The main character of the novel by M. A. Sholokhov “ Quiet Don“Grigory Melekhov, looking for the truth of life, gets confused a lot, makes mistakes, suffers, because in none of the warring parties does he find the moral truth for which he strives.
Grigory is faithful to the Cossack traditions, instilled in him from birth. But at the same time, he surrenders to the power of violent passion, capable of violating generally accepted norms and rules. Neither the formidable father, nor dirty rumors and ridicule are able to stop Gregory in his passionate impulse.
Melekhov is distinguished by his amazing ability to love. Unwittingly, he causes pain to loved ones. Grigory himself suffers, he suffers no less than Natalya, Aksinya, and his parents. The hero finds himself between two poles: love-duty and love-passion. Committing actions that are bad from the point of view of public morality and dating a married woman, Gregory remains completely honest and sincere. “And I feel sorry for you,” he says to Natalya, “you have become close during these days, but there is nothing in your heart... It’s empty.”
Stormy historical events They spun Gregory in their whirlwind. But the more he delves into military operations, the more he is drawn to the land, to work. He often dreams of the steppe. His heart is always with his beloved, distant woman, with his native farm, kuren.
A new turn in history returns Melekhov to the land, to his beloved, to his family. Grigory meets with the house, with the farm after a long separation. The bosom of his family returns him to the world of shattered traditional ideas about the meaning of life, about Cossack duty.
While fighting, “Gregory firmly guarded the Cossack honor, seized the opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, acted extravagantly, went to the rear of the Austrians in disguise, took down outposts without bloodshed.” Over time, the hero changes. He feels that “the pain for a person that oppressed him in the first days of the war has gone away irrevocably. The heart has become coarse, hardened...” The original portrait of Gregory also changes: “... his eyes are sunken and his cheekbones stick out sharply.”
The tragic revolution, which split the world of the Cossacks into friends and foes, poses many difficult and thorny questions for Gregory. The hero faces a choice. Where to go? With whom? For what? Where is the truth? Melekhov, on his search path, encounters different people, each of whom has his own point of view on what is happening. Thus, centurion Efim Izvarin does not believe in the universal equality declared by the Bolsheviks; he is convinced of the special fate and purpose of the Cossacks and advocates the independent, autonomous life of the Don region. He is a separatist. Gregory, delving into the essence of his speeches, tries to argue with him, but he is illiterate and loses in an argument with a well-educated centurion, who knows how to consistently and logically present the course of his thoughts. “Izvarin easily defeated him in verbal battles,” the author reports, and therefore Gregory falls under the strong influence of Izvarin’s ideas.
Podtelkov instills different truths in Melekhov, who believes that the Cossacks have common interests with all Russian peasants and workers, with the entire proletariat. Podtelkov is convinced of the need for elected people's power. He speaks so competently, convincingly and passionately about his ideas that it makes Gregory listen to him and even believe him. After the conversation with Podtelkov, the hero “painfully tried to sort out the confusion of thoughts, think through something, decide.” In Gregory, an illiterate and politically unsavvy man, despite various suggestions, the desire to find his truth, his place in life, something that is really worth serving is still actively pulsating. Those around him offer him different ways, but Gregory firmly answers them: “I’m looking for the entrance myself.”
The moment comes when Melekhov wholeheartedly takes the side of the new system. But this system, with its cruelty towards the Cossacks and injustice, again pushes Gregory onto the warpath. Melekhov is shocked by the behavior of Chernetsov and Podtelkov in the scene of the massacre of the Chernetsovites. It burns with blind hatred and enmity. Gregory, unlike them, is trying to protect an unarmed enemy from a merciless bloody massacre. Gregory does not stand up for the enemy - in each of his enemies he sees, first of all, a person.
But in war it’s like in war. Fatigue and anger lead the hero to cruelty. The episode of the murder of sailors speaks eloquently about this. However, such inhumanity is not easy for Gregory. It is after this scene that Melekhov experiences deep torment from the realization of a terrible truth: he has gone far from what he was born for and what he fought for. “Life is going wrong, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” he understands.
