Live and remember characteristics of Andrey. Characteristics of the main characters

War, no matter for what purpose it is waged, brings with it only misfortune and tears, destruction and grief. For our people, the bloodiest of all wars was the Great Patriotic War, which took millions of lives of defenders native land. When they died, they were sure that they were giving their lives for their Motherland, for their loved ones. But death, even such a noble one, is always very scary. However, the spiritual death of a person is much more terrible. This is exactly what we're talking about we're talking about in the story of the famous Russian writer V. Rasputin “Live and Remember”.

The author of the story reveals the spiritual depths of the main character of the work - deserter Andrei Guskov. This man fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War from the first day. Patriotic War. In one of the battles, Andrei was wounded and shell-shocked. But after treatment, having been discharged from the hospital, Guskov did not go to his unit, but secretly made his way to his native village, according to wartime laws, becoming a deserter subject to execution without trial.

Before the war, Andrei Guskov was a good hard-working guy, a reliable husband and an obedient son. He went to the front at the beginning of the war. “He didn’t cross others, but he didn’t hide behind other people’s backs either,” V. Rasputin says about him. Andrei was not a timid person and at the front showed himself to be a brave and disciplined soldier. And although he did not want to die, for three years he fought not for fear, but for his conscience, regularly fulfilling all his duties. And all these three years he was not left with an irresistible desire to see his village, meet his relatives and his wife Nastena.

It turned out that after a serious chest wound and concussion, Andrei ended up in a hospital near Novosibirsk, and before he home It was just a stone's throw from there. However, the medical commission rejects his request for a short leave and immediately sends Guskov to the front. That’s when he makes a rash and thoughtless decision, without receiving permission from his superiors and going on unauthorized absence to his native village. He planned to spend very little time on this, but getting bogged down in endless military moves, Andrei begins to understand that the matter no longer smells of a guardhouse for unauthorized absence, but of real desertion and a military tribunal. There would be no problems on the road, and he would definitely return to his native part, not much late. After all, he just wanted to see his relatives, maybe last time in life, and not “he was shaking for his skin.”

How did Andrei Guskov’s rash act, which became the main choice of his whole life, turn out to be? And did he have the right to go instead of his unit to his native village and fulfill even such a modest desire as to see my own wife? This desire would be modest in times of peace, but in times of war one should not arrange one’s fate by separating oneself from the fate of the people, from their grief.

The entire moral burden and awareness of betrayal fell entirely on Guskov’s wife Nastena. V. Rasputin writes: “It is the custom of a Russian woman to arrange her life only once and endure everything that befalls it.” And she endured. Even when Andrei, who did not make it to the front, appears in the house, she takes all the blame from her husband upon herself. “Without guilt, but guilty,” the writer says about her. Nastena “took up the cross” of Andrei, not even realizing and vaguely imagining what her husband’s decision to return home would entail. For this act, Andrei Guskov will soon be cruelly but fairly punished by fate. Literally from the first day of his stay in home The terrible consequences of his betrayal begin to emerge. There is a moral decline of Andrei and the loss of his personality, destroyed by constant reproaches of conscience, which he tries with all his might, if not to overcome, then at least to drown out.

Soon Andrei learned to howl from a wolf wandering not far from the hut and rejoiced at this with malicious vindictiveness: “It will come in handy.” good people frighten". He also deftly adapted to steal fish from other people’s holes, and he did this not so much out of need as out of a desire to annoy fellow villagers who live openly, with a clear conscience and without fear, unlike him, who was forced to hide all the time and be afraid of every rustle. A highest point moral decay Andrei Guskov became the senseless murder of a calf in a strange village, which he killed not for meat, but for the sake of some incomprehensible whim that settled in him from the moment he returned home. This whim settled in Andrei’s soul so firmly and took over all his thoughts so powerfully that it completely destroyed all his connections with what is sacred and dear to every person, connections with people and nature, respect for other people’s property and people’s work.

