- Summary
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- Belyaev
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- Amphibian Man
Year: 1927 Genre: story
The main characters: Doctor Salvatore, his son Ichthyander, the owner of the fishing schooners Zurito and Gutiera - Ichthyander's beloved.
The brilliant doctor Salvatore transplants gills into a boy to save his life. He grows up and meets a girl named Gutierre. But pearl fisherman Pedro Zurita wants to marry her. Zurita also hunts Ichthyander, thinking that he is a sea devil. Ichthyander, trying to save Gutierre, falls into the hands of Zurita. Balthasar, Guttiere's father, learns that Ichthyander is his son and tries to save him from the hands of Zurita. It all ends with Salvatore being sent to prison, but before that, he manages to send Ichthyander on a long journey across the oceans to his friend.
This work teaches resistance to evil and meanness, and the belief that kindness and honesty will pay off in full.
Read the summary of Amphibious Man Belyaev
At the beginning of the story, we meet the owner of the pearl fishing schooner Pedro Zurita and his assistant Balthazar. They hunt off the coast of Argentina and, one day, stumble upon an unusual creature - a sea devil. There are a huge number of rumors about this mysterious inhabitant of the sea. But no one has ever seen him. Pedro Zurita was not only able to see him, but also heard him speak in the purest Spanish.
Zurita decides to catch him. Together with his team, he ambushes him, and Ichthyander falls into the set up net. But at the last moment he managed to cut the bonds that bound him and escape into the sea. Having examined the bottom of the sea where the devil was caught. Zurita finds a metal grate in one of the grottoes. Realizing that this could not have happened without human intervention, he decides to explore the entire coast.
Walking along the shore, he comes across a large hacienda, surrounded on all sides by a solid fence. It belongs to Doctor Salvatore, whom the Indians worship as a god. The doctor treated them for free, sometimes helping the hopelessly ill.
Zurita decides to send a spy to his house. Balthazar's brother Christo agreed to this role. With the help of a sick girl he brought for treatment, Cristo meets the doctor and then becomes his servant.
In this house he sees many miracles and amazing creatures. But he can’t manage to get into the fenced-in courtyard, where he thinks the sea devil might be.
And then Christo decides to make sure that the doctor trusts him completely. For this purpose, he, along with Zurito and Balthazar, stages an attack by bandits on the doctor, during which Cristo saves him and helps him escape. The plan works great. And now Salvatore trusts him completely. And when Ichthyander’s servant falls ill, Christo successfully replaces him.
The sea devil turns out to be a young man named Ichthyander. Long ago, Dr. Salvatore transplanted gills into a sick boy. The operation was successful, and now Ichthyander can breathe with the help of his lungs on land, and with the help of his gills in the water.
The attackers planned to lure Ichthyander into the city. Taking advantage of the fact that this young man once saved a drowning girl and since then has been madly in love with her. Cristo promises to help him in his search. Choosing a moment when the doctor was not at home, Ichthyander and Christo go into the city.
In Buenos Aires, he brings Ichthyander to Balthazar's shop. And while the two attackers are discussing how best to organize the kidnapping, Balthazar’s daughter Gutierre arrives. She turns out to be exactly the girl who was saved by Ichthyander. Taken by surprise and embarrassed, he runs out of the shop, reaches the sea, and swims home. This is how the kidnapping plan suddenly breaks down.
Having learned who Gutierre is and where she can be found, Ichthyander begins to follow her. One day, while handing over a pearl necklace to his friend Olsen, Gutierre drops it into the sea. Ichthyander dives and gets it. This is how he speaks to her for the first time.
But Pedro Zurito has designs on Guttiere. Taking advantage of the fact that Balthazar owes him a large amount of money, Zurito seeks Gutierre’s consent to become his wife.
Having married, he takes his young wife to the estate. Ichthyander follows them. Having penetrated the estate, he falls into the hands of Zurita.
Pedro, realizing that Ichthyander loves Gutierre, tricks the young man into promising to catch a large number of pearls. Ichthyander fulfills his promise, but Zurita refuses to let him go. Taking advantage of the team's rebellion, Ichthyander manages to escape.
