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- Ostrovsky
- The theme of sin and repentance in the play The Thunderstorm
Sin is different for everyone. There is no unique concept of sin. Every person has done it at least once. After all, people are not sinless. When a person offends another, he also commits a sin. He feels guilty and remorseful. Atonement for guilt is repentance.
A fairly clear example of one of the sins can be seen in the drama by A.N. Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm", using the example of the main character Katerina.
Treason, what does it mean and what can it entail? For Katerina, she turned out to be destructive and sinful. As a result, she could not survive and lose her life.
In life, Katerina is a bright and kind girl who could not control herself. But she had her reasons. She got married when she was a very young girl. The mother-in-law was not the most loyal woman; she did not respect her daughter-in-law and considered her son’s property, as if she were just a thing in their house.
Is it possible to condemn Katerina for such an impulse of the soul that visited her heart? She just wanted a feeling of full rights in this story with Boris. She understood that what she had done was a sin that she could not forgive herself. But she asked to go with Tikhon, she didn’t want to stay. I understood that a sin could be committed.
Katerina tried so hard not to throw herself into the unconscious abyss of passion that dominated her. But love, which was this abyss, became a real sin for the young girl.
In family life, she was as if in a cage. And with Boris she was able to feel alive and free. Loving and beloved. After all, her soul needed this harmony and love so much.
But no matter how good it was for Katerina, she still committed a sin. He stroked her and pulled her like a load, lower and lower.
Having found one way out, seeing heavenly punishment in the thunderstorm, she decides to repent, but after confessing, everyone rejected and despised her. But did they have the right to do so? Perhaps even with such sin, she would have been much purer than those who condemned her most.
Seeing no other way out, she decides to commit another sin, which cannot even be compared with the previous one. She throws herself into the Volga in agony, deliberately taking her own life.
At the end of the drama, he dies along with Katerina, with the one who dared to throw herself into the despair of her life, which brought her love and freedom, but committing a sin. but the environment of that world is also perishing, which did not understand that such love and freedom is not afraid even of sin and destructive repentance.
Sin in Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm
The work raises the theme of sin and repentance. This topic remains relevant to this day. After all, a person’s life is full of disappointments when he has to come to terms with something, accept the fact that he needs to move on with his life. But sometimes this is very difficult to do. The situations in which a person finds himself can be completely different. But they all depend on one thing: what decision a person makes - will he take a desperate step or resign himself.
The main character of the work is Katerina, a young girl, Tikhon’s wife. She has an easy-going character and was brought up in patriarchal ways. But the fate of the girl, whose image appears to us pure and bright, is very difficult. The situation in which Katerina finds herself is shocking. The constant reproaches of her mother-in-law, Kabanova, a rude and despotic woman, injustice and Tikhon’s betrayal lead to the fact that the girl cannot come to terms with her fate. No matter how hard she tried to improve family relationships, nothing worked. And then the heroine, in the hope of happiness, indulges in a feeling of love for another - Boris. But the problems are not getting smaller; pangs of conscience haunt the girl. She constantly wonders whether she should confess to her husband. And yet Katerina can no longer hide her sin and tells everything to her mother-in-law and husband. This causes reproaches and scolding from the mother-in-law, who instructs her son to beat his wife... Even Boris, who, as the girl thought, could save her from torment, leaves for Siberia, fearing publicity from people. All this forces the heroine to make a fatal decision - to rush into the Volga. She is not afraid that this is a sin, because she cannot come to terms with her fate, accept the fact that she will not be happy, although she could constantly please her mother-in-law and become her husband’s slave. The only salvation for her is death.
In conclusion, I would like to say that sometimes a person’s choice depends on the situation in which he finds himself. The theme of despair and humility is evident in this work. The fate of the unfortunate girl Katerina and her tragic end confirm that coming to terms with anything can be very difficult and sometimes a desperate act may be the only way out.
