Stages of Gregory's life. Typical and individual

Mikhail Sholokhov... He knows the most...

secret movements of human souls and with

knows how to show with great skill

This. Even his most random heroes,

whose life began and ended on

remain on the same page for a long time -

in your memory.

V.Ya. Shishkov

We can rightfully call M. Sholokhov a chronicler of the Soviet era, its researcher, its singer. He created a whole gallery of images that, in terms of their expressiveness and artistic value, stood on a par with the most remarkable images of advanced literature.

“Quiet Don” is a novel about the fate of the people at a turning point. This is the author’s fundamental point of view on the revolution and the Civil War. The dramatic fates of the main characters, the cruel lessons of the fate of Grigory Melikhov, the main character of the novel, are formed by Sholokhov into the unity of the historical truth of the people on the path of building a new life. By following the thorny path of Gregory's life quest, one can understand how Sholokhov himself managed to solve the problem of the moral quest of his protagonist.

At the beginning of the story, young Gregory - a real Cossack, a brilliant rider, hunter, fisherman and diligent rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. The traditional Cossack commitment to military glory helps him out in his first trials on the bloody battlefields in 1914. Distinguished by exceptional courage, Gregory quickly gets used to bloody battles. However, what distinguishes him from his brothers in arms is his sensitivity to any manifestation of cruelty. To any violence against the weak and defenseless, and as events develop - also a protest against the horrors and absurdities of war. In fact, he spends his entire life in an environment of hatred and fear that is alien to him, becoming embittered and discovering with disgust how all his talent, his entire being goes into the dangerous skill of creating death. He has no time to be at home, with his family, among people who love him.

All this cruelty, filth, and violence forced Gregory to take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he was after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, doubts appeared about his devotion to the tsar, the fatherland and military duty.

In the seventeenth year we see Gregory in chaotic and painful attempts to somehow make up his mind in this “time of troubles.” He seeks political truth in a world of rapidly changing values, guided more often by the external signs of events than by their essence.

At first he fights for the Reds, but their murder of unarmed prisoners repulses him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, committing robbery and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again Gregory’s search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a person completely lost in the cycle of events.

The deep forces of Gregory’s soul push him away from both the Reds and the Whites. “They are all the same! - he says to his childhood friends who are leaning towards the Bolsheviks. “They are all a yoke on the neck of the Cossacks!” And when he learns about the rebellion of the Cossacks in the upper reaches of the Don against the Red Army, he takes the side of the rebels. Now he can fight for what is dear to him, for what he loved and cherished all his life: “It’s as if the days of searching for the truth, trials, transitions and difficult internal struggles were not behind him. What was there to think about? Why was the soul rushing about - in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions? Life seemed mocking, wisely simple. Now it seemed to him that from eternity there had not been such a truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and embittered to the brim, he thought: everyone has their own truth, their own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life and will continue to fight as long as the sun shines on them, as long as warm blood oozes through their veins. We must fight with those who want to take away life, the right to it; you have to fight hard, without swaying, like in a wall, but the intensity of hatred, the hardness will be given by the struggle!”

Both a return to the dominance of officers in the event of a White victory, and the power of the Reds on the Don are unacceptable for Gregory. In the last volume of the novel, demotion as a consequence of disobedience to the White Guard general, the death of his wife and the final defeat of the White Army bring Gregory to the last degree of despair. In the end, he joins Budyonny’s cavalry and heroically fights the Poles, wanting to clear himself of his guilt before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former messenger that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Listnitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but to me everything was still unclear. They both have their own straight roads, their own ends, but since I was seventeen, I’ve been walking along the vilyuzhkas like I’m swaying like a drunk...”

