At the beginning of the story, young Gregory - a real Cossack, a brilliant horseman, hunter, fisherman and hardworking rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. The traditional Cossack commitment to military glory helps him out in the first trials on the bloody battlefields in 1914. Distinguished by exceptional courage, Gregory quickly gets used to bloody battles. However, he is distinguished from his brothers in arms by his sensitivity to any manifestation of cruelty. To any violence against the weak and defenseless, and as events unfold - also a protest against the horrors and absurdities of war. In fact, he spends his whole life in an environment of hatred and fear that is alien to him, hardening and discovering with disgust how all his talent, his entire being goes into the dangerous skill of creating death. He has no time to be at home, in the family, among people who love him.
All this cruelty, dirt, violence made Gregory take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he was after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, doubts about loyalty to the tsar, fatherland and military duty appear.
In the seventeenth year, we see Gregory in chaotic and painful attempts to somehow decide in this "troubled time." He searches for political truth in a world of rapidly changing values, guided more often by the external signs of events than by their essence.
At first he fights for the Reds, but the killing of unarmed prisoners by them repels him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, doing robberies and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again, Gregory's search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a man completely lost in the cycle of events.
The deep forces of Gregory's soul repel him from both the Reds and the Whites. “They are all the same!? he says to his childhood friends leaning towards the Bolsheviks.? All of them are a yoke around the neck of the Cossacks! And when he learns about the rebellion of the Cossacks in the upper reaches of the Don against the Red Army, he takes the side of the rebels. Now he can fight for what is dear to him, for what he loved and cherished all his life: “As if there were no days of searching for the truth, searches, transitions and heavy internal struggle behind him. What was there to think about? Why did the soul rush about? in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions? Life seemed mocking, wisely simple. Now it already seemed to him that from eternity there was no such truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and embittered to the extreme, he thought: everyone has his own truth, his own furrow. For a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life - people have always fought and will fight as long as the sun shines on them, while warm blood oozes through their veins. We must fight those who want to take life, right for it; you have to fight hard, without swinging,? like in the wall but the intensity of hatred, firmness will give the struggle!
Both a return to the dominance of officers in the event of a victory for the Whites, and the power of the Reds on the Don are unacceptable for Grigory. In the last volume of the novel, the demotion as a result of disobedience to a White Guard officer, the death of his wife and the final defeat of the White Army bring Gregory to the last degree of despair. In the end, he joins the cavalry of Budyonny and heroically fights with the Poles, wanting to clear himself of his guilt before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former orderly that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Litsvitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but everything is still unclear to me. They both have their own, straight roads, their own ends, and since the seventeenth year I have been walking along the forks, swinging like a drunk ... "
The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of the Russian Cossacks as a whole. The Cossacks never broke their hats to anyone, they lived apart, isolated from the rest of the world, I feel some of my exclusivity, peculiarity and strive to preserve it. Both whites and reds for the majority of ordinary Cossacks are “non-residents” who brought discord and war to the Don land. Whichever side the Cossacks fought on, they want one thing: to return to their native farm, to their wife and children, to plow the land, to run their own household.
One night, under the threat of arrest, and therefore the inevitable execution, Grigory flees from his native farm. After long wanderings, yearning for children and Aksinya, he secretly returns. Aksinya hugs him, presses her face against his wet overcoat, sobs: “Better kill, but don’t leave!”. Having begged his sister to take the children, he and Aksinya flee at night in the hope of getting to the Kuban and starting a new life. Enthusiastic joy fills the soul of this woman at the thought that she is again next to Gregory. But her happiness is short-lived: on the way they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. When they find shelter in the pit, Grigory buries his Aksinya: “With his palms, he diligently pressed wet, yellow clay on the grave mound and knelt near the grave for a long time, bowing his head, gently swaying. Now there was no need for him to rush. It was all over…”
Hiding for weeks in the thicket of the forest, Grigory is experiencing an increasingly strong desire “to be like ... in his native places, to show off at the kids, then he could die ...” He returns to his native farm.
Having touchingly described Grigory's meeting with his son, Sholokhov ends his novel with the words: “Well, that little thing that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gate of his native house, holding his son in his arms. It was all that remained in his life, which still made him related to the earth and to all this huge world shining under the cold sun.
Gregory did not have long to enjoy this joy. Obviously, he came back to die. To perish from communist necessity in the person of Mikhail Koshevoy. In a novel full of cruelty, executions and murders, Sholokhov wisely lowers the curtain on this last episode. In the meantime, a whole human life flashed before us, flashing brightly and slowly fading away. The biography of Grigory by Sholokhov is quite voluminous. Gregory lived, in the full sense of the word, when his life idyll was not disturbed in any way.
