Composition “Artistic originality of the story “The Fate of a Man”. Artistic features of the story of Mikhail Sholokhov the fate of man

The Second World War is the greatest tragic lesson for both man and mankind. More than fifty million victims, a myriad of destroyed villages and cities, the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which shook the world, made a person take a closer look at himself and re-respond to

question: “What are you, Man, and what is Your destiny? »

A special work that raised the problem of personality psychology during the war to a new height is the famous story by M. A. Sholokhov “The Fate of a Man”.

The reader is presented not just the story of a soldier's life, but the fate of a man who embodied the typical features of a rational Russian character.

A modest worker, the father of the family lived and was happy in his own way. And suddenly the war ... Sokolov went to the front to defend his homeland. Like thousands of others like him, the war confronted Andrei with inevitable and unavoidable horrors. She tore him away from his home, from his family, from work. And Andrei Sokolov's whole life seemed to overturn: the monster of military atrocities fell upon him, life suddenly for no reason began to beat and whip him with all its might. Why is this man so punished?

Sokolov's suffering is not an episode connected with the private fate of a person. The horrors of the Second World War were imposed on the Russian man, and at the cost of enormous sacrifices and personal losses, tragic upheavals and hardships, he defended his homeland. This is the meaning of the story "The fate of man."

The story is told in the first person, and this reveals a person not only in action, but also in reflection, reveals the inner world of a person, gives an idea of ​​the deep motives of the heroic and the strength of the human spirit.

He bravely fulfilled his military duty at the front. Near Lozovenki, he was instructed to bring shells to the battery. “We had to rush a lot, because the battle was approaching us: someone’s tanks were rattling on the left, shooting was on the right, shooting was ahead, and it was already beginning to smell of fried ... - says Sokolov. - The commander of our auto company asks: “Will you get through, Sokolov?” And there was nothing to ask. There, my comrades, maybe they are dying, but I'll sniff around here? “What a conversation! - I answer him. - I have to slip through, and that's it!

In this episode, Sholokhov noticed the main feature of a real person - a sense of camaraderie; the ability to think about others more than about yourself, the ability to help as much as possible.

But, stunned by the explosion of a shell, Andrey woke up already in captivity by the Germans. With pain, he watches as the advancing German troops go east. Hearing at night that a traitor next to him wants to betray the commander, Sokolov decided to prevent this and strangled the traitor with his own hands at dawn.

Sholokhov's hero did not lose his human dignity either in German captivity or at the front, where he returned again, having escaped from captivity. The feat of a man appeared in Sholokhov's story mainly not on the battlefield and not on the labor front, but in the conditions of fascist captivity, behind the barbed wire of a concentration camp. In the spiritual single combat with fascism, the character of Andrei Sokolov, his courage, is revealed. Reflecting on his fate, he says with pain in his soul: “Oh, brother, it’s not easy to understand that you are not of your own free will in captivity. Whoever has not experienced this in their own skin, you will not immediately enter into the soul, so that it would humanly dawn on him what this thing means.

And the scene of Andrei Sokolov's psychological duel with the commandant of the concentration camp only confirms this idea. Andrey’s words breathe hatred when it comes to the enemies of the Motherland: “I wanted to show them, the damned, that although I’m dying of hunger, I’m not going to choke on their sop, that I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and that I’m like cattle they didn't turn me, no matter how hard they tried."

Far from his homeland, Andrei Sokolov survived all the hardships of the war, the inhuman abuse of fascist captivity. And more than once death looked into his eyes, but each time he found titanic courage in himself and remained a man to the end.

But not only in a collision with the enemy, Sholokhov sees the manifestation of a heroic person in nature. No less serious test for the hero are his loss, the terrible grief of a soldier deprived of loved ones and shelter, his loneliness. Andrei Sokolov emerged victorious from the war, returned peace to the world, and in the war he lost everything that he had in life “for himself”: family, love, happiness ... The ruthless and heartless fate did not leave the soldier even a haven on earth. In the place where his house, built by him himself, stood, a huge funnel from a German air bomb darkened.

