The action of the drama “At the Bottom” takes place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This is a time of economic crisis for Russia, many remain unemployed, lose their status, position in society, and some sink to the “bottom” of life. It is no coincidence that Gorky paints this way of the place where his heroes huddle. Before us is a dirty basement, like a cave: a smoke-stained ceiling, heavy stone vaults with crumbling plaster. And everywhere along the walls there are bunks. The terrible picture is completed by the furniture of the shelter: “a large table, two benches, a stool - everything is unpainted and dirty.” After such descriptions, it becomes scary; is this really how the author sees Russia on the eve of a new century?
The conflicts presented in the play are diverse: social and everyday, love, and philosophical. They flare up both between heroes belonging to different social classes, and within themselves. Indeed, people find themselves “at the bottom,” as a rule, experiencing an internal social conflict. Gorky gives the reader a backstory for each character. Thus, the Baron used to lead the intellectual life of a representative of high society: “Before, when my body was not poisoned by alcohol, I, an old man, had a good memory... And now... it’s over, brother!” Vaska Pepel responds to this: “You are a master... there was a time when you didn’t consider our brother to be a person... and all that...” It is clearly shown how arbitrary the division into social classes is in the human world and how easily a former master equaled his position with the sharper Bubnov and the thief Vaska Pepl.
In parallel with social and everyday conflicts, love conflicts also develop. Here the relationship between the Kostylevs and Vaska Pepla with Natalya, the sister of Vasilisa Karpovna Kostyleva, comes to the fore. With the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, Ash is ready to turn to another, new life. For her sake, Vaska leaves Vasilisa, his feelings for her have cooled. A hero cannot lie or be insincere. The climax is the scene in which Natasha is scalded with boiling water, and Vaska kills Kostylev. At first glance, Vasilisa emerges as the winner, having taken revenge on her former lover and harming her rival. In addition, after the death of her husband, she remains the sovereign mistress of the shelter. However, now it becomes completely clear that there is nothing human left in Vasilisa, she will never be able to find human happiness. And in our eyes, its fall “to the bottom” is happening even more rapidly.
The arrival of Luke provokes the maturation of a philosophical conflict in the society of the night shelters. The reader follows its development through the dialogues and monologues of the characters. Luke reveals the bright sides of their nature in the heroes and encourages them to remember their dreams. According to Luke, people need “sweet lies” more than “bitter truth.” In conversations with a wanderer, a girl of easy virtue, Nastya, begins to dream of pure love, the Actor seriously thinks about returning to the stage, Vaska Ash strives for honest earnings and a life without deception. Gorky believed in man and his ability to control his own destiny. The hero of his play, Luka, does not want to see swindlers and deceivers in the night shelters, he respects them all, believes that “not a single flea is bad: they are all black, they all jump...” The Wanderer sincerely believes that a person becomes overgrown with sins and vices when life itself “dumps him in the mud.” Even when confronted with real thieves, Luka does not hand them over to the police, because he understands that it was not a sweet life that pushed them down this path: “Give me some bread for Christ’s sake!” Let's go, they say, without eating. I tell them: you devils would just ask for bread. And I’m tired of them, they say... you ask and ask, but no one gives... it’s a shame!.. So they lived with me all winter.” Luka sincerely wishes the best to his interlocutors and shows real paths to a new, better life.
After Luke leaves, everything happens not at all as the heroes who believed in the words of the wanderer expected. Having lost his last hope, the Actor commits suicide. After killing Kostylev, Ash goes to Siberia, not as a free settler, but as a convict. However, the old man’s sermon gave impetus to Satin’s monologue. It is he, paradoxically, who continues the work of Luke, does not allow people who have lost faith to despair, and offers them a new “philosophy of life” that can raise people from the “bottom.”
Thus, the social concept of “bottom” acquires a philosophical meaning. Gorky tried to consider not only the reasons for the social and moral decline of people, but also to show different ways for people to overcome despair, spiritual desolation and pessimism.
