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Mikhail Sholokhov’s sad story “The Fate of a Man” touches the heartstrings. Written by the author in 1956, it reveals the naked truth about the atrocities of the Great Patriotic War and what Andrei Sokolov, a Soviet soldier, experienced in German captivity. But first things first.

The main characters of the story:

Andrei Sokolov is a Soviet soldier who had to experience a lot of grief during the Great Patriotic War. But, despite adversity, even captivity, where the hero suffered brutal abuse from the Nazis, he survived. The smile of an adopted orphan boy shone like a ray of light in the darkness of hopelessness, when the hero of the story lost his entire family in the war.

Andrei's wife Irina: a meek, calm woman, a real wife, loving her husband, who knew how to console and support in difficult times. When Andrei left for the front, I was in great despair. She died along with her two children when a shell hit the house.

Meeting at the crossing

Mikhail Sholokhov writes his work in the first person. It was the first post-war spring, and the narrator had to get to the Bukanovskaya station, which was sixty kilometers away, at any cost. Swimming along with the driver of the car to the other side of the river called Epanka, he began to wait for the driver, who had left for two hours.

Suddenly, a man with a little boy moving towards the crossing attracted attention. They stopped, said hello, and a casual conversation ensued, in which Andrei Sokolov - that was the name of the new acquaintance - told about his bitter life during the war years.

Andrey's difficult fate

Whatever kind of torment a person endures during the terrible years of confrontation between nations.

The Great Patriotic War maimed and wounded human bodies and souls, especially those who had to be in German captivity and drink the bitter cup of inhuman suffering. One of these was Andrei Sokolov.

Life of Andrei Sokolov before the Great Patriotic War

Fierce troubles befell the guy since his youth: his parents and sister died of hunger, loneliness, the war in the Red Army. But at that difficult time, Andrei’s clever wife, meek, quiet and affectionate, became a joy for Andrei.

And life seemed to be getting better: work as a driver, good earnings, three smart children who were excellent students (they even wrote about the eldest, Anatoly, in the newspaper). And finally, a cozy two-room house, which they built with the money they had saved just before the war... It suddenly fell on Soviet soil and turned out to be much worse than the previous, civil one. And Andrei Sokolov’s happiness, achieved with such difficulty, was broken into small fragments.

We invite you to familiarize yourself with, whose works are a reflection of the historical upheavals that the whole country was then experiencing.

Farewell to family

Andrei went to the front. His wife Irina and three children saw him off in tears. The wife was especially sad: “My dear... Andryusha... we won’t see each other... you and I... anymore... in this... world.”
“Until my death,” Andrei recalls, “I will not forgive myself for pushing her away then.” He remembers everything, although he wants to forget: the white lips of the desperate Irina, who whispered something when they boarded the train; and the children, who, no matter how hard they tried, could not smile through their tears... And the train carried Andrei further and further, towards military everyday life and bad weather.

First years at the front

At the front, Andrei worked as a driver. Two minor wounds could not be compared with what he had to endure later, when, seriously wounded, he was captured by the Nazis.

In captivity

What kind of abuse did you have to endure from the Germans along the way: they hit you on the head with a rifle butt, and in front of Andrei they shot the wounded, and then they drove everyone into the church to spend the night. The main character would have suffered even more if a military doctor had not been among the prisoners, who offered his help and put his dislocated arm in place. There was immediate relief.

Preventing Betrayal

Among the prisoners was a man who planned the next morning, when the question was asked whether there were commissars, Jews and communists among the prisoners, to hand over his platoon commander to the Germans. I was very afraid for my life. Andrei, having heard the conversation about this, was not taken aback and strangled the traitor. And subsequently I didn’t regret it one bit.

The escape

From the time of his captivity, Andrei became more and more obsessed with the idea of ​​escaping. And now a real opportunity presented itself to accomplish the plan. The prisoners were digging graves for their own dead and, seeing that the guards were distracted, Andrei quietly escaped. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful: after four days of searching, he was returned, the dogs were released, he was tortured for a long time, he was put in a punishment cell for a month and, finally, he was sent to Germany.

In a foreign land

To say that life in Germany was terrible is an understatement. Andrei, listed as prisoner number 331, was constantly beaten, fed very poorly, and forced to work hard at the Stone Quarry. And once, for reckless words about the Germans, uttered inadvertently in the barracks, he was summoned to Herr Lagerfuehrer. However, Andrei was not afraid: he confirmed what was said earlier: “four cubic meters of production is a lot...” They wanted to shoot first, and would have carried out the sentence, but, seeing the courage of the Russian soldier who was not afraid of death, the commandant respected him, changed his mind and released him. barracks, even at the same time supplying food.

Release from captivity

While working as a driver for the Nazis (he drove a German major), Andrei Sokolov began to think about a second escape, which could be more successful than the previous one. And so it happened.
On the road in the direction of Trosnitsa, having changed into a German uniform, Andrei stopped a car with a major sleeping in the back seat and stunned the German. And then he turned to where the Russians were fighting.

Among their

Finally, finding himself on the territory among Soviet soldiers, Andrei was able to breathe easy. He missed his native land so much that he fell to her and kissed her. At first, his own people did not recognize him, but then they realized that it was not a Fritz who had gotten lost at all, but his own, dear, Voronezh resident had escaped from captivity, and even brought important documents with him. They fed him, bathed him in the bathhouse, gave him uniform, but the colonel refused his request to take him into the rifle unit: it was necessary to receive medical treatment.

