Essay “A novel of caution (Evgeny Zamyatin “We”). “We” by E. I. Zamyatin - a warning novel VI. Teacher's final words

I ask: what do people talk about from the very cradle -
prayed, dreamed, suffered?
E. Zamyatin.

Goals:

• Expand students’ knowledge and ideas about the “dystopian” genre and its features.
• Develop the ability to analyze and compare works of art.
• Instill a love for the artistic word, cultivate self-esteem.

Write on the board:

• "The Beneficial Yoke of Reason";
• “the most difficult and highest love is cruelty”;
• “mathematically infallible happiness”;
• “thoughts not clouded by madness pizza”;
• “the soul is a serious illness”;
• “We are the happiest arithmetic mean”;
• “You need to love mercilessly.”

During the classes

Teacher's word.

And God created man from the dust of the ground, and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: You will eat from every tree of the garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day that you eat its fruit you will surely die.

The man disobeyed. Therefore, sin entered our world.

Appeal to the epigraph: “I ask: what have people been praying for, dreaming about, tormenting from the very cradle?”

And they dreamed of how to return the lost paradise, to revive the Golden Age, wanting, if not in practice, then at least in the imagination to create an ideal, orderly model of human coexistence. There are enough projects of an ideal state in world history and, of course, in literature (Thomas More, Tommaso Campanela, N. Chernyshevsky). And if the utopians saw their task in creating a “brave new world,” then for Zamyatin the artist, an eyewitness of the revolutionary elements, it was important to warn about the dangers on the path to paradise, about its too high price.

Already on the first pages of the novel, Yevgeny Zamyatin creates a model of an ideal, from the point of view of utopians, state, where the long-awaited harmony of public and personal is found. The main character D-503, a mathematician, builder of Integral, conducts a dialogue with his ancestors in diary entries. He is perplexed by the ignorance of his distant ancestors and admires the correct life of the United State, where the “wild state of freedom” is replaced by “mathematically infallible happiness.

Role-playing game.

I am the ancient ancestor to whom D-503 addresses, and you are the “numbers” (I-330, D-503, O-90), you are the “happiest arithmetic mean.”

What is your happiness, citizens of the United State? At what moments in your life do you feel happiest? (Students' answers).

One of the wise men said: “Love and hunger rule the world.” You conquered hunger with oil food, but what about love? (Students' answers).

Art first of all presupposes freedom of creativity. Are there really no creative people or dissidents in the United State? (Students' answers.)

“The only way to save a person from crime is to save him from freedom,” you say. How can you rid a person of freedom? (Students' answers).

Conversation with the class.

You spoke so convincingly about “mathematically infallible happiness,” and critics of Soviet Russia accused the writer precisely because he portrayed “communism in the form of some kind of super-barracks” and distorted the socialist future. Alexander Voronsky argued especially passionately with Zamyatin, saying: “The pamphlet misses the mark.”

How completely did Zamyatin’s prophecies and warnings come true?

(Reality in our country temporarily surpassed even Zamyatin’s worst fears.In the 30s and 40s, millions of people were turned into “numbers,” but numbers were written not on gold plaques, but on camp pea coats. And A. Voronsky was among those who were shot under one of these nameless numbers.)

Zamyatin’s language is unusual, the novel is piled with oxymoronic expressions (“the beneficial yoke of reason,” “the most difficult and highest love is cruelty,” etc.).

Read out the oxymorons written out at home.

How can we explain such a conglomeration of oxymoronic expressions?

(The world depicted in the novel is a world of inverted ethics, perverting the true, traditional meaning of words.And what words! The main ones in the spiritual universe! In writing on the board, we underline the words: freedom, happiness, love, soul).

The central idea of ​​any utopia – universal equality – turns into universal averageness in Zamyatin’s dystopia; to be original is to violate equality. The slightest manifestation of freedom is considered a crime. “Happiness lies in unfreedom,” say the heroes of the novel.

However, human nature cannot tolerate such an impersonal existence. As soon as a person comes face to face with the natural world, even for a moment, living human emotions and passions immediately make themselves felt. The main character D-503, enthusiastically admiring the reason of the United State, falls in love. “Your business is bad,” says the doctor, “apparently, you have formed a soul.”

Vague aspirations are revealed in a thousand “numbers”. The high-voltage wall fencing the United State is collapsing. Riot... And then a conversation takes place between the protagonist and the Benefactor.

Zamyatinsky’s Benefactor is the last child of the Devil who tempted Christ and a direct descendant of the Grand Inquisitor Dostoevsky, and the conversation between the Benefactor and D-503 is a continuation of reflection on eternal and painful questions:

• what is freedom?
• Why does a person need it?

Re-read the scenes of the conversation between the Great Benefactor and the hero D-503 (entry 36). Then turn to Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, re-read “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”. Compare with the ideas of Zamyatin’s novel the statements of the Grand Inquisitor Dostoevsky addressed to Jesus. Show how in Zamyatin’s novel the “law” of realizing earthly paradise, discovered by the Grand Inquisitor, was implemented?

(“By believing in my word,” said Christ, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”Both Dostoevsky's Inquisitor and Zamyatin's Benefactor deny the divine freedom of man inherent in him by nature itself. Consequently, they look at man as material for an impersonal totalitarian state. The “good” they promise people is the “good” of voluntary slaves, moral and social dependents).

Conclusion.

What does E. Zamyatin warn his contemporaries and descendants against and why is the novel “We” classified as a dystopian genre?

(There is no happiness without freedom and no good without good!Evgeny Zamyatin in the novel “We” showed the absurdity of the utopian world, because utopian ideas cross out the question of the human personality, of individualism).

