2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
We all remember Chekhov's saying that brevity is the sister of talent. First of all, it refers to the talent of Anton Pavlovich himself. Being a brilliant master of “talking” details, the writer was able to present his characters to the readers as if they were alive with one or two well-aimed words, with a few strokes, and to describe in detail the situations in which they found themselves.
Thick and thin, plot and plot
Consider, for example, the story "Thick and Thin". Its brief content boils down to such events: the family of an official descends from the train onto the platform of the Nikolaevsky railway station. Someone calls out to the head of the family, he turns around, and it turns out that he was recognized by a former classmate, and now also an official. The one who arrived is “thin”: thin, not richly dressed, and smells of him not very presentable, ham sandwiches and coffee grounds. He is laden with suitcases, cartons and other travel belongings. And his former friend -"thick". His lips are luscious, he smells of expensive cologne and expensive wine and dinner, which he just ate at the station restaurant. Here, in fact, is the whole plot that makes up the story "Thick and Thin." A brief summary of it further: a small conversation between Misha ("fat") and Porfiry ("thin"). And here Chekhov's "details" come to the fore. Thin at first does not notice the difference in social status between himself and the second official. He does not live well, but is quite content. He has a small salary, makes cigarette cases for sale, his wife gives private music lessons. Porfiry is sincerely glad to meet his childhood bosom friend, emotions and memories flooded and overwhelmed the hero. He, like his friend, has tears in his eyes, and both, as Chekhov writes, are "pleasantly stunned." However, the tonality of the work changes radically when the “party” of Tolstoy enters the narrative. "Friend Misha", it turns out, has already become a secret adviser - a considerable rank in Tsarist Russia!
Has a "two stars", and in general, a good job. This is where the hidden conflict of the work begins, embedded in the very title of the story “Thick and Thin”, a summary of which we are considering. For Porfiry, the rise of a friend up the career ladder was unexpected. Being himself a petty official and a "little" person, he used to revere the powers that be and fear them. In the hero, the mechanism of servility, sycophancy, and fear of superiors immediately “turns on”. Chekhov shows this masterfully. Thin like everythingtwisted, his sincere smile becomes pathetic, forced, reminiscent of a grin, and his long chin stretches and becomes even longer. He mumbles something, stutters and is a completely pathetic sight. Porfiry humiliates himself, and humiliates himself voluntarily! Spiritual, mental slavery, like poison, oozes literally from every pore of his body, from his every word. He again introduces “Misha”, whom he now calls by title, his wife and son, and both he and the members of the family seem to become even “thinner”, stretching into a string, or cowardly hiding, trying to become inconspicuous, shrink. This episode evokes bitter laughter and resentment for the person, for his trampled dignity, the story "Thick and Thin." Its brief content is further reduced to a description of the emotions of the characters. "Tolstoy" all the excitement around his title is unpleasant. He really rejoiced at Porfiry and sees in him not a subordinate, but a person, a long-standing accomplice of children's pranks. "Fat" would talk about the past with pleasure, recalled carefree childhood years. But such an idyll is impossible, Chekhov believes.
"Thick, thin", the summary of which we are considering, is a realistic work. And Porfiry's behavior is quite typical and corresponds to the cruel truth of life. In a society where there are no all kinds of freedoms, where autocracy tramples on human rights and comprehensively enslaves him, where the material side of life dictates its own rules, a small person can very rarely behave on an equal footing with a "big man". AboutThis is what the humanistic traditions of all Russian literature tell us: Pushkin's stationmaster Samson Vyrin, Gogol's Akaki Bashmachkin, and Dostoevsky's Makar Devushkin. And remember the "Death of an official" of the same Chekhov - why did his hero die? From fear that he sneezed on the boss! So our summary of “Thick and Thin” focuses your attention, dear readers, on the main problem of the story: how can a person “drop by drop” squeeze a slave out of himself? Willing slave!
The composition of the work is circular: it ends with a phrase uttered by Chekhov at the beginning - that both were pleasantly stunned. Of course, "nice" - already in a figurative sense. But how to get rid of this servility - such a question is posed by the author to readers. And each of us needs to answer it.
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