Analysis of the story “The Wonderful Doctor” (A. Kuprin)

Themes and problems of Kuprin's creativity. Analysis of the stories “Moloch” and “Olesya”.

Each writer is shaped by his life circumstances (father dies in childhood, no means of subsistence, Moscow widow's house, from the age of 7 he was sent to the Razumovsky boarding school, state support, at the age of 10 - a military student! Gymnasium, strict rules, which was later transformed V cadet corps- military career. Afterwards he entered the Alexander Junkers School. 1890, second lieutenant, served 4 years military career. The Dnieper regiment was quartered in provincial towns and observed this life. Podolsk province, province.

1894 – Kuprin retires having chosen the path professional writer. Childhood – humiliation before “benefactors”, childhood years “joyless at government grub”, severity, order. Youth is an ordinary regiment, a colorless existence in vulgarity and everyday life.

Writer - no money. Did you leave, travel around the middle zone, the south, what did you work for? Loader, estate manager, land surveyor, fisherman, blacksmith, sang in the choir (provincial stage), newspaper business: reporter (essays and more). All the trials strengthened his character and gave him many life observations. This material is very important. Kuprin became his own in various fields.

The writer was always attracted (at an early stage) by depths human soul and its hidden possibilities, his first stories were written on military topics: “Inquiry” about universal human orders, “Overnight”, army ensign. Paid a lot of attention inner world human, unusual conditions, psychology, subconscious. Special perspectives on the topic: toy, sparrow, horror. Borderline states.

The theme of love excited him: it also provided rich material. There are many stories about the death of love, beauty, he talks about the waste of innate abilities “Dead power”. Potentially embedded, bright impulses of life are important to him. ʼʼHoly loveʼʼ, ʼʼPassionate minuteʼʼ. He describes his heroines with great sympathy; they often come into conflict with the cruelty and self-centeredness of life. Bright characters on a circus theme, “Alles”, “Lolly”, are often selfless heroines who make sacrifices for the sake of their love. Cuprn has created tens of romantic stories. Guided by love gives intense experiences. A reason for depicting bright characters. Love experiences are a natural, uninhibited manifestation of the spiritual world.

The small genre form did not allow Kuprin to express all his thoughts and feelings. Moves on to the story “Moloch” and “Olesya”. These stories are interconnected by contradiction. Both of them were written based on impressions from Kuprin’s trips to the Donetsk coal basin and Polesie. Conventionally: the moloch about the dangers of scientific and technological progress and its disastrous side are connected. And Olesya is the ideal of a natural person. In Moloch, first of all, they noted the social motive and exploitation of the working bourgeoisie. Tragic situation. Uses essays about Donetsk enterprises. The non-fictional, very convincingly recreates the conditions, depicts the iron law for the struggle of existence. The main character is engineer Bobrov. Reflective hero. The beaver engineer belongs to this type of hero. The plant is likened to God – Moloch. For the sake of the development of scientific and technical programs.
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ʼʼYour civilization is good if its fruits have been counted…ʼʼ. An acute social conflict is acquiring philosophical understanding. Contents of the story: an engineer's observations of the work of the plant and the immoral factory elite. Entrepreneur Kvashnin and his entourage.

The theme of Moloch is deities.

The drama of an unfulfilled soul. The drama of a person who is honest by nature, who failed to find himself and realize himself. For Kuprin, the most terrible consequence of iron civilization is the death of spiritual purity in people.

Kuprin is looking for his ideal in an area beyond the control of Moloch - a natural man, Olesya's story appears. The representative is an intellectual, reflective, Olesya is whole, passionate, wild. The intellectual loses. At the beginning of the story, Olesya says about Her beloved: although you are kind, you are only weak. The hero lacks integrity of nature, depth of feelings, and this is his weakness. Olesya grew up far from false social foundations. Kuprin idealizes the image of the “daughter of the forests”. As often happens with Kuprin, this love story ends in failure. There is no happy ending, no way out for the hero. This story is poetic. Kuprin describes pictures of nature. Nature also helps them and embellishes their history. The first reviewers called this story a “forest symphony”. Merging with nature gives completeness and purity of the spiritual world. This story is one of the links in Kuprin’s Polesie cycle. These are stories like “Wilderness of the Forest”, etc.