One night, under the threat of arrest, and therefore inevitable execution, Grigory flees his native farm. After long wanderings, longing for his children and Aksinya, he secretly returns. Aksinya hugs him, presses her face to his wet overcoat and sobs: “It’s better to kill him, but don’t leave him again!” Having asked his sister to take the children, he and Aksinya flee at night in the hope of getting to Kuban and starting a new life. Enthusiastic joy fills the soul of this woman at the thought that she is again next to Gregory. But her happiness is short-lived: on the road they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. When they find shelter in a ditch, Gregory buries his Aksinya: “He carefully crushed the wet yellow clay on the grave mound with his palms and knelt for a long time near the grave, bowing his head, quietly swaying.

There was no need for him to rush now. It was all over..."

Hiding for weeks in the thicket of the forest, Grigory experiences an increasingly strong desire to “walk... around his native places, show off like the kids, then he could die...”. He returns to his native village.

Having touchingly described Grigory’s meeting with his son, Sholokhov ends his novel with the words: “Well, the little that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms... This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

Gregory did not have long to enjoy this joy. It is obvious that he returned to die. To die from communist necessity in the person of Mikhail Koshevoy. In a novel full of cruelty, executions and murders, Sholokhov wisely brings down the curtain on this final episode. Meanwhile, an entire human life flashed before us, flashing brightly and slowly fading away. Sholokhov's biography of Gregory is quite voluminous. Gregory lived, in the full sense of the word, when his idyll of life was not disturbed by anything.

He loved and was loved, he lived an extraordinary worldly life on his native farm and was content. He always tried to do the right thing, and if not, well, every person has the right to make a mistake. Many moments of Gregory’s life in the novel are peculiar “escapes” from events that are beyond his mind. The passion of Gregory’s quest is most often replaced by a return to himself, to a natural life, to his home. But at the same time, it cannot be said that Gregory’s life quests reached a dead end, no, he had true love, and fate did not deprive him of the opportunity to be a happy father. But Gregory was forced to constantly look for a way out. from the difficult situations that have arisen. Speaking about Gregory’s moral choice in life, it is impossible to say unambiguously whether his choice was really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better life in life, and this is his desire. was not a simple desire to “live better than everyone else.” It was sincere and affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him, in particular the woman he loved. Despite his fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although only for a very short time. But even these short minutes of much-needed happiness were enough. They were not lost in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain.

>Essays based on the work Quiet Don

The path of quest of Grigory Melikhov

The epic novel by M. A. Sholokhov “Quiet Don” (1928-1940) is a work about the life of the Don Cossacks during the civil war. The main character of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, is a worthy son of his father, a loving and fair person, a seeker of truth. Gregory's personal development against the backdrop of changing, often hostile events in the world is the main problem of the novel. The author masterfully depicts the stages of formation and development of the hero's character, his exploits and disappointments, and most importantly, the search for a path in life.

The image of Grigory Melekhov is complex and contradictory. It combines family, social, historical and love lines. He cannot be considered separately from other characters. He is in close unity with his parents, his family and other Cossacks. The “millstones” of the war did not spare Gregory. They walked through his soul, crippling it and leaving bloody traces. On the battlefields he matured, received many awards, supported the Cossack honor, but at what cost. The kind and humane Gregory became hardened, his character was strengthened, and he became different. If after the first murder he could not sleep at night, tormented by his conscience, then over time he learned to mercilessly kill the enemy and even developed the technique of a fatal blow. However, until the last chapter he remained a loving, open and fair person.

In search of the truth, Gregory rushed from one camp to another, from “red” to “white”. As a result, he became a renegade. He even envied those who firmly believed in one truth and fought for only one idea. The hero experienced moral fluctuations not only at the front, but also at home. On the one hand, the devoted and loving Natalya was waiting for him, and on the other hand, all his life he loved Aksinya, the wife of Stepan Astakhov. This ambiguous position in different social spheres indicates that Gregory is a doubtful nature. He always lived “between two fires.” The author himself sympathizes with his hero - a man who lived in troubled times, when all moral guidelines were shifted.

Having still not understood what the “truth” was and why this senseless war was needed, having lost almost all his loved ones and relatives, at the end of the novel Gregory returned to his native land. The only person who related him to the earth and this huge world was his son Mishatka. According to the author, this is exactly what the life of a Cossack could have been like: the son returned to his mother, that is, to the Cossack land. Perhaps this was the “truth” that Gregory had been looking for for so long.

