Rasputin's work "Fire" was published in 1985. In this story, the writer continues to analyze the life of the people from the story “Farewell to Matera” who moved to another village after the island was flooded. They were moved to the urban-type settlement of Sosnovka. The main character, Ivan Petrovich Egorov, feels exhausted morally and physically: “like in a grave.”

The eventual basis of the story is simple: warehouses caught fire in the village of Sosnovka. Who saves people's property from the fire, and who grabs what they can for themselves. The way people behave in an extreme situation serves as an impetus for the painful thoughts of the main character of the story, driver Ivan Petrovich Egorov, in whom Rasputin embodied the popular character of a lover of truth, suffering at the sight of the destruction of the age-old moral basis of existence.

The situation with the fire in the story allows the author to explore the present and the past. Warehouses are burning, goods that people have not seen on the shelves: sausages, Japanese rags, red fish, a Ural motorcycle, sugar, flour. Some people, taking advantage of the confusion, are stealing what they can. In the story, the fire is a symbol of disaster for the social atmosphere in Sosnovka.

Ivan Petrovich is looking for answers to the questions that the surrounding reality throws at him. Why “has everything turned upside down?.. It was not supposed to, not accepted, it became supposed and accepted, it was impossible - it became possible, it was considered a shame, a mortal sin - it is revered for dexterity and valor.” Ivan Petrovich made the rule of his life “to live according to conscience” the law of his life; it pains him that during a fire, the one-armed Savely drags bags of flour into his bathhouse, and the “friendly guys - Arkharovites” first of all grab boxes of vodka.

But the hero not only suffers, he tries to find the reason for this moral impoverishment. At the same time, the main thing is the destruction of the centuries-old traditions of the Russian people: they have forgotten how to plow and sow, they are accustomed to only taking, cutting down, and destroying.

In all the works of V. Rasputin, a special role is played by the image of the house: the house of the old woman Anna, where her children gather, the Guskovs’ hut, which does not accept a deserter, Daria’s house, which goes under the water. The residents of Sosnovka do not have this, and the village itself is like a temporary shelter: “Uncomfortable and unkempt... bivouac type... as if they were wandering from place to place, stopped to wait out the bad weather, and ended up stuck...”. The absence of a Home deprives people of their life basis, kindness, and warmth. The reader feels acute anxiety from the picture of the ruthless conquest of nature. A large volume of work requires a large number of workers, often random ones. The writer describes a layer of “superfluous” people, indifferent to everything, who cause discord in life.

They were joined by the “Arkharovites” (organizational recruitment brigade), who brazenly put pressure on everyone. And the local residents were at a loss before this evil force. The author, through the reflections of Ivan Petrovich, explains the situation: “people scattered all over themselves even earlier.” Social strata in Sosnovka were mixed. There is a disintegration of the “common and harmonious existence.” Over the twenty years of living in the new village, morality has changed. In Sosnovka, houses don’t even have front gardens, because these are temporary housing anyway. Ivan Petrovich remained faithful to the previous principles, the norms of good and evil. He works honestly, worries about the decline of morals. And it finds itself in the position of a foreign body. Ivan Petrovich's attempts to prevent the Ninth's gang from taking over power end in the gang's revenge. Either they will puncture the tires of his car, then they will pour sand into the carburetor, then they will cut the brake hoses to the trailer, or they will knock out the rack from under the beam, which almost kills Ivan Petrovich.

Ivan Petrovich has to get ready with his wife Alena to leave for the Far East to visit one of his sons, but he will not be able to leave this land.

There are many positive characters in the story: Ivan Petrovich’s wife Alena, old uncle Misha Hampo, Afonya Bronnikov, head of the timber industry section Boris Timofeevich Vodnikov. Descriptions of nature are symbolic. At the beginning of the story (March) she is lethargic and numb. At the end there is a moment of calm, before blossoming. Ivan Petrovich, walking on the spring earth, “as if he had finally been carried out on the right road.”

"Farewell to Matera"

In the story, traditionally for Rasputin, the reader is presented with “old old women”: Daria Pinegina, Katerina Zotova, Natalya, Sima, as well as the male hero Bogodul. Each of them has a hard working life in the past. Now they live as if to continue the family (human) line, considering this their main goal. Rasputin makes them bearers of people's moral values ​​and contrasts them with the “obsevkov” - those who do not care about Matera, who leave their native walls without regret. This is Andrey, Daria’s grandson: the land of his ancestors and its fate do not concern him, his goal is a large construction project, and he argues with his father and grandmother, denying their values.

