Vladislav Krapivin, "Stars in the rain" - summary and analysis of the work

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

Vladislav Krapivin is the author of children's, philosophical and allegorical works that bring up many generations of children and encourage older people to remember what they were like in childhood.

The work considered in this article is written by the hand of an adult with a big heart of a child. In it, a thoughtful boy decides to turn an ordinary umbrella into a starry sky. What for? You will learn about this by reading the analysis and summary of Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain", which are given below.

Boy burdened with resentment

The city gets wet in the rain. The tram train drives up to the square and hospitably opens the doors. A boy, soaked to the bone, enters the carriage. Fumbling in his pockets, he discovers that he has absolutely no money, and is about to leave. The conductor stops him: “Wait, what a proud! Get a ticket. The boy doesn't even say thanks. He doesn't know where the tram goes. The hero is not afraid of rain, but gets into the car just to be far away from home.

This is how Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain" begins. A summary cannot be imagined without paying attention to the mood of the protagonist.

The boy's resentment, which made him travel around the city in such bad weather, and even without an umbrella, lies like a heavy load, pulls his shoulders down - the hero wearily sinks into the seat next to the fair-haired girl.

Long-awaited acquaintance

The girl turns out to be familiar: the boy often meets her on the way to school. Although they never spoke, he always looks for her fur hat with his eyes, and when the girls are not seen for a long time, he worries.

Sometimes the hero tries not to think about her and repeats to himself that this is the most ordinary girl. But once, without the slightest hesitation, he rushed to help when the boy aimed a snowball at her back. The girl does not know this. “And she doesn’t need anything,” the boy decides.

Sitting in a tram car, they talk to each other for the first time. And because the girl is a little familiar, the hero shares his story with her.

How it all began

Vladislav Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain" begins with the fact that the main character finds himself outside in the rain. What prompted the boy to leave home without an umbrella? This will be discussed below.

A few days ago, when the sun was shining brightly outside, a boy was standing on the roof of a barn holding an umbrella over him. He had to jump from three meters down, whereother young adventurers like him were waiting for him. However, this was not immediately possible.

The fact is that by nature the hero is thoughtful and even poetic, inclined to give names to everything he sees. Right next to the barn, several islands of dusty grass were green, and in the boy's imagination they immediately turned into uncharted archipelagos. The water in the barrel was like a deep lake.

He stood on the roof, causing a wave of discontent among those waiting below. The boy was already decisively bending his knees and preparing to jump, when suddenly his umbrella became surprisingly similar to a small circus dome. The lone hole through which the sky shone through turned into a distant star. For the boy, this was a revelation. He often looks at the sky and knows all the major constellations by heart. But to see a star in the daytime, when the sun is shining brightly, means for him it's like a supernova explosion. Let it be just a hole in the umbrella.

The boy felt like an inventor. This umbrella could become a small planetarium. To do this, it was only necessary to pierce the matter in certain places, so that constellations were obtained. And then you can go outside on the most cloudy day, point your umbrella at the North Star, which, as you know, is always in the same place, and know where the stars are at that moment. It only remained to carry out the calculations, because the Earth rotates, which means that the constellations do not stand still. On this account, the boy came up with a simple scheme: divide the umbrella into twenty-four parts, like a clock inday, and rotate it depending on what time it is.

In fact, the astronomical umbrella was invented by the scientist N. E. Nabokov. This discovery is discussed in Krapivin's work "Stars in the Rain". The summary should also mention the following events that happened a little while later at the protagonist's house.

Taking out an old umbrella from behind the closet, the hero began to make holes in its black fabric with a needle. But just at that time, Veronika Pavlovna, who was staying with them, needed to go outside, and outside the window it was raining. Finding a damaged umbrella in the hands of the boy, she was terribly indignant. The offended hero went outside to seek solace in the rain. So he ended up on the tram.

For a listening girl, the idea of a planetarium seems very curious. She finds chalk in her pocket, with which she usually draws classics on asph alt, and invites the boy to draw a map of the starry sky he invented right on her umbrella. But the boy does not have time to do this: the tram pulls up to the stop, where the girl and her mother get off.

What is the use of an astronomical umbrella?

Inspired by a new idea, armed with the chalk left for him, the boy starts looking for someone who will let him draw a starry sky on his umbrella. The author Vladislav Krapivin draws the attention of the reader of the story to the hope glimmering in the main character. "Stars in the Rain" (a summary of the work is discussed in this article) will definitely tell about one more hero.

There is a boy in a half-empty carsees a man in a uniform that stays clean even in the rain. This is the captain in shiny boots, a cap and stars on shoulder straps.

However, instead of sharing the joy of discovery with the boy, the captain tries to find a use for his invention. And not finding it, he gets out of the car, taking the umbrella with him.

