Grigory Melikhov - characterization and tragedy of the hero. The image of Grigory Melikhov in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don"

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

Mikhail Sholokhov knew and loved his small homeland and could perfectly describe it. With this, he entered Russian literature. First appeared "Don stories". The then masters drew attention to him (today's reader does not know any of them) and said: “Beautiful! Well done!" Then they forgot … And suddenly the first volume of the work was published, which almost put the author on a par with Homer, Goethe and Leo Tolstoy. In the epic novel Quiet Flows the Don, Mikhail Aleksandrovich authentically reflected the fate of a great people, the endless search for truth in the chaotic years of the civil war and bloody revolution.

Quiet Don in the fate of the writer

The image of Grigory Melikhov captivated the entire reading public. Young talent would develop and develop. But the circumstances did not contribute to the fact that the writer became the conscience of the nation and people. The Cossack nature of Sholokhov did not allow him to rush into the favorites of the rulers, but they did not allow him to become in Russian literature what he was supposed to become.

Many years after the Great Patriotic War and the publication of The Fate of Man, Mikhail Sholokhov makes a strange, at first glance, entry in his diary: “To all of themI liked my Man. So I lied? Don't know. But I know what I didn't say.”

Favorite hero

From the first pages of "Quiet Don", the writer draws a diverse and wide river of life in the Don Cossack village. And Grigory Melikhov is only one of the many interesting characters in this book, and besides, not the most important one, as it seems at first. His mental outlook is primitive, like a grandfather's saber. He has nothing to become the center of a large artistic canvas, except for a masterful, explosive character. But the reader from the first pages feels the writer's love for this character and begins to follow his fate. What attracts us and Gregory from the most youthful years? Probably with their biology, blood.

Even male readers are not indifferent to him, like those women from real life who loved Gregory more than life itself. And he lives like Don. His inner masculine power draws everyone into his orbit. Nowadays, such people are called charismatic personalities.

But there are other forces in the world that require reflection and analysis. However, they continue to live in the village, not suspecting anything, thinking that they are protected from the world by their courageous moral virtues: they eat their (!) Bread, serve the Fatherland in the way that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers punished them. It seems to all villagers, including Grigory Melikhov, that a more just and sustainable life does not exist. They sometimes fight among themselves, mostly because of women, not suspecting that it is women who choose, givingpreference for powerful biology. And rightly so - mother nature herself ordered that the human race, including the Cossack, does not dry out on Earth.

War

But civilization has given rise to many injustices, and one of them is a false idea clothed in truthful words. Quiet Don flows truthfully. And the fate of Grigory Melikhov, who was born on its shores, did not portend anything that would make the blood run cold.

The village of Veshenskaya and the Tatar farmstead were not founded by St. Petersburg and fed by him, too. But the idea that life itself was almost given to each Cossack personally not by God, but by his father and mother, but by some kind of center, broke into the tough but fair life of the Cossacks with the word “war”. Something similar happened on the other side of Europe. Two large groups of people went to war in an organized and civilized manner against each other in order to flood the earth with blood. And they were inspired by false ideas, dressed in words about love for the Fatherland.

War without embellishment

Sholokhov paints war as it is, showing how it cripples human souls. Sad mothers and young wives remained at home, and the Cossacks with lances went to fight. Grigory's checker tasted human meat for the first time, and in an instant he became a completely different person.

The dying German listened to him, not understanding a word of Russian, but realizing that universal evil is being done - the essence of the image and likeness of God is crippled.

Revolution

Again, not in the village, not on the Tatarsky farm, but far, far fromthe banks of the Don begin tectonic shifts in the depths of society, the waves from which will reach the hardworking Cossacks. The protagonist of the novel returned home. He has many personal problems. He's had his fill of blood and doesn't want to shed any more. But the life of Grigory Melikhov, his personality is of interest to those who have not obtained a piece of bread for their livelihood for decades with their own hands. And some people bring false ideas to the Cossack environment, clothed in truthful words about equality, fraternity and justice.

Grigory Melikhov gets involved in a struggle that is alien to him by definition. Who started this quarrel in which the Russians began to hate the Russians? The main character does not ask this question. His fate carries through life like a blade of grass. Grigory Melikhov listens with surprise to the friend of his youth, who began to speak incomprehensible words and look at him with suspicion.

And the Don flows calmly and majestically. The fate of Grigory Melikhov is just an episode for him. New people will come to its shores, new life will come. The writer says almost nothing about the revolution, although everyone talks about it a lot. But nothing is remembered from what they said. The image of Don overshadows everything. And the revolution is also just an episode on its shores.

The tragedy of Grigory Melikhov

The protagonist of Sholokhov's novel began his life simply and clearly. Loved and was loved. He vaguely believed in God, without delving into the details. And in the future he lived as simply and clearly as in childhood. Grigory Melikhov did not deviate for a small step either from his essence, or from the truth that he absorbed intohimself along with the water that he drew from the Don. And even his sword did not stick into human bodies with pleasure, although he had an innate ability to kill. The tragedy was precisely that Gregory remained an atom of society, which can be either split into component parts or combined with other atoms by a will alien to him. He did not understand this and strove to remain free, like the majestic Don. On the last pages of the novel, we see him reassured, hope for happiness glimmers in his soul. Doubtful point of the novel. Will the main character get what he dreams of?

The end of the Cossack way of life

An artist may not understand anything of what is happening around him, but he must feel life. And Mikhail Sholokhov felt it. Tectonic shifts in world history destroyed the Cossack way of life, which was dear to him, perverted the souls of the Cossacks, turning them into meaningless "atoms" that became suitable for building anything and anyone, but not the Cossacks themselves.

There are a lot of didactic politics in volumes 2, 3, and 4 of the novel, but, describing the path of Grigory Melikhov, the artist involuntarily returned to the truth of life. And false ideas receded into the background and dissolved in the haze of century-old prospects. The triumphant notes of the final part of the novel are drowned out by the reader's longing for the bygone life, which the writer painted with such incredible artistic power in Volume 1 of The Quiet Flows the Don.

First as base

Sholokhov begins his novel with a description of the appearance of a child whofounded the Melikhov family, and ends with a description of the child who should prolong this family. Quiet Don can be called a great work of Russian literature. This work not only opposes everything that was later written by Sholokhov, but is a reflection of that core of the Cossack people, which gives hope to the writer himself that the life of the Cossacks on Earth has not ended.

Two wars and a revolution are just episodes in the life of a people who recognize themselves as Don Cossacks. He will wake up and show the world his beautiful Melikhovo soul.

The life of the Cossack family is immortal

The protagonist of Sholokhov's novel entered the very core of the attitude of the Russian people. Grigory Melikhov (his image) ceased to be a household character back in the 30s of the twentieth century. It cannot be said that the writer endowed the hero with the typical features of a Cossack. Just typical in Grigory Melikhov is not enough. And there is no special beauty in it. It is beautiful with its power, vitality, which is able to overcome all the superficial things that come to the banks of the free quiet Don.

This is an image of hope and faith in the highest meaning of human existence, which is always the basis of everything. In a strange way, those ideas that tore the village of Veshenskaya to pieces, wiped the Tatar farm from the ground, have sunk into oblivion, and the novel "Quiet Don", the fate of Grigory Melikhov, remained in our minds. This proves the immortality of the Cossack blood and family.