Composition

E. I. Zamyatin wrote his dystopian novel “We” in 1920. At the center of the work is a description of a state that has achieved the utopian idea of ​​communism and socialism. All residents of this society have only “numbers” instead of names.

The main character of the novel is D-503. It is on his behalf that the story is told about the life of a society in the distant future. D-503 writes a diary; thanks to his entries, the reader can imagine how an ordinary representative of the society of the future lives, thinks, and feels.

It turns out that in the new society everything has become automatic. People don't look like people anymore. These are rather machines that act strictly on command. All their behavior is based on the instructions of the great Tablet. They wake up, fall asleep, eat, drink, and walk only on command at strictly defined hours. Intimate life for residents occurs only according to a schedule and only with the person who is registered with him. Only during an hour of intimate contact can these people lower the curtains in their glass houses.

The state tries to completely control the lives of its citizens. They are obliged to think correctly, to feel correctly. Naturally, it is easy to assume that any free-thinking is simply unacceptable here.

But Zamyatin’s “numbers” are still living people, born by father and mother and only raised by the state. When dealing with living people, the United State cannot rely only on slavish obedience. The happiness of “numbers” is ugly, but the feeling of happiness must be true. Consequently, the task of a totalitarian system is not to completely destroy the individual, but to limit it from all sides: movement - by the Green Wall, lifestyle - by the Tablet, intellectual search - by the Unified State Science, which never makes mistakes.

From the very beginning of the novel, we are talking not about people, but about “numbers” - this is extremely immoral and cruel. But there is an explanation for this in the United State: “There is nothing happier than numbers living according to the harmonious eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitation, no delusions.” Everything that is bright and good is denied, including love. From the point of view of the United State, love is a disease.

I believe that the entire novel is one big warning to zealous builders of communism. And not only communism. After all, any utopian idea is utopian because it is not capable of existing in reality. It is impossible to make everyone equal and happy. To do this, you need to kill everything human in people, destroy the soul. It turned out that Zamyatin’s novel was also a very correct prediction. Although the work was written in 1920, the author foresaw the terrible times of the reign of Stalin in Russia and Hitler in Germany. These rulers “built happiness” at the cost of human lives and freedom.

So in the work, the city residents are building the Integral. This is a symbol of absolute happiness for everyone. This happiness consisted in “bending the wild curve, straightening it along a tangent - an asymptote - in a straight line. Because the line of the United State is a straight line. The great, divine, precise, wise straight line - the wisest of lines...”

It becomes scary from the attitude “everyone should be happy.” And those who are “unhappy” will be forced: “If they do not understand that we bring them mathematically unmistakable happiness, it is our duty to force them to be happy.”

As the hero later found out, the system “will not let anyone out of its clutches.” Dissenters will be punished, severely punished. They are either destroyed or subjected to the “Great Operation”. The main character, who rebelled and did not want to hush up the truth and continue to submit to the system, is placed on the operating table and “some kind of splinter is pulled out of his head.”

Zamyatin wanted to warn his contemporaries and descendants what life under the yoke of totalitarianism could lead to. The work was written in the first post-revolutionary years. But, without wanting it, Zamyatin turned out to be a seer. Therefore, the novel “We” was originally written as a warning, but it also became visionary.

Other works on this work

tale Zamyatin uses the artistic means of folk stage art - the traditions of booths, buffoons, and fair performances. At the same time, the experience of Russian folk comedy was in its own way combined with the experience of Italian

Zamyatin was convinced that the basis of modern visual media should be a fusion of reality, “everyday life” with “fantasy” and convention. He was attracted by the characteristic, grotesque figurative drawing, subjectively colored language. He gravitated towards all this in his prose as an artist, and defended and propagated the same as a critic. But most of all, and first of all, he defended the independence of creativity. He wrote in 1924: “Truth is what is primarily lacking in today’s literature. Writer...

I’m too used to speaking cautiously and with caution. That is why very little literature now fulfills the task assigned to it by history: to see our amazing, unique era with everything that is disgusting and beautiful in it.”

Zamyatin's independent and unyielding position made his position in Soviet literature increasingly difficult. Since 1930, it has practically ceased to be printed. The play “The Flea” was removed from the repertoire, and the tragedy “Attila” never received permission to be staged. Under these conditions, Zamyatin wrote a letter to Stalin in 1931 and asked him to allow him to go abroad. Zamyatin’s request was supported by Gorky, and in November 1931 Zamyatin left abroad. From February 1932 he lived in Paris.

Abroad. Among the Russian emigration, Zamyatin kept to himself, maintaining relations only with a narrow circle of close friends in Russia - the writer A. Remizov, the artist Yu. Annenkov and some others. N. Berberova, in her book of memoirs “My italics,” wrote about Zamyatin: “He didn’t know anyone, didn’t consider himself an emigrant, and lived in the hope of returning home at the first opportunity. I don’t think he believed that he would live to see such an opportunity, but for him it was too scary to finally give up this hope...” Until the end of his life, Zamyatin not only retained Soviet citizenship and a Soviet passport, but also continued to pay for his apartment in Leningrad on the street. Zhukovsky.

In Paris, he worked on film scripts - he filmed Gorky’s “At the Lower Depths” and “Anna Karenina” for French cinema. But the main creative idea for Zamyatin in the last years of his life was the novel “The Scourge of God” - about the leader of the Huns, the ruler of Great Scythia Atilla.