In general, the composition of the story is rather vague; it is presented as a chain of events connected, so to speak, only by internal meaning, chronology. Everything that happens directly concerns Matera, the fact of its inevitable (as the author emphasizes) disappearance, hence all the experiences of its inhabitants. All characters with a significant degree of confidence submit to the system of opposition between true villagers, with their range of values, and the so-called “residues”. On this basis, we can also consider the means used by the author to ensure that the reader understands how he relates to certain characters. Rasputin gives his favorite heroines original Russian names, evoking something rustic: Daria Pinegina, Natalya Karpova, Katerina. He endows such a colorful character as Bogodul with features similar to the hero of Russian fairy tales, the goblin.

In contrast to them, Rasputin awards derogatory names to heroes unpleasant to him - Klavka Strigunov, Petrukha (in the past - Nikita Zotov, later renamed for greater similarity with the farcical Petrushka). Their speech also adds negative traits to such characters - it is literary poor, with illiterately constructed phrases, and if correct, then full of cliches (“Shall we understand or what shall we?”). It is noteworthy that in the story the positive characters are old women and children (little Kolya). Both are helpless; in fact, they are being replaced by the “young tribe.”

Rasputin writes that the old, dying world is the only abode of holiness and harmony. After all, the residents (or rather, mostly the women) of Matera are really not worried about any external problems; they live in their own closed world. That is why the penetration of the external, cruel and aggressive world is so scary for them. Matera simply dies from its influence.

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Lyceum of Modern Management Technologies No. 2

Abstract on the topic:

“Moral problems in the works of V. Rasputin”

Completed by: student of grade 11 “B”

Chubar Alexey Alexandrovich

Checked by: literature teacher

Bliznina Margarita Mikhailovna

Penza, 2008.

• 3
• "Farewell to Matera" 4
• "Money for Maria" 7
• "Deadline" 9
• "Live and Remember" 11
• Conclusion 13
• 14

The range of moral problems in the author’s work

V. Astafiev wrote: “You always have to start with yourself, then you will reach the general, national, universal problems.” Apparently, Valentin Rasputin was guided by a similar principle on his creative path. He covers events and phenomena that are close to him in spirit, which he had to endure (the flooding of his native village in the work “Farewell to Matera”). Based on his personal experiences and observations, the author outlines a very wide range of moral problems, as well as many different human characters and personalities who solve these problems in their own way.

Sergei Zalygin wrote that Rasputin’s stories are distinguished by their special “artistic completeness” - completeness and completeness of “complexity”. Be it the characters and relationships of the heroes, be it the depiction of events - everything from beginning to end retains its complexity and does not replace the logical and emotional simplicity of some final, indisputable conclusions and explanations. The pressing question is “who is to blame?” in Rasputin’s works does not receive a clear answer. As if in return, the reader realizes the impossibility of such an answer; we guess that all the answers that come to mind are insufficient, unsatisfactory; they will not ease the burden in any way, will not correct anything, will not prevent anything in the future; we remain face to face with what happened, with that terrible, cruel injustice, and our whole being rebels against it...

Rasputin's stories are an attempt to find something basic and decisive in the mentality and consciousness of modern man. The author approaches his goal by highlighting and solving in his works such moral problems as the problem of memory, the problem of relationships between “fathers” and “children”, the problem of love and attachment to the native land, the problem of pettiness, the problem of empathy, compassion, mercy, conscience, the problem of the evolution of ideas about material values, a turning point in the spiritual life of mankind. It is worth noting that the author does not have works devoted to any of the above problems. Reading Rasputin's novels and stories, we see the deep mutual penetration of various moral phenomena, their interconnection. Because of this, it is impossible to clearly identify one specific problem and characterize it. Therefore, I will consider the “tangle” of problems in the context of certain works and in the end I will try to draw a conclusion on the moral issues of Rasputin’s work as a whole.

"Farewell to Matera"

Each person has his own small homeland, that land that is the Universe and everything that Matera became for the heroes of the story by Valentin Rasputin. All of V.G.’s books originate from love for his small homeland. Rasputin, so I would like to consider this topic first. In the story “Farewell to Matera” one can easily read the fate of the writer’s native village, Atalanka, which fell into a flood zone during the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station.