He loved and was loved, he lived an extraordinary worldly life on his native farm and was satisfied. He always tried to do the right thing, and if not - well, every person has the right to make a mistake. Many moments of Gregory's life in the novel are a kind of "escape" from events that are beyond the power of his mind. The passion of Gregory's searches is most often replaced by a return to himself, to natural life, to his home. But at the same time, it cannot be said that Gregory's life quests have come to a standstill, no. He had true love, and fate did not deprive him of the opportunity to be a happy father. But Gregory was forced to constantly look for a way out of the difficult situations that had arisen. Speaking about the moral choice of Gregory in life, it is impossible to say unequivocally whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better share in life, and this desire was not a simple desire to "live the best." It was sincere and affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him, in particular the woman he loved. Despite the fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although for a very short time. But even these short minutes of much-needed happiness were enough. They did not disappear in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain. There is no particular fault of Gregory in the way his fate turned out: he did not choose the burden in which to live. But one thing can be said: Melekhov is broken, but not broken, crippled, but not disfigured by the war, like Mitka Korshunov or Fomin. He did not prevaricate, and if he went against his conscience somewhere, then he paid the price for it to the end. And Mishatka, sitting in his father's arms, is the best reward for everything from an unkind fate. M. Sholokhov, like Tolstoy, emphasizes the decisive role of the people in history.
Describing his idea for the image of the protagonist of The Quiet Flows the Don, M. Sholokhov wrote: “I wanted to talk about the charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov, but I didn’t succeed completely.” It did not succeed, as it seems to us, not because of a lack of skill (the writer perfectly understood the scale of the figure he created), but because in him the human spirit rose to the heights of perfection and descended to the depths of despair. The path of Grigory Melekhov to the ideal of true life is a tragic path of gains, mistakes and losses, which was passed by the entire Russian people in the 20th century.
Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. Such cruel tests fell on his lot, which a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and the fratricidal civil war, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, the Cossack liberty and the fate of the people merged into one. The strong disposition inherited from his father, adherence to principles and rebelliousness haunt him from his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, despising public morality and his father's prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person, standing up for justice. The author shows his industriousness in the scenes of hunting, fishing, haymaking. Throughout the novel, in severe battles, now on one side, then on the other side of the warring parties, he is looking for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, of its glorious victories, in Voronezh, the Cossacks hear from a local old man a phrase thrown after them with pity: “You are my dear ... beef!” The elderly man knew that there was nothing worse than war, it was not an adventure where you could become a hero, it was dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Grigory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The cornet Lyakhovsky was the first to fall off his horse. Prokhor galloped at him... With a chisel, like a diamond on glass, he cut out the memory of Gregory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhorov's horse with bared teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind... More fell. The Cossacks fell and the horses."
In parallel, the author shows the events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under the palms - do not wait for those dear to your heart! No matter how many tears flow from swollen and discolored eyes, do not wash away the longing! No matter how many times you shout on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the east wind of their cries will not carry them to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!
The war appears to the writer and his heroes as a series of hardships and deaths that change all foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to seek the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees all the same as the Whites, cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why a fratricidal war is being waged. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? After all, life on a farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of the war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people, to starve and die - to them, and not to commanders.
There are also characters in the story who think differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else's game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder unrecognizably changed him. The hero has lost his foothold, his kind, just soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He is not alone in thinking about the terrible reverse side of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It is easier to kill a person for someone else, which hand he has broken in this matter, than to crush a louse. A man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Gregory - Aksinya, is perceived as a sentence to all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all the living, it is not for nothing that Grigory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees a black sky above him and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t regret the child either.”
Realizing that the war kills the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among the thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is already almost an old man. in his immortal work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Grigory became black ...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.
Roman M.A. Sholokhov's "Quiet Don" is a novel about the Cossacks in the era of the Civil War. The protagonist of the work - Grigory Melekhov - continues the tradition of Russian classical literature, in which one of the main images is the hero-truth seeker (the works of Nekrasov, Leskov, Tolstoy, Gorky).
Grigory Melekhov also strives to find the meaning of life, to understand the whirlwind of historical events, to find happiness. This simple Cossack was born in a simple and friendly family, where centuries-old traditions are sacred - they work hard, have fun. The basis of the hero's character - love for work, for his native land, respect for the elders, justice, decency, kindness - is laid right here, in the family.
Handsome, hardworking, cheerful, Grigory immediately wins the hearts of those around him: he is not afraid of human rumors (almost openly loves the beautiful Aksinya, the wife of the Cossack Stepan), he does not consider it shameful to become a farm laborer in order to maintain relations with his beloved woman.
