Example 1
Maxim Gorky wrote his play “At the Lower Depths” in the 1900s, at a time when there was a severe economic crisis in Russia. Many became poor and wandered around the country. People sank to the very “bottom” of life and did not know how to get out of there. There are flophouses popping up, turned into places of stay by savvy slumlords. “Former” people gather there. The author writes this play in order to show a completely different layer of the population.
The action takes place in one of the dark basements with dilapidated furnishings, there were no chairs, instead there were tree stumps, bunks were located along all the walls, and in the middle there was a roughly knocked together table. Everyone present here has their own story, which brought them here. Some simply had nowhere to sleep, some were kicked out of their homes, and some became shamelessly drunkards. And everyone understood that their lives were already at the bottom, and did not try to change anything. However, there were also those here who hoped to escape into another world, but they did not know how to do this. One day, the wanderer Luke, a man of about sixty, appeared at the shelter. He tried to make everyone believe that there was hope for a bright future, that everything could still be changed. He promised peace to the dying Anna, told Ash about Siberia, and told the Actor that there was a hospital that helped get rid of alcohol addiction. However, all hopes are destroyed as soon as Luka disappears. The heroes understand that the old man's stories were lies in order to support them. Klesh has to sell his tools to bury his wife; he doesn’t know how to move on. Satin, who was an opponent of Luke’s theory, that is, stood for the “bitter truth,” tells the Actor that there are no hospitals, and he commits suicide. And it turns out that Luke, on the contrary, pushed everyone even further to the bottom. He seemed to want the best and instilled hope. However, after the collapse of their hopes, they completely lost faith and realized that nothing would change. They were again defeated in the struggle for a new life.
Gorky, summing up the play, says that all the troubles of the heroes are from their lack of freedom. They drive themselves into limits, do not try to change anything, but go with the flow. Only a person who is free can fight for a better life. And this freedom is not only in the physical sense, people must break the shackles that bind their thoughts and believe that everything is possible. Only truly free people with strength of character will be able to overcome all difficulties and achieve their goals.
“Former People” in the play “At the Depths”
Tossing about , confused, contradictory, flexible to the point of spinelessness, refuting themselves, not knowing and not seeing a way out, they, in contrast, only emphasize the attractiveness of the mechanic Andrei Kleshch, whose life philosophy is truly formed and tempered by work. Whose straightforwardness and consistency repel the inhabitants of the shelter from him, more inclined to listen to the insinuating, soothing rantings of the wanderer Luke.
Another opponent of the tramp philosophy, the owner of the shelter, Kostylev, pronounces a verdict on it that is difficult to refute, from the position of a person standing firmly on the ground.
Kostylev. A person must live in one place. It is impossible for people like cockroaches to live... Wherever anyone wants, they crawl there... A person must determine himself to the place... and not get confused in vain on the ground...
Luk a. What if for whom there is a place everywhere?
Kostylev. Therefore, he is a tramp... a useless person.
“Useless man” - this also applies to Luke, whose wandering is no better than tramping. Which, by the way, other characters also understand. The Baron, for example, at the first meeting asks: “Who are you, kikimora?” Then, after exchanging a few remarks with him, he will answer his own question: “You rogue!” The strong-willed and domineering Vasilisa evaluates the new guest even more categorically.
V a s i l i s a. Who are you?
Luk a. Passing... wandering...
V a s i l i s a. Passerby... too! He would say he’s a rogue... getting closer to the truth...
Even a superficial analysis of the semantics of these verbal pairs “kikimora - rogue”, “passer-by - rogue” gives an idea of the author’s attitude towards his hero. In the film script “On the Way to the Bottom”, which was created in 1928–1930, which was never completed, Gorky managed to present the past life and the curve of descent into social insignificance of only several characters in the play, including Luka. There, in the script, Luka, the village headman, bought meadows from the landowner, and the peasants at the gathering understand that “now the headman will squeeze the blood out of us.” The fact is that the landowner leased the meadows to the rural community, and it fairly divided the hayfields. Now the peasants will have to deal not with the community, but with a world-eating fist emerging from their own midst, dictating its terms to each individual owner. The village elder Luka has one more, even two no less serious sins on his conscience. He forces the wife of a young peasant dependent on him to live with him, who, unable to bear the shame, hanged himself.
