The main characters are the thunderstorm. A.N. Ostrovsky "The Thunderstorm": description, characters, analysis of the work. Main characters

Federal Agency for Education of the Russian Federation

Gymnasium No. 123

on literature

Speech characteristics of the characters in the drama by A.N. Ostrovsky

"Storm".

Work completed:

10th grade student "A"

Khomenko Evgenia Sergeevna

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Teacher:

Orekhova Olga Vasilievna

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Grade…………………….

Barnaul-2005

Introduction………………………………………………………

Chapter 1. Biography of A. N. Ostrovsky……………………..

Chapter 2. The history of the creation of the drama “The Thunderstorm”…………………

Chapter 3. Speech characteristics of Katerina………………..

Chapter 4. Comparative speech characteristics of Wild and Kabanikha……………………………………………………………

Conclusion……………………………………………………

List of used literature……………………….

Introduction

Ostrovsky's drama "The Thunderstorm" is the most significant work of the famous playwright. It was written during a period of social upsurge, when the foundations of serfdom were cracking, and a thunderstorm was really brewing in the stuffy atmosphere. Ostrovsky's play takes us to the merchant environment, where the Domostroev order was most persistently maintained. Residents of a provincial town live a closed life alien to public interests, in ignorance of what is happening in the world, in ignorance and indifference.

We turn to this drama now. The problems that the author touches on in it are very important for us. Ostrovsky raises the problem of the turning point in social life that occurred in the 50s, the change in social foundations.

After reading the novel, I set a goal for myself to see the peculiarities of the speech characteristics of the characters and find out how the speech of the characters helps to understand their character. After all, the image of a hero is created with the help of a portrait, with the help of artistic means, with the help of characterization of actions, speech characteristics. Seeing a person for the first time, by his speech, intonation, behavior, we can understand his inner world, some vital interests and, most importantly, his character. Speech characteristics are very important for a dramatic work, because it is through it that one can see the essence of a particular character.

In order to better understand the character of Katerina, Kabanikha and Wild, it is necessary to solve the following problems.

I decided to start with the biography of Ostrovsky and the history of the creation of “The Thunderstorm” in order to understand how the talent of the future master of speech characterization of characters was honed, because the author very clearly shows the global difference between the positive and negative heroes of his work. Then I will consider the speech characteristics of Katerina and make the same characteristics of the Wild and Kabanikha. After all this, I will try to draw a definite conclusion about the speech characteristics of the characters and its role in the drama “The Thunderstorm”

While working on the topic, I became acquainted with the articles by I. A. Goncharov “Review of the drama “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky” and N. A. Dobrolyubov “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom.” Moreover, I studied the article by A.I. Revyakin “Features of Katerina’s speech”, where the main sources of Katerina’s language are well shown. I found a variety of material about the biography of Ostrovsky and the history of the creation of the drama in the textbook Russian Literature of the 19th Century by V. Yu. Lebedev.

An encyclopedic dictionary of terms, published under the leadership of Yu. Boreev, helped me understand theoretical concepts (hero, characterization, speech, author).

Despite the fact that many critical articles and responses from literary scholars are devoted to Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm,” the speech characteristics of the characters have not been fully studied, and therefore are of interest for research.

Chapter 1. Biography of A. N. Ostrovsky

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born on March 31, 1823 in Zamoskvorechye, in the very center of Moscow, in the cradle of glorious Russian history, which everyone around was talking about, even the names of Zamoskvoretsky streets.

Ostrovsky graduated from the First Moscow Gymnasium and in 1840, at the request of his father, he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. But studying at the university was not to his liking, a conflict arose with one of the professors, and at the end of his second year Ostrovsky quit “due to domestic circumstances.”

In 1843, his father assigned him to serve in the Moscow Conscientious Court. For the future playwright, this was an unexpected gift of fate. The court considered complaints from fathers about unlucky sons, property and other domestic disputes. The judge delved deeply into the case, listened carefully to the disputing parties, and the scribe Ostrovsky kept records of the cases. During the investigation, the plaintiffs and defendants said things that are usually hidden and hidden from prying eyes. It was a real school for learning the dramatic aspects of merchant life. In 1845, Ostrovsky moved to the Moscow Commercial Court as a clerical official of the desk “for cases of verbal violence.” Here he encountered peasants, city bourgeois, merchants, and petty nobility who traded in trade. Brothers and sisters arguing about inheritance and insolvent debtors were judged “according to their conscience.” A whole world of dramatic conflicts unfolded before us, and all the diverse richness of the living Great Russian language sounded. I had to guess the character of a person by his speech pattern, by the peculiarities of intonation. The talent of the future “auditory realist,” as Ostrovsky called himself, a playwright and master of speech characterization of characters in his plays, was nurtured and honed.

Having worked for the Russian stage for almost forty years, Ostrovsky created a whole repertoire - about fifty plays. Ostrovsky's works still remain on stage. And after a hundred and fifty years it is not difficult to see the heroes of his plays nearby.

