An essay on the theme of the image of the common people in the novel “War and Peace. An essay on the theme of the image of the common people in the novel “War and Peace Message people in the novel war peace

The people in the novel "War and Peace"

It is believed that wars are won and lost by commanders and emperors, but in any war a commander without an army is like a needle without a thread. After all, it is soldiers, officers, generals - people who serve in the army and take part in battles and battles, become the very thread with which history is embroidered. If you try to sew with only one needle, the fabric will pierce, perhaps even traces will remain, but there will be no result. So a commander without his regiments is just a lonely needle, which is easily lost in the haystacks formed by time if there is no thread of his troops behind him. Sovereigns are not at war, the people are at war. Sovereigns and commanders are only needles. Tolstoy shows that the theme of the people in the novel "War and Peace" is the main theme of the entire work. The people of Russia are people of different classes, both high society and those who make up the middle class, and ordinary people. They all love their Motherland and are ready to give their lives for it.

The image of the people in the novel

The two main storylines of the novel reveal to readers how the characters are formed and the destinies of two families - the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys - develop. Using these examples, Tolstoy shows how the intelligentsia developed in Russia, some of its representatives came to the events of December 1825, when the Decembrist uprising took place.

The Russian people in War and Peace are represented by different characters. Tolstoy seemed to have collected the features inherent in ordinary people, and created several collective images, embodying them in specific characters.

In Plato Karataev, met by Pierre in captivity, the characteristic features of serfs were embodied. Kind, calm, hard-working Plato, who talks about life, but does not think about it: “He, apparently, never thought about what he said and what he would say ...”. In the novel, Plato is the embodiment of a part of the Russian people of that time, wise, obedient to fate and the tsar, who loves their homeland, but went to fight for it only because they were caught and "given to the soldiers." His natural kindness and wisdom revive the "master" Pierre, who is constantly looking for the meaning of life and cannot find and comprehend it.

But at the same time, "When Pierre, sometimes struck by the meaning of his speech, asked to repeat what was said, Plato could not remember what he had said a minute ago." All these searches and throwings are alien and incomprehensible to Karataev, he knows how to accept life as it is at this very moment, and he accepts death humbly and without grumbling.

The merchant Ferapontov, an acquaintance of Alpatych, is a typical representative of the merchant class, on the one hand stingy and cunning, but at the same time burning his property so that the enemy does not get it. And he does not want to believe that Smolensk will be surrendered, and he even beats his wife for her requests to leave the city.

And the fact that Ferapontov and other merchants themselves set fire to their shops and houses is a manifestation of patriotism and love for Russia, and it is already clear that Napoleon will not be able to defeat the people, who are ready to do anything to save their homeland.

The collective image of the people in the novel "War and Peace" is created by many characters. These are partisans like Tikhon Shcherbaty, who fought the French in their own way, and, as if effortlessly, destroyed small detachments. These are wanderers, humble and religious, such as Pelageyushka, who went to holy places. Militia men, dressed in simple white shirts, "to prepare for death", "with a loud voice and laughter" digging trenches on the Borodino field before the battle.

In difficult times, when the danger of being conquered by Napoleon hung over the country, one main goal came to the fore for all these people - the salvation of Russia. Before her, everything else was petty and unimportant. At such moments, people show their true colors with amazing clarity, and in War and Peace, Tolstoy shows the difference between ordinary people who are ready to die for their country and other people, careerists and opportunists.

This is especially well manifested in the description of the preparations for the battle on the Borodino field. A simple soldier with the words: “They want to fall on all the people ...”, some officers, for whom the main thing is that “great awards should have been distributed for tomorrow and new people should have been put forward”, soldiers praying in front of the icon of the Smolensk Mother of God, Dolokhov, asking for forgiveness from Pierre - all these are strokes of the general picture that confronted Pierre after a conversation with Bolkonsky. “He understood that hidden ... warmth of patriotism that was in all those people he saw, and which explained to him why all these people calmly and as if thoughtlessly prepared for death” - this is how Tolstoy describes the general state of people before the battle of Borodino.