The beginning of this topic was laid by a play in 1928. Zamyatin believed that in the history of mankind one can find, as it were, overlapping eras, reflected in one another. The times of the great migration of peoples seemed to him to be so similar to the era of the October Revolution - the era of devastating campaigns of tribes from the East, the collision of the already aging Roman civilization with a wave of fresh barbarian peoples. In the play and especially in the novel, Zamyatin wanted to voice this roll call of times in such a way that it would have meaning and interest for the contemporary reader. The novel remained unfinished. The written chapters were published in Paris in a circulation of 200 copies after the death of the writer.

IN In the letter to Stalin mentioned above, Zamyatin wrote:

“...I ask that you allow me and my wife to temporarily... go abroad so that I can return back as soon as it becomes possible for us to serve big ideas in literature without serving little people, as soon as we the view on the role of the artist of words will partly change.” Zamyatin did not live to see these times - he died in Paris in 1937 from angina pectoris (as angina was called then). Nevertheless, they are coming, and Zamyatin finally got the opportunity to return to his homeland - to return with his works.

RANGE OF CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMS

Dystopia Stream of consciousness

1. How did E. Zamyatin greet the revolution of 1917? In what works did he evaluate the events of October?

2. What is the plot of the novel "We"? What is the meaning of the love story depicted in Roma?

3. What real phenomena and processes of the present gave Zamyatin the basis for depicting fantastic pictures of the future?

4. What is dystopia? Determine the place of Zamyatin's novel

V a number of works of this genre.

5. What is the significance of Zamyatin’s warnings for our time?

6. What role does Zamyatin’s inner mind play in the narrative?

* nolog?

7. What forced the writer to leave the Soviet Union and how did he show himself abroad?

Essay topics

1. The image of the narrator (D-503) in the novel “We”, his role in the current

2. The story of the main character(I-330) of the novel “We”, the meaning of her aspirations and her fate.

3. Portrayal of love in the novel "We". What is the significance of this human feeling for Zamyatin?

Abstract topic

Anenkov Yu. Evgeniy Zamyatin//Lit. studies.- 1989.-

№ 5.

IN based on the article - memories graphic artist Yuri Annenkov, who knew Zamyatin closely and left us a well-known portrait of the writer.

The return of Evgeny Zamyatin.“Round” table “Lit. gas you." Conducted by S. Selivanova and K. Stepanyan // Lit. newspaper.- 1989.-

IN the materials of the round table are represented quite widely

a wide range of judgments of modern literary scholars and critics

R Zamyatin's work.

Z a m i t i n E. I. We: Novel, stories / Intro. Art. I. O. Shaitanova. - M., 1990.

The composition of the book is interesting. The works are arranged in such a way

Zamyatin E.I. Selected works /Preface. V. B. Shklovsky; Entry Art. V. A. Keldysh. - M., 1989.

The book is the most complete collection of Zamyatin's prose to date. It consistently and completely traces

the writer’s creative path is explored, his pre-October prose is characterized, its artistic originality is revealed, and the novel “We” is analyzed meaningfully and in detail. For the first time, the circumstances that prompted Zamyatin to leave the country abroad are illuminated, as well as the opinions of artists of the Russian Abroad about him.

BORIS PILNYAK (1894-1938)

The beginning of the way. Among the literary names consigned to oblivion for decades, the name of Boris Andreevich Vogau (literary pseudonym Boris Pilnyak) turned out to be forgotten especially firmly. He was almost untouched by the rehabilitation process until very recently. And once upon a time this name was accompanied by unusually loud fame. At first, after the publication of the novel “The Naked Year” in 1922, the brightest talent was seen in Pilnyak

new literature.

Much is known about the writer’s pre-literary biography from numerous interviews, articles, the writer’s conversations about himself, and written autobiographies of different years.

in Mozhaisk, Moscow province; Father was a zemstvo, an honest man of character who did not live in the same den with the “chairmen.”

“My father worked as a veterinarian and, after a nomadic life, soon settled in Kolomna, which became a real homeland for Pilnyak. Many of his works from the tens and twenties are signed with the Kolomna address. Before the revolution, being a Zemstvo meant a lot; it meant the right to independence from the authorities, service not to it, but to society. One of the first stories of Pilnyak (who had just changed his German surname on the occasion of the outbreak of the war to the name of his favorite place in Ukraine - Pilnyanka) “Zemstvo Deed” was written precisely about this right defended by the zemstvo intellectual - to be free and honest. -

Then Pilnyak would return several times to Soviet times, including in the story “Zashtat,” which is considered his last completed work, which would see the light only many years after the tragic death of the writer” (Znamya. - 1987. - No. 5).

This was generally characteristic of Pilnyak - to return to his things, repeat plots or combine them so that a new whole emerged from several stories. Montage was a favorite technique of the 20s, and Pilnyak was one of the innovators of montage prose, which widely covered a variety of material, connecting genuine document and fiction. His first novel was formed from the stories of the revolutionary years, according to the law of montage.

The novel “The Naked Year” as a page in the writer’s biography.

In the winter of 1920 -1921. Pilnyak created the novel “The Naked Year”. As usual, he put the date under the text - 25 Dec Art. Art. 1920 The time of war communism, to which everyone responds in their own way: one - with a warning about a possible tragedy that has already begun, the other - accepting what happened with all its conceivable and inconceivable consequences. They seem to choose the opposite path, but these paths will converge later - in the formula of the sentence passed on both the heretic and the singer of the revolution. Any opinion turns out to be seditious where one is not supposed to have an opinion, where one will, one censorship law reigns.