Homework for the lesson
2. Collect material for each inhabitant of the shelter.
3. Think about how you can group the characters.
4. What is the nature of the conflict in the play?
Purpose of the lesson: to show Gorky’s innovation; identify the components of genre and conflict in a play.
The main question I wanted to pose is what is better, truth or compassion. What is more necessary? Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This is not a subjective question, but a general philosophical one.
Maksim Gorky
History of the play
For more than 80 years, performances based on the play “At the Lower Depths” have not left the national stage. It has also visited the largest theaters in the world, and interest in it does not wane!
In 1901, Gorky said about the concept of his play: “It will be scary.” The author changed the title several times: “Without the Sun”, “Nochlezhka”, “The Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”. The title “At the Lower Depths” first appeared on art theater posters. What is highlighted is not the location of the action - “night shelter”, not the nature of the conditions - “no sun”, “the bottom”, not even the social position - “at the bottom of life”. The phrase “At the Bottom” has a much broader meaning than all of the above. What's going on at the bottom? “At the bottom” – what, just life? Maybe even souls?
The ambiguity of Gorky's play led to its various theatrical productions.
The most striking was the first stage adaptation of the drama (1902) by the Art Theater by the famous directors K.S. Stanislavsky, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko with the direct participation of A.M. Gorky.
In 1903, the play was awarded the honorary Griboyedov Prize.
Features of the composition
Question
Where does the play take place?
Answer
In a cave-like basement in which people are forced to lead an antediluvian existence. Separate strokes of the description introduce the symbolism of hell here: the shelter is located below ground level, people are deprived of the sun here, the light falls “from top to bottom”, the characters feel like “dead people”, “sinners”, “thrown into a pit, “killed” by society and in these vaults buried.
Question
How is the scene depicted in the play?
Answer
In the author's remarks. In the first act it is a “cave-like basement”, “heavy, stone vaults, sooty, with crumbling plaster.” It is important that the writer gives instructions on how the scene is illuminated: “from the viewer and from top to bottom,” the light reaches the shelters from the basement window, as if looking for people among the basement inhabitants. Thin partitions screen off Ash's room. Everywhere along the walls there are bunks. Apart from Kvashnya, Baron and Nastya, who live in the kitchen, no one has their own corner. Everything is on display in front of each other, a secluded place is only on the stove and behind the chintz canopy separating the dying Anna’s bed from the others (by this she is already, as it were, separated from life). There is dirt everywhere: “dirty chintz canopy”, unpainted and dirty tables, benches, stools, tattered cardboards, pieces of oilcloth, rags.
Question
List the characters in the play with their brief characteristics. What groups can all the characters be divided into?
Answer
All the inhabitants of the shelter can be conditionally united into four groups, depending on the place they occupy in the clash of different positions, in the philosophical conflict of the play.
The first group includes Actor, Nastya, Ash, Natasha. These characters are predisposed to meeting the wanderer Luke. Each of them lives with some kind of dream or hope. So the Actor hopes to recover from alcoholism and return to the stage, where he had the theatrical name Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky. Now, however, there is no name left, but his thoughts are directed towards artistic glory. Nastya dreams of a French student whom she supposedly loves passionately. Ash dreams of a free and free life, “so that you can... respect yourself.” Natasha vaguely hopes for a happy fate when Vasily will be her strong support. Each of these characters is not too firm in their aspirations and is internally divided.
Luke, which we will talk about in detail in the next lesson, is designed to reveal the essence of everyone.
Baron and Bubnov are the third group. The first of them constantly lives in the past, remembering hundreds of serfs, carriages with coats of arms, coffee with cream in bed in the morning. Completely devastated, he no longer expects anything, dreams of nothing. The second - Bubnov - also sometimes turns to past years, when he suffered from life, but mostly lives in the present and recognizes only what he sees and touches. Bubnov is an indifferent cynic. For him, only facts are clear; they are a “stubborn thing.” The truth of Baron and Bubnov is a hard, wingless truth, far from the real truth.