Terrible news

So Andrei ended up in the hospital. He was well fed, provided with care, and after German captivity life might have seemed almost good, if not for one “but”. The soldier's soul yearned for his wife and children, he wrote a letter home, waited for news from them, but still no answer. And suddenly - terrible news from a neighbor, a carpenter, Ivan Timofeevich. He writes that neither Irina nor his younger daughter and son are alive. Their hut was hit by a heavy shell... And after that the elder Anatoly volunteered for the front. My heart sank from burning pain. After being discharged from the hospital, Andrei decided to go himself to the place where his home once stood. The sight turned out to be so depressing - a deep crater and waist-deep weeds - that the ex-husband and father of the family could not stay there for a minute. I asked to go back to the division.

First joy, then sorrow

Among the impenetrable darkness of despair, a ray of hope flashed - the eldest son of Andrei Sokolov, Anatoly, sent a letter from the front. It turns out that he graduated from an artillery school - and has already received the rank of captain, “commands a battery of forty-fives, has six orders and medals...”
How happy this unexpected news made my father! How many dreams awoke in him: his son would return from the front, get married, and his grandfather would nurse his long-awaited grandchildren. Alas, this short-term happiness was shattered: on May 9, just on Victory Day, a German sniper killed Anatoly. And it was terrible, unbearably painful for my father to see him dead, in a coffin!

Sokolov's new son is a boy named Vanya

It was as if something had snapped inside Andrey. And he would not have lived at all, but simply existed, if he had not then adopted a little six-year-old boy, whose mother and father had both died in the war.
In Uryupinsk (due to the misfortunes that befell him, the main character of the story did not want to return to Voronezh), a childless couple took in Andrei. He worked as a truck driver, sometimes transporting bread. Several times, stopping at a teahouse for a snack, Sokolov saw a hungry orphan boy - and his heart grew attached to the child. I decided to take it for myself. “Hey, Vanyushka! Get in the car quickly, I’ll take you to the elevator, and from there we’ll come back here and have lunch,” Andrei called the baby.
- Do you know who I am? - asked, having learned from the boy that he was an orphan.
- Who? – Vanya asked.
- I am your father!
At that moment, such joy overwhelmed both the newly acquired son and Sokolov himself, such bright feelings that the former soldier understood: he had done the right thing. And he will no longer be able to live without Vanya. Since then they have never been apart - neither day nor night. Andrei's petrified heart became softer with the arrival of this mischievous baby into his life.
Only he didn’t have to stay long in Uryupinsk - another friend invited the hero to the Kashira district. So now they walk with their son on Russian soil, because Andrei is not used to staying in one place.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov

MAN'S FATE

Evgenia Grigorievna Levitskaya

member of the CPSU since 1903

The first post-war spring on the Upper Don was unusually friendly and assertive. At the end of March, warm winds blew from the Azov region, and within two days the sands of the left bank of the Don were completely exposed, snow-filled ravines and gullies in the steppe swelled up, breaking the ice, steppe rivers leaped madly, and the roads became almost completely impassable.

During this bad time of no roads, I had to go to the village of Bukanovskaya. And the distance is small - only about sixty kilometers - but overcoming them was not so easy. My friend and I left before sunrise. A pair of well-fed horses, pulling the lines to a string, could barely drag the heavy chaise. The wheels sank to the very hub into the damp sand mixed with snow and ice, and an hour later, on the horses’ sides and whips, under the thin belts of the harnesses, white fluffy flakes of soap appeared, and in the fresh morning air there was a sharp and intoxicating smell of horse sweat and warmed tar generously oiled horse harness.

Where it was especially difficult for the horses, we got off the chaise and walked. The soaked snow squelched under the boots, it was hard to walk, but along the sides of the road there was still crystal ice glistening in the sun, and it was even more difficult to get through there. Only about six hours later we covered a distance of thirty kilometers and arrived at the crossing over the Elanka River.

A small river, drying up in places in summer, opposite the Mokhovsky farm in a swampy floodplain overgrown with alders, overflowed for a whole kilometer. It was necessary to cross on a fragile punt that could carry no more than three people. We released the horses. On the other side, in the collective farm barn, an old, well-worn “Jeep” was waiting for us, left there in the winter. Together with the driver, we boarded the dilapidated boat, not without fear. The comrade remained on the shore with his things. They had barely set sail when water began to gush out in fountains from the rotten bottom in different places. Using improvised means, they caulked the unreliable vessel and scooped water out of it until they reached it. An hour later we were on the other side of Elanka. The driver drove the car from the farm, approached the boat and said, taking the oar:

If this damned trough doesn’t fall apart on the water, we’ll arrive in two hours, don’t wait earlier.

The farm was located far to the side, and near the pier there was such silence as only happens in deserted places in the dead of autumn and at the very beginning of spring. The water smelled of dampness, the tart bitterness of rotting alder, and from the distant Khoper steppes, drowned in a lilac haze of fog, a light breeze carried the eternally youthful, barely perceptible aroma of land recently freed from under the snow.

Not far away, on the coastal sand, lay a fallen fence. I sat down on it, wanted to light a cigarette, but, putting my hand into the right pocket of the cotton quilt, to my great chagrin, I discovered that the pack of Belomor was completely soaked. During the crossing, a wave lashed over the side of a low-slung boat and doused me waist-deep in muddy water. Then I had no time to think about cigarettes, I had to abandon the oar and quickly bail out the water so that the boat would not sink, and now, bitterly annoyed at my mistake, I carefully took the soggy pack out of my pocket, squatted down and began to lay it out one by one on the fence damp, browned cigarettes.