Sections: Literature

Lesson plan.

History of the Melekhov family. Already in the history of the family, the character of Gregory is laid down.
Portrait description of Gregory in comparison with his brother Peter (it was Gregory, and not Peter, who was the successor of the “Turk” family - the Melekhovs.)
Attitude to work (house, Listnitsky estate Yagodnoye, longing for the land, eight returns home: an ever-increasing craving for home, thriftiness.
The image of Gregory at war as the embodiment of the author's concept of war (debt, coercion, senseless cruelty, destruction). Gregory never fought with his Cossacks, and Melekhov’s participation in the internecine fratricidal war is never described.
Typical and individual in the image of Gregory. (why does Melekhov return home without waiting for the amnesty?)
Points of view of writers and critics on the image of Grigory Melekhov

In criticism, debates about the essence of the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov still continue.

At first there was an opinion that this is the tragedy of the renegade.

He, they say, went against the people and therefore lost all human traits, became a lone wolf, a beast.

Refutation: the renegade does not evoke sympathy, but they cried over the fate of Melekhov. And Melekhov did not become a beast, did not lose the ability to feel, suffer, and did not lose the desire to live.

Others explained Melekhov's tragedy as a delusion.

Here it was true that Gregory, according to this theory, carried within himself the traits of the Russian national character, the Russian peasantry. They further said that he was half owner, half hard worker. /quote Lenin about the peasant (article about L. Tolstoy))

So Gregory hesitates, but in the end he gets lost. Therefore, he must be condemned and pitied.

But! Gregory is confused not because he is the owner, but because in each of the warring parties does not find absolute moral truth, which he strives for with the maximalism inherent in Russian people.

1) From the first pages Gregory is depicted in everyday creative peasant life:

Fishing
With a horse at a watering hole
In love,
Scenes of peasant labor

C: “His feet confidently trampled the ground”

Melekhov is merged with the world, is part of it.

But in Gregory, the personal principle, Russian moral maximalism with its desire to get to the essence, without stopping halfway, and not to put up with any violations of the natural course of life, is unusually clearly manifested.

2) He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions.(this is especially evident in relations with Natasha and Aksinya:

The last meeting of Gregory with Natalya (Part VII Chapter 7)
The death of Natalya and related experiences (Part VII Ch. 16-18)
Death of Aksinya (Part VIII Chapter 17)

3) Gregory characterized by an acute emotional reaction to everything that happens, him responsive on the impressions of life heart. It has developed feeling of pity, compassion, This can be judged by the following lines:

While making hay, Grigory accidentally cut off ********* (Part I Chapter 9)
Episode with Franya part 2 chapter 11
Vanity with the murdered Austrian (Part 3, Chapter 10)
Reaction to the news of Kotlyarov’s execution (Part VI)

4) Staying always honest, morally independent and upright in character, Gregory showed himself to be a person capable of action.

Fight with Stepan Astakhov over Aksinya (Part I Ch. 12)
Leaving Aksinya for Yagodnoye (Part 2 Ch. 11-12)
Collision with the sergeant (part 3, chapter 11)
Breakup with Podtelkov (Part 3, Chapter 12)
Collision with General Fitzhalaurav (Part VII Chapter 10)
The decision, without waiting for an amnesty, to return to the farm (Part VIII, Chapter 18).

5) Captivates the sincerity of his motives– he did not lie to himself anywhere, in his doubts and tossing. His internal monologues convince us of this (Part VI Ch. 21,28)

Gregory is the only character who given the right to monologues- “thoughts” that reveal his spiritual origin.

6) It is impossible to “obey dogmatic rules” They forced Grigory to abandon the farm, the land, and go with Aksinya to the Listnitsky estate with a koshokh.

There, Sholokhov shows , social life disrupted the course of natural life. There, for the first time, the hero broke away from the earth, from his origins.