Satin occupies the fourth position in the play. For all its originality, it is also distinguished by its inconsistency. Firstly, the words spoken by this hero are in sharp contrast to his essence. After all, a swindler by occupation, a prisoner and a murderer in the past speaks about the truth. Secondly, in a number of cases Satin turns out to be close to Luke. He agrees with the wanderer that “people live for the best,” that truth is connected with the idea of a person, that one should not interfere with him and belittle him (“Do not offend a person!”)
The images should be arranged along the “ladder” of ranks and positions, since we have before us a social cross-section of life in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century: Baron, Kostylev, Bubnov, Satin, Actor; Ashes, Nastya.
Question
What is the conflict of the drama?
Answer
The conflict in this drama is social. Each of the night shelters experienced their own social conflict in the past, as a result of which they found themselves in a humiliating position. Life has deprived the people gathered in this hell. She deprived Kleshch of the right to work, Nastya to have a family, Actor to have a profession, Baron to have her former comfort, Anna was doomed to starvation, Ash to theft, Bubnov to endless drinking, Nastya to prostitution.
A sharp conflict situation, playing out in front of the audience, is the most important feature of drama as a type of literature.
Question
How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict?
Answer
The social conflict is taken off stage, pushed into the past, it does not become the basis of the dramatic conflict. We are only observing the result of off-stage conflicts.
Question
What kind of conflicts, other than social ones, are highlighted in the play?
Answer
The play contains a traditional love conflict. It is determined by the relationships between Vaska Pepla, Vasilisa, the wife of the owner of the shelter, Kostylev and Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister. The exposition of this conflict is a conversation between the night shelters, from which it is clear that Kostylev is looking for his wife Vasilisa in the rooming house, who is cheating on him with Vaska Pepl. The beginning of this conflict is the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, for whose sake Ashes leaves Vasilisa. As the love conflict develops, it becomes clear that the relationship with Natasha revives Ash, he wants to leave with her and start a new life. The culmination of the conflict is taken off stage: at the end of the third act, we learn from Kvashnya’s words that they boiled the girl’s legs with boiling water” - Vasilisa knocked over the samovar and scalded Natasha’s legs. The murder of Kostylev by Vaska Ash turns out to be the tragic outcome of a love conflict. Natasha stops believing Ash: “They are at the same time! Damn you! You both…"
Question
What is unique about the love conflict in the play?
Answer
A love conflict becomes a facet of a social conflict. He shows that inhuman conditions cripple a person, and even love does not save a person, but leads to tragedy: death, injury, murder, hard labor. As a result, Vasilisa alone achieves all her goals: she takes revenge on her former lover Ash and her rival sister Natasha, gets rid of her unloved and disgusted husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows the monstrosity of the social conditions that disfigured both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners. The night shelters are not directly involved in this conflict, they are only third-party spectators.
Question
What does this shelter remind you of?
Answer
The shelter is a unique model of the cruel world from which its inhabitants were thrown out. Here, too, there are “masters”, the police, the same alienation, hostility, and the same vices are manifested.
Teacher's final words
Gorky depicts the consciousness of people at the “bottom”. The plot unfolds not so much in external action - in everyday life, but in the dialogues of the characters. It is the conversations of the night shelters that determine the development of the dramatic conflict. The action is transferred to a non-event series. This is typical for the genre of philosophical drama.
So, the genre of the play can be defined as a socio-philosophical drama.
Homework
Prepare for a debate lesson about Luke. To do this: note (or write down) his statements about people, about truth, about faith. Determine your attitude towards statements about Luke by Baron and Satin (Act IV).
Identify the compositional elements of the play. Why did Chekhov consider the last act unnecessary?