A roll call with Turgenev’s “notes of a hunter”, poeticization of nature. Although the heroes are different. Kuprin is fascinated by the picturesque region. Central Russian strip. Its inhabitants and their interesting characters.

Creative principles were expressed: a writer must observe life. Kuprin was a master of precise detail and fast-paced, information-rich storytelling. There is always a plot. Sometimes concentration was combined in one paragraph. Clarity of position: what you love and what you hate, what you actually want to say. He expressed his gaze definitely and emotionally.

Forms: story within a story. In this case, a person’s subjective perception arises and this makes it possible to reliably present information. Through the eyes of a directly active participant – someone else’s speech (technique), to see the situation more deeply.

Themes and problems of Kuprin's creativity. Analysis of the stories “Moloch” and “Olesya”. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category “Themes and problems of Kuprin’s work. Analysis of the stories “Moloch” and “Olesya.” 2017, 2018.

History of creation

A. Kuprin’s story “Olesya” was first published in 1898 in the newspaper “Kievlyanin” and was accompanied by a subtitle. "From memories of Volyn." It is curious that the writer first sent the manuscript to the magazine “Russian Wealth”, since before this the magazine had already published Kuprin’s story “Forest Wilderness”, also dedicated to Polesie. Thus, the author hoped to create a continuation effect. However, “Russian Wealth” for some reason refused to publish “Olesya” (perhaps the publishers were not satisfied with the size of the story, because by that time it was the author’s largest work), and the cycle planned by the author did not work out. But later, in 1905, “Olesya” was published in an independent publication, accompanied by an introduction from the author, which told the story of the creation of the work. Later, the full-fledged “Polessia Cycle” was released, the pinnacle and decoration of which was “Olesya”.

The author's introduction is preserved only in the archives. In it, Kuprin said that while visiting a friend of the landowner Poroshin in Polesie, he heard from him many legends and fairy tales related to local beliefs. Among other things, Poroshin said that he himself was in love with a local witch. Kuprin will later tell this story in the story, at the same time including in it all the mysticism of local legends, the mysterious mystical atmosphere and piercing realism of the situation surrounding him, the difficult fate of the Polesie inhabitants.

Analysis of the work

Plot of the story

Compositionally, “Olesya” is a retrospective story, that is, the author-narrator returns in memories to the events that took place in his life many years ago.

The basis of the plot and the leading theme of the story is the love between the city nobleman (panych) Ivan Timofeevich and the young resident of Polesie, Olesya. Love is bright, but tragic, since its death is inevitable due to a number of circumstances - social inequality, the gap between the heroes.

According to the plot, the hero of the story, Ivan Timofeevich, spends several months in a remote village, on the edge of Volyn Polesie (the territory called Little Russia in tsarist times, today the west of the Pripyat Lowland, in northern Ukraine). A city dweller, he first tries to instill culture in the local peasants, treats them, teaches them to read, but his studies are unsuccessful, since people are overcome by worries and are not interested in either enlightenment or development. Ivan Timofeevich increasingly goes into the forest to hunt, admires the local landscapes, and sometimes listens to the stories of his servant Yarmola, who talks about witches and sorcerers.

Having gotten lost one day while hunting, Ivan ends up in a forest hut - the same witch from Yarmola’s stories lives here - Manuilikha and her granddaughter Olesya.

The second time the hero comes to the inhabitants of the hut is in the spring. Olesya tells fortunes for him, predicting a quick, unhappy love and adversity, even a suicide attempt. The girl also shows mystical abilities - she can influence a person, instilling her will or fear, and stop bleeding. Panych falls in love with Olesya, but she herself remains distinctly cold towards him. She is especially angry that the gentleman stands up for her and her grandmother in front of the local police officer, who threatened to disperse the inhabitants of the forest hut for their alleged sorcery and harm to people.

Ivan falls ill and does not come to the forest hut for a week, but when he comes, it is noticeable that Olesya is happy to see him, and the feelings of both of them flare up. A month of secret dates and quiet, bright happiness passes. Despite the obvious and realized inequality of lovers by Ivan, he proposes to Olesya. She refuses, citing the fact that she, a servant of the devil, cannot go into church, and therefore, get married, entering into a marriage union. Nevertheless, the girl decides to go to church to please the gentleman. Local residents, however, did not appreciate Olesya’s impulse and attacked her, beating her severely.

