The story “The Fate of a Man” was written by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov in 1956 and was soon published in the Pravda newspaper. This is a sad story of the difficult life of a simple Russian driver Andrei Sokolov.

The fate of this man is truly tragic. Quite early on, the hero was left an orphan, as hunger claimed the lives of his parents and sister. Andrei himself, in order to survive, had to go to Kuban and start “attacking the kulaks.”

Returning from there, the man married a “meek,” cheerful and “obsequious” girl Irina and began working as a driver, then the young family had children. It would seem that life began to get better, but suddenly war broke out, and Andrei Sokolov was among the first to go to the front.

Despite the fact that the harsh military life, of course, burdened the hero, he never dared to complain about it to his wife. He believed that “that’s why you’re a man, that’s why you’re a soldier, to endure everything, to endure everything, if need calls for it.”

In the future, life itself seems to be trying to test this statement of Andrei Sokolov, and is preparing a new terrible test for him: the man is captured by the Germans. This happens when he, without thinking for a moment, decides to accomplish a real feat: to deliver shells to a battery of his soldiers, which is located in a hot spot and is about to engage in battle with the enemy. Andrei himself speaks very simply about his heroic deed: “My comrades may be dying there, but am I going to pine away here?”

Indeed, this man was ready to give his life for his comrades, just like they did for him. In the work, the author gives many examples of the courage of Russian soldiers. Suffice it to recall the military doctor who “in captivity and in the dark” did “his great work”: at night, when the Germans herded all the Russian prisoners into the church, he passed from one soldier to another and tried to help his compatriots in whatever way he could.

The soldiers stoically endure all the trials that befall them in German captivity: this includes unbearably hard hard labor and constant hunger, cold, beatings, and just bullying from enemies. In such difficult conditions, these people do not lose the ability to joke and laugh, which says a lot about their courage and fortitude.

Living in constant fear makes Andrei Sokolov and his comrades truly brave. Suffice it to recall the episode where the Germans want to shoot the main character (even before they decide to take him prisoner). At this moment, being wounded, he still rises to his feet and fearlessly looks his possible killer straight in the eyes. Further, soldier Sokolov, despite the risk of being captured and killed, decides to bravely escape from captivity, but, unfortunately, this attempt is unsuccessful.

In the episode when the German camp authorities call Andrei Sokolov to the commandant’s office to announce the prisoner’s sentence of execution, the man shows real heroism. Knowing that he is going to his death, he prepares to “look fearlessly into the hole of the pistol.”

In conversation with Commandant Müller main character also shows incredible courage and dignity: he does not agree to drink vodka “for the victory of German weapons” and refuses a snack, demonstrating to his opponents that, despite his hunger, he is not going to “choke on their handout.”

For the first time in Russian military literature The heroism of a soldier is manifested not only in the exploits he performed on the battlefield, but also in such life situations. Sokolov's courage admires his opponents so much that they decide not to kill their captive, but, on the contrary, give him food with them and release him back to the camp.

The second attempt to get out of captivity turns out to be successful for Andrei, and the man returns to his own. But the most terrible news, which will require from the hero no less, and perhaps even more courage, than all military trials, awaits the soldier Sokolov ahead. While in the hospital, Andrei learns from a neighbor’s letter about the death of his wife and daughters, and then, after the end of the war, he is informed that his son was killed on Victory Day.

Such things sometimes break even the strongest and most courageous men, because soldiers live in war and in captivity with the hope of returning to their relatives. But tragic events open up new reserves of kindness and humanity in Andrei Sokolov, and therefore he takes in a young orphan, Vanya, to raise him. This noble deed, like all the brave deeds performed by Sokolov in the war, can rightfully be considered a real feat and a manifestation of heroism in our everyday life.