Ostrovsky died in 1886 in his beloved Trans-Volga estate Shchelykovo, in the Kostroma dense forests: on the hilly banks of small winding rivers. The writer’s life for the most part took place in these core places of Russia: where from a young age he could observe the primordial customs and mores, still little affected by the urban civilization of his day, and hear the indigenous Russian speech.

Chapter 2. The history of the creation of the drama “The Thunderstorm”

The creation of “The Thunderstorm” was preceded by the playwright’s expedition to the Upper Volga, undertaken on instructions from the Moscow Ministry in 1856-1857. She revived and revived his youthful impressions, when in 1848 Ostrovsky first went with his household on an exciting journey to his father’s homeland, to the Volga city of Kostroma and further, to the Shchelykovo estate acquired by his father. The result of this trip was Ostrovsky’s diary, which reveals much in his perception of provincial Volga Russia.

For quite a long time, it was believed that Ostrovsky took the plot of “The Thunderstorm” from the life of the Kostroma merchants, and that it was based on the Klykov case, which was sensational in Kostroma at the end of 1859. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, Kostroma residents pointed to the site of Katerina’s murder - a gazebo at the end of a small boulevard, which in those years literally hung over the Volga. They also showed the house where she lived, next to the Church of the Assumption. And when “The Thunderstorm” was first performed on the stage of the Kostroma Theater, the actors made up “like the Klykovs.”

Kostroma local historians then thoroughly examined the “Klykovo Case” in the archives and, with documents in hand, came to the conclusion that it was this story that Ostrovsky used in his work on “The Thunderstorm.” The coincidences were almost literal. A.P. Klykova was extradited at the age of sixteen to a gloomy, unsociable merchant family, consisting of old parents, a son and an unmarried daughter. The mistress of the house, stern and obstinate, depersonalized her husband and children with her despotism. She forced her young daughter-in-law to do any menial work and begged her to see her family.

At the time of the drama, Klykova was nineteen years old. In the past, she was brought up in love and in the comfort of her soul, by a doting grandmother, she was cheerful, lively, cheerful. Now she found herself unkind and alien in the family. Her young husband, Klykov, a carefree man, could not protect his wife from the oppression of her mother-in-law and treated her indifferently. The Klykovs had no children. And then another man stood in the way of the young woman, Maryin, an employee at the post office. Suspicions and scenes of jealousy began. It ended with the fact that on November 10, 1859, the body of A.P. Klykova was found in the Volga. A long trial began, which received wide publicity even outside the Kostroma province, and none of the Kostroma residents doubted that Ostrovsky had used the materials of this case in “The Thunderstorm.”

Many decades passed before researchers established for sure that “The Thunderstorm” was written before the Kostroma merchant Klykova rushed into the Volga. Ostrovsky began working on “The Thunderstorm” in June-July 1859 and finished on October 9 of the same year. The play was first published in the January issue of the magazine “Library for Reading” for 1860. The first performance of “The Thunderstorm” on stage took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theater, during a benefit performance by S.V. Vasilyev with L.P. Nikulina-Kositskaya in the role of Katerina. The version about the Kostroma source of the “Thunderstorm” turned out to be far-fetched. However, the very fact of an amazing coincidence speaks volumes: it testifies to the perspicacity of the national playwright, who caught the growing conflict in merchant life between the old and the new, a conflict in which Dobrolyubov saw “what is refreshing and encouraging” for a reason, and the famous theater figure S. A. Yuryev said: “The Thunderstorm” was not written by Ostrovsky... “The Thunderstorm” was written by Volga.”

Chapter 3. Speech characteristics of Katerina

The main sources of Katerina's language are folk vernacular, folk oral poetry and church-everyday literature.

The deep connection of her language with popular vernacular is reflected in vocabulary, imagery, and syntax.

Her speech is replete with verbal expressions, idioms of popular vernacular: “So that I don’t see either my father or my mother”; “doted on my soul”; “calm my soul”; “how long does it take to get into trouble”; “to be a sin”, in the sense of misfortune. But these and similar phraseological units are generally understandable, commonly used, and clear. Only as an exception are morphologically incorrect formations found in her speech: “you don’t know my character”; “After this we’ll talk.”

The imagery of her language is manifested in the abundance of verbal and visual means, in particular comparisons. So, in her speech there are more than twenty comparisons, and all the other characters in the play, taken together, have a little more than this number. At the same time, her comparisons are of a wide-spread, folk nature: “as if he were calling me blue,” “as if a dove was cooing,” “as if a mountain had been lifted from my shoulders,” “my hands were burning like coal.”

Katerina’s speech often contains words and phrases, motifs and echoes of folk poetry.

Addressing Varvara, Katerina says: “Why don’t people fly like birds?..” - etc.

Longing for Boris, Katerina says in her penultimate monologue: “Why should I live now, well, why? I don’t need anything, nothing is nice to me, and God’s light is not nice!”

Here there are phraseological turns of a folk-colloquial and folk-song nature. So, for example, in the collection of folk songs published by Sobolevsky, we read:

It’s absolutely impossible to live without a dear friend...