Andrei failed to pass the test of humanity, since his soul completely disintegrates, and his wife Nastena turns into a driven, unsociable creature. Her conscientious nature is dried up by the stinging, eternal shame for her husband, and double life takes away from her not only simple joys, but with every minute it leaves the girl less and less vitality. Simplicity, trust and cordiality in conversations with friends have disappeared; she cannot not only talk with fellow villagers, but even be among people without tension. Although, without knowing anything, her friends and neighbors still treat her the same way and accept her as one of their own, Nastena has long been a stranger to them stranger. She does not receive joy either from love, or from motherhood, which she has been waiting for so long, or from Great Victory his people and the end of the war. After all, it “has nothing to do with the long-awaited Victory, the great holiday. Most last man has, but she doesn’t.” And waiting for a child becomes a real torment for her, endless thoughts about what fate awaits him in the future, how to explain his appearance to his fellow villagers and whether it would be better to get rid of him? It turned out that Nastya received stolen goods, love, motherhood and her whole life.

“It’s sweet to live, it’s scary to live, it’s a shame to live,” this is what the writer says about the deserter’s wife. Increasingly, fatigue and despair pulled her into a rapid, irrevocable whirlpool, at the bottom of which was death. One night Nastena was unable to cross the river and see Andrei, because her fellow villagers nevertheless noticed her pregnancy and began to be wary of her, which was the reason for the refusal to cross. And hearing a chase not far away, she, tired, tormented, throws herself into the water, not saving Andrei, but putting an end to her bitter fate.
Going into the waves of the Angara, Nastena remains pure in front of people. She acquired this purity thanks to the ability to sacrifice herself for the sake of others, accepting the guilt of her deserter husband and holy faith in true human values. Even scary surrounding reality and the hostile attitude of people did not break her, did not embitter her at all. But Andrei could not stand the tests of life. His moral fiber was completely destroyed. The justification for his flight, which he saw in his unborn child, also died along with Nastena. Andrei thought that the newborn life of their heir would replace his ruined one and save him from painful remorse for a uselessly decayed existence.
V. Rasputin punishes the deserter with the death of his wife and unborn child, those who were dearer to Guskov than anyone else in the world: “Live and remember. Live and remember!” There is punishment by death, but punishment by life is even worse. And Andrei is left to live with this punishment. But to live as a driven, empty and brutalized creature, but no longer a human being. Any death is better than such a life, the life of a creature who was once a good person, who strayed from the people, people. And V. Rasputin once again addresses not only the heroes of the work, but also his readers: “Live and remember. Live and remember! that you cannot live apart from the fate of your people and your native land. And there is no justification for Andrei Guskov; we cannot consider him a victim of war. In exactly these conditions, for five years, throughout the Great Patriotic War, millions of our compatriots lived, worked and fought, who sacrificed their own destiny and their own happiness for the sake of the happiness of our Motherland. Guskov is an executioner, because by becoming a deserter, he doomed not only himself, but also his young wife and unborn child to death. He cannot be understood, he cannot be forgiven.

"Live and Remember" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.

The plot of the story by V.G. Rasputin's "Live and Remember" reminds detective story: old man Guskov’s skis, ax and self-sustaining gabak disappeared from the bathhouse. However, the work itself is written in a completely different genre: it is a deep philosophical reflection on moral principles existence, about the power of love. Since the ax disappeared from under the floorboard, Nasten’s daughter-in-law immediately guesses that one of her own took it. A complex range of feelings takes possession of her. On the one hand, she wants to see her husband, whom she sincerely loves. On the other hand, he understands that if he is hiding from people, it means he deserted from the front, and such a crime is war time not forgiven. A number of bright visual and expressive means of V.G. Rasputin shows the depth of Nastena’s experiences.