“An easy, well-fed life,” spoiled him. He became lazy, put on weight, and looked older than his years.”

7) But too much the people's beginning is strong in Gregory so as not to be preserved in his soul. As soon as Melekhov found himself on his own land during the hunt, all the excitement disappeared, and an eternal, main feeling trembled in his soul.

8) This abyss, fueled by man’s desire for regret and the destructive tendencies of the era, widened and deepened during the First World War. (true to duty - active in battles - rewards)

But! The more he delves into military operations, the more he is drawn to the earth, to work. He dreams of the steppe. His heart is with his beloved and distant woman. And his soul is gnawing at his conscience: “... it’s difficult to kiss a child, to open and look into his eyes.”

9) The revolution returned Melekhov to the land, with his beloved, to his family, and children. And he wholeheartedly sided with the new system . But the same revolution his cruelty towards the Cossacks, his injustice towards prisoners, and even towards Gregory himself pushed again him on the warpath.

Fatigue and embitterment lead the hero to cruelty - Melekhov’s murder of sailors (it was after this that Grigory will wander around the earth in “monstrous enlightenment,” realizing that he has gone far from what he was born for and what he fought for.

“Life is going wrong, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” he admitted.

10) Having stood up with all his inherent energy for the interests of the workers and therefore became one of the leaders of the Veshensky uprising, Gregory is convinced that it did not bring the expected results: the Cossacks suffer from the white movement just as they suffered from the red ones before. (peace did not come to the Don, but the same nobles who despised the ordinary Cossack, the Cossack peasant, returned.

11) But Gregory the feeling of national exclusivity is alien: Grigory has deep respect for the Englishman, a mechanic with work problems.

Melekhov prefaces his refusal to evacuate overseas with a statement about Russia: “No matter what the mother is, she is dearer than a stranger!”

12) And salvation for Melekhov again - a return to the land, to Aksinya, and children . Violence disgusts him. (he releases relatives of the Red Cossacks from prison) drives a horse to save Ivan Alekseevich and Mishka Koshevoy.)

13) Moving on to the reds in the last years of the civil war, Gregory became , according to Prokhor Zykov, “fun and smooth " But it is also important that the roles Melekhova did not fight with his own , but was on the Polish front.

In Part VIII, Gregory’s ideal is outlined: “ He was going home to eventually get to work, live with the children, with Aksinya...”

But his dream was not destined to come true. Mikhail Koshevoy ( representative revolutionary violence) provoked Gregory to run away from home, from children, Aksinya .

15) He is forced to hide in the villages, join Fomin's gang.

The lack of a way out (and his thirst for life did not allow him to go to execution) pushes him to an obvious wrong.

16) All that Grigory has left by the end of the novel are children, mother earth (Sholokhov emphasizes three times that Grigory’s chest pain is cured by lying on the “damp earth”) and love for Aksinya. But even this little remains with the death of the beloved woman.

“Black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun” (this characterizes the strength of Gregory’s feelings and the degree of sensation or loss).

“Everything was taken from him, everything was destroyed by merciless death. Only the children remained, but he himself still frantically clung to the ground, as if, in fact, his broken life was of some value to him and to others.”

In this craving for life there is no personal salvation for Grigory Melekhov, but there is an affirmation of the ideal of life.

At the end of the novel, when life is reborn, Grigory threw his rifle, revolver, cartridges into the water, and wiped his hands “ He crossed the Don across the blue March ice and walked briskly towards the house. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms...”

Critics' opinions on the ending.

Critics argued for a long time about the future fate of Melekhov. Soviet literary scholars argued that Melekhov would join socialist life. Western critics say the venerable Cossack will be arrested the next day and then executed.

Sholokhov left the possibility of both paths open with an open ending. This is not of fundamental importance, because at the end of the novel, what constitutes essence humanistic philosophy of the main character of the novel, humanity inXX century: ““under the cold sun” the vast world shines, life continues, embodied in the symbolic picture of a child in the arms of his father.(the image of a child as a symbol of eternal life was already present in many of Sholokhov’s “Don Stories”; “The Fate of a Man” also ends with it.