Ivan hurries to the forest house, where the beaten, defeated and morally crushed Olesya tells him that her fears about the impossibility of their union have been confirmed - they cannot be together, so she and her grandmother will leave their home. Now the village is even more hostile towards Olesya and Ivan - any whim of nature will be associated with its sabotage and sooner or later they will kill.

Before leaving for the city, Ivan goes into the forest again, but in the hut he finds only red olesin beads.

Heroes of the story

Olesya

The main character of the story is the forest witch Olesya (her real name is Alena - says grandmother Manuilikha, and Olesya is the local version of the name). A beautiful, tall brunette with intelligent dark eyes immediately attracts Ivan's attention. The girl's natural beauty is combined with a natural intelligence - despite the fact that the girl does not even know how to read, she has, perhaps, more tact and depth than the city girl.

Olesya is sure that she is “not like everyone else” and soberly understands that for this dissimilarity she can suffer from the people. Ivan doesn’t really believe in Olesya’s unusual abilities, believing that there is more to it than a centuries-old superstition. However, he cannot deny the mysticism of Olesya’s image.

Olesya is well aware of the impossibility of her happiness with Ivan, even if he makes a strong-willed decision and marries her, so it is she who boldly and simply manages their relationship: firstly, she exercises self-control, trying not to impose herself on the gentleman, and secondly, she decides to separate , seeing that they are not a couple. Savor would be unacceptable for Olesya, her husband would inevitably become burdened with her after the lack of common interests became clear. Olesya does not want to be a burden, to tie Ivan hand and foot and leaves on her own - this is the heroism and strength of the girl.

Ivan Timofeevich

Ivan is a poor, educated nobleman. City boredom leads him to Polesie, where at first he tries to do some business, but in the end the only activity left is hunting. He treats legends about witches as fairy tales - a healthy skepticism is justified by his education.

(Ivan and Olesya)

Ivan Timofeevich - sincere and a kind person, he is able to feel the beauty of nature, and therefore Olesya at first interests him not as beautiful girl, but as interesting person. He wonders how it happened that nature itself raised her, and she came out so tender and delicate, unlike the rude, uncouth peasants. How did it happen that they, religious, although superstitious, are ruder and tougher than Olesya, although she should be the embodiment of evil. For Ivan, meeting Olesya is not a lordly pastime or a difficult summer love adventure, although he understands that they are not a couple - society in any case will be stronger than their love and will destroy their happiness. The personification of society in this case is unimportant - be it a blind and stupid peasant force, be it city residents, Ivan’s colleagues. When he thinks of Olesya as his future wife, in a city dress, trying to carry on small talk with his colleagues, he simply comes to a dead end. The loss of Olesya for Ivan is as much a tragedy as finding her as a wife. This remains outside the scope of the story, but most likely Olesya’s prediction came true in full - after her departure he felt bad, even to the point of thinking about intentionally leaving this life.

Final conclusion

The culmination of events in the story occurs on a big holiday - Trinity. This is not a coincidence; it emphasizes and intensifies the tragedy with which Olesya’s bright fairy tale is trampled by people who hate her. There is a sarcastic paradox in this: the servant of the devil, Olesya, the witch, turns out to be more open to love than the crowd of people whose religion fits into the thesis “God is Love.”

The author's conclusions sound tragic - it is impossible for two people to be happy together when the happiness for each of them individually is different. For Ivan, happiness is impossible apart from civilization. For Olesya - in isolation from nature. But at the same time, the author claims, civilization is cruel, society can poison relations between people, destroy them morally and physically, but nature cannot.

Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Here, in the Cherry estate, the famous Russian surgeon Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov lived and worked for 20 years: a man who performed many miracles during his life, the prototype of the “wonderful doctor” about whom Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin narrates.

On December 25, 1897, the newspaper “Kievskoye Slovo” published a work by A.I. Kuprin’s “The Wonderful Doctor (true incident),” which begins with the lines: “The following story is not the fruit of idle fiction. Everything I described actually happened in Kyiv about thirty years ago...”, which immediately puts the reader in a serious mood: after all real stories we take it closer to our hearts and feel more strongly about the heroes.

So, this story was told to Alexander Ivanovich by a banker he knew, who, by the way, is also one of the heroes of the book. Real basis The story is no different from what the author depicted.

“The Wonderful Doctor” is a work about the amazing philanthropy, the mercy of one famous doctor who did not strive for fame, did not expect honors, but only selflessly provided help to those who needed it here and now.