At first, “she lay for a long time in the dark with with open eyes, afraid to move, so as not to give away her terrible guess to someone,” then she sniffed the air in the bathhouse like an animal, trying to catch familiar smells. She is tormented by a “stubborn horror in her heart.” The portrait of Nastena (long, skinny, with awkwardly protruding arms, legs and head, with frozen pain on her face) shows what moral and physical torment the war brought to the woman. Only her younger sister Katka forced Nastena to show interest in life and look for work. Nastena endured all the hardships steadfastly, learning to remain silent. She considered childlessness to be her greatest misfortune. Her husband Andrei was also worried about this and often beat her.

Rasputin does not try to justify Andrei’s desertion, but seeks to explain it from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved leave, wanted to see his wife, but the leave he was entitled to after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal that Andrei Guskov commits creeps into his soul gradually. At first he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: “If not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, when his turn comes.” Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the intelligence officers Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he take the path of betrayal? At first, Andrey just wants to see his family, Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in winter you couldn’t turn around in three days. Andrei remembered the demonstration execution, when in his presence they shot a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village. Guskov understands that you won’t get a pat on the head for going AWOL.

Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, he settled for some time with a mute woman, Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally found himself in his native place. However, the hero did not feel joy from the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed betrayal, Guskov embarked on the path of the beast. After some time, life, which he valued so much at the front, became no longer pleasant to him. Having committed treason, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax for a minute turn him into a hunted animal.

Andrei's betrayal falls fatally on Nastena's shoulders. For a long time she cannot comprehend what has happened: her husband, who came secretly to his native land, seems to her to be a werewolf: “Understanding little, she suddenly realized: is it her husband? Wasn't it a werewolf with her? Can you see it in the dark? And they say they can pretend so that even in broad daylight you can’t tell them apart from the real thing.” Because of Andrey, the woman has to lie and dodge. With touching naivety, Nastena tries to confront cruel reality. It seems to the heroine that she only dreamed of the night meeting with her deserter husband. V.G. shows with fine detail. Rasputin, like Nastena, strives to remove the obsession from himself, to get rid of it like a nightmare. Lost in years Soviet power Official religiosity is still alive in the depths of the consciousness of Russian people. It is her (as the strongest family amulet) that the unfortunate Nastena calls for help: “Not knowing how to place a cross correctly, she haphazardly crossed herself and whispered the words of a long-forgotten prayer that came to mind, left over from childhood.” However, the entire depth of grief and horror of the unfortunate woman, her awareness of the fatal line that Andrei’s betrayal drew between their family and the rest of the world, is embodied by the last phrase of the third part of the story, when Nastena freezes from the treacherous thought: “Wouldn’t it be better if this Was it really just a werewolf?

Nastena begins to help her husband hide and feeds him. She trades food for things. All the worries fell on the shoulders of this woman (about younger sister, about elderly fathers-in-law). In the same time terrible secret puts stone wall between Nastena and her fellow villagers: “Alone, completely alone among people: no one to talk to, no one to cry to, everything must be kept to oneself.”

The heroine's tragedy is intensified by the fact that she became pregnant. Having learned about this, Andrey first rejoices, and then understands how difficult situation the wife got caught: after all, everyone will think that the woman spoiled this child while her husband is fighting at the front. In a difficult conversation on this topic, the symbolically important image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, by right hand Hangars. And now there are two: people and me. It’s impossible to bring them together: the Angara needs to dry out,” says Andrey Nastene.

During the conversation, it turns out that the heroes once had the same dream: Nastena, in her girlish form, comes to Andrei, who is lying near the birch trees and calls him, telling him that she was tortured with the children.

The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful intractability of the situation in which Nastena found herself.

Talking about the fate of the heroine, V.G. Rasputin simultaneously sets out his views on life and happiness. They are sometimes expressed by him in aphoristic phrases: “Life is not clothes, you don’t try them on ten times. What you have is all yours, and it’s not good to renounce anything, even the worst.” It’s paradoxical, but, left alone with their common joy and misfortune, the heroes finally found that spiritual closeness, that mutual understanding that was not there when they lived happily as a family before the war.