Conclusion

The path of Grigory Melekhov to the ideal of true life - this is a tragic path gains, mistakes and losses that the entire Russian people went through in the 20th century.

“Grigory Melekhov is an integral person in a tragically torn time.” (E. Tamarchenko)

Portrait, character of Aksinya. (Part 1 Ch. 3,4,12)
The origin and development of love between Aksinya and Gregory. (Part 1, Chapter 3, Part 2, Chapter 10)
Dunyasha Melekhova (part 1 chapter 3,4,9)
Daria Melekhova. The drama of fate.
Ilyinichna's maternal love.
Natalia's tragedy.

Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and fratricidal civil war, the attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, Cossack freedom and the fate of the people merged together. The strong character, integrity and rebellion inherited from his father have haunted him since his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, disdaining public morality and his father’s prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person who stands up for justice. The author shows his hard work in scenes of hunting, fishing, and haymaking. Throughout the entire novel, in harsh battles on one side or the other, he searches for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, its glorious victories, in Voronezh the Cossacks hear from a local old man the phrase thrown after them with pity: “My dear... beef!” The elderly man knew that there is nothing worse than war, this is not an adventure in which you can become a hero, it is dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Gregory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The first to fall from his horse was the cornet Lyakhovsky. Prokhor galloped at him... With a cutter, like a diamond on glass, he cut out Gregory’s memory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhor’s horse with barbed slabs of teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind him... They fell again. The Cossacks and horses fell."
In parallel, the author shows events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how much simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under their palms, we won’t be able to wait for those dear to our hearts! No matter how many tears stream from swollen and faded eyes, it will not wash away the melancholy! No matter how much you cry on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the eastern wind will not carry their cries to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!”
The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of hardships and deaths that change all the foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious things that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty, intransigence, and thirst for the blood of his enemies as the Whites. War destroys the smooth life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why the fratricidal war is being waged. For whose sake and what should they die in the prime of life? After all, life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hope, and opportunity. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; it is they, not the commanders, who will starve and die.
There are also characters in the work who think completely differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country solely as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else’s game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier, whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind, fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He is not the only one who thinks about the terrible downside of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It’s easier to kill someone else who has broken their hand in this matter than to crush a louse. The man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Grigory - Aksinya, is perceived as a death sentence for all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all living people; it is not for nothing that Gregory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees above him a black sky and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two warring sides. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t feel sorry for the children either.”
Realizing that the war is killing the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise his children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. in his immortal work, he raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by burning fires, Grigory’s life became black...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.

At the beginning of the story, young Gregory - a real Cossack, a brilliant rider, hunter, fisherman and diligent rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. The traditional Cossack commitment to military glory helps him out in his first trials on the bloody battlefields in 1914. Distinguished by exceptional courage, Gregory quickly gets used to bloody battles. However, what distinguishes him from his brothers in arms is his sensitivity to any manifestation of cruelty. To any violence against the weak and defenseless, and as events develop - also a protest against the horrors and absurdities of war. In fact, he spends his entire life in an environment of hatred and fear that is alien to him, becoming embittered and discovering with disgust how all his talent, his entire being, goes into the dangerous skill of creating death. He has no time to be at home, with his family, among people who love him.

The deep forces of Gregory’s soul push him away from both the Reds and the Whites. “They are all the same!? he says to childhood friends leaning towards the Bolsheviks.? They are all a yoke on the neck of the Cossacks!” And when he learns about the rebellion of the Cossacks in the upper reaches of the Don against the Red Army, he takes the side of the rebels. Now he can fight for what is dear to him, for what he loved and cherished all his life: “As if the days of searching for the truth, searching, transitions and difficult internal struggles were not behind him. What was there to think about? Why was your soul rushing about? in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions? Life seemed mocking, wisely simple. Now it seemed to him that from eternity there had not been such a truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and embittered to the brim, he thought: everyone has their own truth, their own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life and will continue to fight as long as the sun shines on them, as long as warm blood oozes through their veins. We must fight with those who want to take away life, the right for it; you have to fight hard, without swinging,? like in the wall? and the intensity of hatred, the firmness will be given by struggle!”