I’ll remember, I’ll remember about the dear one, the white light is not nice to the girl,

The white light is not nice, not nice... I’ll go from the mountain into the dark forest...

Going out on a date with Boris, Katerina exclaims: “Why did you come, my destroyer?” In a folk wedding ceremony, the bride greets the groom with the words: “Here comes my destroyer.”

In the final monologue, Katerina says: “It’s better in the grave... There’s a grave under the tree... how good... The sun warms it, the rain wets it... in the spring the grass grows on it, it’s so soft... birds will fly to the tree, they will sing, they will bring out children, the flowers will bloom: yellow , little red ones, little blue ones...”

Everything here comes from folk poetry: diminutive-suffixal vocabulary, phraseological units, images.

For this part of the monologue, direct textile correspondences are abundant in oral poetry. For example:

...They will cover it with an oak board

Yes, they will lower you into the grave

And they will cover it with damp earth.

You're an ant in the grass,

More scarlet flowers!

Along with popular vernacular and folk poetry, the language of Katerina, as already noted, was greatly influenced by church literature.

“Our house,” she says, “was full of pilgrims and praying mantises. And we’ll come from church, sit down to do some work... and the wanderers will begin to tell where they have been, what they have seen, different lives, or sing poetry” (D. 1, Rev. 7).

Possessing a relatively rich vocabulary, Katerina speaks freely, drawing on diverse and psychologically very deep comparisons. Her speech flows. So, she is not alien to such words and expressions of literary language as: dreams, thoughts, of course, as if all this happened in one second, there is something so extraordinary in me.

In the first monologue, Katerina talks about her dreams: “And what dreams I had, Varenka, what dreams! Or golden temples, or some extraordinary gardens, and everyone is singing invisible voices, and there is a smell of cypress, and the mountains and trees, as if not the same as usual, but as if they were written in images.”

These dreams, both in content and in the form of verbal expression, are undoubtedly inspired by spiritual poems.

Katerina’s speech is unique not only lexico-phraseologically, but also syntactically. It consists mainly of simple and complex sentences, with predicates placed at the end of the phrase: “So time will pass until lunch. Here the old women will fall asleep, and I will walk in the garden... It was so good” (D. 1, Rev. 7).

Most often, as is typical for the syntax of folk speech, Katerina connects sentences through the conjunctions a and yes. “And we’ll come from church... and the wanderers will start telling... It’s like I’m flying... And what dreams did I have.”

Katerina’s floating speech sometimes takes on the character of a folk lament: “Oh, my misfortune, my misfortune! (Crying) Where can I, poor thing, go? Who should I grab hold of?

Katerina’s speech is deeply emotional, lyrically sincere, and poetic. To give her speech emotional and poetic expressiveness, diminutive suffixes are used, so inherent in folk speech (key, water, children, grave, rain, grass), and intensifying particles (“How did he feel sorry for me? What words did he say?” ), and interjections (“Oh, how I miss him!”).

The lyrical sincerity and poetry of Katerina’s speech are given by the epithets that come after the defined words (golden temples, extraordinary gardens, with evil thoughts), and repetitions, so characteristic of the oral poetry of the people.

Ostrovsky reveals in Katerina’s speech not only her passionate, tenderly poetic nature, but also her strong-willed strength. Katerina’s willpower and determination are shaded by syntactic constructions of a sharply affirming or negative nature.

Chapter 4. Comparative speech characteristics of Wild and

Kabanikha

In Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm,” Dikoy and Kabanikha are representatives of the “Dark Kingdom.” It seems as if Kalinov is fenced off from the rest of the world by a high fence and lives some kind of special, closed life. Ostrovsky focused on the most important things, showing the wretchedness and savagery of the morals of Russian patriarchal life, because all this life is based solely on familiar, outdated laws, which are obviously completely ridiculous. The “Dark Kingdom” tenaciously clings to its old, established. This is standing in one place. And such standing is possible if it is supported by people who have strength and authority.

A more complete, in my opinion, idea of a person can be given by his speech, that is, by habitual and specific expressions inherent only to a given hero. We see how Dikoy, as if nothing had happened, can just offend a person. He doesn’t regard not only those around him, but even his family and friends. His family lives in constant fear of his wrath. Dikoy mocks his nephew in every possible way. It is enough to remember his words: “I told you once, I told you twice”; “Don’t you dare come across me”; you'll find everything! Not enough space for you? Wherever you fall, here you are. Ugh, damn you! Why are you standing like a pillar! Are they telling you no?” Dikoy openly shows that he does not respect his nephew at all. He puts himself above everyone around him. And no one offers him the slightest resistance. He scolds everyone over whom he feels his power, but if someone scolds him himself, he cannot answer, then stay strong, everyone at home! It’s on them that Dikoy will take out all his anger.

Dikoy is a “significant person” in the city, a merchant. This is how Shapkin says about him: “We should look for another scolder like ours, Savel Prokofich. There’s no way he’ll cut someone off.”