But the author does not at all idealize the Russian people, in the episode where the Bogucharov peasants, trying to preserve their acquired property, do not let Princess Marya out of Bogucharov, he clearly shows the meanness and baseness of these people. In describing this scene, Tolstoy shows the behavior of the peasants as alien to Russian patriotism.

Conclusion

In an essay on the topic “The Russian people in the novel “War and Peace”, I wanted to show the attitude of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstov towards the Russian people as a “whole and unified” organism. And I want to end the essay with a quote from Tolstov: “... the reason for our triumph was not accidental, but lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people and troops, ... this character should have been expressed even more clearly in an era of failures and defeats ... "

Artwork test

June 26 2010

The people in "War and Peace" are Tikhon Shcherbaty, Tushin and Timokhin, Pierre Bezukhoe and, Nikolai Rostov and. The Kuragins and Drubetskys also belong to the historical people. The people in "War and Peace" are not only morally healthy and positive. For the author of the historical epic dedicated to the era of the Patriotic War with Napoleon, the concept of "people" contained a complex and contradictory unity, heterogeneous both morally and socially. Throughout Tolstoy's life, many of his concepts changed dramatically. Including the concept of "people". Perhaps it was this change in Tolstoy's understanding of what a people is that most clearly expressed the character and direction of Tolstoy's special and historically significant path.

In the 1980s, after the crisis he had gone through and his transition to the position of a defender of peasant interests, only the "working people", only the working classes would be recognized as having the right to be called a people. Then the concepts of "man" and "master" will become for him deeply opposed in their social and moral meaning and value. In "War and Peace" this is not yet and could not be. It could not be due to the peculiarities of the historical material of the work, and due to the peculiarities of Tolstoy's worldview of that time. It is worth noting that in The Landlord's Morning, written in the 1950s, Tolstoy calls the peasants not a people, as he will do starting from the 1980s, but a "class of the people." , The people in "War and Peace" - as it should be with the historical people - are many-sided and multidimensional. On the pages of Tolstoy's novel, people of different characters and different social positions collide, get acquainted and part, diverge and converge, love and hate, live and die. These are landowners and peasants, officers and soldiers, merchants and philistines, etc. However, Tolstoy pays the most attention and space to the depiction of people belonging to the nobility. This is explained not only by the fact that, as Tolstoy himself admits, the nobles, their way of life, customs, their deeds and thoughts were better known to him. This is also justified by purely objective circumstances: the action of Tolstoy's historical novel takes place at a time when it was precisely the nobility that was the main conscious participant in the historical process and therefore, not only in Tolstoy's imagination, but also in reality, was in the foreground of events. Let us recall that the era depicted by Tolstoy in the novel was attributed by V. I. Lenin to the noble period in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement.

The fact that Tolstoy pays special attention to the nobility does not at all mean that Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, has the same attitude towards various people from among the nobles. To Tolstoy, some characters are clearly sympathetic, sweet, spiritually close, and for the reader this immediately becomes noticeable. Tolstoy's other heroes are alien and unpleasant, and this too is felt by the reader immediately and in the most direct way. The author's "purity of moral feeling", which has an organic ability to infect in an artistic sense, is evident. As in his earlier works, so in War and Peace, Tolstoy is never morally indifferent to his heroes. Like Pierre Bezukhov, he constantly asks questions: “What is wrong? What well? What should you love, what should you hate? These are the most fundamental questions of Tolstoy's artistic worldview. For him, these are also the most fundamental questions of history, of any human illumination and reproduction of history.

The novel by L. N. Tolstoy was created in the 1860s. This time became in Russia the period of the highest activity of the peasant masses, the rise of the social movement.

The central theme of the literature of the 60s of the XIX century was the theme of the people. To consider it, as well as to highlight many major problems of our time, the writer turned to the historical past: the events of 1805-1807 and the war of 1812.