The hero’s native nest always remains the persistent truth, the unshakable value. In the most difficult moments of life, he turns to thoughts about home, about native nature, about work. These memories give Gregory a feeling of harmony and peace of mind.
Gregory becomes one of the leaders of the Veshensky uprising. This is a new stage in his journey. But gradually he becomes disillusioned and realizes that the uprising did not bring the expected results: the Cossacks are suffering from the whites in the same way as before they suffered from the reds. Well-fed officers - nobles - treat the ordinary Cossack with contempt and arrogance and dream only of achieving success with his help in their new campaigns; The Cossacks are only a reliable means of achieving their goals. For Grigory, General Fitzkhelaurov’s boorish attitude towards him is outrageous; foreign occupiers are hateful and disgusting.
Painfully enduring everything that is happening in the country, Melekhov nevertheless refuses to evacuate. “Whatever the mother is, she is more like a stranger,” he argues. And such a position deserves all respect.
The next transitional stage, salvation for Gregory again becomes a return to the land, to Aksi-nye, to the children. He suddenly becomes imbued with extraordinary warmth and love for children, realizing that they are the meaning of his existence. The usual way of life and the environment of one’s home give rise to the hero’s desire to escape from the struggle. Gregory, having gone through a long and difficult path, loses faith in both the whites and the reds. Home and family are true values, a real support. Violence, repeatedly seen and experienced, evokes disgust in him. More than once he commits noble deeds under the influence of hatred towards him. Grigory releases the relatives of the Red Cossacks from prison, drives a horse to death in order to save Ivan Alekseevich and Mishka Koshevoy from death, leaves the square, not wanting to witness the execution of the Podtelkovites.
Quick to kill and unjustifiably cruel, Mishka Koshevoy pushes Grigory to run away from home. He is forced to wander around the villages and as a result joins Fomin’s gang. The love for life and for children does not allow Grigory to give up. He understands that if he fails to act, he will be shot. Melekhov has no choice, and he joins the gang. Begins new stage Gregory's spiritual quest.
Gregory has little left at the end of the novel. Children, native land and love for Aksinya. But new losses await the hero. He deeply and painfully experiences the death of his beloved woman, but finds the strength to search for himself further: “Everything was taken away from him, everything was destroyed by a merciless death. Only the children remained. But he himself still frantically clung to the ground, as if, in fact, his broken life was of some value to him and to others.”
Gregory spends most of his life in captivity of world-tearing hatred and death, becoming bitter and falling into despair. Stopping on the way, he discovers with disgust that while he hates violence, he hates death. He is the head and support of the family, but he has no time to be at home, among the people who love him.
All the hero’s attempts to find himself are a path of suffering. Melekhov moves forward with his heart open to everything, “stirred up”. He seeks integrity, genuine and undeniable truths, and wants to get to the very essence of everything. His quest is passionate, his soul is on fire. He is tormented by an unsatisfied moral hunger. Gregory longs for self-determination, but he is not without self-condemnation. Melekhov looks for the root of his mistakes, including in himself, in his actions. But about the hero who has gone through many thorns, we can say with confidence that his soul, despite everything, is alive, it is not ruined by the most difficult circumstances of life. Evidence of this is Gregory’s desire for peace, for peace, for land, the desire to return home. Without waiting for the amnesty, Melekhov returns home. He is possessed by a single desire - the desire for peace. His goal is to raise his son, a generous reward for all life's pains. Mishatka is Gregory’s hope for the future, it contains the possibility of continuing the Melekhov family. These thoughts of Gregory are confirmation that he is broken by the war, but not broken by it.
Grigory Melekhov’s path to truth is the tragic path of man’s wanderings, gains, mistakes and losses, evidence of the close connection between personality and history. This difficult path was passed by the Russian people in the 20th century.
Critic Yu. Lukin wrote about the novel: “The significance of the figure of Grigory Melekhov... expands, going beyond the scope and specificity of the Cossack environment of the Don in 1921 and grows to a typical image of a person who did not find his way during the years of the revolution.”