Essay The problem of repentance in A. Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”
In Ostrovsky's play “The Thunderstorm,” moral problems were widely raised. Using the example of the provincial town of Kalinov, the playwright showed the prevailing morals there. He depicted the cruelty of people living the old fashioned way, according to Domostroy, and the riotousness of the younger generation. All the characters in the play can be conditionally divided into two parts: those who believe that you can receive forgiveness for any sin if you then repent, and those who believe that sin is followed by punishment and there is no salvation from it. Here one of the most important problems of man in general and “Thunderstorm” in particular arises. Repentance as a problem appeared a very long time ago. Then, when a person believed that there was a higher power and was afraid of it. He began to try to behave in such a way as to appease God with his behavior. People gradually developed ways to appease God through certain actions and deeds. All violations of this code were considered displeasing to God - sin. At first, people simply made sacrifices to the gods, sharing with them what they had. The apogee of such relationships is human sacrifice. In contrast to this, monotheistic religions arise, that is, those recognizing one God. These religions abandoned sacrifice and created codes defining standards of human behavior. These codes have become shrines, as they are believed to be written from above. Examples of such books are the Christian Bible and the Muslim Koran. Violation of oral or written norms is a sin and must be punished. If at first a person was afraid of being killed on the spot, then later he begins to fear for his afterlife. A person begins to worry about where his soul will go after death: eternal bliss or eternal suffering. One could get to blessed places for righteous behavior, but sinners go to places where they will suffer forever. This is where repentance arises, since a rare person could live without committing sins, and ending his life because of a few sins was scary for everyone. Therefore, it becomes possible to save yourself from punishment by begging God for forgiveness. Thus, any person, even the last sinner, receives hope of salvation if he repents. In “The Thunderstorm” the problem of repentance is the most acute. The main character of the tragedy, Katerina, experiences terrible pangs of conscience. She is torn between her legal husband and Boris, a righteous life and fall. She cannot forbid herself to love Boris, but she executes herself in her soul, believing that by doing this she is rejecting God, since a husband is to his wife as God is to the church. Therefore, by cheating on her husband, she betrays God, which means she loses all possibility of salvation. She considers this sin unforgivable and therefore denies the possibility of repentance for herself. Katerina is a very pious woman; since childhood she has been accustomed to pray to God and even seen angels, which is why her torment is so strong. These sufferings bring her to the point that she, fearing God’s punishment, personified in the form of a thunderstorm, throws herself at her husband’s feet and confesses everything to him, putting her life in his hands. People react to this recognition in different ways, revealing their attitude towards the possibility of repentance. Kabanova offers to bury her alive in the ground, that is, she believes that there is no way to forgive her. Tikhon, on the contrary, forgives Katerina, that is, he believes that she will receive forgiveness from God. Katerina believes in repentance because she fears that she will die suddenly - she fears not because her life will be interrupted, but because she is afraid to appear before God unrepentant, with all her sins. People's attitude towards the possibility of repentance is manifested during a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm represents the wrath of God, and therefore people experience fear when they see a thunderstorm. Some are trying to come up with something. For example, Kuligin wants to build lightning rods and save people from thunderstorms, because he believes that people can be saved from God’s punishment if they repent, then God’s wrath will disappear through repentance, just as lightning goes into the ground through a lightning rod. Dikoy believes that it is impossible to hide from the wrath of God, that is, he does not believe in the possibility of repentance (although it should be noted that he can repent, since he throws himself at the feet of a man and asks for forgiveness for cursing him). Pangs of conscience drive Katerina to the point where she begins to think about suicide. Suicide in Christianity is one of the most serious sins. It was as if man had rejected God, so the suicides had no hope of salvation. Here the question arises: how was such a devout woman like Katerina able to commit suicide, knowing that by doing so she was destroying her soul? Maybe she didn’t really believe in God at all? But this can be contrasted with the fact that she considered her soul already ruined and simply did not want to live further in such torment, without hope of salvation. Hamlet’s question arises before her - to be or not to be? To endure torment on earth and know the evil that exists here, or to commit suicide and end your torment on earth. But no one knows exactly what happens after death and whether it will be worse. Katerina is driven to despair by the attitude of people towards her and the torment of her conscience, so she rejects the possibility of salvation. But in the denouement it turns out that she has hope of salvation, since she does not drown in the water, but breaks into an anchor. The anchor is similar to part of the cross, where the base represents the Holy Grail - the cup with the blood of the Lord. The Holy Grail symbolizes salvation. And Katerina is bleeding from her head. Thus, there is hope that she was forgiven and saved.
The theme of sin in Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is not just a master of drama. This is a very sensitive writer who loves his land, his people, its history. He is attracted to his plays by their amazing moral purity and genuine humanity. His characters are people of their era, and at the same time, much about them is close to us. They commit good and bad deeds, they rejoice and suffer, they love and cheat, some live honestly, some live immorally.
Getting to know them, we should think about our lives, about the lives of our loved ones, friends, about our morality. After all, sin in the broad sense of the word is a violation of some principles of universal morality.
In Ostrovsky’s plays there is always a protest against the humiliation of a person, against businessmanship, against the substitution of moral ideals, when decency is valued much lower than a profitable position, when true love gives way to a “profitable match.” These are not just signs of a bygone time, these are symptoms of a serious and protracted illness, which you and I also have to fight.
