Composition
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a world-famous writer and Nobel laureate. In his works he touches on eternal themes: love, nature and death. The theme of death, as is known, touches on the philosophical problems of human existence.
| The philosophical problems that Bunin raises in his works were most fully revealed in the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” In this story, death is presented as one of the important events that determines the true value of a person. Philosophical problems of the meaning of life, true and imaginary values are the main ones in this work. The writer reflects not only on the fate of an individual person, but also on the fate of humanity, which, in his opinion, stands on the brink of destruction. The story was written in 1915, when the First World War was already underway and there was a crisis of civilization. It is symbolic in the story that the ship on which the main character travels is called “Atlantis”. Atlantis is a legendary sunken island that could not withstand the raging elements and became a symbol of a lost civilization.
Associations also arise with the Titanic, which perished in 1912. “The ocean that walked behind the walls” of the steamship is a symbol of the elements, nature, opposing civilization. But the people sailing on the ship do not notice the hidden threat posed by the elements, they do not hear the howl of the wind, which is drowned out by the music. They firmly believe in their idol - the captain. The ship is a model of Western bourgeois civilization. Its holds and decks are the layers of this society. The upper floors resemble “a huge hotel with all the amenities”; here are people at the top of the social ladder, people who have achieved complete well-being. Bunin draws attention to the regularity of this life, where everything is subject to a strict routine. The author emphasizes that these people, the masters of life, have already lost their individuality. All they do while traveling is have fun and wait for lunch or dinner. From the outside it looks unnatural and unnatural. There is no place for sincere feelings here. Even a couple in love ends up being hired by Lloyd to “play love for good money.” It is an artificial paradise filled with light, warmth and music. But there is also hell. This hell is the “underwater womb” of the ship, which Bunin compares to the underworld. Ordinary people work there, on whom the well-being of those at the top, leading a carefree and serene life, depends.
A prominent representative of bourgeois civilization in the story is the gentleman from San Francisco. The hero is simply called a master, because his essence is in his mouth. At least he considers himself a master and revels in his position. He achieved everything he strived for: wealth, power. Now he can afford to go to the Old World “solely for fun” and can enjoy all the benefits of life. Describing the gentleman’s appearance, Bunin uses epithets that emphasize his wealth and unnaturalness: “silver mustache”, “golden fillings” of teeth, a strong bald head is compared to “old ivory”. There is nothing spiritual about the gentleman, his goal - to become rich and reap the fruits of this wealth - was realized, but he did not become happier because of it. ) But then comes the climax of the story, the gentleman from San Francisco dies. It is unlikely that this master of life expected to leave the sinful earth so soon. His death looks “illogical”, out of step with the general orderly order of things, but for it there are no social or material differences.
And the worst thing is that humanity begins to manifest itself in him only before death. “It was no longer the gentleman from San Francisco who was wheezing,” he was no longer there, “but someone else.” Death makes him human: “his features began to become thinner and brighter.” Death dramatically changes the attitude of those around him: the corpse must be urgently removed from the hotel so as not to spoil the mood of other guests, they cannot even provide a coffin - only a soda box, and the servants, who were in awe of the living, laugh at the dead. Thus, the master’s power turned out to be imaginary, illusory. In pursuit of material values, he forgot about true, spiritual values, and therefore he was forgotten immediately after death. This is what is called retribution according to deserts. The gentleman from San Francisco deserved only oblivion.
An unexpected departure into oblivion is perceived as the highest moment, when everything falls into place, when illusions disappear, and the truth remains, when nature “roughly” proves its omnipotence. But people continue their carefree, thoughtless existence, quickly returning to “peace and quiet.” Their souls cannot be awakened to life by the example of one of them. The problem of the story goes beyond the individual case. Its ending is connected with reflections on the fate of not just one hero, but all people, past and future passengers of the ship under the mythical and tragic name “Atlantis”. People are forced to overcome the “hard” path of “darkness, ocean, blizzard.” Only to the naive, simple, how accessible is the joy of joining “the eternal and blissful abodes”, to the highest spiritual values. The bearers of true values are the Abruzzese highlanders and old Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a boatman, "a carefree reveler and a handsome man." He is probably the same age as the gentleman from San Francisco, only a few lines are dedicated to him, but unlike the gentleman, he has a sonorous name. Lorenzo is famous throughout Italy; he has served as a model for many painters more than once. He looks around with a regal air, rejoicing in life, showing off with his rags. The picturesque poor man Lorenzo remains to live forever on the canvases of artists, but the rich old man from San Francisco was erased from life as soon as he died.