Having learned about Nastena's pregnancy, her fellow villagers condemn her. Only Andrey's father Mikheich understands with his heart the bitter truth about which he is so stubbornly silent. Tired of shame and eternal fear, she throws herself from the boat into the waters of the Angara River. Plot-story by V.G. Rasputin's “Live and Remember” shows that in difficult moments for the homeland, every person must courageously share its fate, and those who showed cowardice and cowardice will face retribution. They have no future, no right to happiness and procreation.

In addition to the main storyline The story contains interesting author's thoughts about the fate of the village. During the war, the village becomes shallow. The souls of people are hardened by grief. Pain for the fate of the Russian village is a cross-cutting theme in V.G.’s work. Rasputin.

"Live and Remember"


The plot of the story by V.G. Rasputin’s “Live and Remember” is reminiscent of a detective story: old man Guskov’s skis, an ax and a self-propelled gabak disappeared from the bathhouse. However, the work itself is written in a completely different genre: it is a deep philosophical reflection on the moral foundations of existence, on the power of love. Since the ax disappeared from under the floorboard, Nasten’s daughter-in-law immediately guesses that one of her own took it. A complex range of feelings takes possession of her. On the one hand, she wants to see her husband, whom she sincerely loves. On the other hand, he understands that if he is hiding from people, it means he has deserted from the front, and such a crime is not forgiven in wartime. A number of bright visual and expressive means of V.G. Rasputin shows the depth of Nastena’s experiences.

At first, “she lay for a long time in the dark with her eyes open, afraid to move, so as not to reveal her terrible guess to someone,” then she sniffed the air in the bathhouse like an animal, trying to catch familiar smells. She is tormented by a “stubborn horror in her heart.” The portrait of Nastena (long, skinny, with awkwardly protruding arms, legs and head, with frozen pain on her face) shows what moral and physical torment the war brought to the woman. Only her younger sister Katka forced Nastena to show interest in life and look for work. Nastena endured all the hardships steadfastly, learning to remain silent. She considered childlessness to be her greatest misfortune. Her husband Andrei was also worried about this and often beat her.

Rasputin does not try to justify Andrei’s desertion, but seeks to explain it from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved leave, wanted to see his wife, but the leave he was entitled to after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal that Andrei Guskov commits creeps into his soul gradually. At first he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: “If not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, when his turn comes.” Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the intelligence officers Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he take the path of betrayal? At first, Andrey just wants to see his family, Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in winter you couldn’t turn around in three days. Andrei remembered the demonstration execution, when in his presence they shot a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village. Guskov understands that you won’t get a pat on the head for going AWOL.

Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, he settled for some time with a mute woman, Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally found himself in his native place. However, the hero did not feel joy from the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed betrayal, Guskov embarked on the path of the beast. After some time, life, which he valued so much at the front, became no longer pleasant to him. Having committed treason, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax for a minute turn him into a hunted animal.

Andrei's betrayal falls fatally on Nastena's shoulders. For a long time she cannot comprehend what has happened: her husband, who came secretly to his native land, seems to her to be a werewolf: “Understanding little, she suddenly realized: is it her husband? Wasn't it a werewolf with her? Can you see it in the dark? And they say they can pretend so that even in broad daylight you can’t tell them apart from the real thing.” Because of Andrey, the woman has to lie and dodge. With touching naivety, Nastena tries to confront cruel reality. It seems to the heroine that she only dreamed of the night meeting with her deserter husband. V.G. shows with fine detail. Rasputin, like Nastena, strives to remove the obsession from himself, to get rid of it like a nightmare. Official religiosity, lost during the years of Soviet power, is still alive in the depths of the consciousness of Russian people. It is her (as the strongest family amulet) that the unfortunate Nastena calls for help: “Not knowing how to place a cross correctly, she haphazardly crossed herself and whispered the words of a long-forgotten prayer that came to mind, left over from childhood.” However, the entire depth of grief and horror of the unfortunate woman, her awareness of the fatal line that Andrei’s betrayal drew between their family and the rest of the world, is embodied by the last phrase of the third part of the story, when Nastena freezes from the treacherous thought: “Wouldn’t it be better if this Was it really just a werewolf?