“The view is unusual! Beauty! The soul rejoices!” exclaims Kuligin, but against the backdrop of this beautiful landscape a bleak picture of life is painted, which appears before us in “The Thunderstorm”. It is Kuligin who gives an accurate and clear description of the life, morals and customs that reign in the city of Kalinov.

Just like Dikoy, Kabanikha is distinguished by selfish inclinations; she thinks only of herself. Residents of the city of Kalinov talk about Dikiy and Kabanikha very often, and this makes it possible to obtain rich material about them. In conversations with Kudryash, Shapkin calls Diky “a scolder,” while Kudryash calls him a “shrill man.” Kabanikha calls Dikiy a “warrior.” All this speaks of the grumpiness and nervousness of his character. Reviews about Kabanikha are also not very flattering. Kuligin calls her a “hypocrite” and says that she “behaves the poor, but has completely eaten up her family.” This characterizes the merchant's wife from the bad side.

We are struck by their callousness towards people dependent on them, their reluctance to part with money when paying workers. Let us remember what Dikoy says: “Once I was fasting about a great fast, and then it was not easy and I slipped a little man in, I came for money, carried firewood... I did sin: I scolded him, I scolded him... I almost killed him.” All relationships between people, in their opinion, are built on wealth.

Kabanikha is richer than Dikoy, and therefore she is the only person in the city with whom Dikoy must be polite. “Well, don’t let your throat loose! Find me cheaper! And I’m dear to you!”

Another feature that unites them is religiosity. But they perceive God not as someone who forgives, but as someone who can punish them.

Kabanikha, like no one else, reflects this city’s commitment to old traditions. (She teaches Katerina and Tikhon how to live in general and how to behave in a specific case.) Kabanova tries to seem like a kind, sincere, and most importantly unhappy woman, tries to justify her actions by her age: “The mother is old, stupid; Well, you, young people, smart ones, shouldn’t exact it from us fools.” But these statements sound more like irony than sincere recognition. Kabanova considers herself the center of attention; she cannot imagine what will happen to the whole world after her death. Kabanikha is absurdly blindly devoted to her old traditions, forcing everyone at home to dance to her tune. She forces Tikhon to say goodbye to his wife in the old-fashioned way, causing laughter and a feeling of regret among those around him.

On the one hand, it seems that Dikoy is ruder, stronger and, therefore, scarier. But, looking closer, we see that Dikoy is only capable of screaming and rampaging. She managed to subjugate everyone, keeps everything under control, she even tries to manage people’s relationships, which leads Katerina to death. The Pig is cunning and smart, unlike the Wild One, and this makes her more terrible. In Kabanikha’s speech, hypocrisy and duality of speech are very clearly manifested. She speaks very impudently and rudely to people, but at the same time, while communicating with him, she wants to seem like a kind, sensitive, sincere, and most importantly, unhappy woman.

We can say that Dikoy is completely illiterate. He says to Boris: “Get lost! I don’t even want to talk to you, a Jesuit.” Dikoy uses “with a Jesuit” instead of “with a Jesuit” in his speech. So he also accompanies his speech with spitting, which completely shows his lack of culture. In general, throughout the entire drama we see him peppering his speech with abuse. “Why are you still here! What the hell else is there here!”, which shows him to be an extremely rude and ill-mannered person.

Dikoy is rude and straightforward in his aggressiveness; he commits actions that sometimes cause bewilderment and surprise among others. He is capable of offending and beating a man without giving him money, and then in front of everyone standing in the dirt in front of him, asking for forgiveness. He is a brawler, and in his violence he is capable of throwing thunder and lightning at his family, who are hiding from him in fear.

Therefore, we can conclude that Dikiy and Kabanikha cannot be considered typical representatives of the merchant class. These characters in Ostrovsky's drama are very similar and differ in their selfish inclinations; they think only about themselves. And even their own children seem to them to be a hindrance to some extent. Such an attitude cannot decorate people, which is why Dikoy and Kabanikha evoke persistent negative emotions in readers.

Conclusion

Speaking about Ostrovsky, in my opinion, we can rightfully call him an unsurpassed master of words, an artist. The characters in the play “The Thunderstorm” appear before us as alive, with bright, embossed characters. Every word spoken by the hero reveals some new facet of his character, shows him from the other side. A person’s character, his mood, his attitude towards others, even if he doesn’t want it, are revealed in his speech, and Ostrovsky, a true master of speech characterization, notices these features. The manner of speech, according to the author, can tell the reader a lot about the character. Thus, each character acquires its own individuality and unique flavor. This is especially important for drama.

In Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm" we can clearly distinguish the positive hero Katerina and the two negative heroes Dikiy and Kabanikha. Of course, they are representatives of the “dark kingdom”. And Katerina is the only person who is trying to fight them. The image of Katerina is drawn brightly and vividly. The main character speaks beautifully, in figurative folk language. Her speech is replete with subtle shades of meaning. Katerina’s monologues, like a drop of water, reflect her entire rich inner world. The author's attitude towards him even appears in the character's speech. With what love and sympathy Ostrovsky treats Katerina, and how sharply he condemns the tyranny of Kabanikha and Dikiy.