It was noon. The sun was shining hotly, like in May. I hoped that the cigarettes would dry out soon. The sun was shining so hotly that I already regretted wearing military cotton trousers and a quilted jacket for the journey. It was the first truly warm day after winter. It was good to sit on the fence like this, alone, completely submitting to silence and loneliness, and, taking off the old soldier’s earflaps from his head, drying his hair, wet after heavy rowing, in the breeze, mindlessly watching the white busty clouds floating in the faded blue.

Soon I saw a man come out onto the road from behind the outer courtyards of the farm. He was leading a little boy by the hand; judging by his height, he was no more than five or six years old. They walked wearily towards the crossing, but when they caught up with the car, they turned towards me. A tall, stooped man, coming close, said in a muffled basso:

Hello, brother!

Hello. - I shook the large, callous hand extended to me.

The man leaned towards the boy and said:

Say hello to your uncle, son. Apparently, he is the same driver as your dad. Only you and I drove a truck, and he drives this little car.

Looking straight into my eyes with eyes as bright as the sky, smiling slightly, the boy boldly extended his pink, cold little hand to me. I shook her lightly and asked:

Why is it, old man, that your hand is so cold? It's warm outside, but you're freezing?

With touching childish trust, the baby pressed himself against my knees and raised his whitish eyebrows in surprise.

What kind of old man am I, uncle? I’m not a boy at all, and I don’t freeze at all, but my hands are cold - because I was rolling snowballs.

Taking the skinny duffel bag off his back and wearily sitting down next to me, my father said:

I'm in trouble with this passenger! It was through him that I got involved. If you take a wide step, he will already break into a trot, so please adapt to such an infantryman. Where I need to step once, I step three times, and we walk with him separately, like a horse and a turtle. But here he needs an eye and an eye. You turn away a little, and he’s already wandering across the puddle or breaking off an ice cream and sucking it instead of candy. No, it’s not a man’s business to travel with such passengers, and at a leisurely pace at that. “He was silent for a while, then asked: “What are you, brother, waiting for your superiors?”

It was inconvenient for me to dissuade him that I was not a driver, and I answered:

We have to wait.

Will they come from the other side?

Don't know if the boat will arrive soon?

In two hours.

In order. Well, while we rest, I have nowhere to rush. And I walk past, I look: my brother, the driver, is sunbathing. Let me, I think, I’ll come in and have a smoke together. One is sick of smoking and dying. And you live richly and smoke cigarettes. Damaged them, then? Well, brother, soaked tobacco, like a treated horse, is no good. Let's smoke my strong drink instead.

Evgenia Grigorievna Levitskaya,

member of the CPSU since 1903

The first post-war spring on the Upper Don was unusually friendly and assertive. At the end of March, warm winds blew from the Azov region, and within two days the sands of the left bank of the Don were completely exposed, snow-filled ravines and gullies in the steppe swelled up, breaking the ice, steppe rivers leaped madly, and the roads became almost completely impassable.

During this bad time of no roads, I had to go to the village of Bukanovskaya. And the distance is small - only about sixty kilometers - but overcoming them was not so easy. My friend and I left before sunrise. A pair of well-fed horses, pulling the lines to a string, could barely drag the heavy chaise. The wheels sank to the very hub into the damp sand mixed with snow and ice, and an hour later, on the horses’ sides and whips, under the thin belts of the harnesses, white fluffy flakes of soap appeared, and in the fresh morning air there was a sharp and intoxicating smell of horse sweat and warmed tar generously oiled horse harness.

Where it was especially difficult for the horses, we got off the chaise and walked. The soaked snow squelched under the boots, it was hard to walk, but along the sides of the road there was still crystal ice glistening in the sun, and it was even more difficult to get through there. Only about six hours later we covered a distance of thirty kilometers and arrived at the crossing over the Elanka River.

A small river, drying up in places in summer, opposite the Mokhovsky farm in a swampy floodplain overgrown with alders, overflowed for a whole kilometer. It was necessary to cross on a fragile punt that could carry no more than three people. We released the horses. On the other side, in the collective farm barn, an old, well-worn “Jeep” was waiting for us, left there in the winter. Together with the driver, we boarded the dilapidated boat, not without fear. The comrade remained on the shore with his things. They had barely set sail when water began to gush out in fountains from the rotten bottom in different places. Using improvised means, they caulked the unreliable vessel and scooped water out of it until they reached it. An hour later we were on the other side of Elanka. The driver drove the car from the farm, approached the boat and said, taking the oar:

If this damned trough doesn’t fall apart on the water, we’ll arrive in two hours, don’t wait earlier.

The farm was located far to the side, and near the pier there was such silence as only happens in deserted places in the dead of autumn and at the very beginning of spring. The water smelled of dampness, the tart bitterness of rotting alder, and from the distant Khoper steppes, drowned in a lilac haze of fog, a light breeze carried the eternally youthful, barely perceptible aroma of land recently freed from under the snow.

Not far away, on the coastal sand, lay a fallen fence. I sat down on it, wanted to light a cigarette, but putting my hand into the right pocket of the cotton quilt, to my great chagrin, I discovered that the pack of Belomor was completely soaked. During the crossing, a wave lashed over the side of a low-slung boat and doused me waist-deep in muddy water. Then I had no time to think about cigarettes, I had to abandon the oar and quickly bail out the water so that the boat would not sink, and now, bitterly annoyed at my mistake, I carefully took the soggy pack out of my pocket, squatted down and began to lay it out one by one on the fence damp, browned cigarettes.