Andrey Sokolov, after all that he experienced, it would seem that he could call life a plague. But he does not grumble at the world, does not withdraw into his grief, but goes to the people. Left alone in this world, this man gave all the warmth that remained in his heart to the orphan Vanyusha, replacing his father. He adopted Vanyusha, who lost his parents in the war, warmed and made happy the orphan soul, and that is why he himself began to gradually return to life. “At night, you stroke him, sleepy, then you sniff the hairs in the whirlwinds, and the heart moves away, it becomes softer, otherwise it turned to stone with grief ...” Sokolov admits to his interlocutor.

With all the logic of his story, M. A. Sholokhov proved that his hero is by no means broken and cannot be broken by life. Having gone through the most difficult trials, he retained the most important thing - his human and civic dignity, his love of life, humanity, helping to live, fight, work.

Andrei Sokolov is organically inherent in the "golden rule" of morality: do not hurt another. He is kind, trusting to people, truly loves his home, wife, children, caring, helpful with his comrades, attentive to a person in trouble, fair and under no circumstances loses high human dignity, conscience, honor. His moral ties with people are so strong that even the hardest vicissitudes of the war could not cut them off.

Andrey Sokolov first of all thinks about his own duties to his relatives, Comrades, Motherland, people, humanity. This is not personal, not egoistic, but folk morality. That is why Sokolov's fate is a human fate, a people's fate.

And this is why Andrey Sokolov is dear to me. His thoughts, thoughts, experiences are close and understandable to us, today's eleventh graders, leaving the walls of the school and entering into an independent life.

/ / / The originality of the composition of Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man"

The peculiarity of the composition of the famous work of Mikhail Sholokhov "The Fate of a Man" is that it is a story within a story.

The description of the reviving nature is included in the text not for the elegance of the style, but for association with the fate of a person who also comes to life after adversity.

The plot of the story begins with the appearance of the main character. A strong man, along with a little boy, sat down on the wattle fence next to the author. They were waiting at the crossing for a boat, and in order to pass the time, they began a casual conversation.

The story of the protagonist about himself can be considered the culmination of the general text. If we consider it separately, then it already has its own compositional parts. The exposition is the pre-war life of Sokolov. The plot is leaving for the front, farewell to the family. The culmination is the trial of a traitor, a conversation with the commandant, an explanation with Vanya.

There is no denouement for the story on behalf of the protagonist. But there is a common denouement - the main character and the boy leave, and the narrator looks after them and tries not to cry, so as not to hurt the little boy's heart.

The peculiar composition of the work includes two stories: external and internal. And accordingly it involves two narrators. The first story is conducted on behalf of the author, and the second on behalf of the protagonist. This construction of the story allows you to reveal the image of the main character more deeply.

He talks about his fate, paying attention to events and his feelings. But he does not see anything special in himself. The author, on the contrary, appreciates the hero himself more, notices in him the high moral qualities of a real person.

Thanks to the “story within a story” compositional technique, the author applied all three modes of depiction in literature: epic, lyric and drama. At the beginning of the story there is an epic description of a spring day. There is nothing special about the fact that spring comes every year. However, in the work it has a symbolic meaning - just as nature comes to life, so does a person come to life after suffering troubles.

There are elements of drama in the story of the protagonist. As in the play, the hero reveals his image through monologues. And the author's remarks help in its full disclosure. As in the drama, there is a tense conflict here - man against war, humanity against cruelty.

There are also many lyrics in the story. The main character talks about his feelings and experiences. The scene of Andrey Vanya's confession that he is his dad is shocking in its emotionality.

In the finale, the narrator says that he can hardly hold back his tears, looking after the heroes. He tries to understand what he feels: respect, admiration, pity for new acquaintances. This acquaintance left a bright mark on the soul of the narrator.

The image of Andrei Sokolov is depicted in a multifaceted and realistic way. He talks about himself very simply, using colloquial expressions. And the narrator speaks of him respectfully.

The Great Patriotic War, even after many decades, remains the greatest blow to the whole world. What a tragedy this is for the fighting Soviet people, who lost the most people in this bloody duel! The lives of many (both military and civilians) were broken. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man" truthfully depicts these sufferings, not of an individual, but of the entire people who stood up to defend their homeland.