Literature
D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the twentieth century. 11th grade program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001
E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the 20th century / St. Petersburg: Parity, 2002
N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments on Russian literature of the twentieth century. Grade 11. I half of the year. M.: VAKO, 2005
How is the scene depicted in the play? Maxim Gorky "at the bottom" and got the best answer
Answer from Wonderful Miracle[guru]
“Cave-like basement. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster.” Musty and stuffy air, squalid surroundings. The location of the action, succinctly indicated in the very first remark, immediately creates an image of a pressing, unbearable world that presses on people. People live in a stuffy atmosphere of constant drunkenness, swearing and debauchery. It’s hard to imagine a greater “bottom.”
Answer from ???Prophet???[guru]
In the 1900s, a severe economic crisis broke out in Russia.
After each crop failure, masses of ruined, impoverished peasants wandered around
country in search of income.
And factories and factories were closed. Thousands of workers and peasants found themselves without
shelter and livelihood. Under the influence of the gravest economic
oppression, a huge number of tramps appear who sink to the “bottom”
life. Taking advantage of the hopeless situation of impoverished people, enterprising
the owners of the dark slums have found a way to benefit from their fetid
basements, turning them into dosshouses where the unemployed found shelter,
beggars, tramps, thieves and other "former people".
Answer from 3 answers[guru]
Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: How is the setting depicted in the play? Maxim Gorky "at the bottom"
Scene
Scene
PLACE OF ACTION - along with time (see) - a mandatory prerequisite for the plot development of events depicted in a literary work. Since a literary work always reflects, to one degree or another, existence, objective reality, and “space and time are the basic forms of existence” (Engels), no action or event in a literary work can be conceived outside of a more or less definite spatial and temporal localization . Spatial localization is the establishment of the mathematical movement. Throughout the history of fiction, the concept of the literary movement changes depending both on the expansion and clarification of man’s knowledge of “objectively real forms of being,” space and time, and the improvement of technology, and on style , type, genre of a literary work in its specific historical significance. Reducing changes in the content of the concept of physical activity to only one of these reasons, in particular to technical reasons, inevitably leads to a distortion of the true history of the phenomenon.
The category of M. d. is of the least importance in lyric poetry (see), although it rarely gives its images plot design in action. The exception is those lyrical genres and works in which lyrical emotion is directed at describing the phenomena of the external world in their relationship with the poet’s experiences or thoughts. Eg. The poetry of sentimentalism is characterized by lyrical landscapes (see “Sentimentalism”), in which the sensitive glorification of the countryside and nature was opposed to the rationality of classical poetry (see “Classicism”). The most vivid expression of these trends is given by the so-called. "descriptive poetry" (q.v.), led by Thomson. The description here does not have an auxiliary, explanatory, but a self-sufficient meaning, which led to Lessing’s attacks on this poetry, which replaces the depiction of events with the depiction of spatial relationships, which is the task not of poetry, but of painting.
The category of mythology is of much greater importance in epic genres that unfold the narrative of various events of human life. These events always take place in a certain specific environment, setting, which itself to a certain extent characterizes the characters, their aspirations and actions. This approach to the problem of MD characterizes, for example. narrative genres of early bourgeois literature of the era of commodity economy (medieval fabliau, Italian novella, adventure novel of the 16th-17th centuries), which are characterized by extensive composition, passion for effective collisions, external dynamics of events without attempts at their in-depth, psychological understanding. A different approach to literary fiction is characteristic of the narrative literature of the bourgeoisie, which has become stronger and more aware of its class interests. Discovering a deeper understanding of reality in its connections and mediations, she uses the category of M.D. for psychological detailing of action, to clarify the internal connections between the images of people and the environment that gave birth to them. Therefore, the bourgeois realistic novel of the 19th century. (Balzac, Stendhal, Thackeray, Dickens, Flaubert, Zola) replaces the dry, laconic designation of M. with a detailed description of it, which is included in the figurative fabric of the novel and explains its plot situations. Thus, the description of the house of the miser Grande (“Eugene Grande”) by Balzac and Plyushkin’s room by Gogol is organically necessary to characterize these images, completing them with individual characteristic features.