Meaning of the name

Secondly, no one except Pirogov wanted to lend a helping hand to people in need; passers-by replaced the bright and pure message of Christmas with the pursuit of discounts, profitable goods and festive dishes. In this atmosphere, the manifestation of virtue is a miracle that can only be hoped for.

Genre and direction

“The Wonderful Doctor” is a story, or, to be more precise, a Yuletide, or Christmas, story. According to all the laws of the genre, the heroes of the work find themselves in a difficult life situation: troubles fall one after another, there is not enough money, which is why the characters even think about taking their own lives. Only a miracle can help them. This miracle results from a chance meeting with a doctor who, in one evening, helps them overcome life’s difficulties. The work “The Wonderful Doctor” has a bright ending: good defeats evil, the state of spiritual decline is replaced by hopes for better life. However, this does not prevent us from attributing this work to the realistic direction, because everything that happened in it is the pure truth.

The story takes place during the holidays. Decorated Christmas trees peek out from store windows, there is an abundance of delicious food everywhere, laughter is heard in the streets, and the ear catches the cheerful conversations of people. But somewhere, very close by, poverty, grief and despair reign. And all these human troubles on the bright holiday of the Nativity of Christ are illuminated by a miracle.

Composition

The entire work is built on contrasts. At the very beginning, two boys stand in front of a bright shop window, a festive spirit is in the air. But when they go home, everything around them becomes darker: old, crumbling houses are everywhere, and their own home is completely in the basement. While people in the city are preparing for the holiday, the Mertsalovs do not know how to make ends meet in order to simply survive. There is no talk of a holiday in their family. This stark contrast allows the reader to feel the desperate situation in which the family finds itself.

It is worth noting the contrast among the heroes of the work. The head of the family turns out to be weak person who is no longer able to solve problems, but is ready to run away from them: he is thinking about suicide. Professor Pirogov is presented to us as an incredibly strong, cheerful and positive hero who, with his kindness, saves the Mertsalov family.

The essence

In the story “The Wonderful Doctor” by A.I. Kuprin talks about how human kindness and caring for one's neighbor can change lives. The action takes place approximately in the 60s of the 19th century in Kyiv. The city has an atmosphere of magic and the approaching holiday. The work begins with two boys, Grisha and Volodya Mertsalov, joyfully gazing at the store window, joking and laughing. But it soon turns out that their family has big problems: they live in the basement, there is a catastrophic lack of money, their father was kicked out of work, their sister died six months ago, and now their second sister, Mashutka, is very ill. Everyone is desperate and seems to be prepared for the worst.

That evening the father of the family goes to beg for alms, but all attempts are in vain. He goes to a park, where he talks about the difficult life of his family, and thoughts of suicide begin to occur to him. But fate turns out to be favorable, and in this very park Mertsalov meets a man who is destined to change his life. They go home to an impoverished family, where the doctor examines Mashutka, prescribes her the necessary medications and even leaves her a large sum of money. He does not give a name, considering what he did to be his duty. And only by the signature on the prescription does the family know that this doctor is the famous Professor Pirogov.

The main characters and their characteristics

The story involves a small amount characters. In this work for A.I. The wonderful doctor himself, Alexander Ivanovich Pirogov, is important to Kuprin.

  1. Pirogov- famous professor, surgeon. He knows how to approach any person: he looks at the father of the family so carefully and interestedly that he almost immediately inspires confidence in him, and he talks about all his troubles. Pirogov does not need to think about whether to help or not. He heads home to the Mertsalovs, where he does everything possible to save desperate souls. One of Mertsalov’s sons, already an adult man, remembers him and calls him a saint: “... that great, powerful and holy thing that lived and burned in the wonderful doctor during his lifetime faded away irrevocably.”
  2. Mertsalov- a man broken by adversity, who is consumed by his own powerlessness. Seeing the death of his daughter, the despair of his wife, the deprivation of the other children, he is ashamed of his inability to help them. The Doctor stops him on the path to a cowardly and fatal act, saving, first of all, his soul, which was ready to sin.
  3. Themes

    The main themes of the work are mercy, compassion and kindness. The Mertsalov family is doing everything possible to cope with the troubles that have befallen them. And in a moment of despair, fate sends them a gift: Doctor Pirogov turns out to be a real wizard who, with his indifference and compassion, heals their crippled souls.