The story "The Fate of a Man" is based on real events: M.A. Sholokhov met a man who told him his tragic biography. This story was almost a ready-made plot, but it did not immediately turn into a literary work. The writer hatched his idea for 10 years, but put it on paper in just a few days. And he dedicated it to E. Levitskaya, who helped him print the main novel of his life, Quiet Flows the Don.

The story was published in the Pravda newspaper on the eve of the new year, 1957. And soon it was read on the All-Union Radio, heard by the whole country. Listeners and readers were shocked by the power and veracity of this work, it gained well-deserved popularity. In literary terms, this book opened up a new way for writers to reveal the theme of war - through the fate of a little man.

Essence of the story

The author accidentally meets the main character Andrei Sokolov and his son Vanyushka. During the forced delay at the crossing, the men began to talk, and a casual acquaintance told the writer his story. Here is what he told him.

Before the war, Andrei lived like everyone else: wife, children, household, work. But then thunder struck, and the hero went to the front, where he served as a driver. One fateful day, Sokolov's car came under fire, he was shell-shocked. So he was captured.

A group of prisoners was brought to the church for an overnight stay, many incidents occurred that night: the execution of a believer who could not desecrate the church (they weren’t even released “before the wind”), and with him several people who accidentally fell under machine gun fire, help from doctor Sokolov and others wounded. Also, the main character had to strangle another prisoner, as he turned out to be a traitor and was going to betray the commissioner. Even during the next transfer to the concentration camp, Andrei tried to escape, but was caught by dogs, who stripped him of his last clothes and bit everything that “skin with meat flew to shreds.”

Then the concentration camp: inhuman work, almost starvation, beatings, humiliation - that's what Sokolov had to endure. “They need four cubic meters of output, and for the grave of each of us, even one cubic meter through the eyes is enough!” Andrey said carelessly. And for this he appeared before the Lagerführer Müller. They wanted to shoot the main character, but he overcame fear, bravely drank three shots of schnapps for his death, for which he earned respect, a loaf of bread and a piece of lard.

Toward the end of hostilities, Sokolov was appointed as a driver. And, finally, there was an opportunity to escape, and even with the engineer, whom the hero drove. The joy of salvation did not have time to subside, grief arrived: he learned about the death of his family (a shell hit the house), and after all, all this time he lived only in the hope of meeting. Only one son survived. Anatoly also defended the Motherland, with Sokolov they simultaneously approached Berlin from different sides. But right on the day of victory, the last hope was killed. Andrew was left all alone.

Subject

The main theme of the story is a man at war. These tragic events are an indicator of personal qualities: in extreme situations, those character traits that are usually hidden are revealed, it is clear who is who in reality. Andrei Sokolov before the war was no different, he was like everyone else. But in battle, having survived captivity, a constant danger to life, he showed himself. His truly heroic qualities were revealed: patriotism, courage, fortitude, will. On the other hand, the same prisoner as Sokolov, probably also no different in ordinary civilian life, was going to betray his commissar in order to curry favor with the enemy. Thus, the theme of moral choice is also reflected in the work.

Also M.A. Sholokhov touches on the theme of willpower. The war took away from the protagonist not only health and strength, but also the whole family. He has no home, how to continue to live, what to do next, how to find meaning? This question interested hundreds of thousands of people who experienced similar losses. And for Sokolov, taking care of the boy Vanyushka, who was also left without a home and family, became a new meaning. And for his sake, for the sake of the future of his country, you need to live on. Here is the disclosure of the theme of the search for the meaning of life - a real person finds it in love and hope for the future.

Issues

1. The problem of choice occupies an important place in the story. Every person faces a choice every day. But not everyone has to choose under pain of death, knowing that your fate depends on this decision. So, Andrei had to decide: to betray or remain true to the oath, to bend under the blows of the enemy or to fight. Sokolov was able to remain a worthy person and citizen, because he determined his priorities, guided by honor and morality, and not by the instinct of self-preservation, fear or meanness.
2. In the whole fate of the hero, in his life trials, the problem of defenselessness of the common man in the face of war is reflected. Little depends on him, circumstances pile on him, from which he tries to get out at least alive. And if Andrei could save himself, then his family could not. And he feels guilty about it, even though he isn't.
3. The problem of cowardice is realized in the work through minor characters. The image of a traitor who is ready to sacrifice the life of a fellow soldier for the sake of momentary gain becomes a counterbalance to the image of the brave and strong-willed Sokolov. And such people were in the war, says the author, but there were fewer of them, that's why we won.
4. The tragedy of war. Numerous losses were suffered not only by soldiers, but also by civilians who could not defend themselves in any way.