That is why, even during the period of his sincere enthusiasm, Pilnyak was perceived with caution by Soviet criticism. Instead of glorifying the party mind of the Bolsheviks, Pilnyak glorified the element of natural force, like nowhere else in Russian history, liberated by the revolution, bursting out in a cruel and cleansing flood. That’s how he understood what had happened at the first moment. And so he presented it - fragmentarily, torn apart, as if following the creative advice of Andrei Bely, who greatly influenced him: “It is almost impossible to take the revolution as a plot in the era of its movement...” And then - in 1917 - Bely declared : “Revolution is a manifestation of creative forces; there is no place for those forces in the design of life, the content of life is fluid; it flowed out from under the forms, the forms dried up long ago; in them formlessness wells up from the underground...” In “The Naked Year,” the plot does not reproduce a narratively smooth flow of events. It is dismembered and willfully laid out. He is also voiced in different ways -

salmon. It is precisely voiced, because for Pilnyak everything begins in sound - both thought and concept. If he believed that the revolution shook up old Russia, sweeping away the alluvial, superficial European, and exposed the pre-Petrine depths of people’s existence, if he thinks so, then we should not be surprised when in the blizzard we discern either the cry of a devil or the newest words born new reality:

Gweeeeeee,aaaaaaaaaaah

Gla-vboom!

Gla-vboom!

Gu-wuz!

- Goo-woose!

Shooya, gwiiuu, gaaauuu...

The blizzard of insanity that accompanies Pilnyak’s novel as a leitmotif requires historical commentary. Here is at least the Glavbum, which reminds us that by decree of the Council of People's Commissars of May 27, 1919, a publishing monopoly was introduced and, due to a shortage of paper, all its cash reserves were concentrated in the hands of the main department - the Glavbum. That same 1919, the hungry year, the naked year - a novel is being written about it, which, due to publishing difficulties, due to the monopoly of Glavbum, saw the light of day only two years after it was written.

A new language - from a snowstorm. The snowstorm is a symbol of revolution, not found by Pilnyak. The first snowstorms began to swirl among the Symbolists - Andrei Bely, Blok.

However, the very word “symbol” gives an inaccurate impression in relation to Pilnyak’s prose. For the Symbolists, a blizzard is a sign of that which is almost elusive, that which can be predicted and seen clearly. The objective and historical give way to the mysticism of the highest meaning. Pilnyak, on the contrary, is objective to the point of naturalism. The law that he is trying to understand and deduce is the law of natural, and not supernatural life. Nature is related to history. These are essentially two equal elements, one of which - history - embodies eternal variability, the other - nature - unchanging repetition. The variable value is established in relation to the constant: Pilnyak’s historical is always given through the natural - in their metaphorical equality, balance. Not a symbol, but a metaphor - a device of his depiction and his thinking.

“Machines and Wolves”: B. Pilnyak’s method of orientation in the elements of nature and history. Pilnyak as a writer began with the conviction that the elements are always right, and individual existence is valuable only as a part and manifestation of the natural whole. That’s right - “A Whole Life” he called the best of his early stories, published back in 1915. A story about birds. About two large birds living above a ravine. What birds? Unknown and unimportant. They have no name, because there is no person in the story. Its beginning is birth, its ending is death. Such is the eventfulness of natural life.

Nature, not burdened by our experience, not called by us by these names, is capable of offering us, Pilnyak believes, the only lesson - life.

Russian historical thought has always been inclined to express itself metaphorically: both because it was accustomed to caution and secrecy, and because it was always carried out through literature, and was often born in it, inseparable from the poetic word. The method is the same, but the thought changes along with history. Trying to keep up with the fast

in the 20s changes, Pilnyak tries different metaphors, proving the naturalness, that is, the naturalness, the correctness of everything that has happened and is happening. First there was a blizzard, then a wolf appears. “Machines and Wolves” is the first novel about the NEP, as Pilnyak will proudly say, making it clear that he was the first to respond to the revolution and the first to understand the changing course of its events. The wolf is a symbol of the terrible and mysterious, akin to man

V nature. In the novel, man is given the opportunity to feel like a wolf more than once. The wolf and the will are related in sound, and therefore, according to the poetic logic adopted by Pilnyak, they are related in meaning. They laughed at Pilnyak and reproached him: his only hero of October was the wolf.

However, the wolf is a wild will. The fearless wolf is scary. In the form of a blizzard, the element appeared to know no evil; in the form of a wolf, it too often brought evil. Pilnyak tries to combine will with reason, nature with history. In the title of the novel, “Machines and Wolves,” the union plays not a dividing, but a connecting role. A new reality is assembled from the natural and the machine.

Pilnyak’s historical metaphors: “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon.” In 1925, B. Pilnyak created a short story, “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon.”

The thing was written quickly, because it was started no earlier than October 31, the day of Frunze’s death. The author’s short introduction seems to deny any connection with this event: “The plot of this story suggests that the reason for writing it and the material was the death of M. V. Frunze. Personally, I almost didn’t know Frunze, I barely knew him, having seen him twice. I don’t know the actual details of his death, and they are not very significant for me, because the purpose of my story is in no way a report on the death of the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. I find it necessary to convey all this to the reader, so that the reader does not look for genuine facts and living persons in it.”

Apparently, everything is correct: a work of art is not a report and does not allow direct analogies. But in fact: the preface will not confuse the astute reader, but will prompt the slow-witted... And if it suggests that the commandant Gavrilov is the late Frunze, then who is the one, with a small letter called a non-hunching man, who has the right to order the military commissar, contrary to his wishes , lie down on the operating table and arrange it so that he can’t get up from this table? The one in whose quiet office reports are sent from the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the Political and Economic Departments of the OGPU, the People's Commissariat of Finance, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, the People's Commissariat of Labor, whose future speech concerns the USSR, America, England, the entire globe - who is he? When they found out, they didn’t dare admit it to themselves. Now they believe that this was the first word spoken out loud about Stalin.