Researchers of Tolstoy's work disagree on what he meant by the word "people": peasants, the nation as a whole, merchants, bourgeoisie, patriotic patriarchal nobility. Of course, all these layers are included in Tolstoy's understanding of the word "people", but only when they are the bearers of morality. Everything that is immoral is excluded by Tolstoy from the concept of “people”.

With his work, the writer asserted the decisive role of the masses in history. In his opinion, the role of an outstanding personality in the development of society is negligible. No matter how brilliant a person is, he cannot direct the movement of history at will, dictate his will to it, control the actions of a huge mass of people living a spontaneous, swarming life. History is created by people, the masses, the people, and not by a person who rises above the people and takes upon himself the right to foresee the course of events at his own will.

Tolstoy divides life into an ascending current and a descending one, centrifugal and centripetal. Kutuzov, to whom the natural course of world events is open within his national-historical limits, is the embodiment of the centripetal, ascending forces of history. The writer emphasizes the moral height of Kutuzov, since this hero is connected with the mass of ordinary people by joint goals and actions, love for the motherland. He receives his strength from the people, experiences the same feelings as the people.

The writer also focuses on the merits of Kutuzov as a commander, whose activities were invariably directed towards one goal that had national significance: “It is difficult to imagine a goal more worthy and more in line with the will of the whole people.” Tolstoy emphasizes the purposefulness of all the actions of Kutuzov, the concentration of all forces on the task that has confronted the entire Russian people in the course of history. The spokesman for the people's patriotic feelings, Kutuzov also becomes the guiding force of popular resistance, raising the spirit of the troops he commands.

Tolstoy portrays Kutuzov as a folk hero who achieved independence and freedom only in alliance with the people and the nation as a whole. In the novel, the personality of the great commander is opposed to the personality of the great conqueror Napoleon. The writer exposes the ideal of unlimited freedom, which leads to the cult of a strong and proud personality.

So, the author sees the significance of a great personality in the feeling of the ongoing history as the will of providence. Great people like Kutuzov, who have a moral sense, their experience, mind and consciousness, guess the requirements of historical necessity.

The “thought of the people” is also expressed in the images of many representatives of the noble class. The path of ideological and moral growth leads positive heroes to rapprochement with the people. Heroes are tested by the Patriotic War. The independence of private life from the political game of the tops emphasizes the inextricable connection of the heroes with the life of the people. The viability of each of the characters is tested by the "people's thought".

She helps Pierre Bezukhov discover and show his best qualities; Andrey Bolkonsky is called “our prince” by the soldiers; Natasha Rostova takes out carts for the wounded; Marya Bolkonskaya rejects Mademoiselle Bourienne's offer to remain in Napoleon's power.

The closeness to the people is most clearly manifested in the image of Natasha, in which the Russian national character was originally laid down. In the scene after the hunt, Natasha listens with pleasure to the game and singing of her uncle, who “sang like the people sing”, and then she dances “Lady”. And everyone around her is amazed at her ability to understand everything that was in every Russian person: “Where, how, when she sucked into herself from this Russian air that she breathed, this Countess, brought up by a French emigrant, this spirit?”

If Natasha is completely characteristic of the features of the Russian character, then in Prince Andrei the Russian beginning is interrupted by the Napoleonic idea; however, it is precisely the features of the Russian character that help him understand all the deceit and hypocrisy of Napoleon, his idol.

Pierre enters the peasant world, and the life of the villagers leads him to serious thoughts.

The hero is aware of his equality with the people, even recognizes the superiority of these people. The more he knows the essence and strength of the people, the more he admires them. The strength of a people lies in its simplicity and naturalness.

According to Tolstoy, patriotism is a property of the soul of any Russian person, and in this respect the difference between Andrei Bolkonsky and any soldier of his regiment is insignificant. War forces everyone to act and act in a way that is impossible not to act. People act not on orders, but in obedience to an inner feeling, a sense of the significance of the moment. Tolstoy writes that they united in their aspirations and actions when they sensed the danger hanging over the whole of society.

