will save him from heavy, dark thoughts so that you can only fall asleep without thinking about anything.
The diggers have no wives, no children, they are deprived of the simplest, most ordinary happiness. But do they experience joy, satisfaction from the fact that they are building a house of happiness? Feel like missionaries? No, each of them is waiting for any convenient moment to leave this construction.
How symbolic it is: the foundation pit for the house of happiness is “built by people with unconscious faces”, “gloomy and thin”, not people, but robots programmed for only one action - hard, to the point of stupefaction, physical labor.
The foundation pit, which people methodically, without stopping, dig, takes away from the earth "thousands of blades of grass, roots and small soil shelters", the "old natural device" is abolished. Instead of natural life, nature, embodied in blades of grass, grass, roots greedily reaching for the sun, there are “gorges of dreary clay”, a pit for creating ephemeral, invented happiness.
The ditch, which the diggers diligently dig, is perceived as a construction pit, where people, exhausted by labor, are buried alive. These people have been deprived of the ability to think, to think. They are convinced that this construction is above all, and for the sake of it it is necessary to forget about love, the arrangement of family happiness, and spiritual life.
At the bottom of this pit, in the layers of the earth where the diggers worked, a terrible memory of these unfortunate people will be kept! And this land, dug pit, will become the fundamental foundation of the house of happiness. Terrible prospect...
Each of the diggers is very unhappy. Voshchev, who instinctively feels that the meaning of life cannot be reduced to labor to the point of stupefaction, that there must be something else, buries his hope of finding the meaning of life at the bottom of the pit. Here, in the process of exhausting work, it cannot be found. The hero, having come to the brigade and becoming one of those who dig a foundation pit for the common proletarian home, is spared the need and opportunity to think.
The existence of diggers is compared to being at the bottom of "hell". The desire to save the lives of the pit workers, exhausted by overwork, gives rise to the project of using the ravine to expand the pit in the head of the excavator. "The ravine" has always been in the Platonic worldview a symbol of the "bottom of hell".
Chiklin, unrolling the “immovable earth”, “stopped and looked around”: “The collective farm followed him and did not stop digging the earth; all the poor and average peasants worked with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.
How strange it sounds: "they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit." After all, in fact, they are digging themselves a huge, mass grave! But this grave is perceived by diggers as "salvation". Salvation from what? Probably from the reality that is prepared for them by the new state system. In this system, such sacred concepts as family, love, duty lose their meaning ...
And the worst thing is that the foundation pit becomes a grave for a little girl - Nastya. Nastya dies from lack warmth: "Instead of toys, she has an iron crowbar, the girl sleeps in one coffin, and uses the second as a red corner." The author notes: “Many people passed by the barracks, but no one came to visit the sick Nastya, because everyone bowed their heads and thought about complete collectivization.”
Nastya - symbolic image communism, the future state. It is no coincidence that Safronov welcomes the girl "as an element of the future." Nastya died, and with her, faith in a brighter future disappeared.
The pit, getting bigger, turns into a girl's grave. The pit, which is dug to create a house of happiness, becomes the burial place of a child, the purest and most holy thing in the world.
The main theme of A. Platonov's story "The Pit" is the construction of socialism in the city and countryside. In the city, as the author shows, it is carried out through the erection of a new building, "where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter the settlement." In the countryside, the building of socialism consists in the creation of a collective farm named after the General Line, and also in the destruction of the kulaks.
All the heroes of the story are involved in the implementation of this single project, to one degree or another. At the beginning of the work, we learn that the thirty-year-old worker Voshchev, who continues the Platonic string of seekers of the meaning of life, is fired from the factory - "due to the growth ... of thoughtfulness amid the general pace of work." In search of a new occupation, the hero finds himself in a team of diggers who are preparing a foundation pit.
In the process of work, the scale of the pit is increasing and reaching incredibly grandiose sizes. Accordingly, the entire project of building socialism is developing more and more. In the course of its implementation, two workers are sent to the village to help the poor carry out collectivization. But there they die at the hands of unknown "kulaks". As a result, collectivization was completed by their comrades, and inhumanly and cruelly (recall the scenes of dispossession and sending peasants along the river - “into the unknown”).
In this regard, the name of the story "The Pit" acquires a generalized symbolic meaning. The foundation pit is a common cause, the collectivization of efforts and hopes, the collectivization of life and faith. Here everyone renounces the personal in the name of the common - the foundation pit. However, the word "pit" is also associated with other meanings: "shoveling" of life, "virgin soil" of the earth, the construction of a temple.
But what is important is that the vector of people's activity is not directed upwards, but downwards, deep into - to the "bottom" of life. In this regard, gradually the "cauldron of collectivism" begins to resemble a mass grave, in which they bury hope for a brighter future. And at the end of the story, in confirmation of this, the girl Nastya dies, who lived in the barracks with the diggers and became their common daughter. Moreover, one of the walls of the pit becomes a grave for Nastya.