The Abruzzese highlanders, like Lorenzo, personify the naturalness and joy of being. They live in harmony, in harmony with the world, with nature. The mountaineers give praise to the sun, morning, Our Lady and Christ. According to Bunin, these are the true values of life.
Most people always associate the Silver Age of Russian literature with poetry. However, one cannot help but notice that the beginning of the twentieth century gave us a great many very talented prose writers.
One of these talents was Ivan Bunin. His short stories truly penetrate the reader's soul and raise important philosophical questions for us. One of Bunin’s most striking prose works is the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” an analysis of which was prepared by the Many-Wise Litrecon.
The creative story of the story “Mr. from San Francisco” began in an exotic land - on the island of Capri. The work is based on Bunin’s memories of his vacation. A wealthy American died in the hotel where he then lived. This incident is clearly imprinted in the writer’s memory, because one small tragedy did not change the holiday mood of the vacationers.
Contemporaries knew interesting facts about the writing of the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” Already in 1915, Bunin wrote in his diary about how he saw Thomas Mann’s story “Death in Venice” in the window of a Moscow bookstore. It was then that he decided to write his story, which was based on that incident in Capri. This is how one insignificant circumstance inspired the author to bring his long-standing idea of a story into reality.
“For some reason I remembered this book and the sudden death of some American who arrived in Capri, at the Quisisana hotel, where we lived that year, and immediately decided to write “Death in Capri,” which I did in four days - slowly, calmly, in harmony with the autumn calm of the gray and already quite short and fresh days and the silence in the estate... Of course, I crossed out the title “Death on Capri” as soon as I wrote the first line: “Mr. from San Francisco...” I made up San Francisco and everything else (except for the fact that some American actually died after dinner at Kwisisan...
This story can be attributed to the literary movement of realism. The writer strives for a reliable depiction of reality. His characters are typical and reliable. There are names of real places. At the same time, modernism, dominant in the culture of that time, was reflected in Bunin’s prose. Thus, in his story there are many images and symbols that reveal the metaphorical meaning of the text.
The genre of “The Gentleman from San Francisco” is short story. This is a short prose work with a small number of characters and one storyline. There is no specificity; the reader understands that the situation described in the story could happen to anyone and at any time.
Ideologically, the composition of the work is divided into two parts: the arrival of the American rich man at the hotel and the return of his lifeless body to the USA. This construction of the plot is intended to emphasize the main idea of the story, to show the contrast between who a person is during life and who (or what) he becomes after death.
At the heart of the main conflict of the work "Mr. from San Francisco" is the confrontation between worldly things, such as wealth, pleasure and entertainment, and the eternal principle, represented in the story by death itself.
In the title of the story, Bunin did not come up with an elegant formula that is a reflection of hidden meanings, nor did he indicate the main idea. Avoiding any specifics both in the narrative and in the title, Bunin once again emphasized the everydayness and insignificance of the life of his hero, busy only with worldly affairs.
This is not a person, but a set of clichés and stereotypes about an inhabitant of the American middle class. He is a master, that is, the master of life, a rich man, whose money other people worship and envy. But how ironic the word “master” sounds when applied to a corpse! This means that a person cannot be the master of anything, because life and death are beyond his control, he has not comprehended their nature. The title of hero is the author's mockery of the smug rich people who think that they own the world, although they cannot even predict their own fate.
Why did the gentleman from San Francisco die? But because he was given a certain period of time, and higher powers did not take into account his plans for life. All the time the hero put off the fulfillment of his cherished desires until later, and when he found time for them, fate laughed at him and reset the counter to zero.
A certain rich American goes with his daughter and wife to Europe, where he plans to spend two years indulging in relaxation and entertainment. An initially pleasant trip is spoiled by disgusting weather. A gentleman from San Francisco and his family go to Capri, where he is suddenly overtaken by death while reading a newspaper.
On the same day, the wife of the deceased is demanded to immediately remove her husband’s body from the hotel. Due to the lack of a hump, the deceased was placed in a soda box and taken to the port at night. The story ends with the body of the gentleman from San Francisco, put away in the dark ship's hold, returning to America.