The novel shows the grandeur and simplicity of swarm life, when everyone does their part of the common cause, and a person is driven not by instinct, but by the laws of social life, as Tolstoy understands them. And such a swarm, or world, does not consist of an impersonal mass, but of individuals who do not lose their individuality in merging with the swarm. This is the merchant Ferapontov, who burns his house so that the enemy does not get it, and the Moscow residents who leave the capital simply from the consideration that it is impossible to live in it under Bonaparte, even if no danger threatens. The peasants Karp and Vlas, who do not give hay to the French, and that Moscow lady who left Moscow with her black-tailed dogs and pugs back in June because of the consideration that “she is not Bonaparte’s servant” become participants in the swarm life. All these people are active participants in the folk, swarm life.

Thus, the people for Tolstoy is a complex phenomenon. The writer did not consider the common people an easily controlled mass, since he understood them much deeper. In the work, where the “folk thought” is in the foreground, a variety of manifestations of the national character are depicted.

Close to the people is Captain Tushin, whose image combines “small and great”, “modest and heroic”.

The theme of the people's war sounds in the image of Tikhon Shcherbaty. This hero is certainly useful in guerrilla warfare; cruel and ruthless to enemies, this character is natural, but Tolstoy has little sympathy. The image of this character is ambiguous, as is the image of Platon Karataev.

When meeting and getting to know Platon Karataev, Pierre is struck by the warmth, good nature, comfort, calmness emanating from this person. It is perceived almost symbolically, as something round, warm and smelling of bread. Karataev is characterized by amazing adaptability to circumstances, the ability to “settle down” in any circumstances.

The behavior of Platon Karataev unconsciously expresses the true wisdom of the folk, peasant philosophy of life, over the comprehension of which the main characters of the epic are tormented. This hero sets out his reasoning in a parable-like form. This, for example, is a legend about an innocently convicted merchant suffering “for his own and for human sins”, the meaning of which is that one must humble oneself and love life, even when one suffers.

And yet, unlike Tikhon Shcherbaty, Karataev is hardly capable of decisive action; its goodness leads to passivity. He is opposed in the novel by Bogucharov's peasants, who rose to rebellion and spoke out for their interests.

Along with the truth of nationality, Tolstoy also shows pseudo-nationality, a fake for it. This is reflected in the images of Rostopchin and Speransky - specific historical figures who, although they try to assume the right to speak on behalf of the people, have nothing in common with them.

In the work, the artistic narrative itself is interrupted at times by historical and philosophical digressions, which are close in style to journalism. The pathos of Tolstoy's philosophical digressions is directed against liberal-bourgeois military historians and writers. According to the writer, "the world denies war." So, on the reception of the antithesis, a description of the dam is built, which the Russian soldiers see during the retreat after Austerlitz - ruined and ugly. In peacetime, however, she was buried in greenery, was neat and rebuilt.

Thus, in Tolstoy's work, the question of man's moral responsibility before history is particularly acute.

So, in Tolstoy's novel “War and Peace”, people from the people come closest to spiritual unity, since it is the people, according to the writer, who are the bearers of spiritual values. The heroes, embodying the “people's thought”, are in constant search for the truth, and therefore, in development. In spiritual unity, the writer sees a way to overcome the contradictions of contemporary life. The war of 1812 was a real historical event, where the idea of ​​spiritual unity came true.

"War and Peace" is one of the brightest works of world literature, revealing the extraordinary richness of human destinies, characters, an unprecedented breadth of coverage of the phenomena of life, the deepest image of the most important events in the history of the Russian people. The basis of the novel, as L. N. Tolstoy admitted, is “the thought of the people”. “I tried to write the history of the people,” said Tolstoy. The people in the novel are not only peasants and peasant soldiers in disguise, but also the courtyard people of the Rostovs, and the merchant Ferapontov, and the army officers Tushin and Timokhin, and representatives of the privileged class - the Bolkonskys, Pierre Bezukhov, the Rostovs, and Vasily Denisov, and the field marshal Kutuzov, that is, those Russian people for whom the fate of Russia was not indifferent. The people are opposed by a handful of court aristocrats and a “muzzy” merchant, worried about his goods before the French take Moscow, that is, those people who are completely indifferent to the fate of the country.