LIFE WAY OF ANDREY SOKOLOV. During the days of the Great Patriotic War When M. Sholokhov was a correspondent for Pravda at the front, he wrote many essays about the courage and heroism of the Russian people. Already in the first military essays of the writer, the image of a man who preserved what makes him invincible emerged - living soul, cordiality, philanthropy. Sholokhov tried to tell about ordinary participants in the war courageously fighting the enemies of their homeland in his last major work, “They Fought for the Motherland,” but the novel remained unfinished. Among the stories created in the post-war years, the story “The Fate of a Man” (1957) entered the treasury of not only Russian but also world literature.

“The Fate of a Man” is a story-poem about a man, a soldier-worker who endured all the hardships of the war years and managed to carry through incredible physical and moral suffering a pure, broad soul open to goodness and light.

“The Fate of Man” describes unusual, exceptional events, but the plot is based on a real incident. The story is structured in the form of a confession by the protagonist. About his participation in the civil war, about the fact that he was already an orphan from a young age, about the fact that in the hungry year of twenty-two he “went to Kuban to hunt the kulaks, and that’s why he survived,” he speaks in passing, focusing in contrast on life with his family before the Patriotic War and mainly during the most recently ended war.

We learn that before the war, Andrei Sokolov was a modest worker, a builder, and the father of a family. He lived an ordinary life, worked and was happy in his own way. But war broke out, and Sokolov’s peaceful happiness, like millions of other people, was destroyed. The war tore him away from his family, from home, from work - from everything that he loved and valued in life.

Andrei Sokolov went to the front to defend his homeland. His path was difficult and tragic. All the hardships and troubles of the wartime fell on his shoulders, and at the first moment he almost disappeared into the general mass, becoming one of many workers in the war, but Andrei later remembers this temporary retreat from humanity with the most acute pain.

The war became for Sokolov a road of endless humiliation, trials, and camps. But the hero’s character and his courage are revealed in spiritual combat with fascism. Andrei Sokolov, the driver carrying shells to the front line, came under fire, was shell-shocked and lost consciousness, and when he woke up, there were Germans around. The human feat of Andrei Sokolov truly appears not on the battlefield or on the labor front, but in conditions of fascist captivity, behind the barbed wire of a concentration camp.

Far from the front, Sokolov survived all the hardships of the war and endless bullying. The memories of the B-14 prisoner of war camp, where thousands of people behind barbed wire were separated from the world, where there was a terrible struggle not just for life, for a pot of gruel, but for the right to remain human, will forever remain in his soul. The camp also became a test for Andrei human dignity. There he had to kill a man for the first time, not a German, but a Russian, with the words: “What kind of guy is he?” This event became a test of the loss of “one of our own.”

Then there was an unsuccessful escape attempt. The climax of the story was the scene in the commandant's room. Andrei behaved defiantly, like a man who has nothing to lose, for whom death is the highest good. But the strength of the human spirit wins - Sokolov remains alive and passes one more test: without betraying the honor of a Russian soldier in the commandant’s office, he does not lose his dignity in front of his comrades. “How are we going to share the food?” - his bunk neighbor asks, and his voice trembles. “Everyone equally,” Andrey answers. - We waited for dawn. Bread and lard were cut with a harsh thread. Everyone got a piece of bread the size of a matchbox, every crumb was taken into account, well, and lard... just to anoint your lips. However, they shared without offense.”

Death looked him in the eye more than once, but each time Sokolov found the strength and courage to remain human. He remembered how on the first night, when he, along with other prisoners of war, was locked in a dilapidated church, he suddenly heard a question in the darkness: “Are there any wounded?” It was a doctor. He set Andrei’s dislocated shoulder, and the pain subsided. And the doctor went further with the same question. And in captivity, in terrible conditions, he continued “to do his great work.” This means that even in captivity you need and can remain human. Moral ties with humanity could not be broken by any of life’s vicissitudes; Andrei Sokolov, in any conditions, acts in accordance with the “golden rule” of morality - do not hurt others, remains kind and responsive to people (according to Sholokhov, a person must preserve the human in himself, no matter what for what tests).