He portrays Kabanikha as a staunch defender of the foundations of the “dark kingdom.” She strictly observes all the rules of patriarchal antiquity, does not tolerate manifestations of personal will in anyone, and has great power over those around her.

As for Dikiy, Ostrovsky was able to convey all the anger and anger that boils in his soul. All members of the household are afraid of the wild one, including nephew Boris. He is open, rude and unceremonious. But both powerful heroes are unhappy: they don’t know what to do with their uncontrollable character.

In Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”, with the help of artistic means, the writer was able to characterize the characters and create a vivid picture of that time. “The Thunderstorm” has a very strong impact on the reader and viewer. The dramas of the heroes do not leave the hearts and minds of people indifferent, which is not possible for every writer. Only a true artist can create such magnificent, eloquent images; only such a master of speech characterization is able to tell the reader about the characters only with the help of their own words and intonations, without resorting to any other additional characteristics.

List of used literature

1. A. N. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm”. Moscow “Moscow Worker”, 1974.

2. Yu. V. Lebedev “Russian literature of the 19th century”, part 2. Enlightenment, 2000.

3. I. E. Kaplin, M. T. Pinaev “Russian literature”. Moscow "Enlightenment", 1993.

4. Yu. Borev. Aesthetics. Theory. Literature. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Terms, 2003.

He opened the “constipations” of two rich merchant houses in the city of Kalinov - the houses of Kabanova and Savel Dikgo.

Kabanikha. Powerful and cruel, the old woman Kabanova is a living personification of the rules of false, sanctimonious “piety”: she knows them well, she herself fulfilled them and steadily demands their fulfillment from others. These rules are as follows: the younger ones in the family must obey the elder; they have no right to have yours opinion, their desires, mine world - they must be “depersonalized”, they must be mannequins. Then they must “be afraid,” live in fear.” If there is no fear in life, then, according to her belief, the world will cease to stand. When Kabanova convinces her son, Tikhon, to act on his wife with “fear,” he says that he does not want Katerina to be “afraid” of him - it is enough for him if she “loves” him. “Why be afraid? - she exclaims, - Why be afraid? Are you crazy, or what? He won’t be afraid of you, and even less so of me! What kind of order will there be in the house? After all, you, tea, live with her in law? Ali, do you think the law means nothing?” Finally, the third rule is not to bring anything “new” into life, to stand for the old in everything - in outlook on life, in human relations, customs and rituals. She laments that “the old stuff is getting out.” “What will happen when the old people die? I don’t even know how the light will stay there!” – she says completely sincerely.

A. N. Ostrovsky. Storm. Play

These are Kabanova’s views, and her cruel nature is reflected in the way they are implemented. She crushes everyone with her lust for power; she knows no pity or condescension towards anyone. She not only “watches” for the implementation of her rules, she invades someone else’s soul with them, finds fault with people, “sharpenes” them for no reason or reason... And all this is done with full consciousness of her “right”, with a consciousness of “necessity” and with constant concerns about external decorum...

The despotism and tyranny of Kabanikha is much worse than that shown by Gordey Tortsov in the play “Poverty is not a vice”, or Wild. Those who do not have any support outside themselves, and therefore it is still possible, although rarely, by skillfully playing on their psychology, to force them to temporarily become ordinary people, as he does We love Tortsov with his brother. But there is no force that would bring Kabanova down: in addition to her despotic nature, she will always find support and support for herself in those foundations of life that she considers an inviolable shrine.

Savel Dikoy. Not so the other “tyrant” of this drama - the merchant Savel Dikoy. This is Gordey Tortsov’s brother: rude, always drunk, who considers himself entitled to scold everyone because he is rich, Dikoy is despotic not “on principle,” like Kabanova, but out of caprice, out of whim. There are no reasonable grounds for his actions - this is unbridled, devoid of any logical basis, arbitrariness. Dikoy, according to the apt definition of the Kalinovites, is a “warrior”: in his own words, “there is always a war going on at home.” “You are a worm! If I want, I’ll have mercy, if I want, I’ll crush!” - this is the basis of his relations with those people who are weaker or poorer than him. One feature of him had a characteristic echo of antiquity - having scolded a peasant during his shit - he “bowed to him in the yard, in the mud - in front of everyone... bowed!”... In this “national repentance” a glimmer of respect for to some higher moral order of things established by antiquity.

Tikhon Kabanov. In the Kabanova family, the younger generation is represented by her son Tikhon, daughter-in-law Katerina and daughter Varvara. All three of these faces were affected differently by the influence of old woman Kabanova.

Tikhon is a completely weak-willed, weak creature, depersonalized by his mother... He, an adult man, obeys her like a boy, and, fearing to disobey her, is ready to humiliate and insult his beloved wife. His desire for freedom is expressed by pathetic, cowardly drunkenness on the side and the same cowardly hatred of his home...