In his work “Quiet Don” - a novel about the Cossacks - Sholokhov showed a reliable picture of his contemporary era. Therefore, this work is interesting not only from the point of view of artistic heritage, but also as evidence of time and history. Sholokhov showed the tragedy of the beginning of the century, when to be for the Reds meant to fully support their policies, and not to support at least one initiative meant to be against, to be white. The times demanded radical opinions and sharp turns. No half-tones or half-truths... But noble man cannot come to terms with this because he understands that this inevitably leads to crime. “Quiet Flows the Flow” shows the fate of a hero who was never able to settle on either the white or the red truth. He searched and searched...
Grigory Melekhov is an ordinary Cossack guy. True, maybe too hot. In Gregory’s family, large and friendly, they sacredly honor the age-old Cossack traditions, work hard, and have fun. But already in the first pages of the novel, the character is distinguished from the bright Cossack environment. So Aksinya Astakhova immediately noticed the “black, affectionate guy.”
Or a seemingly everyday episode: while mowing, Melekhov accidentally killed a duckling with a scythe. “Gregory placed the slaughtered duckling in his palm. Yellow-brown, just hatched from an egg the other day. It contained a living warmth in the cannon. There is a pink bubble of blood on the flat open beak, the beads of the eyes are cunningly squinted, and there is a slight trembling of the still hot paws. Grigory looked with a sudden feeling of acute pity at the dead lump lying in his palm.”
Not one of the numerous characters in the novel is capable of such acute pity or responsiveness to the beauty of nature.
Nice, hard-working, cheerful Gregory immediately wins the hearts of readers: he is not afraid of people's gossip, almost openly, without hiding, he loves the beautiful Aksinya, the wife of the Cossack Stepan. He does not consider it shameful to become a farm laborer in order to preserve his love for Aksinya.
What sets him apart from many other Cossacks is his noble, pure attitude towards women. When the Cossacks committed a heinous act during the war - they raped a woman, Grigory alone becomes furious at this act. He was even tied up so that he would not prevent the Cossacks from committing a crime.
And at the same time, Gregory is a person who tends to hesitate. So, despite his great love for Aksinya, Grigory does not resist his parents and marries Natalya according to their will.
Grigory will also experience hesitation in war. He was both an unfinished “Bolshevik” and a fake White Guard, rushing in search of the truth between the Whites and the Reds.
Service in the army and the war that soon began tore Grigory away from his native kuren and abandoned him hundreds of kilometers from his home. And although he firmly cherishes the Cossack honor and deserves a reward, Gregory is not created for war. Longing for his native farm dried up Grigory’s heart. He feels a passionate desire to leave this hated world of violence and rush to his native kuren.
He painfully wants to know the truth, to find out whose side she is on: the whites or the reds? Having fallen under the influence of the Bolshevik Garanja, Grigory, like a sponge, absorbs new thoughts, new ideas. But few people know about his mental fluctuations; Gregory does not speak about them out loud. Only through internal monologues does the reader understand how the hero suffers. He begins to fight for the Reds, trying to sincerely believe in the truth of this fight.
But the murder of unarmed prisoners by the Reds pushes him away from them. And then this happens: Gregory’s kind, childishly pure soul pushes him away from both the Reds and the Whites. He says: “They are all the same! They are all a yoke on the neck of the Cossacks!”
Grigory Melekhov cannot calmly hear how the Reds who stopped at his kuren say vile, cynical things about his wife Natalya.
After long wars, vain feats, blood, this man understands that only his old love remains his support. “The only thing that remained for him in life was his passion for Aksinya that flared up with new and irrepressible force. She alone beckoned him to her, as she beckons a traveler on a chilling black night, the distant, quivering flame of a fire.”
last try Fortunately for Aksinya and Gregory (the flight to Kuban) ends with the death of the heroine: “Like the steppe scorched by the popes, Gregory’s life became black. He lost everything that was dear to his heart. Only the children remained. But he himself still frantically clung to the ground, as if, in fact, his broken life was of some value to him and others.”
Grigory becomes wiser and begins to understand that the truth can be neither on the side of the Reds nor on the side of the Whites. Why? Yes, because the reds and whites are all about politics. And where there is a class struggle, blood is shed, people die, children remain orphans. Truth is peaceful work for the joy of man, family, children, family, love.