But Pilnyak did not promise a report, and he does not write a report. Having already established a style of documentary narration, a montage bringing together facts that speak for themselves, here he seems to complement his style with a style that gained popularity in Russian prose precisely during these years - Hoffmannian, named after the great German romantic.

An emergency train from the south arrives in an unnamed city, at the end of which the commander’s saloon car “with sentries on the steps, with curtains drawn behind the mirrored glass windows” gleams. It’s no longer night, but it’s not morning yet. It's not autumn anymore, but it's not winter yet. Unreal light. Ghost town. And it seems that only the commander’s premonition is real in him, all the more real because it gives off the smell that is so familiar to him - blood. This smell is everywhere - even from the pages of Tolstoy, Gavrilov reads it, speaks about it to the only friend who meets him - Popov:

“I’m reading Tolstoy, the old man, “Childhood and Adolescence,” the old man wrote well, “I felt existence, blood... I saw a lot of blood, but... but I’m afraid of surgery, like a boy, I don’t want to, they’ll kill me... The old man understood well about human blood.”

And then he will repeat again: “The old man felt the blood well!” These were the last words Popov heard from Gavrilov.

WITH a story is written using Tolstoy's leitmotif and often

With Tolstoy's method of defamiliarization. Gavrilov arrives in a foreign city, in an enemy camp. Everything here is alien, and even if not seen through his eyes, in the very objectivity of the author’s description it appears as a phantasmagoria, violating the laws of nature and reason:

In the evening, tens of thousands of people went to the cinema, theaters, variety shows, open-air stages, taverns and pubs. There, in places of spectacle, they showed anything, confusing time, space and countries; Greeks as they have never been, Assyrians as they have never been, Jews who have never been, Americans, English, Germans, the oppressed, Chinese who have never been, Russian workers, Arakcheev, Pugachev, Nicholas the First, Stenka Razin; in addition, they showed the ability to speak well or poorly, good or bad legs, arms, backs and chests, the ability to dance and sing well or poorly; in addition, they showed all types of love and different love cases, ones that almost never happen in everyday life. People, dressed up, sat in rows, watched, listened, clapped their hands...

The conventionality of city life, the conventionality of theatrical art, seen through the eyes of a person who does not want to delve into the meaning of this convention and thereby rejects it from himself - this has already happened in Tolstoy. Pilnyakov’s description sounds like a variation on the theme of the description of Wagner’s performance in Tolstoy’s famous treatise “What is Art? ":

On the stage, among the scenery that was supposed to represent a blacksmith's device, sat dressed in tights and a cloak made of skins, in a wig, with a false beard, an actor, with white, weak, non-working hands (in terms of loose movements, most importantly - on the stomach and the absence of muscles shows the actor), and hit the sword with a hammer, which never happens,

which cannot exist at all, and he hit in a way that they never hit with hammers, while, opening his mouth strangely, he sang something that could not be understood.

Tolstoy’s technique, but in the moonlight the landscape loses its literary-quotational appearance and passes into the possession of Pilnyak, either reminding us with the rising of the moon of nature that is unnecessary to the city and forgotten by man, or not accidentally giving this nature a nocturnal, otherworldly, has long been associated with death in moonlight. Moonlight is dead light... Bloody moon...

Pilnyak will never be forgiven for such a vision of illuminating reality.

Boris Pilnyak in the 30s: the novels “Mahogany” and “The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea.” “The Red Tree” is a story in which, as always with Pilnyak, the relationship of the present day with the past, the relatively recent past, is clarified. From everyday life, from mahogany, fused with it, figures of Yakov Skudrin emerge, masterditch-cabinet-makersBezdetov brothers. Po-pilnyakov- These figures are written in a rather rough, choppy manner. And it is convincing: it is not the past, not the connection with it and its remnants that kills the human in them, but the fact that this past itself, its pitiful remnants, they snatch from the hands of people lost in the new reality. They are ready to take everything: Pavlovian chairs,

They felt in the story not only as buyers, but as people who had already purchased power and authority. Behind them is the present. They pushed into oblivion the half-mad “ohlomons”: Ognev, Pozharov, Ozhogov... Not surnames, but pseudonyms with the reflection of a global conflagration on them. “True communists” until nineteen twenty-one...

They have no way into the future. Ozhogov, the younger brother of Yakov Skudrin, the first chairman of the local executive committee, asks his nephew Akim, who came from the capital, if he was kicked out of the party, and, learning that he was not, promises: “... well, not now, then they’ll kick him out later , all Leninists and Trotskyists will be kicked out.”

The story “The Mahogany Tree” was completed on January 15, 1929. Trotsky was exiled from the USSR in February. This event was predetermined much earlier: “The Trotskyist Akim was late for the train, just like for the train of time.”

Municipal educational budgetary institution

secondary educational school of the village of Amzya, Neftekamsk urban district

Literature lesson in 11th grade

On this topic

“The development of the dystopian genre in the novel

E. I. Zamyatina “We”. Fate of the individual

In a totalitarian state"

Prepared by the teacher

Russian language and literature

Fayzullina Gulnaz Mukhametzyanovna

2011-2012 academic year

Goals

1. Definition of the genre of utopia and dystopia
2. Show the skill of E.I. Zamyatin, the humanistic orientation of the work, the affirmation of human values.
3. Development of students' analytical abilities.

Equipment: slides, printed texts, excerpts from the novel.