Varvara Kabanova. Varvara is a braver person than her brother. But she is also unable to openly fight her mother head-on. And she wins her freedom through deception and cunning. She covers up her wild life with “deanery” and hypocrisy. Oddly enough, girls in the city of Kalinov turned a blind eye to such a life: “when can we go for a walk, if not among the girls!” – says Kabanova herself. “Sin is not a problem, rumor is not good!” - they said in Famusov’s circle. The same point of view is here: publicity, according to Kabanova, is the worst thing of all.

Varvara tried to arrange for Katerina the same “fraudulent happiness” that she herself enjoyed with a clear conscience. And this led to a terrible tragedy.

Feklusha. The praying pilgrim Feklusha represents in “The Thunderstorm” the complete opposite of the inquisitive mechanic Kuligin. A stupid and cunning, ignorant old woman, she pronounces an accusation against the entire new cultural life, glimpses of which disturb the “dark kingdom” with their novelty. The whole world, with its vanity, seems to her to be the “kingdom of the flesh,” the “kingdom of the Antichrist.” He who serves the “world” serves the devil and destroys his soul. From this point of view, she agrees with Kabanikha and with many other inhabitants of Kalinov and the entire “dark kingdom” depicted by Ostrovsky.

In Moscow, life is teeming, people are fussing, in a hurry, as if they are looking for something, says Feklusha, and contrasts this “vanity” with the peace and silence of Kalinov, who plunged into sleep at sunset. Feklusha, in the old way, explains the reasons for the “city bustle”: the devil invisibly scattered “the seeds of tares” into human hearts, and people moved away from God and serve him. Any novelty frightens Feklusha into her like-minded people - she considers the locomotive a “fire-breathing snake”, and the old woman Kabanova agrees with her... And at this time, here, in Kalinov, Kuligin dreams of a perpetuum mobile... What an incompatible contradiction of interests and worldviews !

Boris. Boris Grigorievich is Dikiy’s nephew, an educated young man who listens to Kuligin’s enthusiastic speeches with a light, polite smile, because he does not believe in perpetuum mobile. But, despite his education, culturally, he is lower than Kuligin, who is armed with both faith and strength. Boris does not apply his education to anything, and he has no strength to fight life! He, without fighting with conscience, carries away Katerina and without fighting with people, leaves her to the mercy of her fate. He is a weak man, and Katerina became interested in him simply because “in the wilderness, even Thomas is a nobleman.” A certain veneer of culture, cleanliness and decency in manners is what made Katerina idealize Boris. And she couldn’t bear to live if Boris didn’t exist—she would idealize someone else.

The events in A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm” take place on the Volga coast, in the fictional city of Kalinov. The work provides a list of characters and their brief characteristics, but they are still not enough to better understand the world of each character and reveal the conflict of the play as a whole. There are not many main characters in Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm".

Katerina, a girl, the main character of the play. She is quite young, she was married off early. Katya was brought up exactly according to the traditions of house-building: the main qualities of a wife were respect and obedience to her husband. At first, Katya tried to love Tikhon, but she could not feel anything but pity for him. At the same time, the girl tried to support her husband, help him and not reproach him. Katerina can be called the most modest, but at the same time the most powerful character in “The Thunderstorm”. Indeed, Katya’s strength of character does not appear outwardly. At first glance, this girl is weak and silent, it seems as if she is easy to break. But this is not true at all. Katerina is the only one in the family who resists Kabanikha’s attacks. She resists, and does not ignore them, like Varvara. The conflict is rather internal in nature. After all, Kabanikha is afraid that Katya might influence her son, after which Tikhon will stop obeying his mother’s will.

Katya wants to fly and often compares herself to a bird. She is literally suffocating in Kalinov’s “dark kingdom”. Having fallen in love with a visiting young man, Katya created for herself an ideal image of love and possible liberation. Unfortunately, her ideas had little to do with reality. The girl's life ended tragically.

Ostrovsky in “The Thunderstorm” makes not only Katerina the main character. The image of Katya is contrasted with the image of Marfa Ignatievna. A woman who keeps her entire family in fear and tension does not command respect. Kabanikha is strong and despotic. Most likely, she took over the “reins of power” after the death of her husband. Although it is more likely that in her marriage Kabanikha was not distinguished by submissiveness. Katya, her daughter-in-law, got the most from her. It is Kabanikha who is indirectly responsible for the death of Katerina.

Varvara is the daughter of Kabanikha. Despite the fact that over so many years she has learned to be cunning and lie, the reader still sympathizes with her. Varvara is a good girl. Surprisingly, deception and cunning do not make her like other residents of the city. She does as she pleases and lives as she pleases. Varvara is not afraid of her mother’s anger, since she is not an authority for her.

Tikhon Kabanov fully lives up to his name. He is quiet, weak, unnoticeable. Tikhon cannot protect his wife from his mother, since he himself is under the strong influence of Kabanikha. His rebellion ultimately proves to be the most significant. After all, it is the words, and not Varvara’s escape, that make readers think about the whole tragedy of the situation.

The author characterizes Kuligin as a self-taught mechanic. This character is a kind of tour guide. In the first act, he seems to be taking us around Kalinov, talking about its morals, about the families that live here, about the social situation. Kuligin seems to know everything about everyone. His assessments of others are very accurate. Kuligin himself is a kind person who is used to living by established rules. He constantly dreams of the common good, of a perpetu mobile, of a lightning rod, of honest work. Unfortunately, his dreams are not destined to come true.