Andrei Sokolov escaped from captivity, taking a German major with valuable documents, and remained alive, but fate prepared a new blow for him: his wife Irina and daughters died in their own home. The last person close to Andrei, the son of Anatoly, was killed by a German sniper “exactly on the ninth of May, in the morning, on Victory Day.” And the greatest gift that fate gave him was to see his dead son before burying him in a foreign land...

Andrei Sokolov went through the roads of wars and hardships, through hunger and cold, mortal danger and risk. He lost everything: his family died, his hearth was destroyed, the meaning of life was lost. After everything that this man has experienced, it would seem that he could become embittered, bitter, broken, but he does not complain, does not withdraw into his grief, but goes to people. Life for those who have not hardened their souls, says the author, continues, because they are able to love and bring good to people, they know how to do something for another, accept him into their hearts and become close and dear to him. Having met the little boy Vanya and learned that all his relatives have died, the hero decides: “We must not disappear separately! I’ll take him as my child!” It is in this love for the boy that Andrei Sokolov finds both overcoming his personal tragedy and the meaning of his future life. It is she, and not just his exploits in the war, that highlights in him the truly humane, human element that is so close to the author.

Andrey Sokolov is a simple Russian man who embodies typical traits national character. He went through all the horrors of the war imposed on him and, at the cost of enormous, incomparable and irreparable personal losses and personal deprivations, defended his homeland, asserting the great right to life, freedom and independence of his homeland. Sholokhov showed, in tragic circumstances, a man majestic in his simplicity. The fate of Andrei Sokolov is a generalized history of the existence of a person who comes into this world for the sake of the main thing - life itself and active love in it for other people, and at the same time - an extremely individual history of the life of a specific person in a specific historical period and in a specific country.

Text based on the story by M.A. Sholokhov "The Fate of Man"

Andrei Sokolov's feat lies in his resilience, devotion to duty, his humanity and compassion for those around him who need his help. These noble feelings were not killed in him either by the war, or by the grief of losing loved ones, or by the difficult years of captivity.

Taking in an orphan boy, while realizing the burden of responsibility for his fate falls on his shoulders - not every person will decide to do this, and even after undergoing trials. It would seem that a person, exhausted both spiritually and physically, should lose strength, break down, or isolate himself from life with a veil of indifference.

Sokolov is not like that.

With the advent of Vanyusha, his life opens up. new stage. And the remaining hero of the story will pass life path extremely worthy.

Although “The Fate of Man” is a work of a small genre, it presents a picture of epic proportions. The fate of the main character reflects the labor biography of the country in peacetime and the tragedy of the entire people during the war years, his unbroken spirit and fortitude. The image of one person symbolizes the portrait of an entire generation.

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Clear, convincing in its simplicity and harsh truth, the work of M. Sholokhov still makes the reader indignant and shudder, passionately love and keenly hate.

Before us is an unforgettable image of an ordinary Soviet soldier - Andrei Sokolov. A man who endured everything, overcame everything... The great Sholokhov art of portraiture: it is fresh, extremely compressed and expressive. From two or three phrases dropped by the author as if in passing, we learn that Sokolov is “tall, stooped,” that his hand is “large, callous,” and he speaks in a “muffled bass voice.” And only after the narrator uttered the first phrase of his story: “Well, and there, brother, I had to take a sip of grief up the nostrils and up,” does his portrait immediately appear before us, drawn with one or two unforgettable features.

The portrait of the second character in the story, the commandant of the Muller camp, is just as briefly and vividly sculpted to the point of physical palpability.

And the image of the warm-hearted, intelligent wife of Andrei Sokolov, the orphan Irinka, who grew up in an orphanage. With her devotion, holy sacrificial love, she resembles the beautiful images of Nekrasov’s Russian women. And again he is so visibly sculpted plastically, and not only externally, but also in the most complex mental movements. The author achieves particular power in the scene of farewell at the station in the first days of the war.