Epigraphs for the lesson:

(Slide 1)

During the classes

1. Introduction to the purpose of the lesson.

You read E. I. Zamyatin’s novel “We” at home. In the last lesson we learned about the history of the creation and publication of the work. Today we will analyze it. We will try to answer the questions that have probably arisen.

1. Checking homework. 2 groups of students prepared messages on the topics “utopia” and “dystopia” (Slide 2)

Since ancient times, people have dreamed that someday the time would come when there would be complete harmony between man and the world and everyone would be happy. This dream in literature was reflected in the genre of utopia (the founder of the genre is T. More). The authors of utopian works depicted life with an ideal government system, social justice (universal equality). Building a society of universal happiness seemed to be a simple matter. Philosophers argued that it is reasonable enough to structure an imperfect order, put everything in its place - and here you have an earthly paradise, which is more perfect than the heavenly one.

Dystopia is a genre that is also called negative utopia. This is an image of such a possible future, which frightens the writer, makes him worry about the fate of humanity, about the soul of an individual person.The purpose of a utopia is, first of all, to show the world the path to perfection; the purpose of a dystopia is to warn the world about the dangers that await it along this path. Dystopia exposes the incompatibility of utopian projects with the interests of an individual, brings to the point of absurdity the contradictions inherent in utopia, clearly demonstrating how equality turns into equalization, a reasonable state structure turns into violent regulation of human behavior, and technological progress turns into the transformation of man into a mechanism.

What genre do you think E. Zamyatin’s novel belongs to: utopia or dystopia?

All answers are heard.

1. Analysis of the novel. The fate of the individual in a totalitarian state.

1 . Analysis of the novel's title.

The novel is called "We". Why do you think it is named like that? What meaning did the author put into this title?

Students give answers. Sample answers:“we” is the state, this is the mass; the individual loses its meaning, everyone is the same, wearing the same clothes, thinking the same way, everything is subject to a strict schedule that cannot be violated.

The title of the novel reflects the main problem that concerns Zamyatin: what will happen to man and humanity if he is forcibly driven into a “happy future.” “We” can be understood as “me” and “others.” Or it can be like a faceless, solid, homogeneous something: a mass, a crowd, a herd. Zamyatin showed the tragedy of overcoming the human in a person, the loss of a name as the loss of one’s own “I”.

2. Analysis of composition and plot. How is the novel structured? What is its composition?

These are diary entries. A story within a story.

Why did the author choose this particular method of storytelling? What is it used for?

To convey the hero's inner world.

Let's look at the structure of the Unified State. What institutions does it include? How it controls the lives of citizens. Everything is subject to control. Down to such intimate areas of life as the intimacy of a man and a woman and the birth of children.

Now I will ask you to make tables. The first group will write the concepts that make up “we”, the second – “I”

Sample tables

(Slide 3)

It should be noted that numbers live in the United State; the heroes have no names. The main character is D-503

The confrontation between “we” and “I” forms the plot of the novel. It is very difficult to turn a person into a cog of the state machine, to take away his uniqueness, to take away from a person the desire to be free, to love, even if love brings suffering. And such a struggle goes on inside the hero throughout the novel. The form of diary entries helps to look into the inner world. “I” and “we” coexist in it at the same time. At the beginning of the novel, the hero feels like only a part of “we” “... exactly like that: we, and let this “We” be the title of my notes.” But Zamyatin managed to convey the difficult psychological process taking place inside D-503.

1. Psychologism in the novel.

A group of guys had to write a psychological description of the hero using quotes. Let's see what they did.

“I, D-503, the builder of the Integral - I am only one of the mathematicians of the United State.

I defeated the old God and the old life.

This woman had the same unpleasant effect on me as an indecomposable irrational term accidentally inserted into an equation.

An idea came to me: after all, man is designed just as wildly... - human heads are opaque, and only tiny windows inside: eyes.

I felt afraid, I felt trapped.

I unfastened myself from the earth and, like an independent planet, spinning furiously, rushed down...

I became glass. I saw - in myself, inside.

There were two of me. One is the former me, D-503, and the other... Previously, he was only

stuck his shaggy paws out of the shell. And now the whole thing came out... And this one

the other one suddenly jumped out...

It’s so nice to feel someone’s watchful eye, lovingly protecting you from the slightest mistake.

We walked two - one. The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we have not yet been born, we are joyfully maturing... everything is for me.

Ripe. And inevitably, like iron and a magnet, with sweet submission to the exact immutable law - I poured into it... I am the universe. ...How full I am!

After all, I now live not in our reasonable world, but in an ancient, delusional one.

Yes, and the fog...I love everything, and everything is elastic, new, amazing.

I know that I have it - that I am sick. And I also know that I don’t want to get better.

Soul? This is a strange, ancient, long-forgotten word... Why doesn’t anyone have it, but I have...

I want her to be with me every minute, every minute - only with me.

...a holiday - only with her, only if she is nearby, shoulder to shoulder.

And I picked up I. I pressed her tightly to me and carried her. My heart was beating - huge, and with every beat it was pouring out such a violent, hot, such a joyful wave. And even if something shatters there, it’s all the same! If only I could carry her like this, carry her, carry her...

…Who are they"? And who am I: “they” or “we” - do I know?

I am dissolved, I am infinitesimal, I am a point...

It was a terrible dream, and it ended. And I, cowardly, I, an unbeliever, - I was already thinking about self-willed death.

It was clear to me: everyone is saved, but there is no salvation for me, I don’t want salvation...

“You probably have a drop of forest blood in you... Maybe that’s why I love you...”