The little things that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights came true. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms. This was all he had left in life. “The author leaves the hero on the edge, the line between light and darkness, black sun of the dead and the cold sun of the vast shining world."
Mikhail Sholokhov... He knows the most...
secret movements human souls and with
knows how to show with great skill
This. Even his most random heroes,
whose life began and ended on
remain on the same page for a long time -
in your memory.
V.Ya. Shishkov
We can rightfully call M. Sholokhov a chronicler of the Soviet era, its researcher, its singer. He created a whole gallery of images that, by the power of their expressiveness and artistic value stood on a par with the most remarkable images of advanced literature.
“Quiet Don” is a novel about the fate of the people at a turning point. This is the author’s fundamental point of view on the revolution and the Civil War. Dramatic fates of the main characters, the cruel lessons of the fate of Grigory Melikhov, the main character of the novel, are formed by Sholokhov into the unity of the historical truth of the people on the path of building a new life. By following the thorny path of Gregory’s life quest, one can understand how Sholokhov himself managed to solve the problem moral quest its main character.
At the beginning of the story, young Gregory - a real Cossack, a brilliant rider, hunter, fisherman and diligent rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. The traditional Cossack commitment to military glory helps him out in his first trials on the bloody battlefields in 1914. Distinguished by exceptional courage, Gregory quickly gets used to bloody battles. However, what distinguishes him from his brothers in arms is his sensitivity to any manifestation of cruelty. To any violence against the weak and defenseless, and as events develop - also a protest against the horrors and absurdities of war. In fact, he spends his entire life in an environment of hatred and fear that is alien to him, becoming embittered and discovering with disgust how all his talent, his entire being goes into the dangerous skill of creating death. He has no time to be at home, with his family, among people who love him.
All this cruelty, filth, and violence forced Gregory to take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he was after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, doubts appeared about his devotion to the tsar, the fatherland and military duty.
In the seventeenth year we see Gregory in chaotic and painful attempts to somehow make up his mind in this “time of troubles.” He seeks political truth in a world of rapidly changing values, guided more often external signs events than their essence.
At first he fights for the Reds, but their murder of unarmed prisoners repulses him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, committing robbery and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again Gregory’s search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a person completely lost in the cycle of events.
The deep forces of Gregory’s soul push him away from both the Reds and the Whites. “They are all the same! - he says to his childhood friends who are leaning towards the Bolsheviks. “They are all a yoke on the neck of the Cossacks!” And when he learns about the rebellion of the Cossacks in the upper reaches of the Don against the Red Army, he takes the side of the rebels. Now he can fight for what is dear to him, for what he loved and cherished all his life: “As if the days of searching for the truth, trials, transitions and difficult internal struggle. What was there to think about? Why was the soul rushing about - in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions? Life seemed mocking, wisely simple. Now it seemed to him that from eternity there had not been such a truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and embittered to the brim, he thought: everyone has their own truth, their own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life and will continue to fight as long as the sun shines on them, as long as warm blood oozes through their veins. We must fight with those who want to take away life, the right to it; you have to fight hard, without swaying, like in a wall, but the intensity of hatred, the hardness will be given by the struggle!”
Both a return to the dominance of officers in the event of a White victory, and the power of the Reds on the Don are unacceptable for Gregory. In the last volume of the novel, demotion as a consequence of disobedience to the White Guard general, the death of his wife and the final defeat of the White Army bring Gregory to the last degree of despair. In the end, he joins Budyonny’s cavalry and heroically fights the Poles, wanting to clear himself of his guilt before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former messenger that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Listnitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but to me everything was still unclear. They both have their own straight roads, their own ends, but since I was seventeen, I’ve been walking along the vilyuzhkas like I’m swaying like a drunk...”
One night, under the threat of arrest, and therefore inevitable execution, Grigory flees his native farm. After long wanderings, longing for his children and Aksinya, he secretly returns. Aksinya hugs him, presses her face to his wet overcoat and sobs: “It’s better to kill him, but don’t leave him again!” Having asked his sister to take the children, he and Aksinya run at night in the hope of getting to Kuban and starting new life. Enthusiastic joy fills the soul of this woman at the thought that she is again next to Gregory. But her happiness is short-lived: on the road they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. When they find shelter in a ditch, Grigory buries his Aksinya: “With his palms he carefully crushed the wet yellow clay and knelt for a long time near the grave, bowing his head, quietly swaying.