The volume of the story is striking: the whole life of the family, and the war, and captivity. Even more amazing is the revelation of the image of Andrei Sokolov. On the small “platform” of the story, a person is shown in joy, and in trouble, and in hatred, and in love, and in peaceful work, and in war. Behind this image stands a multimillion-strong, great, kind, long-suffering working people. And how this peaceful people is transformed during the years of military disasters!

Russian soldier! What historian, artist fully depicted and glorified his valor?! This is a sublime and complex image. Much is fused and intertwined in him that made him “not only invincible, but also a great martyr, almost a saint - traits consisting of an ingenuous, naive faith, a clear, good-natured, cheerful outlook on life, cold and businesslike courage, humility in the face of death, pity for the vanquished, endless patience and amazing physical and moral endurance” (A. Kuprin).

The typical features of a Russian soldier are embodied in the image of Andrei Sokolov. Extraordinary endurance, durability, high moral qualities in the most difficult moments of war, captivity, and post-war life, this person evokes a feeling of admiration. “...And I began to gather my courage to look into the hole of the pistol fearlessly, as befits a soldier, so that my enemies would not see at my last minute that it was still difficult for me to part with my life...” says Sokolov. The noble pride of a soldier who does not want to show the enemy the fear of death because shame is worse than death.

Even among cruel enemies in whom fascism has burned out everything human, the dignity and self-control of the Russian soldier evokes respect. “That's what, Sokolov, you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. I am also a soldier and respect worthy opponents. I won't shoot you. Moreover, today our valiant troops reached the Volga and completely captured Stalingrad,” says Muller.

The ability to bring the breadth of life's display to an epic sound is characteristic only of enormous talent. Carefully reading the structure of the story, one cannot help but notice the fairytale technique that the author resorts to, showing the single combat of the Lagerfuhrer and “Russian Ivan”: as in epics and ancient tales that have come down to us from the depths of the people, M. Sholokhov uses the technique of triple amplification. The soldier drank the first glass, preparing for death, and did not take a bite. He drank the second glass and again refused the snack. And only after the third, stretched glass of schnapps, “he took a bite of a small piece of bread and put the rest on the table.”

This is a traditional fairy-tale increase in the drama of the action over time. The writer used it quite naturally, and this technique of storytellers harmoniously merges with his modern story. The work of M. Sholokhov is national in language. The writer reveals the typical image of the Russian soldier Andrei Sokolov in the structure of thought and speech, full of apt, original words and folk sayings.

But not only in those noted external signs, as a method of triple amplification and saturation of the language with vivid expressions and proverbs, and, as Belinsky said, in the very “fold of the Russian mind, in the Russian way of looking at things,” the writer’s nationality is manifested. A sensitive artist, M. Sholokhov was connected with the life of his people, with their thoughts and hopes, with all his life and all his thoughts. His creativity was fed by life-giving springs folk wisdom, her great truth and beauty. This determined the fidelity to every detail, every intonation of his work. The main advantage of the story is probably that it is built on the correct disclosure of the deep movements of the human soul.

It would seem that the strength of Andrei Sokolov, mercilessly beaten by life, was about to dry up. But no! An inexhaustible source of love lurks in his soul. And this love, this good beginning in a person guides all his actions.

Finishing the story, M. Sholokhov did not put a plot point. The writer leaves his heroes in a spring field: a former front-line soldier and his adopted child, connected by the great power of love, are walking along the road, and a great life lies before them. And we believe that these people will not disappear, they will find their happiness...

No one is able to read the following monologue by Andrei Sokolov at the beginning of the story without excitement: “Sometimes you don’t sleep at night, you look into the darkness with empty eyes and think: “Why have you, life, maimed me so much? Why did you distort it like that?” I don’t have an answer, either in the dark or in the clear sun... No, and I can’t wait!”