Both a return to the dominance of officers in the event of a White victory, and the power of the Reds on the Don are unacceptable for Gregory. In the last volume of the novel, demotion as a consequence of disobedience to a White Guard officer, the death of his wife and the final defeat of the White Army bring Gregory to the last degree of despair. In the end, he joins Budyonny’s cavalry and heroically fights the Poles, wanting to clear himself of his guilt before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former messenger that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Litsvitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but to me everything is still unclear. They both have their own straight roads, their own ends, but since I was seventeen, I’ve been walking along the vilyuzhki like a drunken swaying...”

The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of the Russian Cossacks as a whole. The Cossacks never broke their hats for anyone, they lived separately, isolated from the rest of the world, they feel some of their exclusivity, peculiarity and strive to preserve it. For the majority of ordinary Cossacks, both white and red are “non-residents” who brought discord and war to the Don land. No matter which side the Cossacks fight on, they want one thing: to return to their native farm, to their wife and children, to plow the land, to run their farm.

One night, under the threat of arrest, and therefore inevitable execution, Grigory flees his native farm. After long wanderings, longing for his children and Aksinya, he secretly returns. Aksinya hugs him, presses her face to his wet overcoat and sobs: “It’s better to kill, but don’t leave!” Having asked his sister to take the children, he and Aksinya flee at night in the hope of getting to Kuban and starting a new life. Enthusiastic joy fills the soul of this woman at the thought that she is again next to Gregory. But her happiness is short-lived: on the road they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. When they find shelter in a ditch, Gregory buries his Aksinya: “He carefully crushed the wet, yellow clay on the grave mound with his palms and knelt for a long time near the grave, bowing his head, quietly swaying. There was no need for him to rush now. It was all over..."

Having touchingly described Grigory’s meeting with his son, Sholokhov ends his novel with the words: “Well, the little that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms. This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

He loved and was loved, he lived an extraordinary worldly life on his native farm and was content. He always tried to do the right thing, and if not, well, every person has the right to make a mistake. Many moments of Gregory's life in the novel are peculiar “escapes” from events that are beyond his mind. The passion of Gregory's quest is most often replaced by a return to himself, to natural life, to his home. But at the same time, it cannot be said that Gregory’s life quest has reached a dead end, no. He had true love, and fate did not deprive him of the opportunity to be a happy father. But Gregory was forced to constantly look for a way out of the difficult situations that had arisen. Speaking about Gregory’s moral choice in life, it is impossible to say unambiguously whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better lot in life, and this desire was not a simple desire to “live better than everyone else.” It was sincere and affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him, in particular the woman he loved. Despite his fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although only for a very short time. But even these short minutes of much-needed happiness were enough. They were not lost in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain. There is no particular fault of Gregory in the way his fate turned out: he did not choose the burden in which to live. But one thing can be said: Melekhov is broken, but not broken, crippled, but not disfigured by the war, like Mitka Korshunov or Fomin. He did not bend his soul, and if he went against his conscience somewhere, he paid himself to the end for it. And Mishatka, sitting in his father’s arms, is his best reward for everything from an unkind fate. M. Sholokhov, like Tolstoy, emphasizes the decisive role of the people in history.

Describing his idea for the image of the main character of “Quiet Don,” M. Sholokhov wrote: “I wanted to talk about the charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov, but I was not completely successful.” It failed, as we see it, not because of a lack of skill (the writer perfectly understood the scale of the figure he created), but because in him the human spirit rose to the heights of perfection and sank to the depths of despair. Grigory Melekhov's path to the ideal of true life is a tragic path of gains, mistakes and losses that was passed by all the Russian people in the 20th century.