Matera is both an island and a village of the same name. Russian peasants inhabited this place for three hundred years. Life goes on slowly, without haste, on this island, and over those more than three hundred years, Matera has made many people happy. She accepted everyone, became a mother to everyone and carefully fed her children, and the children responded to her with love. And the residents of Matera did not need comfortable houses with heating, or a kitchen with a gas stove. They did not see happiness in this. If only I had the opportunity to touch my native land, light the stove, drink tea from a samovar, live my whole life next to the graves of my parents, and when the turn comes, lie next to them. But Matera leaves, the soul of this world leaves.

Mothers stand up to defend their homeland, try to save their village, their history. But what can old men and women do against the almighty boss, who gave the order to flood Matera and wipe it off the face of the earth? For strangers, this island is just a territory, a flood zone.

Rasputin skillfully depicts scenes of people parting with the village. Let’s read again how Yegor and Nastasya postpone their departure again and again, how they do not want to leave their native land, how Bogodul desperately fights to preserve the cemetery, because it is sacred to the inhabitants of Matera: “And the old women crawled around the cemetery until the last night, stuck put back the crosses, installed bedside tables.”

All this once again proves that it is impossible to tear a people away from the land, from its roots, that such actions can be equated to brutal murder.

The main ideological character of the story is the old woman Daria. This is the person who remained devoted to his homeland until the end of his life, until the last minute. This woman is a kind of guardian of eternity. Daria is a true national character. The writer himself is close to the thoughts of this sweet old woman. Rasputin gives her only positive traits, simple and unpretentious speech. It must be said that all the old residents of Matera are described by the author with warmth. But it is through Daria’s voice that the author expresses his judgments regarding moral problems. This old woman concludes that the sense of conscience has begun to be lost in people and society. “There are a lot more people,” she reflects, “but my conscience is the same... our conscience has grown old, she has become an old woman, no one looks at her... What about conscience if this happens!”

Rasputin's characters directly associate the loss of conscience with a person's separation from the earth, from his roots, from age-old traditions. Unfortunately, only old men and women remained faithful to Matera. Young people live in the future and calmly part with their small homeland. Thus, two more problems are touched upon: the problem of memory and the peculiar conflict of “fathers” and “children”.

In this context, “fathers” are people for whom breaking with the earth is fatal; they grew up on it and absorbed love for it with their mother’s milk. This is Bogodul, and grandfather Egor, and Nastasya, and Sima, and Katerina. “Children” are those youth who so easily left the village to the mercy of fate, a village with a history of three hundred years. This is Andrey, Petrukha, Klavka Strigunova. As we know, the views of “fathers” differ sharply from the views of “children,” therefore the conflict between them is eternal and inevitable. And if in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” the truth was on the side of the “children”, on the side of the new generation, which sought to eradicate the morally decaying nobility, then in the story “Farewell to Mother” the situation is completely opposite: young people are ruining the only thing that makes it possible preservation of life on earth (customs, traditions, national roots). This idea is confirmed by Daria’s words, expressing the idea of ​​the work: “The truth is in memory. He who has no memory has no life.” Memory is not just events recorded in the brain, it is a spiritual connection with something. The writer makes you wonder whether a person who left his native land, broke with his roots, will be happy, and, by burning bridges, leaving Matera, will he not lose his soul, his moral support? Lack of connection with one’s native land, readiness to leave it and forget it like a “bad dream”, disdainful attitude towards one’s small homeland (“It should have been drowned a long time ago. There is no smell of living things... not people, but bugs and cockroaches. They found a place to live - in the middle of the water ... like frogs”) does not characterize the heroes from the best side.

The outcome of the work is deplorable... An entire village disappeared from the map of Siberia, and with it the traditions and customs that over the centuries shaped the human soul, his unique character, and were the roots of our lives.

V. Rasputin touches on many moral issues in his story, but the fate of Matera is the leading theme of this work. Not only is the theme traditional here: the fate of the village, its moral principles, but also the characters themselves. The work largely follows the traditions of humanism. Rasputin is not against change, he does not try in his story to protest against everything new, progressive, but makes one think about such transformations in life that would not destroy the humanity in a person. Many moral imperatives are also traditional in the story.

“Farewell to Matera” is the result of an analysis of one social phenomenon, carried out on the basis of the author’s memories. Rasputin explores the branchy tree of moral problems that this event exposed. Like any humanist, in his story he addresses issues of humanity and solves many moral problems, and also, which is not unimportant, establishes connections between them, demonstrates the inseparability and dependence on each other of the processes occurring in the human soul.