And at the same time, Gregory is a man who tends to hesitate. So, despite his great love for Aksinya, Grigory does not resist his parents, marries Natalya Korshunova at their will.
Without fully realizing it himself, Melekhov strives to exist "in truth." He is trying to understand, to answer for himself the question “how should one live?”. The search for a hero is complicated by the era in which he was born - the time of revolutions and wars.
Gregory will experience strong moral hesitation when he gets to the fronts of the First World War. The hero went to war, thinking that he knew which side the truth was on: you need to defend the fatherland and destroy the enemy. What could be easier? Melekhov does just that. He fights valiantly, he is brave and selfless, he does not shame the honor of the Cossacks. But gradually doubts come to the hero. He begins to see in opponents the same people with their hopes, weaknesses, fears, joys. What is all this slaughter for, what will it bring to people?
The hero begins to realize this especially clearly when fellow countryman Melekhov Chubaty kills a captive Austrian, still a very young boy. The prisoner tries to establish contact with the Russians, openly smiles at them, tries to please. The Cossacks were pleased with the decision to bring him to the headquarters for interrogation, but Chubaty kills the boy simply out of love for violence, out of hatred.
For Melekhov, this event becomes a real moral blow. And although he firmly protects the Cossack honor, deserves a reward, he understands that he was not created for war. He desperately wants to know the truth in order to find the meaning of his actions. Having fallen under the influence of the Bolshevik Garandzhi, the hero, like a sponge, absorbs new thoughts, new ideas. He starts fighting for the Reds. But the killing of unarmed prisoners by the Reds pushes him away from them too.
The childishly pure soul of Gregory alienates him from both the Reds and the Whites. Melekhov reveals the truth: the truth cannot be on either side. Reds and whites are politics, class struggle. And where there is a class struggle, blood is always shed, people die, children remain orphans. The truth is peaceful work in the native land, family, love.
Gregory is a wavering, doubting nature. This allows him to seek the truth, not to stop there, not to be limited by other people's explanations. Gregory's position in life is a position "between": between the traditions of the fathers and his own will, between two loving women - Aksinya and Natalya, between whites and reds. Finally, between the need to fight and the realization of the senselessness and uselessness of the massacre (“my hands need to plow, not fight”).
The author himself sympathizes with his hero. In the novel, Sholokhov objectively describes the events, talks about the "truth" of both the Whites and the Reds. But his sympathy, feelings are on the side of Melekhov. It fell to this man to live at a time when all moral guidelines were shifted. It was this, as well as the desire to search for the truth, that led the hero to such a tragic ending - the loss of everything that he loved: “Why did you, life, cripple me like that?”
The writer emphasizes that the civil war is a tragedy for the entire Russian people. There are no right or wrong in it, because people die, brother goes against brother, father against son.
Thus, Sholokhov in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" made a man from the people and from the people as a truth seeker. The image of Grigory Melekhov becomes the concentration of the historical and ideological conflict of the work, an expression of the tragic searches of the entire Russian people.
Sections: Literature
Lesson plan.
I
In criticism, disputes about the essence of the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov still do not stop.
At first it was believed that this is the tragedy of the renegade.
He supposedly went against the people and therefore lost all human features, became a lone wolf, a beast.
Rebuttal: the renegade does not evoke sympathy, but they cried over the fate of Melekhov. Yes, and Melekhov did not become a beast, did not lose the ability to feel, suffer, did not lose the desire to live.
Others explained the tragedy of Melekhov as a delusion.
Here it was true that Gregory, according to this theory, carried in himself the traits of the Russian national character, the Russian peasantry. Further, they said that he was half owner, half worker. / Lenin's quote about the peasant (art. about L. Tolstoy))
So Grigory hesitated, but in the end got lost. Therefore, he must be condemned and pitied.
But! Grigory is confused not because he is the owner, but because in each of the warring parties does not find absolute moral truth, to which he aspires with the maximalism inherent in Russian people.
1) From the first pages, Gregory is depicted in everyday creative peasant life:
C: “His feet confidently trampled the ground”
Melekhov is merged with the world, is a part of it.
But in Gregory, the personal principle is unusually clearly manifested, Russian moral maximalism with its desire to get to the bottom without stopping halfway, not to put up with any violations of the natural course of life.
2) He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions.(this is especially pronounced in relations with Natasha and Aksinya:
3) Gregory a strong emotional reaction to everything that happens, him responsive on the impressions of life heart. It has developed feeling of pity, compassion, This can be seen from these lines:
4) Staying always honest, morally independent and upright in character, Gregory showed himself as a person capable of an act.