No one hears me scream: save me from this - save me! If you

I had a mother - like the ancients: mine - that’s exactly the mother. And so that for her – I don’t

The builder of “Integral”, and not the number D-503, and not the molecule of the United State, but a simple human piece - a piece of itself - trampled, crushed, thrown away... And let me nail or be nailed - maybe it’s the same - so that her old lady's wrinkled lips - -

It seems to me that I always hated her, from the very beginning. I fought... But no, no, don’t believe me: I could have saved myself, I didn’t want to, I wanted to die, that was what was dearest to me... that is, not to die, but so that she...

…and where does your finite Universe end? What's next?

Have I ever felt - or imagined that I felt - this? No nonsense, no ridiculous metaphors, no feelings: just facts. Because I'm healthy, I'm completely, completely healthy. I smile - I can’t help but smile: they pulled some kind of splinter out of my head, my head is light, empty.

The next day, I, D-503, appeared to the Benefactor and told him everything I knew about the enemies of happiness. Why might this have seemed difficult to me before? Unclear. The only explanation: my previous illness (soul).

...at the same table with Him, with the Benefactor, - I sat in the famous Gas Room. They brought that woman. She had to testify in my presence. This woman remained stubbornly silent and smiled. I noticed that her teeth were sharp and very white and that it was beautiful.

She looked at me... looked until her eyes were completely closed.

And I hope we will win. More: I am sure we will win. Because reason must win."

Which feeling is stronger than “we”? Love. It is love that helps the hero find himself. What other spiritual values ​​does the hero approach? Towards religion, he wants to have a mother.

"We" wins. But we do not experience a feeling of relief or joy. What feelings did you have while reading the novel? Imagine yourself as residents of the United State.

What would you most dislike in such a world?

The answers may vary.

So, the One State, its absurd logic in the novel is opposed by the awakening soul, that is, the ability to feel, love, suffer. The soul that makes a person a person, a person. The United State could not kill the spiritual, emotional beginning in a person. Why didn't this happen?

Unlike the heroes of Huxley’s novel “Brave New World,” who are programmed at the genetic level, Zamyatin’s numbers are still living people, born of a father and mother and only raised by the state. When dealing with living people, the United State cannot rely only on slavish obedience. The key to stability is for citizens to be “ignited” with faith and love for the state. The happiness of numbers is ugly, but the feeling of happiness must be true.

A person who has not been completely killed is trying to break out of the established framework and, perhaps, will find a place for himself in the vastness of the Universe. But the protagonist's neighbor seeks to prove that the Universe is finite. The Unified State Science wants to fence the Universe with a Green Wall. This is where the hero asks his main question: “Listen,” I tugged at my neighbor. - Listen, I’m telling you! You must, you must answer me, but where does your final Universe end? What's next?

Throughout the novel, the hero rushes between human feeling and duty to the United State, between internal freedom and the happiness of unfreedom. Love awakened his soul, his imagination. A fanatic of the United State, he freed himself from its shackles, looked beyond what was permitted: “What’s next?”

I will consider how the attempt to resist violence ends in the novel.

The riot failed, I-330 falls into the gas Bell, the main character undergoes the Great Operation and coolly watches the death of his former lover. The ending of the novel is tragic, but does this mean that the writer does not leave us hope? Let me note: I-330 does not give up until the very end, D-503 is forcibly operated on, O-90 goes beyond the Green Wall to give birth to her own child, and not a state number.

1. Summarizing.

The novel “We” is an innovative and highly artistic work. Having created a grotesque model of the United State, where the idea of ​​a common life was embodied in “ideal unfreedom”, and the idea of ​​equality - a universal leveling system, where the right to be well-fed required the renunciation of personal freedom, Zamyatin denounced those who, ignoring the real complexity of the world, tried to artificially “Make people happy”. of people".

The novel “We” is a prophetic, philosophical novel. He is full of anxiety for the future. The problem of happiness and freedom is acute in it.

As J. Orwell said: “... this novel is a signal of the danger that threatens man, humanity from the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state - no matter what.”

This work will always be relevant - as a warning about how totalitarianism destroys the natural harmony of the world and the individual. Such works as “We” squeeze slavery out of a person, make him an individual, and warn that one should not bow to “we,” no matter how lofty words surround this “we.” No one has the right to decide for us what our happiness is, no one has the right to deprive us of political, spiritual and creative freedom. And therefore, we, today, must decide what will be most important in our lives - “I” or “we”.

1. Homework.

Answer the questions:

What does Zamyatin warn about with his work?

Dystopia Dystopia (English dystopia) is a direction in fiction and cinema, in the narrow sense a description of a totalitarian state, in a broad sense - any society in which negative development trends have prevailed.

The meaning of the title of the novel “We” in the novel means the United State, which is a utopia. This is a state where there is only a “herd” feeling and unformed personal qualities; a person does not exist as an individual and unconsciously coexists with others like him. After the publication of the novel, the pronoun “We” began to have a negative meaning...

Conflict between “we” and “I” WE I Power of the United State State of freedom Guardian Bureau Love Sentinel Tablet Emotions Green Wall Fantasies State newspaper Creativity Institute of State Poets and Writers Art Mathematically infallible happiness Family, parents, children Unified State Science Beauty Stability Religion Mind Soul , spirituality Music factory Unorganized music Ideal lack of freedom Attachments Equality Originality Child rearing Sexual relations)))

Female and male characters in the novel In general, the male heroes in the novel “We” are more rationalistic, straightforward, have a less stable character, and are characterized by reflection and hesitation. It is I-330 and O-90 - strong characters - who do not hesitate to oppose the United State, in contrast to the reflective male numbers, despite the fact that both heroines are completely different in psychology, appearance, and life goals.