There was no need for him to rush now. It was all over..."
Hiding for weeks in the thicket of the forest, Grigory experiences an increasingly strong desire to “walk... around his native places, show off like the kids, then he could die...”. He returns to his native village.
Having touchingly described Grigory’s meeting with his son, Sholokhov ends his novel with the words: “Well, the little that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms... This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”
Gregory did not have long to enjoy this joy. It is obvious that he returned to die. To die from communist necessity in the person of Mikhail Koshevoy. In a novel full of cruelty, executions and murders, Sholokhov wisely draws the curtain down on this last episode. Meanwhile, a whole human life. Sholokhov's biography of Gregory is quite voluminous. Gregory lived, in the full sense of the word, when his idyll of life was not disturbed by anything.
He loved and was loved, he lived an extraordinary life worldly life on his native farm and was pleased. He always tried to do the right thing, and if not, well, every person has the right to make a mistake. Many moments of Gregory’s life in the novel are peculiar “escapes” from events that are beyond his mind. The passion of Gregory’s quest is most often replaced by a return to himself, to natural life, to one’s home. But at the same time it cannot be said that life's quest Gregory is at a dead end, no. He had real love, and fate did not deprive him of the opportunity to be a happy father. But Gregory was forced to constantly look for a way out of the difficult situations that had arisen. Talking about moral choice Gregory in life, it is impossible to say for sure whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better lot in life, and this desire of his was not a simple desire to “live better than everyone else.” It was sincere and affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him, in particular the woman he loved. Despite his fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although only for a very short time. But even these short minutes of much-needed happiness were enough. They were not lost in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain.
Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First First World War, then a revolution and a fratricidal civil war, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, an uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, Cossack freedom and the fate of the people merged together. The strong character, integrity and rebellion inherited from his father have haunted him since his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, married woman, he leaves with her, disdaining public morality and his father’s prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person who stands up for justice. The author shows his hard work in scenes of hunting, fishing, and haymaking. Throughout the entire novel, in harsh battles on one side or the other, he searches for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, its glorious victories, in Voronezh the Cossacks hear from a local old man the phrase thrown after them with pity: “My dear... beef!” Old man I knew that there is nothing more terrible than war, this is not an adventure in which you can become a hero, it is dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Gregory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The first to fall from his horse was the cornet Lyakhovsky. Prokhor galloped at him... With a cutter, like a diamond on glass, he cut out Gregory’s memory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhor’s horse with barbed slabs of teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind him... They fell again. The Cossacks and horses fell.”
In parallel, the author shows events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how much simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under their palms, we won’t be able to wait for those dear to our hearts! No matter how many tears stream from swollen and faded eyes, it will not wash away the melancholy! No matter how much you cry on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the eastern wind will not carry their cries to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!”
The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of hardships and deaths that change all the foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious things that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty, intransigence, and thirst for the blood of his enemies as the Whites. War destroys the smooth life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why the fratricidal war is being waged. For whose sake and what should they die in the prime of life? After all, life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hope, and opportunity. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people, starve and die - for them, not for the commanders.
There are also characters in the work who think completely differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country solely as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else’s game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier, whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind, fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He's not the only one thinking about the terrible back side military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It’s easier to kill someone else who has broken their hand in this matter than to crush a louse. The man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Grigory - Aksinya, is perceived as a death sentence for all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all living people; it is not for nothing that Gregory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees above him a black sky and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two warring sides. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t feel sorry for the children either.”
Realizing that war kills the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. in his immortal work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by burning fires, Grigory’s life became black...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.
The purpose of the lesson: to show the inevitability of the tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov, the connection of this tragedy with the fate of society.
Methodological techniques: verification homework- adjustment of the plan drawn up by the students, conversation according to the plan.