“The Thunderstorm” was written in 1859, after Ostrovsky’s trip along the Volga. This trip enriched the writer with new impressions, giving him the opportunity to get acquainted with the life of the population of the Upper Volga, with the main crafts, customs, rituals, songs, and with the nature of the region. The heroes of the “dark kingdom” live without even suspecting how ugly and dark it is, this “kingdom”. Here merchants undermine each other's trade, tyrants mock their households, here they receive information about other lands from ignorant wanderers, here they believe that Lithuania “fell from the sky on us.” Ostrovsky showed a fictional city, but it looks very authentic. The author saw with pain how politically, economically and culturally backward Russia was, how dark the country’s population was, especially in the provinces,
One gets the impression that Kalinov is fenced off from the whole world by a tall fence and lives some kind of special, closed life. But can one really say that this is a unique Russian town, that in other places life is completely different, without sin and ignorance? No, this is a typical picture of Russian provincial reality; the playwright focused on the most important thing, showing the wretchedness and savagery of the morals of Russian patriarchal life. What is holding back its development? Why is there no place for something new and fresh here?
Because all this life is based on familiar, outdated laws that seem completely ridiculous. Clinging to the old, established, regulating all aspects of existence (economy, everyday life, family, morality) is a terrible brake on the development of any city, people, or state. This is standing still. Stagnation. Its consequences are terrible and sometimes unpredictable. First of all, it hits a person, either dulling him, turning him into a thoughtless performer, or forcing him to cunning, adapting, sinning, or causing him to feel a sense of protest. Stagnation is then possible when it is supported by people in power. These in Kalinov are Dikoy and Kabanova.
In the Wild there are features inherent in the people. Thus, he perceives natural phenomena in purely religious traditions. To Kuligin’s request to give money for a lightning rod, Dikoy proudly replies: *It’s all vanity.” When Kuligin declared that the thunderstorm is electricity, Dikoy, getting more and more angry and stamping his foot, exclaims with sincere anger: “What other electricity is there? Well, how come you are not a robber? A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we can feel it, but you want to defend yourself, God forgive me, with poles and some kind of rods.” Kuligin’s words, in Dikoy’s view, are already a crime against something that even he, Dikoy, respects.
A similar attitude towards the forces of nature is inherent in everyone: the Kalinovites, including Katerina, endowed with a heightened sense of conscience. How does Katerina perceive the thunderstorm? Like God’s punishment, which she cannot avoid, because even thinking about Boris is, in her opinion, a sin.
Dikoy is not an exception for Kalinov, but a product of the entire way of life of Kalinov. The scary thing is that such an attitude towards the family, towards the disenfranchised Kalinovites is perceived by everyone as the norm. A wild man can do anything: scold him for nothing, and, bowing, ask the man for forgiveness. “Truly I tell you, I bowed at the man’s feet. This is what my heart brings me to: here in the yard, in the dirt, I bowed to him; I bowed to him in front of everyone.” It wasn’t because I was bowing: they say, I can swear and bow to the peasant - please! Not out of remorse (I shouldn’t have offended a person). Such an unusual behavior of the tyrant is explained by the fact that the story with the man happened during Lent, when sinning is especially dangerous. But Dikiy’s religiosity, his fear of God’s punishment are far from truly Christian morality, from the humanity that Katerina is endowed with.
Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova is perceived as a strong and powerful character. She is the antipode of Katerina.
True, both of them are united by a very serious attitude towards Domostroevsky orders and uncompromisingness. It seems that she is sincerely upset by the decline in morality among the younger generation, the disrespect for the laws to which she herself obeyed unconditionally. She stands up for a strong, lasting family, for order in the house, which, in her opinion, is possible only if the rules prescribed by the house-building are observed. Any deviation from them is a terrible sin. Marfa Ignatievna considers herself a decent, sinless woman. By welcoming strangers, she is sure that she is doing a godly deed. But their praise, this oil that they pour on Kabanikha’s soul, admiring her and her order, is also a sin. Pride and hypocrisy are the vices inherent in this powerful and selfish woman. Marfa Ignatievna’s worst sin is that she casually destroys people’s destinies, dictating her will to them, determining their behavior, their attitude to the world and to each other. She destroyed Katerina, crippled Tikhon’s life, and encroached on Varvara’s fate. And all this is done under the guise of piety, with the name of God on the lips.
Son Tikhon is married. Until now, he lived only with her, his mother, with his mind, was her property, and never contradicted her in anything. As a result, he grew into a person deprived of independence, firmness, and the ability to stand up for himself. Weak-willed, timid, suffering from his mother’s harsh temper, he seeks oblivion in drunkenness, in this sinful vice. And the wife he came across was somehow strange, somehow not herself, not like everyone else. Yes, and he loves Katerina, cannot and does not want to keep her in fear, does not demand respect from her. The mother feels that her son is gradually leaving her power, that he has his own life, that he does not treat his wife as a master, but is drawn to her in his own way.