The heroes of the story “The Master from San Francisco” are listed by the Many-Wise Litrecon in the table:
| heroes of the story “Mr. from San Francisco” | characteristic |
| gentleman from san francisco | a fifty-eight-year-old rich man from the USA. being an entrepreneur, he exploited the labor of Chinese emigrants. Despite his huge earnings and wealth, he believes that all his life he did not live, but only existed, postponing his cherished dreams and hobbies for later. looks at his journey as the beginning of a new life in which he canenjoy the fruits of your work. self-confident. condescendingly arrogant. narcissistic. |
| wife of a gentleman from San Francisco | an unremarkable woman. a cantankerous and hysterical American woman. |
| daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco | a pretty but otherwise unremarkable girl. |
| passengers of the liner | the cream of high society in Europe and America. highly titled persons, rich people and other influential persons. for the most part, empty and insignificant people who do not care about anything but themselves. |
The themes of the story “Mr. from San Francisco” are diverse, despite the small volume of the work.
The problems of the story “Mr. from San Francisco” are very rich:
The point of the story "Mr. from San Francisco" is to expose the deceitful capitalist society. He reveals to us his inhuman cruelty and deep depravity, hidden behind ostentatious gloss and external benevolence.
At the same time, Bunin also raises philosophical questions, talking about the futility and transience of existence and the gloomy greatness of death, which in the end equalizes all people with each other and laughs at every achievement. The main idea of the story “Mr. from San Francisco” is the need to humble human pride. We are not the masters of our fate, so we need to be able to enjoy every moment given to us from above, because at any moment the thread of life can be cut off forever, and our plans can remain plans. This is the author's position.
The moral lessons in the story “Mr. from San Francisco” are, first of all, the need not to cling to material values, not to prioritize acquired wealth, but to value the human soul in oneself. After all, after death, the soul is all that remains with a person, and the memory of it is all that remains on earth. This is Bunin's morality.
The story is quite rich in various details that complement the narrative and emphasize the main idea. The concept of peace in the story “The Mister from San Francisco” is especially interesting:
The expression of this Eternity is the calm and quiet sea, which indifferently carries the gentleman from San Francisco, first to Europe, and then back to America. The image of the ocean reflects the hero’s life itself: he floated with the flow, enjoyed comfort and security, but it was this current that led him to death on the island of Capri. Without having time to rest and live for himself, he died, bringing his sacrifice to the altar of success. The flow of life is inexorable: if we ourselves do not turn back, making efforts to change direction, it takes us completely different from where we would like to be. The flow itself is inert and indifferent.
Also interesting are the symbols in the story “The Mister from San Francisco”:
Despite the war going on at that time, Bunin’s story not only did not get lost against its background, but also attracted the attention of many great writers and critics. The success was universally recognized:
“...the story “The Mister from San Francisco”, when it first appeared... was unanimously noted by critics as a new major “achievement” of a talented artist and, in general, one of the most outstanding works of modern literature.” (A. Ghisetti, “Monthly Magazine”, 1917, No. 1)
One of the most famous writers of the era, Maxim Gorky, in a personal letter, completely admired Bunin, separately noting the awe he felt while reading “The Gentleman from San Francisco.”
Critic Abram Derman wrote in the magazine “Russian Thought” in 1916: “More than ten years separate us from the end of Chekhov’s work, and during this period, if we exclude what was published after the death of L. N. Tolstoy, it did not appear in Russian a work of art equal in power and significance to the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco”... How did the artist evolve? On the scale of his feelings... With some solemn and righteous sadness, the artist painted a large image of enormous evil - an image of sin in which the life of a modern city man with an old heart takes place, and the reader feels here not only the legality, but also the justice and beauty of the author’s own coldness towards his hero..."
Another reviewer from the magazine “Russian Wealth” from 1917 also praised Bunin’s work, but noted that his concept was too narrow, and the entire work could be expressed in one line:
“The story is good, but it suffers from shortcomings of its merits, as the French say. The contrast between the superficial splendor of our modern culture and its insignificance in the face of death is expressed in the story with exciting force, but it exhausts it to the bottom...
The English writer Thomas Mann, who partly inspired Bunin to write the story, believed that the story could be put on a par with the works of such great writers as Tolstoy and Pushkin. But not only Thomas Mann noticed the story of his Russian colleague. In France, Bunin’s prose was also known and received enthusiastically:
"Mr. Bunin... added one more name, little known in France, to... the greatest Russian writers." (review in the French magazine Revue de l'époque (Review of the Epoch), 1921)
Even several decades later, Bunin's work was highly appreciated by critics. In Soviet times, little attention was paid to him as a political emigrant, but during Perestroika, Bunin's prose experienced another period of recognition and popularity among the broad masses.