Religion in the novel “Those two in paradise” were presented with a choice: either happiness without freedom – or freedom without happiness; There is no third option. They, fools, chose freedom - and what: it’s clear - then for centuries they yearned for shackles. and only we again figured out how to restore happiness... The benefactor, the machine, the cube, the gas bell, the Guardians - all this is good, all this is majestic, beautiful, noble, sublime, crystal clear. Because it protects our lack of freedom - that is, our happiness. The monstrous logic of the Unified State is demonstrated by the Benefactor himself, drawing before the imagination of the trembling D-503 a picture of the crucifixion; he makes the main character of this “majestic tragedy” not the executed Messiah, but his executioner, correcting the mistakes of a criminal individual, crucifying a person in the name of universal happiness.

Conclusion Still, “We” won. D-503 agreed to the "operation". He calmly watched as I-330 died in the gas bell, his beloved...

In his article “New Russian Prose,” Evgeny Zamyatin called “alloys of fantasy and reality” the most promising form of literature. The troubled time of the revolutionary turning point, when Bulgakov’s run to nowhere is heard with a loud stomp, but for some reason, can only be reflected in the distorting mirrors of science fiction, until it gives way to a time to collect stones. Otherwise, the authors risk distorting the appearance of the era, because the great is seen only from a distance, and if it is not there, then correctly assessing the scale is an impossible task. Therefore, in 1921, Zamyatin confirmed his thought and wrote. By the way, he is one of the first who did this in the world, and in the USSR he became a pioneer.

The author argued that dystopia is a social pamphlet dressed in the artistic form of a fantasy novel. He described his novel “We” as “a warning about the double danger threatening humanity: the hypertrophied power of machines and the hypertrophied power of the state.” It would be a mistake to say that Zamyatin wrote the dystopia as a protest against the revolution and Soviet power. His warning is aimed at helping the new world to beware of excesses and extremes, from which it is a stone's throw to totalitarian dictatorship over the individual. Such a future did not fit into the formula “Freedom. Equality. Brotherhood.”, so the author was not against this principle, but, on the contrary, wanted to preserve it. Harsh, inhumane, equalizing measures for the sake of centralizing life in the country frightened the writer. Gradually, he came to the conclusion that without criticism and debate, the existing political system, created with good intentions, would “tighten the screws” even more. If the war of liberation ends in enslavement, then all sacrifices are in vain. Zamyatin wanted to continue to defend the right to freedom, but on the ideological front, at the level of dialogue, not a rally. However, no one appreciated the sincere impulse: successive tsars attacked the “anti-revolutionary” and “bourgeois” writer. Naively, he thought that it was still possible to have a discussion without immediate condemnation and cruel persecution. The author of the novel “We” paid dearly for his mistake.

In the center of the state of the future stands the crown of the creation of technical thought “Fire-breathing INTEGRAL”. This is a symbolic image of the new power, which completely excludes the category of freedom. From now on, all people are just the technical staff of Integral, its elements and nothing more. Absolute power is embodied in an impeccably cold and dispassionate technique that is, in principle, incapable of feelings. Machines are opposed to people. If now a person adjusts gadgets to suit himself, then in the future they will change roles. The machine “reflashes” the person, setting its own parameters and settings. As a result, the individual is assigned a number, a program is introduced, according to which lack of freedom = happiness, personal consciousness = illness, I = we, creativity = public service, and not “shameless nightingale whistling.” Intimate life is issued using coupons in accordance with the “Table of Sexual Days”. You must come to the person who took the ticket for you. There is no love, there is a duty, provided for and calculated by the many-wise state apparatus.

Collectivity and technology became fetishes of the revolution, and this did not suit Zamyatin. Any fanaticism disfigures the idea and distorts the meaning.

“Even among the ancients - the most mature ones knew: the source of law is force, law is a function of force. And here are two scales: on one there is a gram, on the other there is a ton, on one there is “I”, on the other there is “we”, the United State. Isn’t it clear: to admit that “I” can have some “rights” in relation to the State, and to admit that a gram can balance a ton, is exactly the same thing. Hence the distribution: ton - rights, gram - responsibilities; and the natural path from insignificance to greatness: forget that you are a gram and feel like a millionth part of a ton..."

Casuistic reasoning of this kind is taken from the revolutionary ideologists of that time. In particular, “to forget that you are a gram and feel like a millionth part of a ton...” is practically a quote from Mayakovsky.

The leitmotif of the novel is the agony of rationalism, its deification, which destroys the soul and suppresses the personality. Isolation from nature, from human nature, brings death to society. The image of the Green Wall, which fences off the perfect world of machines and calculations from the “unreasonable world of animals and birds,” demonstrates the horror of global control. It is so easy to rob a person, slander the world around him and impose false ideals that it becomes scary to turn on the TV and listen to advice spoken in a commanding voice.

In his review, another dystopian George Orwell wrote:

“The Benefactor's machine is a guillotine. In Zamyatin's Utopia, executions are commonplace. They are performed publicly, in the presence of the Benefactor, and are accompanied by the reading of odes of praise performed by official poets. The guillotine is, of course, no longer the crude colossus of bygone times, but an improved device that literally destroys the victim in an instant, leaving behind a cloud of steam and a puddle of clean water. Execution is essentially the sacrifice of a person, and this ritual is imbued with the dark spirit of the slave-owning civilizations of the Ancient World. It is this intuitive revelation of the irrational side of totalitarianism - sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself, adoration of the Leader endowed with divine traits - that puts Zamyatin’s book above Huxley’s.”