Balthasar learns from his brother Cristo that Ichthyander is his son. This became clear from the birthmark on his shoulder. Balthazar sues Dr. Salvatore demanding the return of his son. During the trial, the details of the doctor's experiments and the origin of Ichthyander are revealed. The doctor is sentenced to prison. But Salvatore, with the help of Olsen and Gutierre, manages to organize Ichthyander’s escape. The young man goes to visit a doctor's friend on the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The fate of all the characters subsequently turns out well, except for Balthazar. He goes crazy and constantly comes to the seashore and calls for Ichthyander.
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Read summary Amphibian Man. Brief retelling. For a reader's diary, take 5-6 sentences
Summary of Belyaev’s novel “Amphibian Man”
1927 Summary of the novel Readable in 12 minutes, original - 5 hours
A still from the film "Amphibian Man" (1961)
On a hot night, the schooner "Medusa" was anchored off the coast of Argentina. Pearl divers were resting on its deck. The night watch was carried by Balthazar, an Indian from the Araucanian tribe, the first mate of the captain and owner of the schooner Pedro Zurita. In his youth, Balthazar was a famous pearl diver. Having grown old, he opened a shop of marine curiosities and began working for Zurita.
Balthazar had already begun to doze off when he heard the musical sound of a trumpet, accompanied by a cheerful and young voice. Fishermen and pearl divers were alarmed - it was a sea devil. This unknown creature has long terrorized the coast, helping some and harming others. He cut nets, threw fish into the boats of the poor, and amused himself by making fun of the fishermen. Scientists could not classify this creature because no one had seen it. Zurita still didn’t believe in the sea devil at all.
In the morning it was discovered that the ropes of the boats tied to the schooner had been cut with a sharp knife. A little later, one of the divers saw the devil himself - a creature with scaly skin, huge eyes and frog legs. The devil saved a diver from a shark. Zurita again did not believe it, but soon he himself saw a strange creature sitting astride a dolphin and blowing into a large shell.
Convinced of the existence of the sea devil, Zurita decided to catch him and force him to work for himself. Balthazar began to help him. The devil appeared again only three weeks later. Having followed him, Balthazar discovered an underwater cave in which the creature was hiding. Strong nets were placed around the cave, but the devil caught in them managed to cut the ropes.
Zurita did not give up. He filled the bay with traps and nets, but the devil did not appear again. Finally, Zurita bought two diving suits and he and Balthazar went down into the cave of the sea devil. The cave turned out to be half filled with air, and in its depths a strong grate with a cunning lock was discovered. After searching around, Zurita came across a stone wall, behind which was the house of Doctor Salvator.
In Buenos Aires, Zurita learned that the doctor was famous for his daring operations. “During the imperialist war he was on the French front, where he was engaged almost exclusively in cranial operations.” After the war, Salvator returned to Argentina and took up science. He treated only Indians, who considered the doctor a god. Zurita realized that Salvator was somehow connected with the sea devil.
One day, the old Indian Cristo (Christopher) came to Salvator with his sick granddaughter. The doctor cured the girl. Out of gratitude, Cristo wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to the doctor. Salvator “reluctantly and cautiously took on new servants,” but there was a lot of work, and Cristo ended up in the doctor’s house. At first the Indian worked in the outer garden, enclosed by two high walls. Many strange animals lived there: two-headed snakes and rats, sparrows with the head of a parrot, llamas with horse tails and talking monkeys. This garden was maintained by very silent blacks.
Soon Salvator went to the Andes to find new animals for experiments, and planned to take Cristo with him. He asked to see his family, but actually went to his brother Balthazar. Zurita's assistant sent his brother to the doctor's house to find out about the sea devil. Having learned about the expedition to the Andes, the brothers made a plan: Salvator would be captured by “bandits”, and Cristo would save him, after which he would become the doctor’s confidant.