It was noon. The sun was shining hotly, like in May. I hoped that the cigarettes would dry out soon. The sun was shining so hotly that I already regretted wearing military cotton trousers and a quilted jacket for the journey. It was the first truly warm day after winter. It was good to sit on the fence like this, alone, completely submitting to silence and loneliness, and, taking off the old soldier’s earflaps from his head, drying his hair, wet after heavy rowing, in the breeze, mindlessly watching the white busty clouds floating in the faded blue.

Soon I saw a man come out onto the road from behind the outer courtyards of the farm. He was leading a little boy by the hand; judging by his height, he was no more than five or six years old. They walked wearily towards the crossing, but when they caught up with the car, they turned towards me. A tall, stooped man, coming close, said in a muffled basso:

Hello, brother!

Hello. - I shook the large, callous hand extended to me.

The man leaned towards the boy and said:

Say hello to your uncle, son. Apparently, he is the same driver as your dad. Only you and I drove a truck, and he drives this little car.

Looking straight into my eyes with eyes as bright as the sky, smiling slightly, the boy boldly extended his pink, cold little hand to me. I shook her lightly and asked:

Why is it, old man, that your hand is so cold? It's warm outside, but you're freezing?

With touching childish trust, the baby pressed himself against my knees and raised his whitish eyebrows in surprise.

What kind of old man am I, uncle? I’m not a boy at all, and I don’t freeze at all, but my hands are cold - because I was rolling snowballs.

Taking the skinny duffel bag off his back and wearily sitting down next to me, my father said:

I'm in trouble with this passenger. It was through him that I got involved. As soon as you take a wide step, he starts to trot, so please adapt to such an infantryman. Where I need to step once, I step three times, and we walk with him separately, like a horse and a turtle. But here he needs an eye and an eye. You turn away a little, and he’s already wandering across the puddle or breaking off an ice cream and sucking it instead of candy. No, it’s not a man’s business to travel with such passengers, and at a leisurely pace at that. “He was silent for a while, then asked: “What are you, brother, waiting for your superiors?”

Municipal educational institution

"Basic secondary school in the village of Zipunovo."

on literature.

Completed

9th grade student

Peshin Alexander.

Babkina Evgenia Nikolaevna.

Chairman of the examination committee

Assistant

2007-2008 academic year year.

1. Introduction. page 3

2. Depiction of Russian folk character

in M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of Man".

2.1 Features of the composition of the work. page 5

2.2 The best features are concentrated in the image of Andrei Sokolov

character of a Russian person. page 7

2.3 The strength of the main character is in close unity with the people. page 10

3. Conclusion. page 11

4. Literature. page 12

5. Application. page 13

Final certification work

on literature.

Depiction of Russian folk character in M. Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man.”

Yes, here they are, Russian characters.

Seems like a simple man

and severe trouble will come,

in big or small, and

great power rises in him –human beauty.

A. N. Tolstoy.

Introduction.

During the Great Patriotic War, the main character of most works becomes a simple person, yesterday's hero of labor, who fought for the freedom and independence of his homeland.

For the Soviet people, the war became their life, their hard but necessary work. And that is why he, a Russian man, an eternal worker, did not flinch before the harsh face of trials.

The stories and narratives created during the Great Patriotic War literally absorbed the breath of the document, or even operational reports from the scene of events. Often, speculation gave way to a burning truth, which, moreover, was higher than any fantasy. The artist’s sense of historicism, extremely acute, made it possible to transform a document, operational summary, information into an artistic testimony of the life of the people in the fire of war.

In an everyday and outwardly inconspicuous fact, phenomenon, event, that significant and significant, special and enduring thing was revealed that constituted the essence of our life.

Organically connected with such works and at the same time qualitatively different from them is the story of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov “The Fate of a Man”, created by the writer ten years after the victorious end of the Great Patriotic War. The story captured the war in its new dimension and awareness, when the foreground was not the task of mobilizing the spirit of compatriots in the battle with the enemy, but sincere compassion for the people's misfortune, divided into private human destinies. The ordinary person in Sholokhov's story turns out to be the main figure, the hero of the time and the people's tragedy. Filled with high humanism and compassion, the confessional story has become an outstanding phenomenon in Russian literature.

And the history of its creation, according to various testimonies, appears as such.

Arriving in Moscow on Saturday, December 8, 1956, Mikhail Aleksandrovich called Pravda straight from the station and warned that he would soon arrive at the editorial office with his new story. At six o'clock in the evening in the editor-in-chief's office, he began to read the beginning of the story to the assembled employees. Suddenly interrupting his reading, he remarked: “This is what I managed to write... And then it will be like this...” And he continued the coherent story without text, from memory. Having promised to complete the story before the New Year, he kept his word. On December 29, 1956, Sholokhov read the entire story to Pravda employees. And just a day later - December 31, 1956 - the first half of the story was published in Pravda, and on January 1, 1957 - its ending.

The idea itself arose in the first post-war year, when the writer met the prototype of Andrei Sokolov. With him was a boy whom he called son. And in the moments of waiting for the ferry across the Don, they - the author, who was mistaken by a new acquaintance for a “brother-driver”, and the stoop-shouldered man he met - began a conversation, from which the story “The Fate of a Man” matured in the artist’s soul.

The purpose of my certification work .

Studying the creative history of M.A. Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man” and characterizing the significant, weighty image of a Man, a Warrior and a Worker.

Tasks:

a) note the features of Sholokhov’s mastery - the ability to convey the most complex emotional experiences of a person enduring hardships and hardships through external, sometimes barely noticeable manifestations - gestures, facial expressions, a short word;

b) having identified the meaning of the title of the story, analyze the courage, perseverance, tenacity in the struggle for life, the ability to love and be friends with the warrior and worker Andrei Sokolov.