He really had reason to come to repentance, to humility, to preach goodness and pity in his declining years - essentially false and hypocritical. And his name speaks volumes about the character of this person, if you build a semantic series: Luke - crafty - wickedness. By the way, Vaska Pepel directly called him “the evil old man” in the third act. Luka is a type of character that does not have any solid foundations; he is for all occasions, “like crumb for the toothless” (Satin), “like a plaster for abscesses” (Baron). He suits everyone, is good for everyone, for those who have a weak-willed, weak or unstable nature - Anna, Nastya, Actor, Tatar, with them he is obsequious, soft, hypocritical, pitiful. Others are too tough for him, they most often put him in his place (Vasilisa, Kostylev, Kleshch); Luke is ambiguous or cynically frank with his equals in unscrupulousness, Baron and Satin. And they feel a kindred spirit in him, inviting him to drink with the money they dishonestly won from the Tatar.
And yet, he stirred up the sleepy, drunken, indifferent swamp of the flophouse, “he, the old yeast, fermented our roommates,” as Satin says, either with admiration or with reproach, in the fourth act. Luke the Wanderer, like a litmus test, reveals the true essence of some who have resigned themselves to their fate and are content with words of pity and consolation (Nastya, Anna, Bubnov). He is also a catalyst of thought for others who are desperate, but have not lost the will to resist unfavorable circumstances (Tick, Ashes).
The content of the fourth act of the play is a dispute around the personality of Luke, who “disappeared from the police... like smoke from the face of fire” (Baron), and, mainly, around that lulling lie that is the essence of his preaching. Sporadically, this dispute arises earlier - in the second and third acts, but there those asking about the truth receive answers from the apostle of lies himself that are outwardly convincing, in any case, they have nothing to object to.
P epel. Old man! Why are you lying?
Luk a. What am I lying about?
P epel. In everything... For what?
Luk a. ...And what do you really need... Think about it! She really might be a bitch for you.
In the third act, Bubnov, stating that “people love to lie,” tries to understand why.
B u b n o v. Well Nastya – it’s understandable! She’s used to touching up her face... so she wants to touch up her soul... But why do others? Here - Luka, approximately... he lies a lot... and without any benefit to himself... The old man... Why would he?...
Luk a. It’s never harmful to caress a person... You need to feel sorry for people...
Unbeknownst to the perplexed Bubnov, lies “without any benefit for oneself” will be more dangerous than personally selfish lies; such lies are especially attractive and difficult to recognize in their true essence. It is noteworthy how Luka exposed himself in conversations with the dying Anna, how his ends meet. Here he describes what bliss awaits Anna when she is “called to the Lord,” how the Lord orders to take her to heaven. And he persuades his interlocutor: “You die with joy, without anxiety... Death, I tell you, it is like a mother to small children...”. But the eternal instinct of life, perhaps for the last time, spoke in Anna, she somehow imploringly answers her comforter: “Well... just a little more... I wish I could live... a little bit! If there is no flour there... here you can be patient... you can!” And Luke, in irritation, mercilessly coldly responds to this dying melancholy, as if forgetting about the heavenly tabernacles promised to her in the next world: “Nothing will happen there!” The last remark confirms that he does not believe in the afterlife and deliberately lies to the dying woman.