"Money for Maria"

For many of us, the concepts of “humanity” and “mercy” are inextricably linked. Many people even identify them (which, however, is not entirely true). The humanist writer could not ignore the topic of mercy, and it is reflected in the story “Money for Mary.”

The plot of the work is very simple. An emergency occurred in a small Siberian village: the auditor discovered a large shortage from the store clerk Maria. It is clear to both the auditor and fellow villagers that Maria did not take a penny for herself, most likely becoming a victim of the accounting neglected by her predecessors. But, fortunately for the saleswoman, the auditor turned out to be a sincere person and gave five days to repay the shortfall. Apparently, he took into account both the woman’s illiteracy and her selflessness, and most importantly, he took pity on the children.

Such a seemingly completely everyday situation reveals human characters quite well. Maria's fellow villagers take a kind of test of mercy. They are faced with a difficult choice: either help out their conscientious and always hard-working fellow countrywoman by lending her money, or turn away, not notice the human misfortune, preserving their own savings. Money here becomes a kind of measure of human conscience. The work reflects the author’s perception of various kinds of misfortunes. Rasputin's misfortune is not just a misfortune. This is also a test of a person, a test that reveals the core of the soul. Here everything is revealed to the bottom: both good and bad - everything is revealed without concealment. Such crisis psychological situations organize the dramaturgy of the conflict both in this story and in other works of the writer.

Maria's family always treated money simply. Husband Kuzma thought: “yes - good - no - oh well.” For Kuzma, “money was patches that were put on the holes necessary for living.” He could think about stocks of bread and meat - it was impossible to do without this, but thoughts about stocks of money seemed funny, clownish to him, and he brushed them aside. He was happy with what he had. That is why, when trouble knocks on his house, Kuzma does not regret the accumulated wealth. He thinks about how to save his wife, the mother of his children. Kuzma promises his sons: “We will turn the whole earth upside down, but we will not give up our mother. We are five men, we can do it.” The mother here is a symbol of the bright and sublime, incapable of any meanness. Mother is life. Protecting her honor and dignity is what is important to Kuzma, not money.

But Stepanida has a completely different attitude towards money. She can’t bear to part with a penny for a while. School director Evgeniy Nikolaevich also has difficulty giving money to help Maria. It is not a feeling of compassion for his fellow villager that guides his action. He wants to strengthen his reputation with this gesture. He advertises his every step to the whole village. But mercy cannot coexist with rude calculation.

Thus, in the person of the head of the family, we see an ideal that we need to emulate when resolving questions about wealth and its influence on people’s consciousness, about family relationships, the dignity and honor of the family. The author again demonstrates the inextricable connection of several moral problems. A minor deficiency allows you to see the moral character of representatives of society, revealing different facets of the same quality of a person.

"Deadline"

Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin is one of the called masters of “village prose”, one of those who continues the traditions of Russian classical prose, primarily from the point of view of moral and philosophical problems. Rasputin explores the conflict between a wise world order, a wise attitude towards the world and an unwise, fussy, thoughtless existence. The search for the roots of this conflict in the 1970 story “The Deadline.”

The narration is led, on the one hand, by an impersonal author-narrator, depicting the events in the house of the dying Anna, on the other hand, it is narrated as if Anna herself, her views, thoughts, and feelings are conveyed in the form of improperly direct speech. This organization of the story creates a feeling of dialogue between two opposing life positions. But in fact, the author’s sympathies are clearly on Anna’s side; the other position is presented in a negative light.

Rasputin's negative position belongs to the author's attitude towards Anna's already adult children, who gathered in the house of their dying old mother to say goodbye to her. But you can’t plan the moment of death, you can’t calculate it in advance, like a train stopping at a station. Contrary to all forecasts, old woman Anna is in no hurry to close her eyes. Her strength weakens and then returns again. Meanwhile, Anna’s children are primarily occupied with their own concerns. Lyusya hurries to sew herself a black dress while her mother is still alive in order to look appropriate at the funeral; Varvara immediately begs for this unsewn dress for her daughter. Sons Ilya and Mikhail thriftyly buy a box of vodka - “the mother must be seen off properly” - and start drinking in advance. And their emotions are unnatural: Varvara, as soon as she arrived and opened the gate, “as soon as she turned herself on, she began to cry: “You’re my mother!” Lucy “also shed a tear.” All of them - Ilya, and Lyusya, and Varvara, and Mikhail - have already come to terms with the inevitability of loss. The unexpected glimmer of hope for recovery does not cause them relief, but rather confusion and frustration. It was as if their mother had deceived them, as if she had forced them to waste their time and nerves, and had mixed up their plans. So the author shows that the spiritual world of these people is poor, they have lost their noble memory, are concerned only with petty matters, have become divorced from Nature (the mother in Rasputin’s story is the nature that gives life). Hence the author’s disgusted detachment from these heroes.

