Essay "Former people" by Maxim Gorky

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

"Former People" is a work created in 1897. It is based on the personal impressions of the author, which he received when he had to live in a rooming house on the outskirts of Kazan. This work in terms of genre can be defined as an essay, since it is characterized by the reliability of the image, the lack of dynamics, attention to everyday life, as well as detailed portrait characteristics. In "Former People" Gorky re-evaluates the type of tramp. There is no romantic halo, familiar to us from his early works.

"Former people" summary

A significant place in the first part is given to the description. First, the outskirts of the street appears before us. She is dirty and sad. The houses located here are nondescript: with skewed windows and curved walls, leaky roofs. We see heaps of garbage and rubble. The following describes the house of the merchant Petunnikov. This is a rickety building with broken windows. Its walls are all dotted with cracks. In this house, which bears little resemblance to housing, there is a rooming house. It resembles a dark, long hole.

Portraits of overnight stays

From the description of the interior, the author proceeds to the portraits of the overnight stays. What are the "former people" in M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom"?

Aristide Kuvalda - the owner of the rooming house, who previously served as a captain. He leads a company of so-called "former people" and represents its "general staff". Gorky describes him as a tall, broad-shouldered man about 50 years old, with a pockmarked face, swollen from drunkenness. He is dressed in a tattered and dirty officer's overcoat, and has a greasy cap on his head.

Following are portraits of other bunkhouses. One of them is the teacher. He is a tall, stooped man with a bald skull and a long, pointed nose. Another overnight stay is Aleksey Maksimovich Simtsov, also known as Kubar. This man is a former forester. Gorky notes that he is "thick as a barrel." He has a small crimson nose, thick white beard and cynical teary eyes.

The next inhabitant of the rooming house is Martyanov Luka Antonovich, nicknamed the End. He used to work as a prison guard, and now he is one of the "former people". This is a silent and gloomy drunkard.

Pavel Solntsev (leftover), a mechanic, also lives here. This is a consumptive, lopsided man about thirty years old. Further, the author describes Kiselnikov. This rooming house is a former convict. He is bony and tall, "crooked in one eye". He was nicknamed one and a half Taras, since his friend Taras, a former deacon, was one and a half times shorter than him. Next, we get acquainted with the long-haired "absurd" young man "with a stupid high-cheeked mug." His nickname is Meteor. Then the author presents to us andordinary inhabitants of the rooming house, peasants. One of them is Tyapa, an old rag-picker.

Characteristics of overnight shelters

Maxim Gorky draws our attention to how indifferent these people are to their fate, as well as to the life and fate of others. They are apathetic, show powerlessness before external circumstances. At the same time, anger is growing in their soul, which is directed against prosperous people. By the way, the world of "former people" in M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom" is very similar to the one created in the essay we are interested in.

Conflict with Petunnikov

In the second part of the work, the dissatisfaction of all these characters turns into an open conflict with Petunnikov, a local merchant. The nature of this conflict is social. The captain noticed that some part of the merchant's factory was located on Vavilov's land. He persuades the innkeeper to file a lawsuit against Petunnikov. It should be noted that Aristide Kuvalda in this case is not driven by the desire to profit. He just wants to annoy Petunnikov, whom he silently calls the hated Judas.

Result of confrontation

However, the lawsuit, which promised 600 rubles, ends in a global one. The businesslike, educated and cruel son of Petunnikov convinces Vavilov of the need to withdraw the lawsuit from the court. Otherwise, he threatens to close the pub, which contains the innkeeper. The inhabitants of the rooming house understand that now they will have to leave their homes, because the merchant, of course, will not forgive them for this misconduct.

Soon Petunnikov really demands to immediately leave the "hut". But the troubles don't end there. The teacher dies, whose death is blamed on Aristide Kuvalda. Thus, the community of overnight stays finally disintegrates. Petunnikov triumphs.

Psychology of heroes

Maxim Gorky pays great attention not only to the study of the life of the so-called former people. He is also interested in their psychology, inner world. The author believes that life in a rooming house gives rise to weak people who are not capable of rebirth, of self-realization. They deny everything, including their own lives. Such a position (its ideologist - Kuvalda) is destructive and unpromising. It lacks a creative, positive beginning. And dissatisfaction, which is caused by impotence, can only give rise to despair and anger.