Nastena begins to help her husband hide and feeds him. She trades food for things. All the worries fell on this woman’s shoulders (about her younger sister, about her elderly in-laws). At the same time, a terrible secret puts a stone wall between Nastena and her fellow villagers: “Alone, completely alone among people: no one to talk to, no one to cry to, everything must be kept to oneself.”

The heroine's tragedy is intensified by the fact that she became pregnant. Having learned about this, Andrei at first rejoices, and then understands what a difficult situation his wife finds herself in: after all, everyone will think that the woman spoiled this child while her husband is fighting at the front. In a difficult conversation on this topic, the symbolically important image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, on the right hand of the Angara. And now there are two: people and me. It’s impossible to bring them together: the Angara needs to dry out,” says Andrey Nastene.

During the conversation, it turns out that the heroes once had the same dream: Nastena, in her girlish form, comes to Andrei, who is lying near the birch trees and calls him, telling him that she was tortured with the children.

The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful intractability of the situation in which Nastena found herself.

Talking about the fate of the heroine, V.G. Rasputin simultaneously sets out his views on life and happiness. They are sometimes expressed by him in aphoristic phrases: “Life is not clothes, you don’t try them on ten times. What you have is all yours, and it’s not good to renounce anything, even the worst.” It’s paradoxical, but, left alone with their common joy and misfortune, the heroes finally found that spiritual closeness, that mutual understanding that was not there when they lived happily as a family before the war.

Having learned about Nastena's pregnancy, her fellow villagers condemn her. Only Andrey's father Mikheich understands with his heart the bitter truth about which he is so stubbornly silent. Tired of shame and eternal fear, she throws herself from the boat into the waters of the Angara River. Plot-story by V.G. Rasputin's “Live and Remember” shows that in difficult moments for the homeland, every person must courageously share its fate, and those who showed cowardice and cowardice will face retribution. They have no future, no right to happiness and procreation.

In addition to the main storyline, the story contains interesting author's reflections on the fate of the village. During the war, the village becomes shallow. The souls of people are hardened by grief. Pain for the fate of the Russian village is a cross-cutting theme in V.G.’s work. Rasputin.

It so happened that in the last war year, he secretly returned from the war to a distant village on the Angara. local Andrey Guskov. The deserter does not think that father's house he will be greeted with open arms, but he believes in his wife’s understanding and is not deceived. His wife Nastena, although she is afraid to admit it to herself, instinctively understands that her husband has returned, and there are several signs for him. Does she love him? Nastena did not marry for love, the four years of her marriage were not so happy, but she is very devoted to her man, because, having been left without parents early, for the first time in her life she found protection and reliability in his house. “They came to an agreement quickly: Nastena was also spurred on by the fact that she was tired of living with her aunt as a worker and bending her back on someone else’s family...”

Nastena threw herself into marriage like water - without any extra thought: she’ll have to get out anyway, few people can do without it - why wait? And what awaits her in new family and a strange village, I had a bad idea. But it turned out that from a working woman she became a working woman, only the yard was different, the farm was larger and the demand was stricter. “Maybe the attitude towards her in the new family would be better if she gave birth to a child, but there are no children.”

Childlessness forced Nastena to endure everything. Since childhood, she had heard that a hollow woman without children is no longer a woman, but only half a woman. So by the beginning of the war, nothing came of the efforts of Nastena and Andrei. Nastena considers herself to blame. “Only once, when Andrei, reproaching her, said something completely unbearable, she answered out of resentment that it was still unknown which of them was the reason - she or he, she had not tried other men. He beat her to a pulp." And when Andrei is taken to war, Nastena is even a little glad that she is left alone without children, not like in other families. Letters from the front from Andrei come regularly, then from the hospital, where he is wounded, too, maybe he will soon come on vacation; and suddenly there was no news for a long time, only one day the chairman of the village council and a policeman came into the hut and asked to see the correspondence. “Did he say anything else about himself?” - “No... What’s wrong with him? Where is he?" - “So we want to find out where he is.”