It is important that Platonov made the most conscientious, hardworking, sincere workers the heroes of his story. They crave happiness and are willing to work furiously for it. Happiness for them lies not in the satisfaction of their personal needs(like their leader Pashkin, who already lives in satiety and contentment), but in achieving the highest level of life for everyone.
These people no longer believe that their century will be enough to see the desired result. But the key to higher justice for them is the meaningfulness, the necessity of their existence. The heroes of Platonov do not die in abandonment and orphanage, but put all their energy into a common cause, embody their hope for a better future. The meaning of their work is the future of Nastya's adopted child. And - the more tragic and gloomy is the ending of the story.
Its semantic result lies in Voshchev's reflections on the calf of the newly deceased Nastya - "the future happy person“He no longer knew where communism would be in the world now, if it was not there at first in a childish feeling and in a convinced impression. Why does he now need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful man in which truth would become joy and movement?
Thus, Platonov's story "The Pit" is a kind of dystopia. The writer doubts to a great extent how to achieve the beautiful goal of socialism - universal human welfare. It shows that for the sake of the future it is impossible to cripple the present, to sacrifice real lives for the sake of the still ephemeral. In Platonov's view, the construction of socialism turns into the creation of a mass grave, where not only beautiful dreams, but also millions of innocent people will be buried.
In this article, we will consider the work that Andrei Platonov created, we will spend it was conceived by the author in 1929, in the fall, when Stalin's article entitled "The Year of the Great Turn" appeared in print, in which he argued the need for collectivization, after which he announced in December about the beginning of the "offensive on the kulak" and the liquidation of it as a class. In unison, one of the heroes of this work tells him that everyone should be thrown "into the brine of socialism." The planned bloody campaign was successful. The tasks set by Stalin were fulfilled.
The writer also carried out his plans, which is confirmed by the analysis. Platonov's "pit" was conceived as a rethinking of history, the correctness of the path chosen by our country. The result was a deep work with a socio-philosophical content. The writer comprehended the reality, conducted its analysis.
We will begin to describe Platonov's "pit" with a story about the creation of the work.
History of creation
The story, which is noteworthy, was written just during the period of Stalin's active work - from 1929 to April 1930. In those days, Andrei Platonovich Platonov worked in the melioration department in his specialty, in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, located in Voronezh region. Therefore, he was, if not a direct participant, then at least a witness to the elimination of kulaks and collectivization. As an artist painting nature, Andrei Platonovich Platonov painted pictures of the fate of people and the events that happened to those who fell into the meat grinder of depersonalization and leveling.
The theme of the works of Andrei Platonovich did not fit into the general ideas of building communism, the doubting and thinking hero of the story was subjected to sharp criticism from the authorities, which was picked up by the press. She carried out her own, far from flattering for the author, analysis.
Such is the short story of the story written by Platonov ("The Foundation Pit"), the history of creation.
Presentation Features
The author's contemporaries favored by the Bolsheviks - writers Kataev, Leonov, Sholokhov - in their works sang the achievements of socialism, depicting collectivization with positive side. Poetics of Platonov, in contrast to them, the optimistic description of the pictures of selfless labor and construction was alien. This author was not attracted by the scale of tasks and aspirations. He was primarily interested in the man and his role in historical events. Therefore, the work "Pit", as well as other creations of this author, is characterized by a thoughtful, unhurried development of events. There are many abstract generalizations in the narrative, since the author focuses on the thoughts and experiences of his characters. Only help external factors the hero to understand himself, and at the same time in the symbolic events that Platonov tells us about.
"Pit": content in brief
The plot of the story is typical for the works of that time devoted to collectivization, and is not complicated. It consists of dispossession with scenes of an attempt on the life of party activists and peasants defending their good. But Platonov managed to present these events from the point of view of a thinking person who was involuntarily drawn into the events about which the story "The Pit" tells.
A summary of the chapters is not the subject of our article. We will only briefly describe the main events of the work. The hero of the story, Voshchev, after he was fired from the factory due to thoughtfulness, gets to the diggers who are digging a foundation pit for the house of the proletarians. Brigadier Chiklin brings an orphaned girl whose mother has died. Chiklin and his comrades liquidate the kulaks by floating them on a raft into the sea along with their families. After that, they return to the city and continue their work. The story "The Pit" ends with the death of a girl who found her last refuge in the wall of the pit.
