History of appearance
Mikhail Zoshchenko wrote his most famous work in 1925. This is the time of the NEP, when life in the country was actively being rebuilt after the revolution and the Civil War . Such changes affected the Russian language, after which the problem of preserving its natural frequency became urgent. Initially, Vladimir Mayakovsky addressed this issue, and subsequently the work “Monkey Language” appeared, which is characterized by a clear plot and ring composition.
Zoshchenko’s “Monkey Language” received excellent reviews from critics; almost all famous authors without exception spoke about it in admiring tones. However, this work did not initially receive proper distribution among the reader, which is explained by the complexity of the issues raised by the author, which were incomprehensible to the majority of the population.
Only after almost half a century was this story appreciated, and at the end of the last century it was even included in the school curriculum.
Narrator
Describing a meeting of neighbors - experts in sophisticated foreign words, he “let it slip.” His self-exposure occurs .
Before us is a narrow-minded, very limited person, similar to the heroic characters about whom he talks with delight. He does not shine with intelligence, he has acquired superficial knowledge. Tongue-tied. He himself is not averse to showing off some kind of word, “numb” in the face of the difficulties of the Russian language, especially those associated with borrowings. Finds himself under the author's arrows of irony
Heroes are characters whose essence is revealed through dialogue.
There will be a plenary meeting, but what?
That’s why I look... as if it’s plenary.
Today is very plenary.
- The laws of word combinations are violated - this creates a comical situation. The word “strongly” (very) can only be combined with qualitative adjectives.
Is there really a quorum?
Got it and that's it.
Why would it be him?
You probably do not approve of these plenary sessions. But they are closer to me... Everything somehow comes out in them minimally to the essence of the day...
Lately, I’ve been quite permanent about these meetings...
- Did you feel how the “vile clerk” sounds in this dialogue?
If you look from the point of view...
Take the point of view, then yes – the industry specifically
Specifically in fact
…
- The syntactic incompleteness of a phrase does not form a thought. Sounding emptiness. The dialogue is about nothing.
An attempt to show off foreign words of a “foggy, arrogant” nature. These “speech exercises” indicate the desire to “become on par with the century”, to show one’s education.
Theme of the story
- monstrous linguistic ignorance
Idea
- a person who has overcome the chaos of revolutions and a destructive civil war must and has the right to a decent life.
Language is a reflection of a person’s inner world. The great Russian language should not be buried in an era of destruction. He must be “in stature” to the new man of the new era - the era of creation
M.M. Zoshchenko was convinced that a person who survived the terrible years of the revolution and the horrors of the civil war deserves the best. In particular, he has the right and duty to speak in correct, clear, understandable, coming from the heart, sincere, hard-won language. The satirist believed in the power of the artistic word, its healing power. It is no coincidence that M. Gorky spoke about the “social pedagogy” of his work. Language is a sign of culture, it is ecology, it is a miracle and salvation.
"Increase in meaning":
Characters and Narrator
The narration is told from the perspective of an uneducated, semi-literate person who believes that the Russian language is extremely difficult, largely due to the large content of foreign words in it. The author seems to show that people create problems for themselves by borrowing incomprehensible expressions from German, French and English, which only make communication more difficult. The narrator is a direct participant in the events, while his speech is far from literary and extremely simple.
The main characters of the work are:
- narrator ;
- 2 unnamed interlocutors;
- an invisible speaker speaking at a meeting.
Two interlocutors are participating in some kind of meeting and are sitting next to the narrator. Both characters use numerous foreign words in their speech, without completely understanding their meaning. They believe that this makes them appear educated and smart, but their incorrect monkey language makes them look stupid and ignorant.
Simple colloquial words and expressions coexist with borrowed vocabulary, and many phrases are simply meaningless.
There is another character in the work - a speaker speaking at a meeting. Since his speech is not given in the story, this person can only be judged by the reviews of the narrator and his neighbors. In their opinion, the speaker is an intelligent man who uses numerous foreign borrowings in his speech. And yet his speech is illiterate, containing various incomprehensible words that are used completely inappropriately.
Zoshchenko deliberately depersonalized his main characters; in his story, the characters do not have an appearance, names or character descriptions. This allows you to concentrate the reader’s attention on the use of borrowed words, which make speech illiterate, stupid and ugly. Thus, the author wants to draw attention to the then pressing problem of preserving the purity of the Russian language.
Both main characters communicate in an incomprehensible mixture of terms, simple folk words and borrowings from foreign vocabulary. An ordinary person who found himself next to them could simply not understand their speech, which from the outside seemed just a set of meaningless sentences. The author showed that such conversations, despite the apparent intelligence, are simply a pointless pastime, which also kills the real Russian language.