When an ax disappears in the Guskov family bathhouse, only Nastena wonders if her husband has returned: “Who would think of a stranger to look under the floorboard?” And just in case, she leaves bread in the bathhouse, and one day she even heats the bathhouse and meets someone in it whom she expects to see. The return of her husband becomes her secret and is perceived by her as a cross. “Nastena believed that in Andrei’s fate since he left home, in some way there was also her participation, she believed and was afraid that she probably lived for herself alone, so she waited: here, Nastena, take it "Don't show it to anyone."

She readily comes to her husband’s aid, is ready to lie and steal for him, is ready to take the blame for a crime for which she is not guilty. In marriage you have to accept both the bad and the good: “You and I agreed on life together. When everything is good, it’s easy to be together, when everything is bad - that’s why people come together.”

Nastena's soul is filled with enthusiasm and courage - to fulfill her wifely duty to the end, she selflessly helps her husband, especially when she realizes that she is carrying his child under her heart. Meetings with her husband in the winter hut across the river, long mournful conversations about the hopelessness of their situation, hard work at home, insincerity settled in relations with the villagers - Nastena is ready for anything, realizing the inevitability of her fate. And although love for her husband is more of a duty for her, she pulls her life’s burden with remarkable masculine strength.

Andrei is not a murderer, not a traitor, but just a deserter who escaped from a hospital, from where, without proper treatment, they were going to send him to the front. Set to go on vacation after being away from home for four years, he can’t resist the idea of ​​returning. As a rural person, not urban or military, he already in the hospital finds himself in a situation from which the only salvation is escape. This is how everything turned out for him, it could have turned out differently if he had been more steady on his feet, but the reality is that in the world, in his village, in his country there will be no forgiveness for him. Having realized this, he wants to delay until the last minute, without thinking about his parents, his wife, and especially about his unborn child. The deeply personal thing that connects Nastena with Andrey conflicts with their way of life. Nastena cannot raise her eyes to those women who are receiving funerals, she cannot rejoice as she would have rejoiced before when the neighboring men returned from the war. At a village celebration of the victory, she remembers Andrei with unexpected anger: “Because of him, because of him, she does not have the right, like everyone else, to rejoice in the victory.” The runaway husband posed a difficult and insoluble question to Nastena: who should she be with? She condemns Andrei, especially now, when the war is ending and when it seems that he would have remained alive and unharmed, like everyone who survived, but, condemning him at times to the point of anger, hatred and despair, she retreats in despair: yes after all, she is his wife. And if so, we must either completely abandon him, jumping onto the fence like a rooster: I am not me and the fault is not mine, or go with him to the end. At least on the chopping block. It is not without reason that it is said: whoever marries whom will be born into that one.

Noticing Nastena's pregnancy, her former friends begin to laugh at her, and her mother-in-law completely kicks her out of the house. “It was not easy to endlessly withstand the grasping and judgmental glances of people - curious, suspicious, angry.” Forced to hide her feelings, to restrain them, Nastena is increasingly exhausted, her fearlessness turns into risk, into feelings wasted in vain. It is they who push her to suicide, drag her into the waters of the Angara, shimmering as if from an eerie and beautiful fairy tale river: “She’s tired. If anyone knew how tired she is and how much she wants to rest.”

Rich material for comprehension moral issues gives modern literature. Today our conversation is about V. G. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember.” The story “Live and Remember,” written in 1974, stands out from a number of other works by the writer. Readers were shocked by the brightness, strength, and acuteness of her characters’ experiences. But they explained the meaning of the story in different ways.

With all the drama of Andrei Guskov’s fate, it is not he who occupies the main attention of the author, but Nasten. Her image is larger, it shakes our imagination. If Nastena is emotionally highlighted in the story, therefore, it is with this image that the author associates some deep-seated problems.