Respectful attitude towards parents is a very valuable quality. Yes, I’m just worried about Tikhon: he’s mortally tired of power, the eternal grumbling of “mama,” but he won’t be able and won’t dare to protect either himself or Katerina. Tikhon is not ready to play the role of husband, head of the family. He cannot command Katerina’s respect. His spiritual needs are insignificant. And a man is a protector; he should take care of the family and its well-being.
Varvara is not like that. She is bolder, more cunning, more lively than Tikhon. Her limited life experience told her that for her own peace of mind and to avoid troubles, it is best to live according to the principle of “closet and cover,” to deceive, deceive, and sin. She does not see anything immoral in that, she is not tormented by remorse, she tries to take from life what she can with the least possible losses. True, her requests are small - to walk to her heart's content with her beloved Curly and not have to account to her mother for every step she takes.
Katerina's sincerity, spontaneity, and emotionality cannot meet understanding in the world of lies and despotism. Her soul is cramped and heavy in the atmosphere of the Kabanovsky house. Everything turned against Katerina.
A proud, strong-willed woman, she was given in marriage to a weak, weak-willed man who is in complete submission to Tikhon’s mother. A spiritual, bright, dreamy nature, she found herself in an atmosphere of hypocrisy and lies, cruel laws, and fell in love with the wingless and dependent Boris. Freedom-loving, she constantly experiences domestic oppression and is forced to endure endless and unfair reproaches from her mother-in-law. Loving children, she is deprived of the joy of motherhood. She is very lonely in Kalinov.
In her memoirs, she poetizes her childhood, her life in her parents' home. And yet her character was formed precisely in the patriarchal-merchant environment. This is also the origin of her tragedy. There she was married off to Kabanova’s son; there, of course, they would never have understood her feelings for Boris.
In her dreams, Katerina created some special image, completely different from the real Boris, and fell in love with him, a mysterious, noble, unusual man, who turned out to be actually prosaic and weak.
Lethargic and uninteresting, in our eyes (but not Katerina’s!) he loses in comparison with Tikhon, in whom there is something lively and kind. The image of Boris is based on spinelessness, lack of life guidelines, clear moral principles, and self-esteem. As you know, for the sake of his sister, he endures his uncle’s bullying, being confident in advance that neither he nor his sister will receive a penny from Diky. Communication with Katerina did not elevate him, did not inspire him, but turned out to be only a new burden, aggravating his situation in life. People like Boris are not hardened by life's trials, but rather bent to the ground.
Katerina loves strongly, deeply, selflessly; honest, bright, sensitive, decisive nature, she is always true to herself. Saying goodbye to Boris seemed to draw a line. Returning home means spiritual death for her, a continuation of endless torture. In death, the thought of which is increasingly mastering Katerina, she dreams of finding true life - in the singing of birds, in the flowering of herbs. Therefore, death is depicted in her imagination in light, not dark, colors.
Over the religious fear of committing the most serious sin, suicide, the nature of a free bird, a passionate, rebellious character, prevails: “If only I could die now... It’s the same as if death would come on its own... but you can’t live! Sin! Won't they pray? He who loves will pray.” Katerina leaves this life with faith in mercy and compassion, with an ardent faith in love. And this is the main thing.
It is important that Katerina’s suffering aroused sympathy among the Kalinovites. The kind Kuligin advised Tikhon: “You should forgive her and never remember her. Themselves, tea, are also not without sin*. True, Katerina herself, endowed with such a heightened conscience, could hardly absolve herself of guilt. She publicly repents, judging herself with her judgment. Her death shocked the humble, drunken Tikhon, who began to see a terrible discovery: “Mama, you ruined her! You, you, you..."
The play still asks us many questions to this day. Why did Katerina die? Because she got a cruel mother-in-law? Because she, being her husband’s wife, committed a sin and could not stand the torment of contempt? If we limit ourselves to these problems, the content of the work is impoverished, reduced to a separate, private episode from the life of a merchant family and is deprived of its high tragic intensity. If Marfa Ignatievna had been kinder, softer, more humane, it is unlikely that tragedy would have happened to Katerina. But the tragedy might not have happened if Katerina knew how to lie, adapt, if she had not judged herself so harshly, if she had not executed herself for sins, true and imaginary, if she had looked at life more simply and calmly. But Kabanikha remains Kabanikha, and Katerina remains Katerina. And each of them reflects a certain life position, acts in accordance with its own principles, and is guided by its own views on sin and virtue.
After reading the play, we can agree or disagree with Katerina, accept her worldview or not, understand or condemn her actions, but everyone should certainly think about what is good and evil, life and death, sin and redemption.
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