Characteristics of the main characters

1. Andrei Sokolov is an ordinary person, one of many who had to leave a peaceful existence in order to defend their homeland. He exchanges a simple and happy life for the dangers of war, not even imagining how to stay away. In extreme circumstances, he maintains spiritual nobility, shows willpower and stamina. Under the blows of fate, he managed not to break. And to find a new meaning of life, which betrays kindness and responsiveness in him, because he sheltered an orphan.
2. Vanyushka is a lonely boy who has to spend the night wherever he has to. His mother was killed during the evacuation, his father at the front. Ragged, dusty, in watermelon juice - this is how he appeared before Sokolov. And Andrei could not leave the child, introduced himself as his father, giving a chance for a further normal life for himself and him.

What was the point of the work?

One of the main ideas of the story is the need to take into account the lessons of the war. The example of Andrei Sokolov shows not what war can do to a person, but what it can do to all of humanity. Prisoners tortured by the concentration camp, orphaned children, destroyed families, scorched fields - this should never be repeated, and therefore should not be forgotten.

No less important is the idea that in any, even the most terrible situation, one must remain a man, not be like an animal, which, out of fear, acts only on the basis of instincts. Survival is the main thing for anyone, but if this is given at the cost of betraying oneself, one's comrades, the Motherland, then the surviving soldier is no longer a person, he is not worthy of this title. Sokolov did not betray his ideals, did not break down, although he went through something that is difficult for a modern reader to even imagine.

Genre

A story is a short literary genre that reveals one storyline and several characters. "The fate of man" refers specifically to him.

However, if you look closely at the composition of the work, you can clarify the general definition, because this is a story within a story. At the beginning, the author narrates, who, by the will of fate, met and talked with his character. Andrei Sokolov himself describes his difficult life, the first-person narrative allows readers to better feel the feelings of the hero and understand him. The author's remarks are introduced to characterize the hero from the outside ("eyes, as if sprinkled with ashes", "I did not see a single tear in his as if dead, extinct eyes ... only large, limply lowered hands trembled finely, chin trembled, firm lips trembled") and show how deeply this strong man suffers.

What values ​​does Sholokhov promote?

The main value for the author (and for readers) is the world. Peace between states, peace in society, peace in the human soul. The war destroyed the happy life of Andrei Sokolov, as well as many people. The echo of the war still does not subside, so its lessons must not be forgotten (although often in recent times this event has been overestimated for political purposes far from the ideals of humanism).

Also, the writer does not forget about the eternal values ​​of the individual: nobility, courage, will, desire to help. The time of knights, noble dignity has long passed, but true nobility does not depend on origin, it is in the soul, expressed in its ability for mercy and empathy, even if the world around is collapsing. This story is an excellent lesson in courage and morality for modern readers.

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The Second World War is the greatest tragic lesson for both man and mankind. More than fifty million victims, a myriad of destroyed villages and cities, the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which shook the world, made a person take a closer look at himself and re-respond to

Question: “What are you, Man, and what is Your destiny? »

A special work that raised the problem of personality psychology during the war to a new height is the famous story by M. A. Sholokhov “The Fate of a Man”.

The reader is presented not just the story of a soldier's life, but the fate of a man who embodied the typical features of a rational Russian character.

A modest worker, the father of the family lived and was happy in his own way. And suddenly the war ... Sokolov went to the front to defend his homeland. Like thousands of others like him, the war confronted Andrei with inevitable and unavoidable horrors. She tore him away from his home, from his family, from work. And Andrei Sokolov's whole life seemed to overturn: the monster of military atrocities fell upon him, life suddenly for no reason began to beat and whip him with all its might. Why is this man so punished?

Sokolov's suffering is not an episode connected with the private fate of a person. The horrors of the Second World War were imposed on the Russian man, and at the cost of enormous sacrifices and personal losses, tragic upheavals and hardships, he defended his homeland. This is the meaning of the story "The fate of man."