    He does not stay in the park when Mertsalov loses his temper: being a man of incredible kindness, he listens to him and immediately does everything possible to help. We do not know how many such acts Professor Pirogov committed during his life. But you can be sure that in his heart there lived a great love for people, indifference, which turned out to be the saving grace for the unfortunate family, which he extended at the most necessary moment.

    Problems

    A.I. Kuprin in this short story raises such universal problems as humanism and loss of hope.

    Professor Pirogov personifies philanthropy and humanism. He is no stranger to the problems of strangers, and he takes helping his neighbor for granted. He does not need gratitude for what he has done, he does not need glory: the only important thing is that the people around him fight and do not lose faith in the best. This becomes his main wish to the Mertsalov family: “...and most importantly, never lose heart.” However, those around the heroes, their acquaintances and colleagues, neighbors and just passers-by - all turned out to be indifferent witnesses to someone else's grief. They did not even think that someone’s misfortune concerned them, they did not want to show humanity, thinking that they were not authorized to correct social injustice. This is the problem: no one cares about what is happening around them, except for one person.

    Despair is also described in detail by the author. It poisons Mertsalov, depriving him of the will and strength to move on. Under the influence of sorrowful thoughts, he descends to a cowardly hope for death, while his family perishes from hunger. The feeling of hopelessness dulls all other feelings and enslaves the person, who is only able to feel sorry for himself.

    Meaning

    What is the main idea of ​​A.I. Kuprin? The answer to this question is precisely contained in the phrase that Pirogov says as he leaves the Mertsalovs: never lose heart.

    Even at the most dark times you need to hope, search, and if there is absolutely no strength left, wait for a miracle. And it does happen. With the most ordinary people on one frosty, say, winter day: the hungry become full, the cold become warm, the sick become well. And these miracles are performed by people themselves with the kindness of their hearts - this is the main idea a writer who saw salvation from social cataclysms in simple mutual assistance.

    What does it teach?

    This small work makes you think about how important it is to be caring towards the people around us. In the bustle of our days, we often forget that somewhere very close by, neighbors, acquaintances, and compatriots are suffering; somewhere, poverty reigns and despair prevails. Entire families do not know how to earn their bread, and barely survive to receive pay. That’s why it’s so important not to pass by and be able to support: with a kind word or deed.

    Helping one person, of course, will not change the world, but it will change one part of it, and the most important one for giving rather than accepting help. The donor is enriched much more than the petitioner, because he receives spiritual satisfaction from what he has done.

    Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Young prose writers They immediately mastered a special type of narrative, small, with an extremely simplified plot basis, revealing not events or relationships, but some state of the human soul. Even where we were talking about a socially specific situation, the main thing was the person’s perception of it, and not the person herself.

Famous critic V. Borovsky wrote about the work of one of the most widely read in the 90s. writers - A. Kuprin, that he “interprets everything from the internal, spiritual, aesthetic side, and not from the external, material, political.” Something similar could be said about many other authors. As for Kuprin, in the “populous” story “Moloch” from the life of the factory, he conveyed, first of all, the unsteady, uncertain worldview of the engineer Bobrov, subject to spontaneous impulses, and the process of his lonely, painfully contradictory, fruitless thoughts. The creator of “Moloch” adopted the sacred color from L. Tolstoy: “Look how radiantly beautiful and how great man is!” But in my modernity I saw a sad waste of beauty and strength, a crushing of feelings, and delusion of thought. There were many reasons for this. Among them, Kuprin singled out “naked” technical progress and an imaginary bourgeois civilization. Nevertheless, he believed: “the coming true culture will ennoble humanity.” The writer’s ideal went back to the victory of “strength of spirit” over “strength of body” and “love faithful to death.” This feeling is identified as a stimulus for the flourishing of personality. Moreover, equally purifying energy is seen in the “tender, chaste fragrance” of love and the “trembling, intoxication” of pure passion. The worship of these moral values ​​permeates all of Kuprin’s works.