In the epic novel there are more than five hundred characters, a description of two wars is given, events unfold in Europe and Russia, but, like cement, all the elements of the novel are held together by “folk thought” and “the author’s original moral attitude to the subject.” According to Leo Tolstoy, an individual is valuable only when he is an integral part of the great whole, his people. “His hero is a whole country fighting against the invasion of the enemy,” wrote V. G. Korolenko. The novel begins with a description of the campaign of 1805, which did not touch the hearts of the people. Tolstoy does not hide the fact that the soldiers not only did not understand the goals of this war, but even vaguely imagined who Russia's ally was. Tolstoy is not interested in the foreign policy of Alexander I, his attention is drawn to the love of life, modesty, courage, endurance, selflessness of the Russian people. Tolstoy's main task is to show the decisive role of the masses in historical events, to show the greatness and beauty of the feat of the Russian people in conditions of mortal danger, when psychologically a person reveals himself most fully.

The plot of the novel is based on the Patriotic War of 1812. The war brought decisive changes to the life of the entire Russian people. All the usual conditions of life were shifted, everything was now evaluated in the light of the danger that hung over Russia. Nikolai Rostov returns to the army, Petya volunteers to go to war, the old prince Bolkonsky forms a detachment of militia from his peasants, Andrei Bolkonsky decides to serve not at the headquarters, but directly command the regiment. Pierre Bezukhov gave part of his money to equip the militias. The Smolensk merchant Ferapontov, in whose mind the disturbing thought of the “death” of Russia arose when he learned that the city was being surrendered, does not seek to save property, but calls on the soldiers to drag everything out of the shop so that the “devils” do not get anything.

The War of 1812 is more represented by mass scenes. The people begin to realize the danger when the enemy approaches Smolensk. The fire and surrender of Smolensk, the death of the old prince Bolkonsky at the time of the review of the peasant militia, the destruction of the crop, the retreat of the Russian army - all this enhances the tragedy of events. At the same time, Tolstoy shows that in this difficult situation something new was born that was to destroy the French. In the growth of moods of determination and anger against the enemy, Tolstoy sees the source of the approaching turning point in the course of the war. The outcome of the war was determined long before its end by the "spirit" of the troops and people. This decisive "spirit" was the patriotism of the Russian people, which manifested itself simply and naturally: the people left towns and villages captured by the French; refused to sell food and hay to enemies; guerrilla detachments formed behind enemy lines.

The Battle of Borodino is the climax of the novel. Pierre Bezukhov, watching the soldiers, experiences a sense of the horror of death and suffering that the war brings, on the other hand, the consciousness of “the solemnity and significance of the coming minute”, which the people inspire him. Pierre was convinced how deeply, with all his heart, the Russian people understand the meaning of what is happening. The soldier, who called him a “countryman”, tells him confidentially: “They want to pile on all the people; one word - Moscow. They want to make one end." The militias, who have just arrived from the depths of Russia, in accordance with custom, put on clean shirts, realizing that they will have to die. Old soldiers refuse to drink vodka - "not such a day, they say."

In these simple forms, connected with folk concepts and customs, the high moral strength of the Russian people was manifested. The high patriotic spirit and moral strength of the people brought victory to Russia in the war of 1812.

The narrator in the novel "War and Peace" writes about the people that he "calmly waited for his fate, feeling in himself the strength in the most difficult moment to find what he had to do. And as soon as the enemy approached, the richest elements of the population left, leaving their property; the poorest remained and set fire to and destroyed what was left.” This was the idea of ​​what a "people's war" is. Here there was no room for self-interest, for thinking about one's own property, for thinking about tomorrow: there will be no tomorrow while today the enemy tramples on their native land. Here there is - for a very short time - the unity of the whole people: from poor peasants setting fire to the abandoned property that should not go to the enemy - to Emperor Alexander I, who resolutely and categorically rejects peace negotiations while Napoleon is within Russia. In the people, Tolstoy sees simplicity, sincerity, awareness of one's own dignity and duty to the Motherland. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy wrote: “It is more interesting for me to know how and under the influence of what feeling one soldier killed another than the disposition of troops at the Battle of Austerlitz or Borodino.”