One can say that Maxim Gorky (his portrait is presented above) in his essay "Former People" passes judgment on the inhabitants of the "bottom". These are degraded, powerless and inactive characters. An analysis of the essay "Former People" shows that they are not capable of good feelings and deeds. In this regard, the episode of the death of the Teacher is indicative. Sledgehammer, who considered this man his friend, could not find even human words for him. The social problems reflected in the stories of the tramp cycle will continue to develop in the plays of Maxim Gorky.

The difference between the work and physiological essays

In the physiological essay, the main subject of the image werethe social roles of the characters, rather than specific characters. The authors were interested, for example, in a St. Petersburg organ grinder, a St. Petersburg janitor, cabbies, officials, and merchants. In the artistic essay, which was created by M. Gorky ("Former People"), the main attention is paid to the study of the characters' characters, which are united by social status. The heroes ended up in a rooming house, at the very bottom of life. The nochlezhka is run by Aristid Kuvalda, who himself is a "former" person, because he is a retired captain.

No autobiographical hero

Some other features of the work can be noted. For example, in "Former People" there is no autobiographical hero, an image so familiar to Gorky. The narrator in this work seems to want to distance himself from everything and not betray his presence. It can be said that his role in the work "Former People" by Maxim Gorky is somewhat different than in the cycle "Across Russia" or in the author's romantic stories. The autobiographical hero is not the listener of the characters, their interlocutor. Only the details of the portrait of the young man, whom Kuvalda nicknamed Meteor, and the characterization of how he relates to others, allow us to discern an autobiographical hero in him. True, he is somewhat distant in this work from the narrator.

The transition from romanticism to realism

The main thing that distinguishes "Former People" from Gorky's early works is the transition from a romantic interpretation of character to a realistic one. The author still portrays people frompeople. However, his appeal to realism allows him to show much more vividly the contrast between dark and light, weak and strong sides of the national character, its inconsistency. This is precisely what is the subject of research in the work "Former People".

It seems that the author, having taken the position of realism, cannot find a way to resolve the conflict between the destiny of a person (his height) and his tragic unfulfillment in the life of "former" people, the low social position that they occupy. The insurmountability of this conflict forces Gorky in the final landscape to return to the worldview characteristic of romanticism. Only in the elements can one find the resolution of the unsolvable. The author writes that there was something inexorable and tense in the strict gray clouds that completely covered the sky. As if they were about to burst into a downpour and wash away all the dirt from the sad, tortured land. However, in general, the landscape is realistic. It is necessary to say a few words about him.

Landscape

In the early stories of the author, the romantic landscape was intended to emphasize the exclusivity of the characters, and the spirituality and beauty of the southern night, the horror of the dark forest or the endless free steppe could be the background against which the romantic hero was revealed, at the cost of his life asserting his ideal. Now Gorky Maxim ("Former People") turns to the realistic landscape. He is interested in its anti-aesthetic features. Before us appears the ugly outskirts of the city. Turbidity of colors, dullness, pallor are needed to create a feeling of abandonment of thatthe environment in which the bunkhouses live.

Conflict

The author tries to understand how great is the social and personal potential of the so-called "former people". It is important for him to find out whether they can, finding themselves in difficult everyday and social conditions, preserve spiritual, non-material values that can be opposed to a world that is so unfair to them. The peculiarity of the conflict is determined precisely by this aspect of the problem. The conflict in the work has a social character. After all, the overnight shelters, led by Kuvalda, oppose the merchant Petunnikov, as well as his son, a cold, strong, intelligent and educated representative of the Russian bourgeoisie.

The author is more interested not in the social aspect of this confrontation, but in the unwillingness of the heroes to comprehend their own situation, possible prospects, their needs. They are not interested in foreign land at all, and not even money. This is just a manifestation of the hatred of a poor drunk for a hard-working and rich man.

Gorky reveals the complete absence of creativity, inner growth, activity, self-improvement in the "former people". But these qualities are very important for the author. They are presented in the novel "Mother", as well as in the hero of his autobiographical trilogy. The inhabitants of the rooming house cannot oppose anything to the surrounding reality, except for malice. This brings them to the very bottom. Their malice turns against themselves. They achieved nothing by their opposition to the merchant"former people".