Features of the composition of the work.

The composition of Sholokhov's work is unique. In its form, it represents a story within a story.

The narrator's narration is framed by the author's beginning and a short ending. The main drama of the story lies in the central part of the work - in the story of Andrei Sokolov. The author's beginning bears the features of an epic narrative, and the ending is a kind of lyrical digression, in which the author expresses a blood connection with the fate of his heroes.

The first-person narrative gives the work the character of a confession and allows the writer, while maintaining the flavor of everyday life, to penetrate into the depths of the hero’s spiritual world.

The frame in which the narrator’s voice sounds prepares a meeting with the hero, who puts us at a certain point of view, makes us see in life and people something that, perhaps, in other circumstances would not attract attention. Note also that from time to time the narrator interrupts the storyteller with a remark, a small lyrical digression, or a sketch of nature - as if a kind of lyrical accompaniment to the story.

Analyzing the introductory part of the work, let us pay attention to its rather dry, almost businesslike beginning. It takes place in the post-war spring, at the end of March 1946. The author travels to the village of Bukanovskaya, sixty kilometers away. Rides out with a friend before sunrise on a pair of horses. Six hours later, the travelers reached the crossing of the Elanka River, which, near the Mokhovsky farm, overflowed for a whole kilometer. After another hour of travel on a dilapidated boat, the narrator crossed to the other side of the Elanka. Sitting down on a fallen fence, he put his hand into the right pocket of his cotton quilt, found a sodden pack of Belomor and began to dry the damp, browned cigarettes in the sun...

As you can see, the story begins simply, “usually”, and is told slowly. The names of farms, rivers, and the number of kilometers covered are accurately indicated. For what?

Sholokhov strives for authenticity, for truthfulness, for creating the impression of everyday life, even the ordinaryness of what is happening. At the same time, we note the thoughtfulness of every detail of the picture.

The narrator talks about his clothes (soldier's wadded trousers, quilted jacket, old soldier's earflaps) and mentions the car that the driver drove from the farm. But it was precisely by his clothes and the fact that there was a car next to him that Andrei Sokolov mistook the author for “his brother, the driver” and openly talked with him.

Let's dwell on the lyrical motif that sounds twice in the introduction: “The water smelled of dampness, the tart bitterness of rotting alder(precision again: not just wood, but alder) , and from the distant Khoper steppes, drowning in the lilac haze of fog, a light breeze carried the eternally youthful, barely perceptible aroma of land recently freed from under the snow.” And: “It was the first truly warm day after winter. It’s good to sit on the fence like this, alone...” The introductory part of the story ends with this quiet motif, creating a mood of peace, quiet, and tranquility.

It is characteristic that the appearance of the hero in the story also does not seem to foreshadow anything special and does not disturb the color of ordinary life recreated by Sholokhov: “Soon I saw a man come out onto the road from behind the outer courtyards of the farm. He was leading a little boy by the hand, judging by his height, no more than five or six years old.” What's unusual here?

I would like to note that Andrey’s appearance is no different from many of his peers, except for his height and stoop. He has large dark hands - the hands of a worker. He is poorly dressed: in protective flight pants, in a burnt-out padded jacket, in moth-eaten socks, he has a “skinny” duffel bag - it’s clear that life is not sweet for the passer-by. He takes out a worn pouch, and from the embroidered inscription on the pouch we learn that this is obviously a former front-line soldier.

A striking artistic detail emphasizes that great human tragedies lie behind the commonplace, the ordinary, and the external inconspicuousness: “I looked at him from the side, and I felt something uneasy... Have you ever seen eyes, as if sprinkled with ashes, filled with such an inescapable mortal melancholy that it is difficult to look into them? These were the eyes of my random interlocutor...”

The best features are concentrated in the image of Andrei Sokolov

character of a Russian person.

The life of Andrei Sokolov before the war was typical for many millions of workers. Before his marriage, he was completely alone. In the first time after his marriage, sometimes he had to drink with his comrades, and drink a lot (a kind of “experience” later affected him during the duel with Muller); when children appeared, he found the strength to “break away” from his comrades and stop drinking; Andrei liked family life and awakened the best feelings in him.

“I worked day and night for these ten years,” said Andrei Sokolov. “I earned good money, and we lived no worse than other people.” And the children were a joy, all three studied well, and the eldest, Anatoly, turned out to be so capable of mathematics that they even wrote about him in the central newspaper.”

Andrei speaks sparingly and reservedly about himself, but we feel the excitement that covers this seemingly stern man. His speech is interrupted, there are not enough words, and deep inner purity, chastity, modesty do not allow the hero to detect every movement of his soul. “I heard,” the author writes, “something bubbling and gurgling in his throat. Not a tear was visible in the seemingly dead “extinguished eyes.” “He sat with his head bowed dejectedly, only his large, limply lowered hands trembled slightly, his chin trembled, his hard lips trembled...” Andrei tried to roll a cigarette, but the newsprint was torn and the tobacco fell onto his lap...

Having noticed that the story about the hero’s life before the war and the episode of farewell to Irina occupy approximately the same number of pages, we clearly understand the importance the author attaches to this episode.

“Until my death, until my last hour, I will die, and I will not forgive myself for pushing her away then!..”- Andrey recalls about his wife Irina. These words contain bashful tenderness, spiritual sensitivity, and mercilessness towards oneself.

... Sokolov fought selflessly, always feeling like he was part of the great Soviet Army. At the most intense moment of the battle, the commander sent Sokolov to deliver ammunition to the front line. But a heavy shell hit the car, and the shell-shocked Andrei was captured...