He did not tolerate verbosity, freed himself from unnecessary epithets, created his prose dense, concise, which allowed Chekhov at one time to compare it with too “thick broth”... And he absolutely could not stand verbal cliches. When in “The Gentleman from San Francisco” he wrote: “December “turned out to be” not entirely successful,” he ironically put the word stood out in quotation marks, since he borrowed it from a vocabulary alien to him: from the vocabulary of the rich and faceless gentlemen who act in his story. His ear for falsehood and dullness of language was acute. (A. A. Saakyants, article-afterword and comments to the “Collected Works of Bunin in six volumes”, volume 4, 1988)
Composition
The story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was written by Bunin in 1915. While traveling around the Mediterranean Sea on a comfortable ship, Bunin went down to the engine room: “If you cut the ship vertically, you will see: we are sitting, drinking wine, talking on various topics, and the drivers in the heat, black with coal, working... Is this fair?
The theme of the story is social injustice, a premonition of the collapse of the world, unable to continue to exist with such acute stratification, as well as the opposition of the natural world of existence to the prudent bourgeois structure of life.
It is no coincidence that the gentleman from San Francisco does not have a name. How many of them are there, not young and who decided belatedly to enjoy life, on the ship Atlantis, in various expensive hotels?
Having made a fortune, having lived, “true, very well, but still pinning hopes on the future,” they set off to see the world. And thanks to the route that the gentleman from San Francisco chooses, we see the state of this world. “He thought to hold the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at this time the most selective society flocks - the same one on which all the benefits of civilization depend: the style of tuxedos, and the strength of thrones, and the declaration of wars, and the welfare of hotels - where Some enthusiastically indulge in car and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and still others in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from cages over the emerald lawn, against the backdrop of a sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately hit the white lumps about the earth..." - the world is busy with entertainment and the destruction of beauty...
But the name given to the ship is very symbolic. “Atlantis” - a multi-storey hulk with all the amenities (a night bar, oriental baths, its own newspaper), a symbol of the world of masters with their measured life and the world of servants, “a great many” of whom “worked in cooks, sculleries and wine cellars” - is moving towards of his death. “The ocean that walked outside the walls was terrible, but they didn’t think about it” - here it is, the reason for the imminent retribution: masters don’t think about servants, the rich don’t think about beggars... Everything in this world is bought and sold... “I was among in this brilliant crowd there was a certain great rich man, ... there was a famous Spanish writer, there was a world-famous beauty, there was an elegant couple in love, whom everyone watched with curiosity... and only one commander knew that this couple was hired by Lloyd to play at love for good money ..."
The family of a gentleman from San Francisco arrives in Naples. “And to the gentleman from San Francisco, just like everyone else, it seemed that it was for him alone that the march of proud America was thundering, that it was the commander who was greeting him with a safe arrival.” Life again flowed as usual, but nature was doing “something terrible,” and “the receptionists, when they talked to them about the weather, only raised their shoulders guiltily.” Bunin contrasts the well-being of civilization with the forces of the elements, as if outraged by this apparent well-being. Continuing to seek pleasure, the family goes to Capri. On the way, the gentleman from San Francisco feels like an old man, sees the real Italy - “under a rocky cliff, a bunch of such pitiful, completely moldy stone houses, stuck...near the boats, near some rags, tins and brown nets...” - and feels despair... For the first time, human feelings awaken in him, and the words that preceded his death: “Oh, this is terrible!”, which he himself does not try to understand, reflect the state of the world...
The death of the gentleman from San Francisco alarmed everyone in the hotel. Bunin calls the natural course of things a “terrible incident”, “what he did,” emphasizing that “people are still most amazed and do not want to believe death for anything.” Yes, for gentlemen, death is the most terrible enemy, taking away the right to enjoy all the benefits of the civilization they have built. With their indifference they punish those who are involved in death. The hotel owner, “who was not at all interested in the trifles that visitors from San Francisco could now leave in his box office,” refuses to even get a simple coffin, and the dead old man, as he now calls him. Bunin, travels on the same “Atlantis” in a soda box hidden deep in the hold, and above him continues to “feign torment in his blissful torment to the shamelessly sad music” of a couple whose game in love is well paid. What is Bunin telling his reader? Not only about social contradictions. After all, in essence, the writer shows in all its ghostly and indifferent splendor precisely the bourgeois world, where the desire for profit, the calculated structure of life obscures from the “gentlemen from San Francisco” the real world, the ability to feel and empathize with grief and joy. We see only a small glimpse of animation in the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco: “She admired everyone and was then sweet and beautiful: beautiful were those tender, complex feelings that the meeting with an ugly man awakened in her... because in the end, maybe be and it doesn’t matter what exactly awakens a girl’s soul - whether it’s money, fame, or nobility of the family.” The lines about Lorenzo, the old boatman, who “brought and already sold for next to nothing two lobsters he caught at night” are imbued with a warm feeling (he “could stand calmly even until the evening, looking around with a regal demeanor, showing off with his rags, a clay pipe and red wool beret"), and about two Abruzzese highlanders. Finally we see that Italy - joyful, beautiful, sunny - which never opened up to the gentleman from San Francisco.