The problem of MD in drama has been much more developed (see). Here it has a particularly significant significance in view of the specific focus on dramatic literature on stage reification, which reveals the objective essence of the play through the means of theatrical art. Precisely because drama is designed for visual perception in the theater, the category of artistic performance receives physically tangible visibility in the drama, being objectified in a three-dimensional stage stage designed through decorations, structures, etc., directly denoting this or that artistic performance. If the novel only talks about M. d., describing him, then the drama shows him to the viewer. The problem of drama in drama is closely related to the method of its stage embodiment, and the technical conditions and capabilities of the theater influence the dramatic solution to this problem. Thus, the elementary character of medieval liturgical drama was to a certain extent determined by the fact that it was given within the confines of the temple, representing a detail of the divine service, while the incomparably more complex character of the mysteries of the 15th and 16th centuries (dozens of episodes forming a drama, dramatization of events like the global flood , creation of the world, etc.) was closely dependent on the progress of technology, which successfully developed in the rising cities of the late Middle Ages and opened up the opportunity for the theater to resort to quite complex stage effects. In our time, advances in stage technology give the playwright the opportunity to include in the composition of plays such elements as cinema, which does not know spatial restrictions (historical chronicles, adventures on land and sea, etc.), radio, etc. But when solving the problem, establishing M. d Although there is some connection between dramaturgical technique and theatrical technique, this connection should not be interpreted in terms of mechanical causality, arguing that the technology of the theatrical stage determines the solution to the problem of drama, which, as said, is a problem of genre and style and is determined by their entire specificity. history. It is not the technique of the stage that determines the style of the drama, but the playwright uses this technique to formalize his ideological positions. Eg. Mystery plays became possible only as a result of the corresponding development of European stage technology, but the very nature of this technique of the late Middle Ages was determined by the tasks that the dramaturgy of the mysteries set for the theater. From the need to dramatize the Bible, which arose among the rising bourgeoisie of the feudal city, a specific stage technique of the 15th-16th centuries grew. The emergence of rich props and complex stage mechanisms that transform the stage into fairy-tale palazzos and fantastic gardens in plays of the Baroque era was generated by the need of the playwright, the ideologist of the aristocracy, for an embellished courtly and festive display of reality. Lope de Vega’s struggle with the principle of unity of place (in his “comedies” he constantly moves the action from place to place), which was insisted on by the playwrights of the Italian Renaissance and later by the French classics of the 17th century, was not explained by the fact that the conditions of the Spanish stage forced the playwright go in the indicated direction (cf. Cervantes’s speeches in defense of the traditions of the Renaissance in the field of drama), but because Lope, as the ideologist of the Spanish hidalgos of the era of Spain’s wide colonial expansion, the world was depicted in a state of flux, in which the most amazing, unexpected pictures are replaced. Since the technique of the stage does not determine the style of drama, but is its constituent element, we see how outwardly similar conditions of theatrical performance give rise in different eras and in different social situations to polar opposite solutions to the problem of M. d. (for example, the desire for concentration and unity of M . in ancient tragedy and its constant changes in medieval mystery, although the external conditions of performance in both cases are similar: a large public performance in the open air, etc.). Likewise, in the same theaters in the same era, we notice the coexistence of different types of drama, different approaches to the problem of it (for example, classical tragedy and opera or tragedy with machines (“Andromeda” by Corneille, “Psyche” by Molière) in France in the 17th century .). In each such case, the problem of M.D., included in the system of images of drama, should be considered as a separate manifestation of a certain specific class style (“general”) and genre (“special”). Only in this way will we be able to overcome the hitherto dominant empirical and formalist approach to the problem of MD and approach its truly Marxist solution. Bibliography:
There are no works that pose the problem of MD in general terms. For some comments in terms of formalist poetics, see: Tomashevsky B.V., Theory of Literature, Leningrad, 1925 (several editions). Valuable instructions are contained in the works of V. M. Fritsche, Problems of Art Criticism, Guise, M. - L., 1930; His, Essay on the Development of Western Literatures, ed. 5th, M., 1931. For orientation in related areas of art, see: V. M. Fritsche, Sociology of Art, ed. 2nd, Guise, M. - L., 1929; Kornitsky I. Ya., Problems of theory and history of art, “Proceedings of the sociological section of the Institute of Archeology and Art History,” RANION, vol. I, M., 1927. For drama, in addition to the bibliography attached to the article. “Unity”, see: “Essays on the history of European theater”, Edited by A. A. Gvozdev and A. A. Smirnov, P., 1923; Muller V.K., Drama and theater of the era of Shakespeare, Leningrad, 1925; Yakovlev M., Theory of Drama, Leningrad, 1927; Mokulsky S.S., Material design of a performance in France on the eve of classicism, “On the theater”, Vremnik Theo GIIII, vol. III, L., 1929. Souriau, De la convention dans la tragedie classique et dans le drame romantique, 1885; Lemaitre J., Corneille et la poetique d’Aristote, 1888; Ebner J., Beitrag zu einer Geschichte der dramatischen Einheiten in Italien, “Munchen. Beitr.”, 1898, XV; Ernst P., Die Einheit des Orts und der Zeit, “Die Schaubuhne”, 1908, V; Strich F., Klassik und Romantik, 1922; Bray K., La formation de doctrine classique en France, 1927 (there is also an extensive bibliography); Hirt E., Das Formgesetz der epischen, dramatischen und lyrischen Dichtung, Lpz., 1923 (all of the listed foreign literature develops the problem in terms of idealistic poetics).
Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
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Maxim Gorky's play "At the Lower Depths" is still the most successful drama in the collection of his works. She won the favor of the public during the author’s lifetime; the writer himself even described the performances in other books, ironizing about his fame. So why did this work captivate people so much?
The play was written at the end of 1901 - beginning of 1902. This work was not an obsession or a gust of inspiration, as is usually the case with creative people. On the contrary, it was written specifically for a troupe of actors from the Moscow Art Theater, created to enrich the culture of all classes of society. Gorky could not imagine what would come of it, but he realized the desired idea of creating a play about tramps, where about two dozen characters would be present.
The fate of Gorky's play cannot be called the final and irrevocable triumph of his creative genius. There were different opinions. People were delighted or criticized such a controversial creation. It survived bans and censorship, and to this day everyone understands the meaning of the drama in their own way.
The meaning of the title of the play “At the Bottom” personifies the social position of all the characters in the work. The title gives an ambiguous first impression, since there is no specific mention of what day we are talking about. The author gives the reader the opportunity to use his imagination and guess what his work is about.
Today, many literary scholars agree that the author meant that his heroes are at the bottom of life in the social, financial and moral sense. This is the meaning of the name.
The play is written in a genre called “social and philosophical drama.” The author touches on precisely such topics and problems. His direction can be designated as “critical realism,” although some researchers insist on the formulation “socialist realism,” since the writer focused the public’s attention on social injustice and the eternal conflict between the poor and the rich. Thus, his work took on an ideological connotation, because at that time the confrontation between the nobility and the common people in Russia was only heating up.
The composition of the work is linear, since all actions are chronologically consistent and form a single thread of the narrative.
The essence of Maxim Gorky's play lies in the depiction of the bottom and its inhabitants. Show readers in the play's characters the marginalized, people humiliated by life and fate, rejected by society and who have broken ties with it. Despite the smoldering flame of hope - having no future. They live, argue about love, honesty, truth, justice, but their words are just empty words for this world and even for their own destinies.
Everything that happens in the play has only one purpose: to show the clash of philosophical views and positions, as well as to illustrate the dramas of outcast people to whom no one lends a helping hand.