A decade after the end of the Great Patriotic War, many documents were found about the heroic behavior of Soviet prisoners of war in fascist death camps. In the camps of Sachsenhause, Ravensbrück and many others, groups of Soviet people were organized to help their comrades endure the horrors of captivity and survive.

A poetic expression of the powerful spirit of the Soviet people who found themselves in fascist captivity was the famous “Moabit Notebook” by Musa Jalil, created by him in a Nazi dungeon:

No, you're lying, executioner, I won't kneel,

At least throw him in a dungeon, at least sell him as a slave!

I will die standing, without asking for forgiveness, -

At least chop my head with an ax!

In Andrei Sokolov's story about captivity, the idea of ​​the solidarity of Soviet people in captivity, their courage and heroism is constantly emphasized.

And the Nazis beat, killed, and burned Soviet people: “They beat you because you are Russian, because you still look at the world, because you work for them, the bastards. They beat you because you looked wrong, stepped wrong, turned wrong... They beat you simply, in order to someday kill you to death, so that you would choke on your last blood and die from the beatings...” But the enemies were powerless to kill the human dignity in the Soviet people, the faith in the immortality of their people.

In all post-war literature, there is, perhaps, no scene equal in power to the duel between Andrei Sokolov and the fascist Müller. In the scene of this fight, a hymn to the Soviet soldier-hero sounds, which evokes respect even from such a beast as Muller was.

It is characteristic that, going to certain death, Andrei, first of all, thinks not about himself, but about Irina and the children. It may seem that in the scene of his confrontation with Muller, Andrei did not show much heroism, at least in the “traditional” sense of the word. He did not get into a fight with the enemy, did not hide a military secret from him at the cost of his life, and he had nothing to hide. They poured him several glasses of vodka, and he, refusing at first, then drank everything that was offered to him. Is it right to talk about Sokolov’s heroism in this case?

It seems to me that the scene of the confrontation with Muller is a duel between enemies, a kind of psychological duel that requires incredible willpower and all physical and mental strength from the hero. On the one hand, there is an armed, well-fed, smug fascist, reveling in power, who has long been accustomed to the idea that everything is allowed to him. On the other hand, an unarmed, powerless prisoner of war, barely able to stand on his feet, deprived of even his name, No. 331. And now this man throws words about the cruel living conditions in the camp in the face of his insolent enemy. Hungry, unable to take his eyes off the rich dishes on the table of the feasting fascists, he refuses to drink to the victory of German weapons, and when he does agree to drink “for your death and deliverance from torment”, then he does not touch the bread: “I wanted to show them, the damned one, that although I’m dying of hunger, I’m not going to choke on their handouts, that I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and that they didn’t turn me into a beast, no matter how hard they tried.”

The fascist monsters admitted that by the power of their mighty spirit they were defeated by this exhausted, exhausted Russian soldier. And Commandant Müller said: “... you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. “I am also a soldier and I respect worthy opponents.”

Sholokhov, contrary to the opinion of some critics, avoids monotony and posterity in his depiction of enemies, which makes the truth of the artistic depiction deeper.

Leaving the Nazis and still waiting for a shot in the back, Sokolov thinks not about himself, but about his comrades. And when, with great difficulty, he reached the barracks, when asked how to divide the bread received from Muller, he answered: “Equally for everyone!”

The lines about how prisoners dying of hunger shared the bread and lard brought by Andrei with a harsh thread are touching to the depths of the soul. “Everyone got a piece of bread the size of a matchbox, every crumb was taken into account, well, and lard, you know, just to anoint your lips. However, they divided it without offense...”

Andrei Sokolov remained in captivity until 1944. By this time, “ours turned Germany’s cheekbone on one side” and prisoners of war began to be used in their specialty. Sokolov began working as a driver: he drove a German engineer to build roads and defensive structures. And here Sokolov does not abandon the thought of escape. When he was sent to the front line, he decided to carry out his intention. But even here he thinks about helping our troops - he decides to take with him a German officer with documents. The escape was accomplished. The information received from the Nazi major turned out to be very important. Sokolov was nominated for an award.

Returning from captivity, Andrei learns about the death of his wife and daughters. And on Victory Day, May 9, 1945, his son Anatoly died at the front. Parting with my son was difficult: “My comrades - friends of my Anatoly - are wiping away their tears, but my unshed tears, apparently, have dried up in my heart. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much.”

The strength of the main character is in close unity with the people.

Having gone through all the horrors of fascist captivity, having lost his family and home, Andrei Sokolov did not lose heart, his heart did not harden, and the tragedy of the people did not overshadow his personal grief.

After demobilization, in the small town of Uryupinsk, Sokolov meets a small, ragged boy, Vanya, and learns that he has no parents - his father was killed at the front, and his mother died on the road. “A burning tear began to boil inside me, and I immediately decided: “We mustn’t disappear separately!” I’ll take him as my child!”

It is impossible to read the lines where Sholokhov conveys the joy of the boy who heard Andrei Sokolov confess that he was his father without excitement and involuntary tears: “Oh my God, what happened here! He rushed to my neck, kissed me on the cheeks, on the lips, on the forehead, and he, like a waxwing, screamed so loudly and thinly that even in the booth it was muffled: “Dad, dear!” I knew! I knew you would find me! You'll find it anyway! I've been waiting so long for you to find me! ..."

In love for the boy, Andrei Sokolov found overcoming his personal tragedy. This love made his life meaningful and purposeful.