The plan was a success. Returning home, Salvator led Cristo into the inner garden. The doctor drained the pool dug in the middle of a small garden and went down the hatch. A long passage led them to a room with a huge aquarium that went straight to the seabed. A “humanoid creature with large bulging eyes and frog-like legs” emerged from the aquarium through a special chamber. The body of the unknown sparkled with bluish-silver scales.” The eyes turned out to be glasses, the paws turned out to be gloves, and the scales turned out to be a special heavy-duty suit. Beneath all this was a handsome young man named Ichthyander.
The young man called the doctor father, but he did not look like a white man. With regular facial features and dark skin, he resembled an Araucana Indian. Ichthyander could live underwater - Salvator implanted the gills of a young shark into his body. It was he who the fishermen considered the sea devil.
Ichthyander spent almost all his time in the ocean with his friend, the dolphin Liding. One day he saved a beautiful girl. She was unconscious and adrift in the ocean, tied to a board. Ichthyander carried the girl ashore. Seeing that she was coming to her senses, the amphibian man disappeared - he did not want to scare her. Soon, “a dark man with a mustache and a goatee, wearing a wide-brimmed hat on his head” appeared next to the girl and passed himself off as her savior. Ichthyander was amazed and outraged by such a blatant lie.
Christo became the servant of Ichthyander. The young man could spend little time in the air: when the gills dried out, the young man began to suffocate. Christo's duties included making sure that Ichthyander slept in a regular bed rather than in water several nights a week. Ichthyander received a good, but too one-sided education. He was well acquainted with the natural sciences, but knew practically nothing about life on land. In matters of everyday life, the young man understood worse than a five-year-old child.
Meanwhile, Salvator went to the mountains again. Ichthyander could not forget the girl he saved, and Christo managed to lure him into the city, promising to look for the beautiful stranger. Ichthyander did not like the hot and dusty city. Cristo led him to Balthazar's shop. While the brothers were talking, Balthazar's adopted daughter, Gutierre, entered the room. The girl was famous for her beauty and inaccessibility. Seeing her, the young man jumped up and ran away - he recognized her.
Some time later, Ichthyander himself came to Balthazar's shop. On the shore he saw Gutierrez handing over a pearl necklace to a tall, broad-shouldered man named Olsen. Suddenly the necklace slipped from the girl’s fingers and fell into the ocean. The place there was deep, and the necklace would have been lost, but Ichthyander got it. This is how the young man met Guttiere. Now they met almost every evening. Balthazar did not suspect that his daughter’s new beau was the sea devil.
One day Ichthyander returned home wounded - he was saving Liding from hunters. While bandaging the wound, Christo saw a large dark mole of an unusual shape on the young man’s shoulder. Despite the wound, Ichthyander came on a date with Gutierra. Suddenly a horseman rode up to them, whom the young man recognized: it was a man who pretended to be the girl’s savior. The rider, who turned out to be Zurita, said that the bride should not walk around with another on the eve of the wedding. Having learned that Gutierre was someone's bride, Ichthyandr began to choke and threw himself off a cliff into the ocean. Gutierre decided that the young man she liked so much had drowned. Balthazar again tried to persuade his daughter to marry Zurita, but the answer was again “no”.
After spending several days at sea, Ichthyander became sad. He found Olsen's boat in the sea. He told the young man that he was not Gutierre’s fiancé at all, and that quite recently the girl became Zurita’s wife - he took her away by force. Gutierrez and Olson were planning to escape to North America, but did not have time. From Olsen, Ichthyander learned that Zurita had taken the girl to his hacienda “Dolores”, and decided to go after her.
Ichthyander traveled half the way to the hacienda along the river. Then we had to go on foot. The young man was unlucky: on the way he met a policeman who found Ichthyander’s crumpled suit suspicious. There was a murder on a neighboring farm, and the policeman decided to blame it on a suspicious young man. He handcuffed Ichthyander and took him to the nearest village. Finding himself on a bridge across a pond, Ichthyander jumped into the water and pretended to drown. While the police were looking for the “drowned man,” Ichthyander reached the hacienda.