Rasputin wonders why Anna’s children have such thick skin? They weren't born that way, were they? And why did such a mother produce soulless children? Anna recalls the past, the childhood of her sons and daughters. He remembers when Mikhail’s first child was born, how happy he was, he burst into his mother with the words: “look, mother, I am from you, he is from me, and someone else is from him...”. Initially, the heroes are able to “sensitively and acutely be surprised at their existence, at what surrounds them at every step,” they are able to understand their participation in the “endless goal” of human existence: “so that the world never grows poor without people and grows old without children.” But this potential was not realized; the pursuit of momentary benefits eclipsed the whole light and meaning of life for Mikhail, Varvara, Ilya and Lyusa. They have no time and do not want to think; they have not developed the ability to be surprised by existence. The writer explains the main reason for moral decline, first of all, by the loss of a person’s spiritual connection with his roots.

In this story, there is one image that is completely opposed to the images of Anna’s insensitive children - this is the youngest daughter Tanchor. Tanya retained the consciousness of her connection with the whole world, coming from childhood, and a grateful feeling for her mother, who gave her life. Anna remembers well how Tanchora, diligently combing her head, said: “You’re doing great for us, Mom.” - “What else is this?” - the mother was surprised. “Because you gave birth to me, and now I live, and without you no one would have given birth to me, so I would never have seen the world.” Tatyana differs from her brothers and sisters in her sense of gratitude to her mother, to the world, hence all the best, morally bright and pure, sensitivity to all living things, joyful liveliness of disposition, tender and sincere love for her mother, which neither time nor distance can extinguish . Although she is also capable of betraying her mother, she did not even consider it necessary to respond to the telegram.

Anna Stepanovna never lived for herself, never shied away from duty, even the most burdensome one. No matter whoever was close to her in trouble, she looked for her guilt, as if she had overlooked something, was too late to intervene in something. There is a conflict between pettiness, callousness and a sense of responsibility for the whole world, a certain selflessness and kindness. The author's position is obvious; he is on the side of the rich spiritual world. For Rasputin, Anna is the ideal image. The writer said: “I have always been attracted to images of ordinary women, distinguished by selflessness, kindness, and the ability to understand another.” The strength of the characters of Rasputin's favorite heroes lies in wisdom, in the people's worldview, and in people's morality. Such people set the tone and intensity of the spiritual life of the people.

In this work, the connection of several moral problems is less noticeable. The main conflict of the work, however, can be associated with the conflict between “fathers” and “children”. It should be noted that the problem of crushing the soul posed by the author is very large-scale and deserves consideration in a separate work.

"Live and Remember"

This story was born from the contact between the writer’s experiences in childhood and his present-day thoughts about the village during the war years. And again, as in “Money for Maria” and in “The Deadline,” Valentin Rasputin chooses a critical situation that tests the moral foundations of the individual.

Did the main character know at that very moment when, succumbing to mental weakness, he jumped on a train heading not to the front, but from the front to Irkutsk, what this action would turn out to be for him and his loved ones? Perhaps he guessed, but only vaguely, indistinctly, for fear of fully thinking through everything that was going to happen after this, after this.

Every day that Andrei avoided war did not delay, but brought closer the tragic outcome. The inevitability of tragedy is contained in the very plot of “live and remember,” and all pages of the story breathe with a foreboding of tragedy. Rasputin does not lead his hero to a choice, but begins with a choice. From the first lines, Guskov is at a fork in the road, one of which leads to war, towards danger, while the other leads away from war. And by giving preference to this second road, he sealed his fate. He disposed of it himself.