And this love inspires confidence that the little person raised by him will grow into a staunch fighter who can endure everything for the sake of the great love for his mother Motherland: “And I would like to think that this Russian man, a man of unbending will, will withstand everything, and near his father’s shoulder will grow one who, having matured, will be able to endure everything, overcome everything on his way.”

Conclusion.

"The Fate of Man."

It is no coincidence that Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov named his story this way.

Not the fate of Andrei Sokolov, but the fate of a person. In essence, this fact expresses the basic law of genuine artistic exploration of existence, which great artists professed and profess.

That is why in “The Fate of Man” there is almost no private story or any private incident. On the contrary, the private life of Andrei Sokolov absorbed what was deeply typical of the lives of millions of people, which allowed Sholokhov to comprehend the hero’s personal life in the light of the tragic creature of the era itself.

Note that at the end of the story, the author for a moment seems to distance himself from the data, specific characters, and this specific conflict: not Andrei Sokolov and Vanyushka, but "two orphaned people", set and abandoned by history in the face of a gigantic catastrophe, if you like - in front of eternity (“two grains of sand thrown into foreign lands by a military hurricane of unprecedented force”). Therefore, I think those literary scholars are right who believe that Sholokhov’s thought in the story moves from the fate of man to the fate of humanity.

But there is another meaning in the title of the story. We can rightfully say that in the person of Andrei Sokolov we see a real person in the noblest sense of the word, or, in Gorky’s language, a Man with a capital M.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a great humanist of his time, a writer of high artistic skill, who was able to penetrate into the very depths of people's life and with great love write down people's characters, embodying wonderful spiritual qualities in them. The images he created are full of vital truth and powerful expressiveness.

Literature

1. A.A. Zhuravleva. "Mikhail Sholokhov". Moscow 1975.

2. M.A. Sholokhov. "The Fate of Man" Moscow 1984.

3. Literature. Textbook-workshop. 9th grade. Moscow 2001.

4. T.A. Ladyzhenskaya. "Develop the gift of speech." Moscow. Enlightenment 1986.

5. M.A. Sholokhov. Stories. Moscow. 2002

7. Life and work of M. Sholokhov. Moscow 1980.

8. Collection "Stories and Tales about the Great Patriotic War." Moscow. "Fiction". 1989

Still from the film "The Fate of Man" based on the story by M. Sholokhov.

Staged by S. Bondarchuk. 1959

Andrey Sokolov – Sergei Bondarchuk, Vanyushka – P. Boriskin.

Andrei Sokolov with Commandant Muller.

Father and son.

"The Fate of Man" Artist O.G. Vereisky.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov

Man's destiny

MAN'S FATE

Evgenia Grigorievna Levitskaya,

member of the CPSU since 1903

The first post-war spring on the Upper Don was unusually friendly and assertive. At the end of March, warm winds blew from the Azov region, and within two days the sands of the left bank of the Don were completely exposed, snow-filled ravines and gullies in the steppe swelled up, breaking the ice, steppe rivers leaped madly, and the roads became almost completely impassable.

During this bad time of no roads, I had to go to the village of Bukanovskaya. And the distance is small - only about sixty kilometers - but overcoming them was not so easy. My friend and I left before sunrise. A pair of well-fed horses, pulling the lines to a string, could barely drag the heavy chaise. The wheels sank to the very hub into the damp sand mixed with snow and ice, and an hour later, on the horses’ sides and whips, under the thin belts of the harnesses, white fluffy flakes of soap appeared, and in the fresh morning air there was a sharp and intoxicating smell of horse sweat and warmed tar generously oiled horse harness.

Where it was especially difficult for the horses, we got off the chaise and walked. The soaked snow squelched under the boots, it was hard to walk, but along the sides of the road there was still crystal ice glistening in the sun, and it was even more difficult to get through there. Only about six hours later we covered a distance of thirty kilometers and arrived at the crossing over the Elanka River.

A small river, drying up in places in summer, opposite the Mokhovsky farm in a swampy floodplain overgrown with alders, overflowed for a whole kilometer. It was necessary to cross on a fragile punt that could carry no more than three people. We released the horses. On the other side, in the collective farm barn, an old, well-worn “Jeep” was waiting for us, left there in the winter. Together with the driver, we boarded the dilapidated boat, not without fear. The comrade remained on the shore with his things. They had barely set sail when water began to gush out in fountains from the rotten bottom in different places. Using improvised means, they caulked the unreliable vessel and scooped water out of it until they reached it. An hour later we were on the other side of Elanka. The driver drove the car from the farm, approached the boat and said, taking the oar:

If this damned trough doesn’t fall apart on the water, we’ll arrive in two hours, don’t wait earlier.

The farm was located far to the side, and near the pier there was such silence as only happens in deserted places in the dead of autumn and at the very beginning of spring. The water smelled of dampness, the tart bitterness of rotting alder, and from the distant Khoper steppes, drowned in a lilac haze of fog, a light breeze carried the eternally youthful, barely perceptible aroma of land recently freed from under the snow.

Not far away, on the coastal sand, lay a fallen fence. I sat down on it, wanted to light a cigarette, but putting my hand into the right pocket of the cotton quilt, to my great chagrin, I discovered that the pack of Belomor was completely soaked. During the crossing, a wave lashed over the side of a low-slung boat and doused me waist-deep in muddy water. Then I had no time to think about cigarettes, I had to abandon the oar and quickly bail out the water so that the boat would not sink, and now, bitterly annoyed at my mistake, I carefully took the soggy pack out of my pocket, squatted down and began to lay it out one by one on the fence damp, browned cigarettes.

