"Childhood" of Maxim Gorky as an autobiographical story

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

The childhood of Maxim Gorky, one of the best Russian writers, passed on the Volga, in Nizhny Novgorod. His name was then Alyosha Peshkov, the years spent in his grandfather's house were full of events, not always pleasant, which later allowed Soviet biographers and literary critics to interpret these memories as incriminating evidence of the viciousness of capitalism.

Memories of the childhood of a mature person

In 1913, being a mature man (and he was already forty-five years old), the writer wanted to remember how his childhood passed. Maxim Gorky, by that time the author of three novels, five stories, a good dozen plays and several good stories, was loved by the reader. His relationship with the authorities was difficult. In 1902, he was an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but he was soon stripped of this title for inciting unrest. In 1905, the writer joins the RSDLP, which, apparently, finally forms his class approach to assessing his own characters.

At the end of the first decade, theautobiographical trilogy written by Maxim Gorky. "Childhood" is the first story. Its opening lines immediately set the stage for the fact that it was not written for an entertainment-hungry public. It begins with a painful scene of his father's funeral, which the boy remembered in every detail, right down to his eyes covered with five-kopeck coins. Despite the harshness and some detachment of childish perception, the description is truly talented, the picture is bright and expressive.

Autobiographical plot

After the death of the father, the mother takes the children and takes them on a steamer from Astrakhan to Nizhny Novgorod, to their grandfather. The baby, Alyosha's brother, dies on the way.

At first they are accepted kindly, only the exclamations of the head of the family "Oh, you-and-and!" give out the former conflict that arose on the basis of the unwanted marriage of the daughter. Grandfather Kashirin is an entrepreneur, he has his own business, he is engaged in dyeing fabrics. Unpleasant smells, noise, unusual words "vitriol", "magenta" irritate the child. Maxim Gorky's childhood passed in this turmoil, the uncles were rude, cruel and, apparently, stupid, and the grandfather had all the manners of a domestic tyrant. But all the hardest, which received the definition of "lead abominations", was ahead.

Characters

A lot of everyday details and a variety of relationships between characters imperceptibly enchant every reader who picks up the first part of the trilogy written by Maxim Gorky, "Childhood". The main characters of the storythey talk in such a way that their voices seem to hover somewhere nearby, each of them has such an individual manner of speech. The grandmother, whose influence on the formation of the personality of the future writer cannot be overestimated, becomes, as it were, the ideal of kindness, while the pugnacious brothers, seized with greed, evoke a feeling of disgust.

Good Deed, the neighbor's freeloader, was an eccentric man, but he obviously possessed an extraordinary intellect. It was he who taught little Alyosha to express thoughts correctly and clearly, which undoubtedly influenced the development of literary abilities. Ivan Tsyganok, a 17-year-old foundling who was brought up in the family, was very kind, which sometimes manifested itself in some oddities. So, going to the market for shopping, he invariably spent less money than he should have expected, and gave the difference to his grandfather, trying to please him. As it turned out, in order to save money, he stole. Excessive diligence led to his premature death: he overstrained himself while carrying out his master's assignment.

There will only be gratitude…

Reading the story "Childhood" by Maxim Gorky, it's hard not to catch the feeling of gratitude that the author felt for the people around him in his early years. What he received from them enriched his soul, which he himself compared to a beehive filled with honey. And nothing that it sometimes tasted bitter, but looked dirty. Departing from his hated grandfather's house "to people", he was sufficiently enriched with life experience so as not to disappear, not to disappear without a trace in the complex adult world.

The story turned out to be eternal. As time has shown, relationshipsbetween people, often even related by blood ties, are characteristic of all times and social formations.