Millions of Sokolov’s peers who did not return from the battlefields, who died from wounds and premature diseases in peacetime, after the Victory, will never receive a painful answer to this question.

Only very recently have we begun to openly talk about the enormous, often completely futile, sacrifices of the Second World War; that it might not have existed at all if Stalin’s policy towards Germany had been more far-sighted; about our completely immoral attitude towards our compatriots who were in German captivity... But the fate of a person cannot be turned back, cannot be remade!

And at first, Sokolov’s life developed like that of many of his peers. "IN civil war was in the Red Army... In the hungry twenty-second, he went to Kuban to fight the kulaks, and that’s why he survived.” Fate generously rewarded Sokolov for his ordeal, giving him a wife like his Irinka: “Tender, quiet, does not know where to seat you, she struggles to prepare sweet kvass for you even with little income.” Maybe Irinka was like this because she was brought up in an orphanage and all the unspent affection fell on her husband and children?

But people often don’t appreciate what they have. It seems to me that he underestimated his wife even before leaving for the front. “Other women are talking with their husbands and sons, but mine clung to me like a leaf to a branch, and only trembles all over... She speaks and sobs behind every word: “My dear... Andryusha... we won’t see you.” ... you and I... more... in this... world...” Andrei Sokolov appreciated those farewell words much later, after the news of the death of his wife and daughters: “Until my death, until my last hours, I’ll die, and I won’t forgive myself for pushing her away then!..”

The rest of his actions during the war and after the Victory were worthy and masculine. Real men, according to Sokolov, are at the front. He “couldn’t stand those slobbery guys who wrote to their wives and sweethearts every day, whether on business or not, smearing their snot on the paper. It’s hard, they say, it’s hard for him, and just in case he’s killed. And here he is, a bitch in his pants, complaining, looking for sympathy, slobbering, but he doesn’t want to understand that these unfortunate women and children had no better time in the rear than ours.”

Sokolov himself had a hard time at the front. He fought less than a year. After two minor wounds, he suffered a severe contusion and captivity, which was considered a disgrace in the official Soviet propaganda of that time. However, Sholokhov successfully avoids the pitfalls of this problem: he simply does not touch upon it, which is not surprising if we remember the time the story was written - 1956. But Sholokhov meted out trials in full to Sokolov behind enemy lines. The first test is the murder of the traitor Kryzhnev. Not every one of us will decide to help a complete stranger. And Sokolov helped. Maybe he did this because shortly before this, a completely unfamiliar military officer helped Sokolov? He set his dislocated arm. There is the humanism and nobility of one and the baseness and cowardice of the other.

Sokolov himself cannot be denied courage. The second test is an escape attempt. Andrei took advantage of the guards’ oversight, fled, went forty kilometers, but he was caught, the dogs were released on the living... He survived, did not bend, did not remain silent, “criticized” the regime in the concentration camp, although he knew that this would mean certain death. Sholokhov masterfully describes the scene of the confrontation between the Russian soldier Sokolov and the commandant of the concentration camp Müller. And it is decided in favor of the Russian soldier. Even a great connoisseur of the Russian soul, who spoke Russian no worse than us, Muller was forced to admit: “That's what, Sokolov, you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. I am also a soldier and I respect worthy opponents. I will shoot you I won't."

Sokolov repaid Muller and all his enemies in full for the gift of life, having successfully escaped from captivity and taking an invaluable tongue - his construction major. It seemed that fate should have mercy on Sokolov, but no... A chill passes through the skin when you learn about two more blows that befell the hero: the death of his wife and daughters under bombing in June 1942 and his son on Victory Day.

What kind of soul must Sokolov have been so as not to break after all the tragedies and even adopt Vanyushka! “Two orphaned people, two grains of sand, thrown into foreign lands by a military hurricane of unprecedented force... What awaits them ahead?” - Sholokhov asks at the end of the story.

Over 60. I really want Ivan’s generation to withstand all the hardships of the present time. Such is the fate of the Russian man!