5) Bribes the sincerity of his motives- he never lied to himself, in his doubts and throwing. We are convinced of this by his internal monologues (part VI ch.21,28)
Gregory is the only character who given the right to monologues– “thoughts”, revealing its spiritual beginning.
6) It is impossible to "obey dogmatic rules" forced Grigory to abandon his household, his land, to leave with Aksinya for the Listnitsky estate with a koshoch.
There, shows Sholokhov , social life disrupted the course of natural life. There, for the first time, the hero broke away from the earth, from the origins.
“An easy, well-fed life spoiled him. He became lazy, put on weight, looked older than his years.
7) But too firmly in Gregory the national beginning so as not to be preserved in his soul. As soon as Melekhov was on his own land during the hunt, all the excitement disappeared, and the eternal, main feeling trembled in his soul.
8) This abyss, m / y by the desire of man unfortunately and the destructive tendencies of the era, widened and deepened in the first world war. (loyal to duty - active in battles - rewards)
But! The more he goes into military action, the more he is drawn to the ground, to work. He dreams of the steppe. His heart is with his beloved and distant woman. And his conscience gnaws at his soul: “… it's hard to kiss a kid, open to look into his eyes.”
9) The revolution returned Melekhov to the earth, with his beloved, to his family, and children. And he wholeheartedly sided with the new system . But the same revolution his cruelty to the Cossacks, his injustice to the prisoners, and to Grigory himself pushed again him on the warpath.
Fatigue and anger lead the hero to cruelty - the murder of sailors by Melekhov (it was after him that Grigory would dangle on the ground in “monstrous enlightenment”, realizing that he had gone far from what he was born for and what he fought for.
“The wrong course in life, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” he admitted.
10) Standing up with all his inherent energy for the interests of the workers and therefore became one of the leaders of the Veshensky uprising, Gregory is convinced that it did not bring the expected results: the Cossacks suffer from the white movement just as they suffered from the Reds before. (Peace did not come to the Don, but the same nobles returned, despising the ordinary Cossack, the Cossack-peasant.
11) But Gregory a sense of national exclusiveness is alien: Gregory has deep respect for the Englishman - a mechanic with labor mazols.
Melekhov precedes his refusal to evacuate overseas with a statement about Russia: “Whatever the mother, she is a relative of a stranger!”
12) And again salvation for Melekhov - a return to the earth, to Aksinya, and children . Violence disgusts him. (he releases relatives of the Red Cossacks from prison) drives a horse to save Ivan Alekseevich and Mishka Koshevoy.)
13) Turning to red during the final years of the civil war, Gregory became , according to Prokhor Zykov, “cheerful and sleek ". But it is also important that the roles Melekhov did not fight with his , but was on the Polish front.
In the VIII part, the ideal of Gregory is outlined: “ He was going home in order to finally get down to work, to live with the children, with Aksinya ... ”
But his dream did not come true. Mikhail Koshevoy ( representative revolutionary violence) provoked Gregory to run away from home, from children, Aksinya .
15) He is forced to hide in farms, join Fomin's gang.
The lack of a way out (and the thirst for life did not let him go under execution) pushes him to an obvious wrong deed.
16) All that Gregory had left by the end of the novel was children, mother earth (Sholokhov emphasizes three times that Grigory heals chest pain by lying down on “damp earth”) and love for Aksinya. But this little still leaves with the death of a beloved woman.
“The black sky and the dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun” (this characterizes the strength of Gregory's feelings and the degree of sensation or loss).
“Everything was taken from him, everything was destroyed by a ruthless death. Only the children remained, but he himself still convulsively clung to the ground, as if in fact his broken life represented some value for him and for others.
In this craving for life there is no personal salvation for Grigory Melekhov, but there is an affirmation of the ideal of life.
At the end of the novel, when life is reborn, Grigory threw a rifle, revolver, cartridges into the water, wiped his hands. The Don crossed over the blue March ice, walked with a large stride towards the house. He stood at the gates of his native house, holding his son in his arms ... "
Opinion of critics about the ending.
Critics argued for a long time and a lot about the further fate of Melekhov. Soviet literary scholars argued that Melekhov would join socialist life. Western critics say that the venerable Cossack will be arrested the next day and then executed.
Sholokhov, with an open ending, left room for both paths. This is of no fundamental importance, because. at the end of the novel, what constitutes essence humanistic philosophy of the protagonist of the novel, humanity in20th century: “under the cold sun, a huge world shines, life continues, embodied in the symbolic picture of a child in his father's arms.(the image of a child as a symbol of eternal life was already present in many of Sholokhov's Don Stories, and The Fate of Man also ends with it.