Master and Chess Player

Two people enter the car, and the boy immediately comes up with names for them: "Chess Player" and "Master". They lead a lively conversation, during which the man, who received the nickname "Master" from the boy, awkwardly turns around and inadvertently, but painfully, hits the main character with an umbrella. The boy is not offended, but hastily uses this opportunity, which attracted attention to him, to offer to make a planetarium out of the umbrella that hit him.

To the surprise of the hero himself, he is listened to attentively. And everything would have worked out this time, but it turns out that the desired umbrella is not black at all, but brown, and even with a gray pattern. Of course, such an umbrella will not make a starry sky - the boy suffers another failure.

Little Sky

A baby enters the tram. In one hand he holds a can for sour cream, in the other he holds an open umbrella, which does not want to close.

In the summary of Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain" it must be said that the main character at this moment feels grown up and strong, so he helps the kid cope with the resisting umbrella, and then offers to draw a starry sky. Although not immediately, but the baby agrees. However, after a few minutes, he asks the boy tohe drew real stars for him: big, with rays, and not just dots with which our hero wants to designate them.

This makes the boy's task impossible as nothing will fit. But, seeing the kid’s resentment, remembering his recent disappointment, he draws large five-pointed stars, a month and even a rocket. The planetarium fails again this time, but the hero is glad that he was able to give the baby a small sky.

Captain sailing for Antarctica

After seeing off the baby, the boy decides it's time for him to go home, when suddenly he notices two umbrellas over his head that come together to protect him from the flow of water. But the recent resentment still makes itself felt, and the main character moves away from the man covering him with their umbrellas with a young girl - a daughter.

Puzzled, but not insisting on communication, the man says that he has already lost the habit of rain. In these words, a meaning is hidden that will affect the further development of Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain". The summary as close as possible to the original text also conveys the fact that the boy does not pay attention to the words of the Captain (as he christened the man), but thinks that his tram has been gone for a long time, and he will have to walk. In pursuit, he hears the Captain offering to share one umbrella with him, to which the boy reacts rather sharply: “Do you think that an umbrella is needed only to hide under it from the rain?” "Of course not!" - father and daughter with a smile begin to list where else an umbrella can come in handy. This softens the heart of the young hero, and heunexpectedly offers them his little planetarium. But this requires an umbrella.

"Will they agree?" The boy looks uncertainly at the man, who nods. Moreover, he takes out a folding knife in which a corkscrew is hidden and tells the hero to immediately make a hole in the umbrella, because the chalk will be erased. "Will you take him with you?" - for some reason the girl asks her father.

This phrase once again focuses on the mystery of the Captain in Krapivin's story "Stars in the Rain". The summary goes on to say that the contented boy is finishing his work and is trying to explain how his little planetarium works. The man stops him: "I know." The hero pauses in embarrassment, the man continues: "You're doing well, but it was also necessary to take into account the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun." Our little hero loses heart, thinking that his invention has failed. “No, what are you,” the captain assures him, “well done! And where I’m going, I still can’t see the North Star.” The boy raises surprised eyes at him, because if the North Star is not visible, then this is the southern hemisphere! "That's right," the captain confirms. “I'm going to Antarctica.”

The boy recognizes in the captain a man he once read about in books. It is he whose adventures our hero dreams of. "What is your name?" the captain asks the boy. “Slavka,” the boy replies. “Do you want me to bring you an Antarctic stone? the captain asks seriously. - Remember the address.”

"I will find you myself," the hero assures. Slavka knows that he is such a personwill find, even in the biggest city.

Analysis of the product

In the story "Stars in the Rain" by V. P. Krapivin, one can clearly draw a dividing line between the adult and children's world: reality is opposed to dreams.

It is worth mentioning the children of this story: the girl whom Slavka met on the way from school, the kid with the can, the main character. These are little dreamers who are able to endow the most everyday object with an unprecedented meaning. They do not demand practical benefits from their discoveries, but enjoy what is happening. Veronika Pavlovna, a captain in shiny boots and perfectly clean clothes, thinks completely differently: they are characterized by a rationalistic view of things. This confrontation persists throughout the story, although once it almost disappears, smoothed out by the appearance of adult characters, endowed with a childlike ability to see what is difficult to see with the naked eye. These are the characters of the Master and the Chess Player. At the end of the story, the Captain appears, sailing away to Antarctica, who understands children, because he himself managed to preserve the "memory of childhood" in himself. And it is this character that resolves the conflict between rationalism and dream.

The author of the story "Stars in the Rain", Krapivin Vladislav, always comments on this work like this: "Warbler is the person that each of us wanted to be in childhood, but never became." Therefore, if you want to immerse yourself in a fairy-tale world full of stars, light from lanterns and drops of water on tram windows, read the entire story in the original.