- The question arises: what did Nastya do that was so extremely important that the writer, for the sake of understanding this, puts her in the foreground of the story, relegating to the background a person of such a terrible fate as Andrei Guskov? — Nastya saves her husband who is in trouble. “She stresses him physically and mentally, helps him survive. — Don’t you think that this answer needs clarification? It is very important to fully expose the depicted situation in order to clearly imagine all its drama. The fact is that Andrey is not just a respectable family man, Nastya’s husband, who needs support. He is a man who committed a crime. And here Rasputin puts Nastya, and after her the readers, in front of the most difficult question: Does every person have the right to sympathy? Or, as indicated in the title of the topic of our lesson: is “mercy towards the fallen” always justified? Let's first try to reflect on common-life material, based on our own experience.

At the same time, we must keep in mind that we have the opportunity to be guided in assessing this or that act not only by legal laws (as it should be at a court hearing). We must also take into account moral laws. To do this, it is extremely important to understand the internal motives of Nastena’s actions, to understand the logic of her emotional impulses. What motivates Rasputin's heroine. Perhaps this is a concern for one’s own well-being, that is, motives of an egoistic nature?

- Thoughts main character refute such an assumption: “So how can we abandon it now? It is necessary not to have a heart at all, instead of a heart to hold a steel balance, weighing out what is profitable and what is unprofitable. Here from someone else. even if he is thrice unclean, you simply cannot brush him off, but he is yours, dear. If not God, then life itself united them in order to keep them together, no matter what happened, no matter what misfortune befell them. “How to get him out of this trouble. how to live in order to help without making mistakes, without getting confused? Whatever happens to him now, she is responsible”; “Guilty - who says it’s not guilty! - but where can we now get the strength to return him to the place from which he jumped to the wrong place where he was supposed to jump? Nastya's thoughts indicate that, saving Andrey. she is not concerned with selfish interests. There is a deep meaning in her action.

- Imagine: a cruel one is coming, terrible war, as they say, not for life, but for death. Streams of blood are flowing in the world. Separate human life devalued. And under these conditions, somewhere in the Russian outback. in a distant corner of Siberia. a weak, defenseless woman rises for this. in order to protect just one person from death, not physical, but moral, despite the general bitterness. This is a task of incredible complexity. And not only personal. This is a national task. Nastya is well aware of her responsibility to people: “Whether it’s fate or higher than that, but it seemed to Nastya. that she has been noticed. separated from the people." The story repeatedly emphasizes Nastya’s connection with her native, “human” world. What way out of this situation does she see?

— “For so many years Nastya was tied to the village. to home, to work, she knew her place, she took care of herself, because something was attached to her too. pulled together into one whole. And suddenly, all at once, the ropes loosened - they didn’t come off completely, but they weakened.” The most important thing here is the heroine’s awareness that “... she, too, was holding something together, pulling it together into one whole.” This means that Nastena is part of this whole, which can be called folk life. And she is afraid to break it.

— For Nastya, life without people is impossible. That is why she is so acutely worried about “breaking ties with the world of people,” because she is in a position between her fellow villagers and Andrei. The meaning of all her actions is an attempt to return Andrei to people. This is confirmed in the text of the story: “My mother said a long time ago: there is no guilt that cannot be forgiven. They're not people, are they? When the war ends, we'll see. Or you can go out to repent, or something else.”

— For the sake of saving Andrei, Nastya is ready for any hardship: “Andrei... Maybe we won’t do this, let’s go out? I would go with you anywhere, to whatever penal servitude you want - wherever you go, there I will too...” And how do we find out about the attitude of the second himself towards Nastya? The author does not give direct assessments, but through popular opinion he expresses his attitude towards Nastya and her actions. This is manifested in the ending of the story: “And on the fourth day Nastya washed ashore not far from Karda. They reported to Atamanovka, but Mikheich was dying, and Mishka the farmhand was sent to fetch Nastena. He delivered Nastya back in the boat, and having delivered, he, like a master, intended to bury her in the cemetery of drowned people. The women didn't give it. And they buried Nastya among their own people, just on the edge, near a rickety fence.