Conclusion
The path of Grigory Melekhov to the ideal of true life - it's a tragic way gains, mistakes and losses, which was passed by the entire Russian people in the XX century.
"Grigory Melekhov is an integral person in a tragically torn time." (E. Tamarchenko)
"Quiet Don" is a work that shows the life of the Don Cossacks in one of the most difficult historical periods in Russia. The realities of the first third of the twentieth century, which turned the whole habitual way of life upside down, like caterpillars drove through the fate of the common people. Through the life path of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”, Sholokhov reveals the main idea of the work, which is to depict the clash of the individual and historical events beyond his control, his wounded fate.
At the beginning of the work, the protagonist is shown as a hardworking guy with a hot temper, which he inherited from his ancestors. Cossack and even Turkish blood flowed in him. Oriental roots endowed Grishka with a bright appearance that could turn the head of more than one Don beauty, and the Cossack stubbornness, in places bordering on stubbornness, ensured the stamina and steadfastness of his character.
On the one hand, he shows respect and love for his parents, on the other hand, he does not listen to their opinion. The first conflict between Gregory and his parents happens because of his love affair with a married neighbor Aksinya. To end the sinful connection between Aksinya and Grigory, his parents decide to marry him. But their choice in the role of the sweet and meek Natalya Korshunova did not solve the problem, but only exacerbated it. Despite the official marriage, love for his wife did not appear, and for Aksinya, who, tormented by jealousy, was increasingly looking for a meeting with him, only flared up.
The blackmail of his father with his house and property forced the hot and impulsive Gregory to leave the farm, his wife, relatives in his hearts and leave with Aksinya. Because of his act, the proud and adamant Cossack, whose family from time immemorial cultivated their own land and grew their own bread, had to become a mercenary, which made Grigory ashamed and disgusted. But he now had to answer both for Aksinya, who had left her husband because of him, and for the child she was carrying.
A new misfortune was not long in coming: the war began, and Gregory, who swore allegiance to the sovereign, was forced to leave both the old and the new family and recover at the front. In his absence, Aksinya remained in the master's house. The death of her daughter and news from the front about the death of Grigory crippled the woman's strength, and she was forced to succumb to the onslaught of the centurion Listnitsky.
Coming from the front and learning about Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his family again. For some period, his wife, relatives and soon appeared twins delight him. But the troubled time on the Don, associated with the Revolution, did not allow them to enjoy family happiness.
In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" Grigory Melekhov's path is full of quests, doubts and contradictions both politically and in love. He constantly rushed about, not knowing where the truth was: “Everyone has his own truth, his own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life. We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ... ". He decided to lead the Cossack division and repair the pillars of the advancing Reds. However, the longer the Civil War continued, the more Gregory doubted the correctness of his choice, the more clearly he understood that the Cossacks were waging war with windmills. Nobody was interested in the interests of the Cossacks and their native land.
The same model of behavior is typical in the personal life of the protagonist of the work. Over time, he forgives Aksinya, realizing that he cannot live without her love and takes him to the front. After he sends her home, where she is forced to once again return to her husband. Arriving on a visit, he looks at Natalya with different eyes, appreciating her devotion and loyalty. He was drawn to his wife, and this intimacy culminated in the conception of a third child.
But again the passion for Aksinya took over him. His last betrayal led to the death of his wife. Grigory drowns his remorse and the impossibility of resisting feelings in the war, becoming cruel and merciless: “I got so smeared on someone else's blood that I didn’t have any stings left for anyone. Childhood - and I almost do not regret this one, but I don’t even think about myself. The war took everything out of me. I became terrible myself. Look into my soul, and there is blackness, as in an empty well ... ".
The loss of loved ones and the retreat sobered Gregory, he understands: you need to be able to save what he has left. He takes Aksinya with him on his retreat, but due to typhus, he is forced to leave her.
He again begins to search for the truth and finds himself in the Red Army, taking command of a cavalry squadron. However, even participation in hostilities on the side of the Soviets will not wash away Grigory's past, stained by the white movement. He is threatened with execution, about which his sister Dunya warned him. Taking Aksinya, he makes an attempt to escape, during which the woman he loves is killed. Having fought for his land and on the side of the Cossacks and the Reds, he remained a stranger among his own.
The path of Grigory Melekhov's search in the novel is the fate of a simple man who loved his land, but lost everything that he had and appreciated, protecting it for the life of the next generation, which in the final personifies his son Mishatka.
Artwork test