It is no coincidence that even in the alcohol-poisoned memory of the Actor, after communicating with Luka, a favorite poem surfaced, which he had previously struggled to remember for a long time. Because the beloved, because it reconciles him with the realities of life, justifies his flight into the world of illusions. The beautifully lying Luka evoked these lines from the subconscious of the most bohemian inhabitant of the bottom: “Gentlemen! If the saint // The world cannot find the way to the truth, // Honor the madman who will inspire // Humanity with a golden dream.” Such a dubious honor was awarded here to the “truth lover” wanderer Luke.
And in answering Ash and Bubnov, he evades the essence of their question: what will the truth become for those who know it, is it harmful to caress a person, is it necessary to feel sorry for people - is that really what their questions are about! Luke is Jesuitically evasive, which his interlocutors intuitively, unconsciously feel. The following dialogue is far from accidental; its subtext is not accidental.
Having exhausted arguments or not finding them at all, having been defeated in verbal duels, Luke prefers not to insist on his own, but to moralize with a feeling of offended virtue. Here is the end of the above dialogue between him and Ash.
Luk a. Look! And I thought I sing well. This is how it always turns out: a person thinks to himself – I’m doing a good job! Grab - people are unhappy.
Outwardly conciliatory “Look!” and the subsequent morality play ends most of his verbal duels with the inhabitants of the flophouse. But they do not give answers that are adequate in directness and frankness to the questions of his opponents - Luke “talks” them. Baron and Satin, who claim to be spiritual leaders in this marginal society, live dishonestly, they are swindlers, so to speak, in life and do not hide it. In the scene of playing cards in the second act, Satin will say to the indignant Tatar, who caught them cheating, while collecting cards: “You know that we are swindlers. So, why did you play?” And Luka is an ideological swindler; he distorts other cards - and that is why his sermon will be more terrible.
Example 2
A shelter is a refuge for people whose lives have gone downhill. A dirty, uncomfortable room where there is no room for dreams and plans for life. For the inhabitants of the shelter, everything most important in life has already happened, they have no future, they are “former people.” They don't have last names. Some still have names, others only have nicknames. Actor: “Without a name there is no person.” Isn't this an indicator of the absolute uselessness of such people for society?
The fates of some heroes seem logical, others - incredible. Vaska Pepel is a thief, the son of a thief. In my opinion, from childhood I was doomed to such a life. The actor drank away his talent. Anna lies dying and considers her husband's beatings to be the cause of her misfortunes. Her husband, Kleshch, is waiting for her to die so that he can be freed from the burden and start working. What is stopping him now is unclear. The Baron's story seems surprising. He says that all his life “there’s been some kind of fog in my head.” It seems to him that throughout his life he only changed clothes: the uniform of a noble institute, a wedding tailcoat. He doesn’t remember what he studied, he doesn’t know why he married a bad woman. He squandered government money - he was dressed in a prison robe. Lived your life stupidly. 24-year-old Nastya tells about her life the same story in different variations, about tragic love. Nobody believes her, but this lie warms her. Satin was a smart guy who loved to make people laugh. He went to prison for the murder of his sister's abuser. Now he is a skeptic and a realist, the main opponent of a random wanderer who ends up in a shelter for a day.
Ordinary everyday skirmishes develop into real philosophical disputes as soon as old man Luka descends to the bottom of the “former people”. He treats everyone with respect, feels sorry for everyone, tries to console them and give them hope for a new life. Anna is consoled by the fact that after death she will finally rest. Nastya says that there was love, since she believes in it so much. He tells the actor about a clinic where he will be cured of alcoholism, and he will be able to reveal his talent again. Vaska is inclined towards marriage and a new life in Siberia, in the “golden side”.
Satin tries to argue, believes that the “bitter truth” is better than the “sweet lie.” These conversations leave no one indifferent. The actor lights up with an idea, stops drinking, and sweeps the streets to earn money. Vaska persuades his beloved Natasha to run away with him from his evil sister. But “former people” have no future. Anna dies in confusion, the Actor's willpower lasts for one day, and Vaska commits murder. The bottom drops even lower. Luka disappears, as does the hope for the best.