It was noon. The sun was shining hotly, like in May. I hoped that the cigarettes would dry out soon. The sun was shining so hotly that I already regretted wearing military cotton trousers and a quilted jacket for the journey. It was the first truly warm day after winter. It was good to sit on the fence like this, alone, completely submitting to silence and loneliness, and, taking off the old soldier’s earflaps from his head, drying his hair, wet after heavy rowing, in the breeze, mindlessly watching the white busty clouds floating in the faded blue.

Soon I saw a man come out onto the road from behind the outer courtyards of the farm. He was leading a little boy by the hand; judging by his height, he was no more than five or six years old. They walked wearily towards the crossing, but when they caught up with the car, they turned towards me. A tall, stooped man, coming close, said in a muffled basso:

Hello, brother!

Hello. - I shook the large, callous hand extended to me.

The man leaned towards the boy and said:

Say hello to your uncle, son. Apparently, he is the same driver as your dad. Only you and I drove a truck, and he drives this little car.

Looking straight into my eyes with eyes as bright as the sky, smiling slightly, the boy boldly extended his pink, cold little hand to me. I shook her lightly and asked:

Why is it, old man, that your hand is so cold? It's warm outside, but you're freezing?

With touching childish trust, the baby pressed himself against my knees and raised his whitish eyebrows in surprise.

What kind of old man am I, uncle? I’m not a boy at all, and I don’t freeze at all, but my hands are cold - because I was rolling snowballs.

Taking the skinny duffel bag off his back and wearily sitting down next to me, my father said:

I'm in trouble with this passenger. It was through him that I got involved. As soon as you take a wide step, he starts to trot, so please adapt to such an infantryman. Where I need to step once, I step three times, and we walk with him separately, like a horse and a turtle. But here he needs an eye and an eye. You turn away a little, and he’s already wandering across the puddle or breaking off an ice cream and sucking it instead of candy. No, it’s not a man’s business to travel with such passengers, and at a leisurely pace at that. “He was silent for a while, then asked: “What are you, brother, waiting for your superiors?”

It was inconvenient for me to dissuade him that I was not a driver, and I answered:

We have to wait.

Will they come from the other side?

Don't know if the boat will arrive soon?

In two hours.

In order. Well, while we rest, I have nowhere to rush. And I walk past, I look: my brother, the driver, is sunbathing. Let me, I think, I’ll come in and have a smoke together. One is sick of smoking and dying. And you live richly and smoke cigarettes. Damaged them, then? Well, brother, soaked tobacco, like a treated horse, is no good. Let's smoke my strong drink instead.

He took out a worn raspberry silk pouch rolled into a tube from the pocket of his protective summer pants, unfolded it, and I managed to read the inscription embroidered on the corner: “To a dear fighter from a 6th grade student at Lebedyansk Secondary School.”

We lit a strong cigarette and were silent for a long time. I wanted to ask where he was going with the child, what need was driving him into such muddiness, but he beat me to it with a question:

What, you spent the entire war behind the wheel?

Almost all of it.

At the front?

Well, there I had to, brother, take a sip of bitterness up the nostrils and up.

He placed his large dark hands on his knees and hunched over. I looked at him from the side, and I felt something uneasy... Have you ever seen eyes, as if sprinkled with ashes, filled with such an inescapable mortal melancholy that it is difficult to look into them? These were the eyes of my random interlocutor.

Having broken out a dry, twisted twig from the fence, he silently moved it along the sand for a minute, drawing some intricate figures, and then spoke:

Sometimes you don’t sleep at night, you look into the darkness with empty eyes and think: “Why, life, did you cripple me like that? Why did you distort it like that?” I don’t have an answer, either in the dark or in the clear sun... No, and I can’t wait! - And suddenly he came to his senses: gently pushing his little son, he said: - Go, dear, play near the water, there is always some kind of prey for the children near the big water. Just be careful not to get your feet wet!

While we were still smoking in silence, I, furtively examining my father and son, noted with surprise one circumstance that was strange in my opinion. The boy was dressed simply, but well: and in the way he sat on him, lined with a light, well-worn long-skirted jacket, and the fact that the tiny boots were sewn with the intention of putting them on a woolen sock, and the very skillful seam on the once torn sleeve of the jacket - everything betrayed feminine care, skillful motherly hands. But the father looked different: the padded jacket, burnt in several places, was carelessly and roughly darned, the patch on his worn-out protective trousers was not sewn on properly, but rather sewn on with wide, masculine stitches; he was wearing almost new soldier's boots, but his thick woolen socks were moth-eaten, they had not been touched by a woman's hand... Even then I thought: “Either he is a widower, or he lives at odds with his wife.”

But then he, following his little son with his eyes, coughed dully, spoke again, and I became all ears.

At first my life was ordinary. I am a native of the Voronezh province, born in 1900. During the civil war he was in the Red Army, in the Kikvidze division. In the hungry year of twenty-two, he went to Kuban to fight the kulaks, and that’s why he survived. And the father, mother and sister died of hunger at home. One left. Rodney - even if you roll a ball - nowhere, no one, not a single soul. Well, a year later he returned from Kuban, sold his little house, and went to Voronezh. At first he worked in a carpentry artel, then he went to a factory and learned to be a mechanic. Soon he got married. The wife was brought up in an orphanage. Orphan. I got a good girl! Quiet, cheerful, obsequious and smart, no match for me. Since childhood, she learned how much a pound is worth, maybe this affected her character. Looking from the outside, she wasn’t all that distinguished, but I wasn’t looking at her from the side, but point-blank. And for me there was no one more beautiful and desirable than her, there was not in the world and there never will be!