The inhabitants of the bottom are people with different life principles and beliefs, but they are all united by one condition: they are mired in poverty, which gradually deprives them of dignity, hope and self-confidence. She corrupts them, dooming the victims to certain death.
Despite the seemingly fairly simple plot and the absence of sharp climactic turns, the work is replete with themes that provide food for thought.
The play has a rich range of issues. Maxim Gorky tried in one work to indicate the moral problems that were relevant at that time, which, however, still exist to this day.
The idea of Gorky's play is that all people are absolutely the same, regardless of their social and financial status. Everyone consists of flesh and blood, the differences lie only in upbringing and character, which give us the opportunity to react differently to current situations and act based on them. No matter who you are, life can change in an instant. Any of us, having lost everything we had in the past, having sunk to the bottom, will lose ourselves. There will no longer be any point in keeping oneself within the bounds of social decency, looking appropriate and behaving appropriately. When a person loses the values established by others, he becomes confused and falls out of reality, as happened with the heroes.
The main idea is that life can break any person. Make him indifferent, bitter, having lost any incentive to exist. Of course, an indifferent society will be to blame for many of his troubles, which will only push the falling one. However, the broken poor are often themselves to blame for the fact that they cannot rise up, because it is difficult to find someone to blame for their laziness, depravity and indifference to everything.
Gorky's author's position is expressed in Satin's monologue, which scatters into aphorisms. “Man – sounds proud!” - he exclaims. The writer wants to show how to treat people in order to appeal to their dignity and strength. Endless regret without concrete practical steps will only harm the poor man, because he will continue to feel sorry for himself rather than work to get out of the vicious circle of poverty. This is the philosophical meaning of drama. In the debate about true and false humanism in society, the winner is the one who speaks directly and honestly, even at the risk of incurring indignation. Gorky in one of Satin’s monologues connects truth and lies with human freedom. Independence comes only at the cost of comprehension and search for truth.
Each reader will draw his own specific conclusion. The play “At the Bottom” can help a person understand that in life it is always worth striving for something, because it gives strength to move on without looking back. Don't stop thinking that nothing will work out.
Using the example of all the heroes, one can see absolute inaction and disinterest in their own fate. Regardless of age and gender, they are simply mired in their current situation, making the excuse that it is too late to resist and start all over again. A person himself must have the desire to change his future, and in case of any failure, do not blame life, do not be offended by it, but gain experience by experiencing the problem. The inhabitants of the shelter believe that suddenly, for their suffering in the basement, a miracle should fall on them that will bring them a new life, as it happens - Luka appears to them, wanting to cheer up all the despairing, help with advice to make life better. But they forgot that words cannot help the fallen man; he extended his hand to them, but no one took it. And everyone is just waiting for action from anyone, but not from themselves.
It cannot be said that before the birth of his legendary play, Gorky did not have any popularity in society. But, it can be emphasized that interest in him intensified precisely because of this work.
Gorky managed to show everyday, everyday things surrounding dirty, uneducated people from a new angle. He knew what he was writing about, since he himself had experience in achieving his position in society; after all, he was from the common people and an orphan. There is no exact explanation why the works of Maxim Gorky were so popular and made such a strong impression on the public, because he was not an innovator of any genre, writing about all known things. But Gorky’s work was fashionable at that time, society liked to read his works and attend theatrical performances based on his creations. It can be assumed that the degree of social tension in Russia was rising, and many were dissatisfied with the established order in the country. The monarchy had exhausted itself, and popular actions in subsequent years were harshly suppressed, and therefore many people gladly looked for disadvantages in the existing system, as if reinforcing their own conclusions.
The peculiarities of the play lie in the way of presentation and presentation of the characters, in the harmonious use of descriptions. One of the problems raised in the work is the individuality of each hero and his struggle for it. Artistic tropes and stylistic figures very accurately depict the living conditions of the characters, because the author saw all these details personally.
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