The story is told in the first person, and this reveals a person not only in action, but also in reflection, reveals the inner world of a person, gives an idea of ​​the deep motives of the heroic and the strength of the human spirit.

He bravely fulfilled his military duty at the front. Near Lozovenki, he was instructed to bring shells to the battery. “We had to rush a lot, because the battle was approaching us: someone’s tanks were rattling on the left, shooting was on the right, shooting was ahead, and it was already beginning to smell of fried ... - says Sokolov. - The commander of our auto company asks: “Will you get through, Sokolov?” And there was nothing to ask. There, my comrades, maybe they are dying, but I'll sniff around here? “What a conversation! - I answer him. - I have to slip through, and that's it!

In this episode, Sholokhov noticed the main feature of a real person - a sense of camaraderie; the ability to think about others more than about yourself, the ability to help as much as possible.

But, stunned by the explosion of a shell, Andrey woke up already in captivity by the Germans. With pain, he watches as the advancing German troops go east. Hearing at night that a traitor next to him wants to betray the commander, Sokolov decided to prevent this and strangled the traitor with his own hands at dawn.

Sholokhov's hero did not lose his human dignity either in German captivity or at the front, where he returned again, having escaped from captivity. The feat of a man appeared in Sholokhov's story mainly not on the battlefield and not on the labor front, but in the conditions of fascist captivity, behind the barbed wire of a concentration camp. In the spiritual single combat with fascism, the character of Andrei Sokolov, his courage, is revealed. Reflecting on his fate, he says with pain in his soul: “Oh, brother, it’s not easy to understand that you are not of your own free will in captivity. Whoever has not experienced this in their own skin, you will not immediately enter into the soul, so that it would humanly dawn on him what this thing means.

And the scene of Andrei Sokolov's psychological duel with the commandant of the concentration camp only confirms this idea. Andrey’s words breathe hatred when it comes to the enemies of the Motherland: “I wanted to show them, the damned, that although I’m dying of hunger, I’m not going to choke on their sop, that I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and that I’m like cattle they didn't turn me, no matter how hard they tried."

Far from his homeland, Andrei Sokolov survived all the hardships of the war, the inhuman abuse of fascist captivity. And more than once death looked into his eyes, but each time he found titanic courage in himself and remained a man to the end.

But not only in a collision with the enemy, Sholokhov sees the manifestation of a heroic person in nature. No less serious test for the hero are his loss, the terrible grief of a soldier deprived of loved ones and shelter, his loneliness. Andrei Sokolov emerged victorious from the war, returned peace to the world, and in the war he lost everything that he had in life “for himself”: family, love, happiness ... The ruthless and heartless fate did not leave the soldier even a haven on earth. In the place where his house, built by him himself, stood, a huge funnel from a German air bomb darkened.

Andrey Sokolov, after all that he experienced, it would seem that he could call life a plague. But he does not grumble at the world, does not withdraw into his grief, but goes to the people. Left alone in this world, this man gave all the warmth that remained in his heart to the orphan Vanyusha, replacing his father. He adopted Vanyusha, who lost his parents in the war, warmed and made happy the orphan soul, and that is why he himself began to gradually return to life. “At night, you stroke him, sleepy, then you sniff the hairs in the whirlwinds, and the heart moves away, it becomes softer, otherwise it turned to stone with grief ...” Sokolov admits to his interlocutor.

With all the logic of his story, M. A. Sholokhov proved that his hero is by no means broken and cannot be broken by life. Having gone through the most difficult trials, he retained the most important thing - his human and civic dignity, his love of life, humanity, helping to live, fight, work.

Andrei Sokolov is organically inherent in the "golden rule" of morality: do not hurt another. He is kind, trusting to people, truly loves his home, wife, children, caring, helpful with his comrades, attentive to a person in trouble, fair and under no circumstances loses high human dignity, conscience, honor. His moral ties with people are so strong that even the hardest vicissitudes of the war could not cut them off.

Andrey Sokolov first of all thinks about his own duties to his relatives, Comrades, Motherland, people, humanity. This is not personal, not egoistic, but folk morality. That is why Sokolov's fate is a human fate, a people's fate.