Thus, one of the most important moral problems arises in the author’s work - the problem of choice. The work shows that one should not succumb to temptation (even such a “high” one as meeting with family) or give in to slack. The hero is lucky on his way home; in the end he achieves his goal without being put on trial. But, having avoided the tribunal, Guskov still did not escape the trial. And from punishment, perhaps more severe than execution. From moral punishment. The more fantastic the luck, the more clearly in “Live and Remember” is the roar of an impending disaster.

Conclusion

Valentin Rasputin has already traveled a long creative path. He wrote works that raise a huge number of moral problems. These problems are very relevant in modern times. What is especially noteworthy is that the author does not look at the problem as an isolated, separate phenomenon. The author explores the interconnection of problems by studying the souls of people. Therefore, you can’t expect simple solutions from him.

After Rasputin’s books, the idea of ​​life becomes somewhat clearer, but not simpler. At least some of the many schemes with which the consciousness of any of us is so well equipped, in contact with this artistically transformed reality, reveal their approximateness or inconsistency. The complex in Rasputin remains complex and ends in a complex way, but there is nothing deliberate or artificial about it. Life is truly replete with these complexities and an abundance of relationships between phenomena.

Valentin Rasputin, with everything he wrote, convinces us that there is light in a person and it is difficult to extinguish it, no matter what circumstances happen, although it is possible. He does not share a gloomy view of man, of the original, undaunted “depravity” of his nature. In Rasputin's heroes and in himself there is a poetic feeling of life, opposed to the base, naturalistic, its perception and depiction. He remains faithful to the traditions of humanism to the end.

Used literature and other sources:

1. V.G. Rasputin “Live and Remember. Stories" Moscow 1977.

2. F.F. Kuznetsov “Russian literature of the 20th century. Sketches, essays, portraits" Moscow 1991.

3. V.G. Rasputin “Down and Upstream. Stories" Moscow 1972.

4. N.V. Egorova, I.V. Zolotareva “lesson developments in Russian literature of the 20th century” Moscow 2002.

5. Critical materials of Internet libraries.

6. www.yandex.ru

7. www.ilib.ru

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Moral quests occupy a significant place in the work of Valentin Rasputin. His works present this problem in all its breadth and versatility. The author himself is a deeply moral person, as evidenced by his active public life. The name of this writer can be found not only among fighters for the moral transformation of the fatherland, but also among fighters for the environment. In his story “Live and Remember,” the writer poses moral problems with the greatest severity. The work was written with the author’s deep knowledge of folk life and the psychology of the common man. The author puts his heroes in a difficult situation: a young guy, Andrei Guskov, fought honestly almost until the very end of the war, but in 1944 he ended up in a hospital and his life began to crack. He thought that a serious wound would free him from further service. Lying in the ward, he already imagined how he would return home, hug his family and his Nastena, and he was so sure of this that he did not even call his relatives to the hospital to see him. The news that he was being sent to the front again struck like a lightning strike. All his dreams and plans were destroyed in an instant. In moments of mental turmoil and despair, Andrei makes a fatal decision for himself, which turned his life and soul upside down, making him a different person. There are many examples in literature when circumstances turn out to be higher than the willpower of the heroes, but the image of Andrei is the most reliable and expressive. There is a feeling that the author personally knew this person. Imperceptibly, the writer blurs the lines between “good” and “bad” characters and does not judge them unambiguously. The more carefully you read the story, the more opportunities you have for understanding the moral state of the characters and analyzing their actions. In Rasputin's works, life is complex in that each situation contains countless facets and gradations. Andrei Guskov makes his choice: he decides to go home on his own, at least for one day. From this moment on, his life falls under the influence of completely different laws of existence, Andrei is carried along in the muddy stream of events like a sliver. He begins to understand that every day of such a life moves him away from normal, honest people and makes it impossible to return back. Fate famously begins to control a weak-willed person. The situation surrounding the heroes is uncomfortable. Andrey's meeting with Nastena takes place in a cold, unheated bathhouse. The author knows Russian folklore well and draws an unambiguous parallel: the bathhouse is a place where all kinds of evil spirits appear at night. This is how the theme of werewolves arises, which runs through the entire narrative. In the minds of the people, werewolves are associated with wolves. And Andrei learned to howl like a wolf, he does it so naturally that Nastena wonders if he is a real werewolf. Andrey is becoming more and more callous in soul. Becomes cruel, even with some manifestation of sadism. Having shot a roe deer; does not finish it off with a second shot, as all hunters do, but stands and carefully watches how the unfortunate animal suffers. “Just before the end, he lifted her up and looked into her eyes - they widened in response. He was waiting for the last, final movement in order to remember how it would be reflected in his eyes.” The type of blood seems to determine his further actions and words. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.” “I have nothing to lose,” he tells his wife. Andrey quickly moves away from people. No matter what punishment he suffers, in the minds of his fellow villagers he will forever remain a werewolf, an inhuman. Werewolves are also popularly called undead. Undead means they live in a completely different dimension than people. But the author makes the hero painfully think: “What have I done wrong to fate that it has done this to me—what?” Andrey does not find an answer to his question. Each reader makes his own judgment. The hero himself is inclined to look for an excuse for his crime. He sees his salvation in his unborn child. His birth, Andrei thinks, is the finger of God indicating a return to normal human life, and he is wrong once again. Nastena and the unborn child die. This moment is the punishment with which higher powers can punish a person who has violated all moral laws. Andrei is doomed to a painful life. Nastena’s words: “Live and remember” will pound in his fevered brain until the end of his days. But this call “Live and Remember” is addressed not only to Andrei, but also to the residents of Atamanovka, to all people in general. Such tragedies always happen before people's eyes, but rarely does anyone dare to prevent them. People are afraid to be frank with loved ones. There are already laws in force here that constrain the moral impulses of innocent people. Nastena was afraid to even tell her friend that she had not sullied her human dignity in any way, but simply found herself between two fires.
She chooses a terrible way out of her situation - suicide. It seems that the author leads the reader to think about some kind of moral infection that is transmitted like a disease. After all, Nastena, by killing herself, kills the child within herself - this is a double sin. A third person, even if not yet born, is suffering. The infection of immorality also spreads to the residents of Atamanovka. They not only do not try to prevent the tragedy, but also contribute to its development and completion. A strong work of art on the theme of morality, such as V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember,” is always a step forward in the spiritual development of society. Such a work, by its very existence, is a barrier to lack of spirituality. The work of such a writer will help our contemporaries not to lose moral values. The work of Valentin Rasputin is often contrasted with “urban prose.” And his action almost always takes place in the village, and the main characters (more precisely, heroines) in most cases are “old old women,” and his sympathies are given not to the new, but to that ancient, primordial, irrevocably passes away. All this is true and not true. The critic A. Bocharov rightly noted that between the “urban” Yu. Trifonov and the “village” V. Rasputin, despite all their differences, there is much in common. Both seek a person’s high morality, both are interested in the place of the individual in history. Both talk about the influence of past life on modern and future life, both do not accept individualists, “iron” supermen and characterless conformists who have forgotten about the higher purpose of man. In a word, both writers develop philosophical problems, although they do it in different ways. The plot of each story by V. Rasputin is connected with testing, choice, death. “The Last Term” talks about the dying days of the old woman Anna and her children gathered at the bedside of their dying mother. Death highlights the characters of all the characters, and first of all the old woman herself. In “Live and Remember,” the action moves to 1945, when the hero of the story, Andrei Guskov, did not want to die at the front, and he deserted. The writer’s focus is on moral and philosophical problems that faced both Andrei himself and, to an even greater extent, his wife Nastena. “Farewell to Matera” describes the flooding of the island, on which the old Siberian village is located, for the needs of the hydroelectric power station, and the last days of the old men and women who remained on it. Under these conditions, the question of the meaning of life, the relationship between morality and progress, death and immortality becomes more acute. In all three stories, V. Rasputin creates images of Russian women, bearers of the moral values ​​of the people, their philosophical worldview, literary successors of Sholokhov’s Ilyinichna and Solzhenitsyn’s Matrena, developing and enriching image of a rural righteous woman. All of them have an inherent feeling of enormous responsibility for what is happening, a feeling of guilt without guilt, an awareness of their unity with the world, both human and natural. In all the writer’s stories, old men and women, the bearers of people’s memory, are opposed by those who, using an expression from “Farewell to Matera,” can be called “seeders.” Looking closely at the contradictions of the modern world, Rasputin, like other “village” writers, sees the origins of lack of spirituality in social reality (a person has been deprived of the sense of master, made a cog, an executor of other people’s decisions). At the same time, the writer makes high demands on the individual himself. For him, individualism and neglect of such popular national values ​​as home, work, ancestors’ graves, and procreation are unacceptable. All these concepts acquire material embodiment in the writer’s prose and are described in a lyrical and poetic manner. From story to story, the tragedy of the author’s worldview intensifies in Rasputin’s work.