Analysis of Zoshchenko's story Monkey Language
In the story “Monkey Language,” Mikhail Zoshchenko ridicules the shortcomings of the public: ignorance, idle talk and illiteracy. The author gives a short and ironic story about how illiterate people clog up simple Russian speech with various foreign words, without understanding what they mean and where it is appropriate to use them.
The author tells on his own behalf, who listens to the conversation of his neighbors “flapping his ears” and understands nothing about it. At the same time, he admires beautiful expressions and words that are incomprehensible to him. He thinks it shows "smart, intelligent conversation."
In this way, Zoshchenko is trying to show the stupidity of the ordinary Russian people, to ridicule their illiteracy and monkey habits.
People who consider themselves intellectuals are not intellectuals, but are rather ignorant. They express themselves in words without understanding or knowing their meaning; “quorum, “subsection, plenary session, permanent relation, industry.” Conducting a conversation in foreign words, they consider themselves smart and knowledgeable. Reading such dialogue, there is a great desire to laugh for a long time.
People do not want to appear ignorant by starting arguments, correcting each other in pronunciation, thereby showing their intelligence. In fact, every interlocutor is a simple and uneducated person. Having heard a lot of foreign terms that are incomprehensible to them, they try to connect them together and demonstrate their intelligence and awareness. The author conveys this contrasting speech well to the reader.
Poorly educated people do not know what certain foreign words mean, but they try to follow the fashion for “smart words” and insert them into their dialogue. Sitting at “plenary sessions”, where “the industry goes from empty to empty,” they listen to stupid and meaningless speeches of storytellers. People try not to miss such meetings. In most cases, nothing is solved, but time is simply wasted.
Analysis and questions raised
The main idea and theme of this work is the problem of modern society, which was expressed in the contamination of the Russian language and total lack of education. Every ignorant person in those days wanted to seem like an important person, so he used borrowed foreign vocabulary, trying to show himself as smart and intelligent. The writer makes the main characters of this story two officials who, in their opinion, had an intelligent conversation at the meeting, replete with a huge amount of clericalism, unnecessary words and borrowings.
Topics raised by the author in the story:
- loss of identity of the Russian language;
- illiteracy of the population;
- ignorance and arrogance.
The author, with the title of the story, has a negative attitude towards such people who use borrowings and spoil the native Russian language. Zoshchenko comically compares illiterate officials with noisy monkeys, who in the eyes of others try to look like authoritative and intelligent creatures.
Using foreign words in their speech, the author places a precise satirical emphasis on the vivid characteristics of the characters.
The choice as the setting of an abstract meeting at which an important report was made emphasizes that the phenomenon described in the story with the borrowing of foreign words is typical at that time. According to the author, such meetings took place in those years every day in almost every organization. Even if you carefully read the speech, you can hardly understand the main meaning of the conversation. The huge number of incomprehensible foreign words has led to the fact that the original pure Russian language began to be perceived as an atavism, gradually becoming a thing of the past.
Analysis of the story Monkey Language by Zoshchenko essay
The people themselves who fill their speech with foreign and sophisticated words are complete ignoramuses. When pronouncing words, they do not understand their true meaning; with an abstruse look they utter their nonsense, which only causes laughter. Naturally, no one is ready to admit their stupidity and ignorance. All ignorant people are characterized by a reluctance to face the truth and tell themselves about their stupidity, about their shortcomings. They will only, being in illusions, tell themselves the opposite: how smart, intellectual they are, and not at all ignorant.
Relevance of the work
The work of Mikhail Zoshchenko is a currently relevant story , especially since in the last few decades there has been a tendency towards the appearance in the Russian language of various borrowed words that do not carry any semantic load and only clog up speech with phraseological units of foreign origin. The author believes that language change is a natural process, however, one should observe this measure, if using such foreign expressions, then only if they correspond to the context. Otherwise, speech consisting of borrowings looks stupid and meaningless.
Zoshchenko also in his story addresses the topic of new people who came out during the NEP. These are former philistines, merchants and industrialists who considered themselves the cream of society, while not being the intelligentsia and belonging to the ignoramuses. It was they who most often used such monkey language, devoid of meaning, but showing their importance, intelligence and intelligence.
Currently, high school students write essays on this story on the topic of analysis of Zoshchenko’s “Monkey Language,” and in literature classes they prepare reading diaries and analyze in detail the themes of such short stories. This is a short work that can be read in full and in key passages, which provides excellent examples of Newspeak with a huge number of borrowings .