And this is why Andrey Sokolov is dear to me. His thoughts, thoughts, experiences are close and understandable to us, today's eleventh graders, leaving the walls of the school and entering into an independent life.

During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Sholokhov, a war correspondent, author of essays - including The Science of Hate (1942), which received great public outcry, the chapters of the unfinished novel They Fought for the Motherland, were published throughout the post-war decades. In 1957, Sholokhov wrote the story "The Fate of a Man", which was included in the golden fund of works about the struggle of the people against the Nazi invaders.

The story is dedicated to E. Levitskaya. We have repeatedly referred to Sholokhov's letters to her, and this dedication, as it were, emphasizes the continuity of the story and the writer's previous work.

Fundamentally new in Sholokhov's story was what he showed as a positive hero of the time of a man who had passed German. (By the way, this was the path of Lieutenant Gerasimov in "The Science of Hate"). People of such a tragic fate were subjected to repression for a long time, they had no place on the pages of literary works. Therefore, having met back in 1946 with the one who became the prototype of the image of Andrei Sokolov, Sholokhov could not realize his plan. He did not belong to the type of writers who could obviously write "on the table" without hoping for publication. He appeared with his story on the pages of Pravda only during the "thaw" - after the 20th Party Congress, which put an end to Stalin's personality cult and the system of prohibitions associated with it.

The private life of the protagonist Andrei Sokolov is included in the specific time of real historical events; the hero (he was born in 1900) is the same age as the 20th century, who took on his shoulders all its social cataclysms. He withstood the tragic trials - German captivity, the death of his family - that she sent him.

The most noticeable compositional feature of "The Fate of a Man" is its construction on the principle of "a story within a story". It is associated with the presence in the work of two subjects of consciousness and speech, consistently setting out its artistic events: the narrator proper, not personally identified, and the hero - Andrei Sokolov. The structure of the story is based on the technique of compositional framing: the confession of the hero is enclosed in the frame of the narrator's speech. Sokolov's story is singled out as a special artistic unity in several ways.

It differs from the narrator's speech in its external form, since the latter is a typical Ich-Erzahlung, and the hero's word is given as a tale. Sokolov's speech is marked stylistically, his story refers to the past, has a different image object, rhythm and tonality.

Due to such emphasized emphasis, Sokolov's story acquires special significance, it becomes a text within a text, a work within a work, acquires a different dimension, turns into the semantic center of Sholokhov's creation. Therefore, each word receives a special weight in the confession of the hero. Placement of Sokolov's story inside another story creates a complex relationship between them: the hero and his life become an object of emotional comprehension on the part of the narrator, which includes the reader.

The motivation for Sokolov's story is sketchy, the narrator tells the reader what he heard from the hero during their chance meeting on the river bank, when Sokolov mistook the writer for "his brother" the driver. Of course, the function of this technique for Sholokhov is more complicated. Sokolov sees in the listener a person of both his generation and his destiny. This determines the naturalness, ultimate frankness and multifunctionality of his monologue. Foreign criticism drew attention to the fact that "The Fate of a Man" combines confession as an element of style and confession as a genre (13, 123-129). Sokolov's speech becomes a confession addressed to the narrator and to himself. This is a dialogue with yourself, thinking about your life and life in general, which you need to understand. This is a story about your grief and mental anguish, from which you need to free yourself, the desire to show yourself, and establish yourself in your rightness. In the process of the story, Sokolov is to some extent freed from severe mental anguish. In places, Sokolov's monologue turns into the hero's judgment on himself. Thus, it is bidirectional: it is addressed to the narrator, from whom Sokolov seeks support, understanding, and to himself, becoming a reflection of his fate. Using the term of M. M. Bakhtin, it can be called a dialogical monologue. It is also characteristic that Sokolov's story goes almost without any explanations, comments on his part: he believes that everything is clear to the narrator, that their life experience and consciousness are one.

The form of the tale is also specific in Sholokhov's creation.

He retains all his attributes, recreating the unsophisticated, natural speech of the hero and presenting it precisely as someone else's individual speech, as a depicted word. And at the same time, this is a choral, polyphonic tale, not limited to purely professional or dialect vocabulary.