Valentin Rasputin is one of the most famous writers of our time, in whose work the most important place is occupied
the problem of the relationship between man and nature.
The image of a “single reality”, an ideal world-order, forcibly destroyed by man, is created by the author in
story “Farewell to Matera”,
written in the mid-seventies of the 20th century. The work appeared at a time when the process
destruction of the connection between man and nature
water has reached a critical point: as a result of the construction of artificial reservoirs,
fertile lands, projects were developed to divert northern rivers, and unpromising villages were destroyed.
Rasputin saw a deep connection between ecological and moral processes - the loss of the world's original
harmony, destruction of connections between the ethical world of the individual and the Russian spiritual tradition. In “Farewell to Matera” this
harmony is personified by the villagers, old men and women, and above all, grandmother Daria. Rasputin showed
the ideal world of nature and man living in harmony with it, fulfilling his labor duty - preserving
memory of our ancestors. Daria’s father once left her a will: “Live, move, to hook us more firmly with
white light, to prick into it that we were...” These words largely determined her actions and relationships with
people. The author develops in the story the motif of the “last deadline”, the essence of which is that every person
with its presence in the world, it establishes a connection between the past, present and future. There are two
world: the righteous one, whom grandmother Daria calls “here!
”, - this is Matera, where everything is “familiar, lived-in and well-trodden”, and the sinful world - “there” - arsonists and the new
village. Each of these worlds lives according to its own laws. Mother's old people cannot accept life "there" where
“they forgot about the soul,” the conscience was “worn out,” the memory was “thinned,” but “the dead... will ask.”
The most important problem of the story is the feasibility of human intervention in the natural world. "Which
“at the price?”, Pavel, the son of Daria’s grandmother, is tormented by the question. It turns out that work, which from the Christian point of view
psychology is a benefactor, can become a destructive force. This idea arises in Paul's thoughts about
that the new village was built somehow inhumanely, “absurdly.”
Construction of a hydroelectric power station, as a result of which the island of Matera will be flooded, the destruction of a cemetery, the burning of houses and
forests - all this looks more like a war with the natural world, rather than its transformation. How does he perceive the tragedy?
everything that is happening Grandma Daria: “Today the world has broken in half.” Old Daria is also sure that ease,
with which people break all ties, the painlessness of leaving their native land, home, are components
“easier life” for people who are forgetful, indifferent and even cruel. Daria calls such people “seedlings.”
V. Rasputin notes with bitterness that the sense of kinship has been lost, the ancestral identity has been lost in the minds of young people
memory, and therefore they do not understand the pain of the old people saying goodbye to Matera as a living being.
An episode of the destruction of a cemetery, which the villagers rush to save -
one of the key ones in the story. For them, the cemetery is a world in which
their ancestors must live. To wipe it off the face of the earth is a crime. Then the invisible thread will break,
connecting the world together. That is why ancient old women stand in the way of the bulldozer.
Man in Rasputin’s artistic concept is inseparable from the outside world - animal, plant,
space. If even one link of this unity is broken, the whole chain breaks and the world loses harmony.
The owner of the island is the first to foresee Matera's imminent death - a small animal that symbolizes
the author's intention, nature as a whole. This image gives the story a special deep meaning. It allows
to see and hear what is hidden from man: the farewell groans of huts, “the breath of growing grass,” hidden
fussing about the birds - in a word, to feel the doom and imminent death of the village.
“What happens, cannot be avoided,” the Owner resigned himself. And in his words there is evidence of the helplessness of nature
in front of a person. “At what cost?” - this question does not arise among the arsonists, the official Vorontsov or the “comrade”
rischa Zhuk from the flood zone department.” This question torments Daria, Ekaterina, Pavel and the author himself.
The story “Farewell to Matera” gives the answer to this question: at the cost of the loss of the “natural harmony”, the death of the righteous
peace. It (the world) is drowning, swallowed up by fog, lost.
The ending of the work is tragic: the old people remaining in Matera hear a sad howl - “a farewell voice
The owner.” Such a denouement is natural. It is determined by the idea of ​​Rasputin. And the idea is this: people without a soul and without
God (“who has the soul, God is in him,” says Grandma Daria) thoughtlessly carry out transformations of nature, the essence
which are in violence against all living things. By destroying the harmonious world of nature, man is doomed to destroy himself.