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Methodological development of a lesson on the topic “The fate of Grigory Melekhov as a path to finding the truth.” Grade 11
The purpose of the lesson: to show the inevitability of the tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov, the connection of this tragedy with the fate of society.
Methodological techniques: checking homework - adjusting the plan drawn up by the students, conversation according to the plan.
During the classes
Teacher's word.
Sholokhov’s heroes are simple, but extraordinary people, and Grigory is not only brave to the point of despair, honest and conscientious, but also truly talented, and not only the hero’s “career” proves this (a cornet from ordinary Cossacks at the head of a division is evidence of considerable abilities, although the Reds have years civil war such cases were not uncommon). This is confirmed by his collapse in life, since Gregory is too deep and complex for the unambiguous choice required by time!
This image attracts the attention of readers with its features of nationality, originality, and sensitivity to the new. But there is also something spontaneous in him, which is inherited from the environment.
Checking homework
Approximate plot plan for “The Fate of Grigory Melekhov”:
Book one
1. Predestination tragic fate(origin).
2. Life in my father's house. Dependence on him (“like dad”).
3. The beginning of love for Aksinya (thunderstorm on the river)
4. Skirmish with Stepan.
5 Matchmaking and marriage. ...
6. Leaving home with Aksinya to become farm laborers for the Listnitskys.
7. Conscription into the army.
8. Murder of an Austrian. Losing a foothold.
9. Wound. News of death received by relatives.
10. Hospital in Moscow. Conversations with Garanzha.
11. Break with Aksinya and return home.
Book two, parts 3-4
12. Etching the truth of Garanji. Going to the front as a “good Cossack.”
13.1915 Rescue of Stepan Astakhov.
14. Hardening of the heart. Chubaty's influence.
15. Premonition of trouble, injury.
16. Gregory and his children, desire for the end of the war.
17. On the side of the Bolsheviks. The influence of Izvarin and Podtelkov.
18. Reminder about Aksinya.
19. Wound. Massacre of prisoners.
20. Infirmary. “Who should I lean against?”
21. Family. "I am for Soviet power."
22. Unsuccessful elections to detachment atamans.
23. Last meeting with Podtelkov.
Book three, part 6
24. Conversation with Peter.
25. Anger towards the Bolsheviks.
26. Quarrel with father over stolen goods.
27. Unauthorized departure home.
28. The Melekhovs have Reds.
29. Dispute with Ivan Alekseevich about “male power.”
30. Drunkenness, thoughts of death.
31. Gregory kills the sailors
32. Conversation with grandfather Grishaka and Natalya.
33. Meeting with Aksinya.
Book four, Part 7:
34. Gregory in the family. Children, Natalya.
35. Gregory's dream.
36. Kudinov about Gregory’s ignorance.
37. Quarrel with Fitzkhalaurov.
38. Family breakdown.
39. The division is disbanded, Gregory is promoted to centurion.
40. Death of wife.
41. Typhoid and recovery.
42. Attempt to board a ship in Novorossiysk.
Part 8:
43. Grigory at Budyonny.
44. Demobilization, conversation with. Mikhail.
45. Leaving the farm.
46. In Owl's gang, on the island.
47. Leaving the gang.
48. Death of Aksinya.
49. In the forest.
50. Returning home.
Conversation.
The image of Grigory Melekhov is central in M. Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don”. It is impossible to immediately say about it whether it is positive or bad guy. For too long he wandered in search of the truth, his path. Grigory Melekhov appears in the novel primarily as a truth-seeker.
At the beginning of the novel, Grigory Melekhov is an ordinary farm boy with the usual range of household chores, activities, and entertainment. He lives thoughtlessly, like grass in the steppe, following traditional principles. Even the love for Aksinya that captured him passionate nature, can't change anything. He allows his father to marry him, and, as usual, prepares for military service. Everything in his life happens involuntarily, as if without his participation, just as he involuntarily dissects a tiny defenseless duckling while mowing - and shudders at what he has done.
Grigory Melekhov did not come into this world for bloodshed. But harsh life placed a saber in his hardworking hands. Gregory experienced the first shed of human blood as a tragedy. The image of the Austrian he killed then appears to him in a dream, causing mental pain. The experience of war completely turns his life upside down, makes him think, look into himself, listen, and take a closer look at people. Conscious life begins.