Three motives in the work of Platonov
Platonov wrote that three things struck him in life - love, wind and long road. All these motives are present in the work chapter by chapter, if you refer to it, it will confirm our idea. But it should be noted that these motives are presented in a peculiar presentation of the author. The plot is tied to the image of the road. However, Voshchev, the hero of Platonov, although he is a wanderer, is by no means in the tradition of domestic literature, because, firstly, he is forced to wander, or rather, to wander, due to the fact that he was fired, and secondly, his goal is to search not for adventure, but for truth, the meaning of existence. Wherever this hero then goes, again and again the author returns him to the pit. As if a person's life closes and goes in a circle.
Many events make up the story "The Foundation Pit", but there are no causal relationships between them. The heroes, as it were, are circling around the pit, dreaming of breaking out of this pit. One wanted to go to study, having increased his experience, the other was expecting a retraining, the third dreamed of moving into the leadership apparatus of the party.
The method of editing episodes of a work
Platonov in the composition of the work uses the method of montage of diverse episodes: there is also a bear-hammer, and an activist who enlightens village women in politics, and fists who say goodbye to each other before being sent to sea on a raft.
Some episodes, about which Platonov's work "The Pit" tells, seem completely random and unmotivated: suddenly, in the course of the action, minor characters pop up in close-up, just as suddenly disappearing. As an example, one can cite an unknown man dressed only in trousers, whom Chiklin brought to the office unexpectedly for everyone. The man, swollen with grief, demanded the return of the coffins prepared for the future, which were found in the pit, to his village.
Grotesque
In the dialogue between peasants and workers, it is surprising how casually they talk about death, with what hopelessness and humility they prepare coffins for themselves and their children. The burial box turns into a "children's toy", into a "bed", ceasing to be a symbol of fear. Such a grotesque reality permeates, in fact, the entire story "The Pit".
Allegory
The author of the work, in addition to the grotesque, also uses allegory to convey the madness of events. Thanks to this and the previous methods, the problems of this work. Not finding a character who could, like Judas, point to wealthy peasant families, he chooses a bear for this role. And considering that this is an animal in folklore was never the personification of evil, one can speak here of a double allegory.
The plot of Voshchev's journey is organically intertwined with another - the failed construction of a monumental common proletarian house. But the workers believed to the last that the local proletariat would live in it in a year. This building is associated with the Tower of Babel, because it became a grave for its builders, just as the foundation pit of a house for the proletarians turned into a grave for a girl, for whom, in fact, it was erected.
Although at the beginning of the work Pashkin claims that happiness will “come historically” anyway, it becomes clear by the end of the story that there is no hope for finding the meaning of life in the future, since the present is built on the death of a girl, and adults worked with such persistence on the foundation pit, as as if they were striving to be saved forever in its abyss.
The work "The Pit" after reading leaves a heavy residue on the soul, but at the same time it is felt that Andrei Platonovich is a humanist writer who tells us about the sad events of the story with regret, love and deep compassion for the heroes, who were passed through by the merciless and uncompromising machine of power, striving to turn everyone into an obedient executor of a godless plan.
Description of the characters in the story
Doesn't give Plato detailed external description heroes, their deep inner characteristics. He, like a surrealist artist who works by breaking logical connections at the subconscious level, only slightly touches with his brush portraits of characters living in an immaterial world, devoid of everyday details and interior. For example, there is no data on the appearance of the main character, Voshchev, it is only said that he is thirty years old at the time of the story. In Pashkin's description, an elderly face is indicated, as well as a bent body, not so much from the years lived, but from the "social" load. Safonov had an "actively thinking" face, while Chiklin had a head that was, according to the author's definition, "little stone", while Kozlov had "raw eyes" and a monotonous cloudy face. Such are the heroes in the story "The Pit" (Platonov).
The image of Nastya
To understand the meaning of the work, the image of a girl living with diggers on a construction site is very important. Nastya is a child of the 1917 revolution. Her mother was a bourgeois, that is, a representative of an obsolete class. Rejection of the past is known to mean loss cultural traditions, historical ties and replacing them with ideological parents - Lenin and Marx. According to the author, people who deny their past cannot have a future.
The world of Nastya is mutilated, because the mother, in order to save her daughter, inspires her not to talk about her non-proletarian origin. The propaganda machine has already infiltrated her mind. The reader is horrified when he learns that this heroine advises Safronov to kill the peasants for the cause of the revolution. What will a child turn into when he grows up if he keeps toys in a coffin? The girl dies at the end of the story, and with her the last ray of hope dies for Voshchev and all the other workers. The latter wins in a kind of confrontation between Nastya and the foundation pit. The dead body of a girl lays down in the foundation of a house under construction.
Philosopher Hero
There is a character in the story, who is the so-called homegrown philosopher, who thinks about the meaning of life, strives to live according to his conscience, and seeks the truth. This main character works. He is the spokesman for the position of the author. This character, included in Platonov's novel "The Pit", seriously thought and doubted the correctness of what was happening around. He does not move along with the general line, he seeks to find his own way to the truth. But he never finds her.