The Wild One has a clerk, Kudryash. This character is interesting because he is not afraid of the merchant and can tell him what he thinks about him. At the same time, Kudryash, just like Dikoy, tries to find benefit in everything. He can be described as a simple person.

Boris comes to Kalinov on business: he urgently needs to establish relations with Dikiy, because only in this case will he be able to receive the money legally bequeathed to him. However, neither Boris nor Dikoy even want to see each other. Initially, Boris seems to readers like Katya, honest and fair. In the last scenes this is refuted: Boris is unable to decide to take a serious step, to take responsibility, he simply runs away, leaving Katya alone.

One of the heroes of “The Thunderstorm” is a wanderer and a maid. Feklusha and Glasha are shown as typical inhabitants of the city of Kalinov. Their darkness and lack of education is truly amazing. Their judgments are absurd and their horizons are very narrow. Women judge morality and ethics according to some perverted, distorted concepts. “Moscow is now full of carnivals and games, but through the streets there is an indo roar and groan. Why, Mother Marfa Ignatievna, they started harnessing a fiery serpent: everything, you see, for the sake of speed” - this is how Feklusha speaks about progress and reforms, and the woman calls a car a “fiery serpent”. The concept of progress and culture is alien to such people, because it is convenient for them to live in an invented limited world of calm and regularity.

This article provides a brief description of the characters in the play “The Thunderstorm”; for a deeper understanding, we recommend that you read the thematic articles about each character in “The Thunderstorm” on our website.

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Alexander Ostrovsky's play “The Thunderstorm” is a real legacy for future generations. Despite the fact that it was written almost two centuries ago, its plot touches on the pressing problems of our turbulent times. The same problems of daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, husband and wife, mother and children... The events of the work take place on the coast of a river called the Volga, in the fictional city of Kalinov. There, in this seemingly quiet place, a real drama develops, the fault of which is ordinary people. But to understand what happened, you need to get to know the characters in the play and determine the role that each of them plays in the work.

Local self-taught mechanic Kuligin

This hero appears from the very beginning of the play. He is a self-taught mechanic who acts as a tour guide of sorts. By nature, Kuligin is a kind person who is accustomed to acting in accordance with established rules. Speaking about others and assessing their morals, he is very accurate in his judgments. He constantly dreams of the common good, of a lightning rod, of a perpetu mobile, of honest work, but, alas, his cherished desires are not destined to come true.

Vanya Kudryash - Varya's beloved

This is a minor character whom the author portrayed as kind and sincere. Despite his simple appearance, Vanya is a fighter in life and always finishes what he starts. Any business in his hands goes wrong. By nature, Ivan is not a romantic, but a practitioner, from this point of view he looks at life.

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He is a strong, smart, well-built guy whom Varvara Kabanova loves. A bright and kind feeling arises between them, although in order to avoid scandals from Varvara’s mother, this relationship has to be carefully hidden.

Boris is Dikiy's nephew

Boris is the nephew of Savl Prokopyich the Wild, a powerful, cruel and greedy man. The author endowed this hero with a contradictory character, on the one hand, describing him as young, educated, well-read, fashionable, on the other – cowardly and weak-willed, who never learned to defend his own point of view despite external circumstances. Knowing that his inheritance is in the hands of Uncle Saul the Wild, Boris tries to please him in everything, despite reproaches and ridicule.

Having fallen in love with Katya Kabanova, who has a mutual feeling for this guy, the young man does not value this relationship, and at a time when the slightest problems arise, he does not try to protect the girl, but immediately backs down, fearing that their relationship will be made public.

Thus, we can conclude that Boris is not so much a positive as a negative character in Alexander Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”.

Dikoy – representative of the “dark kingdom”

Savl Prokofievich Dikoy is a wealthy merchant who is the most respected and influential person in the city. However, he is picky, angry, ignorant and cruel. This set of negative qualities greatly outweighs the external significance of Dikiy, whose last name also speaks for itself - all his behavior is wild and unnatural.

It doesn’t matter to him what others think about this or that issue; Dikoy considers his own opinion to be the only correct one. He stops at nothing, brazenly taking away what he has acquired through back-breaking labor. This hero takes pleasure in quarreling and swearing with everyone. He shouts at his workers who come for their due salaries, raises his voice at family members who get the most from the character of Savl Prokofich. Knowing that his nephew’s fate is in his hands, he abuses his powers in relation to Boris, because he is ready to fulfill any of his demands in order to receive an inheritance. Dikoy can only communicate as equals with Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, who, surprisingly, understands his nature. Savl Prokopyich personifies the morals of a small provincial town. With the help of this image, the author wanted to show the reader the need for changes in the views and behavior of society at that time.