Bunin, who noticed the injustice of social stratification and sympathized with those whom the bourgeoisie did not notice, nevertheless did not accept the revolution (the collapse of the old world that he predicted), which set itself the goal of making those “who were nothing” into everything. He remained in the world where the gentleman from San Francisco lived, and this is the drama of his fate - he remained in a dying world, but knew how to see its beauty.
The Devil who appears at the end of the story, watching from the rocks of Gibraltar as Atlantis moves toward destruction, knows everything about humanity that it itself does not know: everything in the world is subject to the natural course of things, and before death comes for you, enjoy the beauty of the world , breathe deeply, love, sing “naive and humbly joyful praises to the sun, the morning... the immaculate intercessor of all those who suffer in this evil and beautiful world and born from her womb in the cave of Bethlehem, in a poor shepherd’s shelter, in the distant land of Judah” .
poem Bunin prose writer
I. Bunin raises the problem of man and modern human civilization in the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” From the very beginning of the story, the writer raised the question of the place of man and humanity in the world. It is human nature to think that this is his world, that he created the world around him with his own hands, but this is not so. After all, there is also the Devil, who looks from the rocks of Gibraltar at the ship Atlantis and controls its fate. And man and all of humanity in the person of this ship becomes nothing more than a toy in his hands. Here are people and their lives: they are busy with life itself, they are having fun, dressing up, solving their small everyday problems. And besides them, there exists the entire surrounding world, the world of nature, of primordial chaos.
The images and characters in the story are deeply symbolic and meaningful. It is no coincidence that I. Bunin introduces this symbolic depth and symbolic subtext into the story; it is important for him to show that the gentleman from San Francisco is not an individual representative of the human nation, he is a Man, a symbol of all humanity, with the whole complex of his feelings and emotions, he is part modern community of people, part of modern civilization. The steamship "Atlantis" is also a symbol, a symbol of the civilization of people that is developing, and its path of development is similar to the journey across the stormy sea, which is described in this story. And the image of the steamer also acquires symbolic content. The whole world created by human hands is doomed to destruction, just as the steamship Atlantis is doomed; it is short-lived in front of another, eternal world. And this is no coincidence, the other world lives according to laws that exclude man and humanity from itself, and therefore is fraught with many mysteries and dangers.
The problem of man and humanity is solved by the author at the level of philosophical and symbolic understanding of the images of the gentleman from San Francisco and the steamship. Let's take a closer look at these images.
In the finale, the mysterious Devil watches from the rocks a ship going to sea and guards it, as he guards all of humanity. And only in the finale it becomes clear how fragile this civilization is, and how short-lived it is. The theme of human civilization is included along with the name of the ship. “Atlantis” was the name of a highly developed culture, similar to the high and progressive modern culture. At the same time, “Atlantis” marks progress; the story repeatedly emphasizes that this is the newest steamship, a steamship that was created in order to conquer the expanses of water and give man a huge advantage over the elements. However, is this so? Let us remember the tragic fate of historical Atlantis. She went underwater. So what awaits this modern civilization and humanity, which clings to things created with its own hands, and which are not eternal compared to another, eternal world?
This is exactly how, through the image-symbol of Atlantis, the feeling of doom is conveyed and the theme of the death of humanity is also revealed. “Atlantis” personifies all of humanity as a whole, just as the gentleman from San Francisco personifies Man, busy with his everyday affairs and completely immersed in his material existence.
Along with the images of Atlantis and the Devil, there are images and themes of a “feast during the plague”, a ball in the middle of a blizzard, which acquire a different, universal meaning.
They become the most important not only in the finale, but in the context of the entire story. Apocalyptic images of the blizzard and the Devil intensify and reveal it more fully. The blizzard becomes a kind of mystical element, a devilish force, an attribute of that unreal world that triumphs over the world of people and modern civilization. Everything in it is in spontaneous “harmony”; the breath of the devil is felt in everything: in the roar of the ocean, reminiscent of a funeral mass, in the waves, similar to mournful silver mountains.