We have the opportunity to judge the war of 1812 from the standpoint of the 21st century, and we see how selfless the Russian soldiers were when they entered into battle with the Napoleonic army, which had managed to conquer almost the whole world before that. After all, every wound in that war could be fatal: the soldiers were not protected by anything, medical care was very limited. Even if the wound was light, the soldier could soon die from blood poisoning. In the novel "War and Peace" the soldiers themselves think little about death: they simply fulfill their patriotic duty, without complicating their feat with thoughts. In this simplicity lies, according to Tolstoy, the greatness of the people's feat.

Prince Andrei looks at the bathing soldiers and realizes that they are cannon fodder. He is one of the few who thinks about their doom and understands the power of their heroism. Therefore, for the soldiers, he is “our prince”.

In the first two volumes, we see how the threat is approaching Russia, how it is growing. In the third and fourth volumes of the novel "War and Peace" the picture of the national feat that saved Russia from the Napoleonic capture is widely developed.

One of Tolstoy's great literary discoveries is his description of the psychology of the crowd. The description of the people is not only made up of individual portraits of heroes from the people, but is also presented as a collective image of the people. We see the people in the prayer scene before the battle, on the Moscow square before the burning of Moscow, before the surrender of Moscow to Napoleon's troops, we hear the roll of voices. Such a collective image in Russian "fine literature" first appeared precisely in Tolstoy. In addition, the magnificent beginning of the novel - an evening at Anna Pavlovna Sherer's - is also, in fact, a description of the crowd, only the "high society crowd".

Contemporaneous readers paid special attention to the rebellion of the Bogucharovo peasants. Bogucharovo was the so-called "beyond the eyes" of Bolkonsky. Already by this name it is clear that Bogucharovo did not often catch his eye. And in general, there were few landowners in the vicinity of this estate. The landowners, among other things, were also news transmitters (which, by the way, they sometimes used in real life not quite conscientiously: the peasants didn’t subscribe to newspapers, and there were no other “mass media” yet). Therefore, it is understandable that between the Bogucharovites “some obscure talk always went, either about listing them all as Cossacks, or about a new faith to which they would be converted, or about some kind of royal lists ...”.

The old prince Bolkonsky did not like the Bogucharovites "for their savagery." According to his rule, Prince Andrei made life easier for the Bogucharovites as best he could. During the short time that he lived there, Andrei Bolkonsky reduced the quitrent to the peasants. With this, landowner "reforms" usually began and ended, but the prince went further, built hospitals and schools. However, the peasants were not very happy about this. After the Napoleonic invasion, they decided to stay in Bogucharovo, hoping with the help of the French to free themselves from the landowners, from the "fortress". However, Napoleon had no plans to free the Russian peasants: their “controllability” through the landowners who spoke French well suited him perfectly. The conflict between the peasants and Princess Mary began unexpectedly for her. However, it was enough for the brave officer Nikolai Rostov to appear, to command loudly, and the peasants themselves tied up the instigators of this failed revolt. In the denouement of this unexpectedly begun and just as unexpectedly ended incident, of course, the attitude of the writer himself to the peasant uprisings of the early 19th century was affected: they were simply impossible, according to Tolstoy. That is why his hero must become a Decembrist, a member of a secret society, trying to free the peasants "from above", through the long-awaited constitution.

It was this people, which so easily abandoned their plans, as soon as an unknown officer shouted, turned out to be the glorious winner of Napoleon. It was the national resistance, the "club of the people's war."

Source (abbreviated): Lanin B.A. Russian language and literature. Literature: Grade 10 / B.A. Lanin, L.Yu. Ustinova, V.M. Shamchikov. - M.: Ventana-Graf, 2016