The Bolshevik Garanzha, who met Gregory in the hospital, seemed to reveal to him the truth and the prospect of change for the better. “Autonomist” Efim Izvarin and Bolshevik Fyodor Podtelkov played a significant role in shaping the beliefs of Grigory Melekhov. The tragically deceased Fyodor Podtelkov pushed Melekhov away, shedding the blood of unarmed prisoners who believed the promises of the Bolshevik who captured them. The senselessness of this murder and the callousness of the “dictator” stunned the hero. He is also a warrior, he killed a lot, but here not only the laws of humanity are violated, but also the laws of war.
“Honest to the core,” Grigory Melekhov cannot help but see the deception. The Bolsheviks promised that there would be no rich and poor. However, a year has already passed since the “Reds” were in power, and the promised equality is not there: “the platoon leader is in chrome boots, and the Vanyok is in windings.” Grigory is very observant, he tends to think about his observations, and the conclusions from his thoughts are disappointing: “If the gentleman is bad, then the boorish gentleman is a hundred times worse.”
The civil war throws Grigory either into the Budennovsky detachment or into the white formations, but this is no longer thoughtless submission to the way of life or a coincidence of circumstances, but a conscious search for the truth, the path. He sees his home and peaceful work as the main values of life. In war, shedding blood, he dreams of how he will prepare for sowing, and these thoughts make his soul warm.
The Soviet government does not allow the former ataman of the hundred to live peacefully and threatens him with prison or execution. The surplus appropriation system instills in the minds of many Cossacks the desire to “re-conquer the war”, to replace the workers’ government with their own, the Cossack’s. Gangs are forming on the Don. Grigory Melekhov, hiding from persecution by the Soviet regime, ends up in one of them, Fomin’s gang. But bandits have no future. For most Cossacks it is clear: they need to sow, not fight.
Is also drawn to peaceful labor main character novel. The last test, the last tragic loss for him is the death of his beloved woman - Aksinya, who received a bullet on the way, as it seems to them, to a free and happy life. Everything died. Gregory's soul is scorched. There remains only the last, but very important thread connecting the hero with life - this is his home. A house, a land waiting for its owner, and a little son - his future, his mark on the earth.
The depth of the contradictions through which the hero went through is revealed with amazing psychological authenticity and historical validity. Versatility and complexity inner world people are always the focus of M. Sholokhov's attention. Individual destinies and a broad generalization of the paths and crossroads of the Don Cossacks allow us to see how complex and contradictory life is, how difficult it is to choose the true path.
What is the meaning of Sholokhov when he speaks of Gregory as a “good Cossack”? Why was Grigory Melekhov chosen as the main character?
(Grigory Melekhov is an extraordinary person, a bright individuality. He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions (especially in relation to Natalya and Aksinya (see episodes: last meeting with Natalia - part 7, chapter 7; Natalia's death - part 7, chapters 16-18;death of Aksinya). He has a responsive heart, a developed sense of pity and compassion (duckling in the hayfield, Franya, the execution of Ivan Alekseevich).
Grigory is a person capable of action (leaving Aksinya for Yagodnoye, breaking up with Podtelkov, clashing with Fitzkhalaurov - part 7, chapter 10; decision to return to the farm).
In which episodes is Gregory’s bright, extraordinary personality most fully revealed? The role of internal monologues. Does a person depend on circumstances or does he make his own destiny?
(He never lied to himself, despite doubts and tossing (see internal monologues - part 6, chapter 21). This is the only character whose thoughts are revealed by the author. War corrupts people and provokes them to commit acts that a person would never normally do did not commit. Gregory had a core that did not allow him to commit meanness even once. A deep attachment to home, to the land is a strong spiritual movement: “My hands need to work, not fight.”