Once there, the young man tried to find Guttiere, but came across Zurita. He hit Ichthyander on the head and threw him into the pond. Gutierre heard a commotion in the garden, went out to the pond and saw a man whom she thought was dead coming out of the water. Ichthyander admitted that he is considered the sea devil. Zurita kept a watchful eye on his young wife and managed to overhear this conversation. He realized that the sea devil was finally in his hands. He saw that Ichthyander was handcuffed and threatened to hand him over to the police. Gutierre began to beg her husband to spare Ichthyander, and he pretended that he could not resist his wife’s pleas. He promised to transport Ichthyander onto his schooner and release him into the open ocean. However, once on the schooner, Zurita locked Ichthyander in the hold, and Guttiere in the cabin.
Meanwhile, an important conversation took place between the brothers Cristo and Balthazar. Balthazar's wife died during childbirth while Cristo was transporting her across the mountains. Then he told his brother that the child had also died. In fact, Cristo took the boy to Dr. Salvator, who reported that he could not save the child. Based on the birthmark, Christo recognized Ichthyander as his nephew. The news that his son was alive and had become a sea devil struck Balthazar.
The next day Salvator returned from the expedition. Christo told him that Ichthyander had been kidnapped. The doctor rushed to save the young man in a submarine hidden in a cave under the house.
In the morning, Zurita ordered Ichthyander to be brought onto the deck. The young man felt unwell. He could not live without clean water, but he had to bathe in a corned beef barrel. Having stunned the “sea devil,” Zurita chained him in a metal belt on a long chain and sent him to look for pearls, promising to release him after that. Ichthyander's catch amazed Zurita. He wanted more, but was afraid to release the amphibious man into the ocean without a chain. Zurita decided that he could keep the young man with the help of Gutierre, but she refused to help him.
Meanwhile, the crew of the schooner learned that there was a sea devil on board and rebelled. The sailors decided to kill Zurita. To escape, he climbed onto the mast and saw the doctor’s submarine approaching the ship. The frightened sailors jumped into the water. Zurita also left the ship, capturing the reluctant Gutierre. Ichthyander was not on the abandoned schooner. Salvator did not know that the young man was under water. Not far from this place a rich passenger steamer sank. Zurita forced Ichthyander to go down there and collect all the jewelry, showing him a fake note from Gutierre. The naive young man followed the scoundrel’s order and was already swimming to the shore when the girl managed to shout for him to save himself. Ichthyander decided to swim away from people.
Balthazar, meanwhile, found no peace. He wanted to snatch his son from the clutches of Dr. Salvator, who seemed to him a monster. He found a rogue lawyer who, on behalf of Balthazar, sued the doctor. He filed a lawsuit against Salvator and Zurit - he wanted to take possession of Ichthyander forever, becoming his guardian. The trial turned out to be loud, since the prosecutor and the bishop were against the doctor. After examining Salvator’s house and seeing the results of his experiments, scientists considered the doctor a brilliant madman. The doctor was calm for himself. He was only worried about Ichthyander, who was also kept in prison. At his trial, Salvatore stated that he wanted to create people of the future who could live in the ocean and use its inexhaustible resources.
In prison, Ichthyander had to live in a stinking iron barrel and eat raw fish. Such a life led to the fact that the young man could practically no longer breathe air. "The amphibian man turned into a fish man." Fortunately, the head of the prison owed a lot to Salvator - the doctor saved his wife and child. He learned that they wanted to kill Ichthyander as a “godless creature” and decided to save him. Olsen took the amphibian man out of prison. Once in the ocean, the young man swam to the Tuamotu Islands, where Dr. Salvator’s friend lived. The doctor himself hoped to be released from prison in a few years and reunite with his adopted son.
Gutierre saw Ichthyander swim into the ocean. She did not dare to appear before his eyes, fearing that the young man would refuse to swim away. The girl ran away from her abusive husband, moved to New York and married Olsen. Cristo remained to serve with Salvator, who had been released from prison and was preparing for a long journey. Only Balthazar, who was considered crazy in the city, remembered the sea devil.
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