Kabanikha - the negative character of the play

The image of Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova is presented in the play as one of the most negative. This is a rich merchant's wife, a widow. A despotic and capricious woman, she keeps the whole house in fear, offending both her own son and daughter, and her daughter-in-law, who suffers the most. “You must do what your mother says,” she orders her weak-willed son Tikhon, and he obeys the demands of the oppressive parent. Achieving order down to the smallest detail, Kabanikha acts with violent methods, making everyone fear her. He won’t be afraid of you, and he won’t be afraid of me either. What kind of order will there be in the house?..” she is perplexed.

In addition, Marfa Ignatievna is a hypocritical and cold-blooded old woman who loves to read morals to her children, without doing what she herself advises. Kabanova is used to getting her way only with reproaches and threats; she does not know such feelings as love and compassion. She mistakenly believes that children should revere their parents so much that their opinions are not taken into account. Indirectly, Kabanova becomes the main reason for the terrible death of her daughter-in-law Katerina, but does not realize this.

Tikhon, son of Kabanova

There is such an expression as “mama’s boy”. It suits Tikhon Kabanov, the son of Marfa Ignatievna, perfectly.

From childhood, accustomed to living in complete submission to a strict mother, he grew up weak-willed and spineless.

This manifests itself throughout his life. Having no opinion of his own, Tikhon cannot make even the simplest decisions, in panic fear of the condemnation of his strict mother, who, without even realizing it, raised her son to be an infantile loser who would start nagging at the slightest danger - and the worst thing is, they lived with the conviction that such education is the only correct one.

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Only once, at the end of the play, when a tragedy occurred with his wife Katerina, Tikhon exclaimed, reproaching his mother: “Mama, you ruined her! you, you, you...” And here it is shown that even a person driven into a dead end is capable of defending his position. It’s just a pity that he realized too late what a jewel and treasure his wife was for him.

Varvara - Tikhon's sister

Varvara Kabanova is Tikhon’s sister and daughter of Marfa Ignatievna. Getting acquainted with the play, the reader can notice what a contrast the brother and sister represent. She, unlike the lack of initiative Tikhon, is lively and courageous, able to make decisions on her own. Varya managed, unlike her brother, to adapt to the character of her overly demanding and wayward mother; I learned to lie, to be a hypocrite, to dodge where necessary, to ignore her orders.

To remove obstacles to meeting her loved one, Varvara simply changed the lock. Thus, she protected herself from unnecessary outbursts of her mother’s anger. As they say, the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe.

This girl is, firstly, practical, secondly, cheerful, thirdly, smart and insightful. In addition, she is the only one in the family who supports Katerina and gives her good advice. In the work, the attitude “do what you want, the main thing is that no one finds out anything” is realized in the image of Varvara.

Katerina is the main character of the play

In A. Ostrovsky's play "The Thunderstorm" the image of Katerina is key. This girl experiences a difficult fate, and, unfortunately, her life ends tragically. But to understand the character of the heroine, you need to follow the author’s storyline from the very beginning.

The only happy childhood for Katerina was when she, like a sponge, absorbed the good things that were instilled by her loving parents and went to church with great joy.

And then a storm struck in the girl’s life. She got married. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. For a weak-willed and spineless person, for whom mother’s orders are more important than normal and healthy relationships in his own family.

All dreams of a happy and strong family collapsed, life went downhill. The fierce mother-in-law Marfa Ignatievna began to act with the girl according to her already proven methods of violence and endless reproaches, which were unacceptable to Katerina. No matter how hard the daughter-in-law tried to smooth out the situation in her family, nothing worked. The mother-in-law continued to nag with or without reason, and the weak-willed husband still obeyed his mother.

Katerina with all her soul internally opposes such hypocritical and senseless behavior, this contradicts her bright and sincere nature, but the girl cannot resist the order established in the Kabanova family. She doesn’t love her husband, but she feels sorry for her, and this is not enough to create a strong family. And then Katerina indulges in feelings of love for another – Dikiy’s nephew, Boris. And from then on even bigger problems began - pangs of conscience that give no rest day or night, a constant question in the soul: “Should I admit my guilt?” “She’s shaking all over, as if she’s got a fever; so pale, rushing around the house, as if looking for something,” says her husband’s sister Varvara about Katerina’s condition. - Eyes like those of a madwoman! Just this morning I started crying and just kept crying. My fathers! What should I do with it?

And finally, Katerina takes a decisive step, telling her mother-in-law and husband about her sin towards Boris: “Mother! Tikhon! I am a sinner before God and before you! Wasn’t it me who swore to you that I wouldn’t look at anyone without you! Remember, remember! Do you know what I, dissolute, did without you? On the very first night I left home... And all ten nights I walked with Boris Grigorievich.”

After this, a real tragedy unfolds: reproaches and scolding from the mother-in-law, who incites her son to beat his daughter-in-law, unbearable mental pain and, finally, the fatal decision - to rush into the Volga. Alas, Katerina’s life was cut short at a young age. Some understand and do not condemn her for this act, some, on the contrary, believe that only a weak-willed person could commit suicide. But, be that as it may, Katerina will remain in the eyes of many readers a positive heroine, that is, the best of all the characters in the play.