All nature around senses the presence of the Devil and warns this blind human civilization of its coming end. It is no coincidence that the sound of the siren is similar to “heavy howls” and “furious squeals”, and the blue lights “flash” on the ship “with trembling and dry crackling”. Everything suggests that the ship with the symbolic name “Atlantis” is approaching the “gate of two worlds” and its wreck. At the level of symbols, the author speaks about the death of all modern civilization and humanity. The story “Mr. from San Francisco” can be called a parable about modern civilization and man, their present and future fate.
The problem of man and civilization, man's place in the world is gradually becoming a global problem. Our life has become so complex that often people simply cannot decide, cannot understand why they live, what the purpose of their existence is. In I. A. Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” we also talk about this problem. The writer tries to answer the questions that interest him: what is a person’s happiness, what is his purpose on earth?
Bunin also poses in his story such a problem as human interaction
And the environment.
In general, Bunin's prose has several distinctive features. With a simple plot, one is struck by the richness of thoughts, images and symbolism that are inherent in the artist’s works. In his narration, Bunin is unfussy, thorough and laconic. It seems that the entire world around him fits into his small works.
This happens thanks to the writer’s figurative and clear style, the typifications that he creates in his work.
With hidden irony and sarcasm, Bunin describes the main character - a gentleman from San Francisco, without even honoring him with a name. The gentleman himself is full of snobbery
And complacency. All his life he strived for wealth, setting himself as an example for the richest people in the world, trying to achieve the same prosperity as them.
Finally, it seems to him that the set goal is close and, finally, it’s time to relax, to live for his own pleasure: “Until this moment, he did not live, but existed.” And the gentleman is already fifty-eight years old...
The hero considers himself the “master” of the situation, but life itself refutes him. Money is a powerful force, but it cannot buy happiness, prosperity, respect, love, life. When planning to travel to the Old World, the gentleman from San Francisco carefully develops a route: “the people to whom he belonged had the custom of beginning the enjoyment of life with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt...” The plan developed by the gentleman from San Francisco was very extensive: Southern Italy, Nice, then Monte Carlo, Rome, Venice, Paris and even Japan.
It seems that the hero has everything under control, everything is taken into account and verified. But this confidence of the Master is refuted by the weather - the elements are beyond the control of a mere mortal.
Nature, its naturalness, is a force opposite to wealth, human self-confidence, and civilization. For money, you can try not to notice its inconveniences, but this does not always work. And moving to Capri becomes a terrible ordeal for all Atlantis passengers.
The fragile steamer barely coped with the elements that befell it.
The gentleman from San Francisco believed that everything around him was created only to fulfill his desires; the hero firmly believed in the power of the “golden calf”: “He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered they served him from morning to evening, preventing his slightest desire.” Yes, the wealth of the American tourist, like a magic key, opened many doors, but not all. It could not prolong his life, it did not protect him even after death.
How much servility and admiration this man saw during his life, the same amount of humiliation his mortal body experienced after death.
Bunin shows how illusory the power of money is in this world, and how pathetic is the person who bets on it. Having created idols for himself, he strives to achieve the same well-being. It seems that the goal has been achieved, he is at the top, for which he worked tirelessly for many years. What did he do that he left for his descendants?
Nobody even remembered his name.
Was there anything to remember? Thousands of such gentlemen travel annually along standard routes, claiming exclusivity, but they are only likenesses of each other, imagining themselves as masters of life. And their turn comes, and they leave without a trace, causing neither regret nor bitterness.
In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” Bunin showed the illusory and disastrous nature of such a path for a person.
It is important to note one more antithesis in the story. Along with nature, the gentleman from San Francisco and others like him are contrasted with service personnel, who are at the lowest, in the opinion of the gentlemen, stage of development. The ship Atlantis, on the upper deck of which passengers were having fun, also contained another tier - fireboxes, into which tons of coal were thrown, salted from sweat. No attention was paid to these people, they were not served, they were not thought about.
Bunin shows that the lower strata seem to fall out of life, they are called upon only to please the masters. It is generally accepted that those in the furnaces do not live, but exist. But, in fact, the human “shells” are the people having fun on the upper deck.
Thus, in the characters, destinies, and thoughts of his heroes, Bunin reveals the problem of the relationship between man and the surrounding world - natural, social, everyday, historical.
(No Ratings Yet)