The hero is constantly in a situation of choice (“I’m looking for a way out myself”). Turning point: dispute and quarrel with Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov, Shtokman. The uncompromising nature of a man who never knew the middle. Tragedyas if transported into the depths of consciousness: “He painfully tried to understand the confusion of thoughts.” This is not political vacillation, but a search for truth. Gregory yearns for the truth, “under the wing of which everyone could warm themselves.” And from his point of view, neither the whites nor the reds have such truth: “There is no truth in life. It is clear that whoever defeats whom will devour him. And I was looking for the bad truth. I was sick at heart, I was swaying back and forth.” These searches turned out to be, as he believes, “in vain and empty.” And this is also his tragedy. A person is placed in inevitable, spontaneous circumstances and already in these circumstances he makes a choice, his destiny.) “What a writer needs most,” said Sholokhov, “he himself needs, is to convey the movement of a person’s soul. I wanted to talk about this charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov...”
Do you think the author of “Quiet Flows the Flow” manages to “convey the movement of the human soul” using the example of the fate of Grigory Melekhov? If so, what do you think is the main direction of this movement? What is its general character? Does the novel's protagonist have what you might call charm? If so, what is its charm? The main problematic of "Quiet Don" is revealed not in the character of one, even the main character, which is Grigory Melekhov, but in the comparison and contrast of many, many characters, in the entire figurative system, in the style and language of the work. But the image of Grigory Melekhov as a typical personality, as it were, concentrates the main historical and ideological conflict of the work and thereby unites all the details of a huge picture of the complex and contradictory life of many characters who are bearers of a certain attitude towards the revolution and the people in a given historical era.
How would you define the main issues of “Quiet Don”? What, in your opinion, allows us to characterize Grigory Melekhov as a typical personality? Can you agree that it is in it that “the main historical and ideological conflict of the work” is concentrated? Literary critic A.I. Khvatov states: “Grigory concealed a huge reserve moral forces, necessary in the creative achievements of the emerging new life. No matter what complications and troubles befell him and no matter how painfully what he did under the influence of a wrong decision fell on his soul, Gregory never looked for motives that weakened his personal guilt and responsibility to life and people.”
What do you think gives a scientist the right to claim that “a huge reserve of moral forces was hidden in Gregory”? What actions do you think support this statement? And against him? What “wrong decisions” does Sholokhov’s hero make? Is it acceptable, in your opinion, to talk about “wrong decisions” at all? literary hero? Reflect on this topic. Do you agree that “Gregory never looked for motives that weakened his personal guilt and responsibility to life and people”? Give examples from the text. “In the plot of the combination of motives, the inescapability of love that Aksinya and Natalya give him, the immensity of Ilyinichna’s maternal suffering, the devoted comradely loyalty of fellow soldiers and peers are artistically effective in revealing the image of Gregory,” especially Prokhor Zykov. Even those with whom his interests intersected dramatically, but to whom his soul was revealed... could not help but feel the power of his charm and generosity.”(A.I. Khvatov).
Do you agree that a special role in revealing the image of Grigory Melekhov is played by the love of Aksinya and Natalya, the suffering of his mother, as well as the comradely loyalty of fellow soldiers and peers? If so, how does this manifest itself in each of these cases?
With which of the characters did Grigory Melekhov’s interests “intersect dramatically”? Can you agree that even these heroes reveal the soul of Grigory Melekhov, and they, in turn, were able to “feel the power of his charm and generosity”? Give examples from the text.
The critic V. Kirpotin (1941) reproached Sholokhov's heroes for primitivism, rudeness, and “mental underdevelopment”: “Even the best of them, Grigory, is slow-witted. A thought is an unbearable burden for him.”
Are there any among the heroes of “Quiet Don” who seemed to you rude and primitive, “mentally undeveloped” people? If so, what role do they serve in the novel?Do you agree that Sholokhov’s Grigory Melekhov is a “slow-witted” person, for whom thought is an “unbearable burden”? If yes, give specific examples of the hero’s “slow-mindedness,” his inability, and unwillingness to think. The critic N. Zhdanov noted (1940): “Gregory could have been with the people in their struggle... but he did not stand with the people. And this is his tragedy.”
In your opinion, is it fair to say that Gregory “did not stand with the people”? Are the people only those who are for the Reds?What do you think is the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov? (This question can be left as homework for a detailed written answer.)
Homework.
How do the events that gripped the country compare with the events in Grigory Melekhov’s personal life?