He wrote a lot about the death of talent, beauty, loneliness of people. But even in the gloomy paintings there were reflections of light. The circus actresses in the stories “Lolly”, “” are poetic, although by no means idealized. They are characterized by a combination of “childish purity of heart with cold-blooded courage,” which always attracted Kuprin in the works of R. Kipling, A. Dumas, D. London. However, the spiritual rise of Kuprin’s heroines does not exclude their strange attraction to insignificant people. Nature's given gift of self-sacrifice is undermined from within by a certain blindness of the soul. Kuprin, however, also found special, exceptional conditions that allowed him to create a romanticized image of a woman and her ideal love. This is how the poetic and tragic story young girl in the story "Olesya".

By external and internal In appearance, the daughter of the forests, Olesya, vividly resembles Maryana from L. Tolstoy’s “Cossacks.” The bright and original beauty of the Polesie “witch” is also combined with innate nobility. The city intellectual Ivan Timofeevich experiences an admiring attraction for her similar to Olenin. At the same time, Kuprin also cherishes the pathos of Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness.” The village in his story is “shrouded in darkness,” disunited, insensitive. “Integral, original, free nature” exists because it is separated from the gloomy peasants (Tolstoy’s communal ideals are not accepted), and is nurtured only by free nature.

Natural state a person, according to Kuprin, is devoid of contradictions, organically combines strong emotions and pure thoughts, strong will and reverent experiences. Unprecedented possibilities are expressed in Olesya’s self-denying feelings for the weak, not without egoism, Ivan Timofeevich. But a miraculously emerging sublime soul is forced to hide from cruel people and suffer from the indifference of its loved ones. Kuprin's work was constantly suspected of lacking generalizations and concepts of the world. K. Paustovsky also saw only the “stream of life.”

Kuprin's story "Olesya" cannot leave the reader indifferent. The love story of a beautiful witch girl and a young gentleman is both tragic and beautiful. Kuprin creates a fabulous image of a Polesie beauty. There is nothing artificial about Olesya; she does not accept lies or pretense. And how different the girl is from the residents of the local villages! She, like them, is simple and uneducated, but how much innate tact, nobility, and truly feminine wisdom she has! Local girls, accustomed to maintaining a slavishly submissive and intimidated expression on their faces, lose all their charm and any charm against the background of the forest “witch.” It is impossible to remain indifferent to Olesya, and it is not surprising that main character falls in love with this beautiful girl. Love becomes the meaning of life for Olesya. She surrenders to this feeling that has absorbed her with all her passion, which for the time being was dormant in her soul. And yet Olesya surprisingly accurately defined her own role in the life of Ivan Timofeevich. The girl understands that their relationship has no future. In the future, the beloved may be ashamed of the uneducated, simple girl who seemed to him like a fairy-tale beauty against the backdrop of the forest. True love always forces a person to make sacrifices. This is exactly what happened to Olesya. She knows very well how the locals, evil and cruel in their religious fanaticism, treat her. The young girl and her grandmother are closely connected in their minds with something unclean and witchcraft. And therefore, local residents are sure that the “witch” has no place in their society. The villagers did not tolerate the presence of a “witch” in God’s temple. But Olesya did not do this on her own whim, she just wanted to fulfill the request of her beloved. The greatness of Olesya’s soul is that she, without hesitation, sacrifices herself, her well-being and happiness. The girl gives up her happiness for the sake of another person. Can Ivan Timofeevich appreciate the full depth moral lesson, which his beloved gives him? The reader wants to believe that the feelings that Ivan Timofeevich experiences for Olesya are sincere. But still, love does not occupy all his thoughts. For Olesya’s sake, he would not give up his usual life, he would not sacrifice anything for her. He condescendingly accepts her stories about witchcraft, about extraordinary abilities that are passed on from generation to generation. But does he believe it? Or is he attracted by the unusualness of the situation, the very fact of communicating with an amazing girl, completely different from either spoiled society ladies or mundane and uninteresting villagers? Olesya does not blame her lover for anything, despite the fact that her relationship with him became the root cause of all her disasters. She is amazingly pure and kind, there is no self-interest in her, she cannot understand all the depravity and cruelty of the world around her. The peasants' hatred of Olesya seems to the reader a cruel injustice of fate. But in fact, people are so stupid and limited in their ignorance that they perceive everything incomprehensible as a crime against their way of life and established views. The story of a short, but so beautiful and pure love makes the reader think about how bizarre and unique human destinies are. Ivan Timofeevich spent very little time with his beloved, but her image will remain with him until the end of his life. Because this ordinary girl taught him a lot - love, sincerity, the ability to sacrifice oneself for the sake of a loved one.