The meaning of the title of the story "The Pit"
The title of the story is symbolic. Not only a construction site means a foundation pit. This is a huge grave, a hole that the workers dig for themselves. Many people die here. A happy home for the proletarians cannot be built on a slavish attitude towards human labor and humiliation of human dignity.
Pessimism, which did not hide Platonov (the story "The Pit" and other works), into the vigorous pace of the domestic literature of that time from positive images Party members, meetings and overfulfillment of plans, of course, could not fit in. This author was not at all in step with the times: he was ahead of him.
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Composition
“Then he stopped and looked around. The collective farm followed him and did not stop digging the ground, all the poor and average peasants worked with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.
A.P. Platonov.
In the story "The Foundation Pit" A.P. Platonov depicted the construction of a "general proletarian house" in which all the working people of the city would live.
The "construction of socialism" is considered by Platonov in the context of the biblical legend of the Tower of Babel as a new attempt by mankind to build "a city and a tower as high as heaven." The story tells about the construction of a foundation pit for this symbolic structure. It is known how important it is to build the basement of the house so that it does not collapse from time and natural disasters. Thus, digging a pit is a very important stage in construction and in the story.
The diggers involved in the creation of the foundation pit are lonely people. The meaning of their life is reduced only to hard, exhausting physical labor. These diggers are building the foundation of future happiness, being unhappy people. So, Prushevsky "was afraid of empty home time, he did not know how to live alone."
Chiklin (one gets the impression) as if deliberately trying to exhaust himself as much as possible with work, so that fatigue would save him from heavy, gloomy thoughts, so that he could only fall asleep without thinking about anything.
The diggers have no wives, no children, they are deprived of the simplest, most ordinary happiness. But do they experience joy, satisfaction from the fact that they are building a house of happiness? Feel like missionaries? No, each of them is waiting for any convenient moment to leave this construction.
How symbolic it is: the foundation pit for the house of happiness is “built by people with unconscious faces”, “gloomy and thin”, not people, but robots programmed for only one action - hard, to the point of stupefaction, physical labor.
The foundation pit, which people methodically, without stopping, dig, takes away from the earth "thousands of blades of grass, roots and small soil shelters", the "old natural device" is abolished. Instead of natural life, nature, embodied in blades of grass, grass, roots greedily reaching for the sun, there are “gorges of dreary clay”, a pit for creating ephemeral, invented happiness.
The ditch, which the diggers diligently dig, is perceived as a construction pit, where people, exhausted by labor, are buried alive. These people have been deprived of the ability to think, to think. They are convinced that this construction is above all, and for the sake of it it is necessary to forget about love, the arrangement of family happiness, and spiritual life.
At the bottom of this pit, in the layers of the earth where the diggers worked, a terrible memory of these unfortunate people will be kept! And this land, dug pit, will become the fundamental foundation of the house of happiness. Terrible prospect...
Each of the diggers is very unhappy. Voshchev, who instinctively feels that the meaning of life cannot be reduced to labor to the point of stupefaction, that there must be something else, buries his hope of finding the meaning of life at the bottom of the pit. Here, in the process of exhausting work, it cannot be found. The hero, having come to the brigade and becoming one of those who dig a foundation pit for the common proletarian home, is spared the need and opportunity to think.
The existence of diggers is compared to being at the bottom of "hell". The desire to save the lives of the pit workers, exhausted by overwork, gives rise to the project of using the ravine to expand the pit in the head of the excavator. "The ravine" has always been in the Platonic worldview a symbol of the "bottom of hell".
Chiklin, unrolling the “immovable earth”, “stopped and looked around”: “The collective farm followed him and did not stop digging the earth; all the poor and average peasants worked with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.
How strange it sounds: "they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit." After all, in fact, they are digging themselves a huge, mass grave! But this grave is perceived by diggers as "salvation". Salvation from what? Probably from the reality that is prepared for them by the new state system. In this system, such sacred concepts as family, love, duty lose their meaning ...
And the worst thing is that the foundation pit becomes a grave for a little girl - Nastya. Nastya dies from a lack of warmth: “Instead of toys, she has an iron crowbar, the girl sleeps in one coffin, and uses the second as a red corner.” The author notes: “Many people passed by the barracks, but no one came to visit the sick Nastya, because everyone bowed their heads and thought about complete collectivization.”
Nastya is a symbolic image of communism, the future state. It is no coincidence that Safronov welcomes the girl "as an element of the future." Nastya died, and with her, faith in a brighter future disappeared.
The pit, getting bigger, turns into a girl's grave. The pit, which is dug to create a house of happiness, becomes the burial place of a child, the purest and most holy thing in the world.
