Main characters
The book “Mother of Man” by Zakrutkin teaches the reader not only love for others, but also the ability to forgive mistakes. It doesn't matter whether it's peacetime or wartime. You need to treat others more humanely, learn to show empathy and forgive offenders in order to ease your own soul. The main characters of the work “Mother of Man” are:
- Maria is a young woman left alone in a burnt village;
- Sanya Zimenkova - 15-year-old Komsomol member;
- Werner Bracht - German soldier, 17 years old;
- the narrator is a retired military man who recalls the story of the main character.
Reflecting on the purity of the Mother of God, who met the narrator on a forest slope in the Carpathian mountains, he introduces the reader to the main character.
She bravely endured the loss of her own son, but was able to remain a noble and kind woman. The difficult trials of combat did not destroy the best human qualities in Mary.
Read the summary of Mother of Man Zakrutkina
From the first pages of the story we find ourselves in 1942 on the occupied territory of our country. Reading the lines of the work, you can see how Maria, the main character, prays to God to die quickly. And this is understandable, because shells were thundering all around, and the woman wanted to quickly get to her fellow villagers. But when she managed to see the farmers, she was horrified. The Nazis burned all the houses and drove the people along the road. And only one teenage girl did not want to obey the Nazis. She screamed that she did not want to go to Germany and serve the Germans. Her mother tried her best to calm her down, but she couldn’t.
The Nazis shot her. After everyone left, Maria came out of hiding and tried to help the seriously wounded Sasha, but she died in the morning. The woman, gathering her strength, buried her fellow countrywoman. This whole procession tired our heroine so much that she fell into a deep sleep.
Waking up some time later, she saw that she was alone in the field. All her fellow villagers were driven to Germany. Hungry and exhausted, Maria began to look for people; when she approached the beet field, she saw a hungry dog and cows that had not been milked for a long time rushing towards her. She felt sorry for the animals, and Maria decided to milk them. She gave the dog fresh milk and drank it herself. And the animals, as a sign of gratitude, even spent the night next to her. The author shows us the heroine as such a kind and merciful woman.
While rescuing the animals, Maria suddenly had the idea that she and the animals could take refuge in a small basement, which served her and her husband as a cellar for storing vegetables. And when she approached this place, she saw a wounded Nazi. He looked at her as if he was asking her for mercy. Remembering how the Nazis killed her husband and son, the woman wanted to plunge a pitchfork into his already bullet-riddled chest, but the word “Mom!” Werner, in Russian, forced her not only to lower her weapon, but also to help him. Motherly feelings awakened in her again, and in the German soldier she again saw her son. After all, he also had a mother somewhere who was worried about him. Having completed all the necessary procedures, Maria was still unable to leave. He died. And we again see what a sensitive heart a simple Russian woman had. She buried the body of her enemy.
Left alone, Maria decided to help her country. She understood that people could return to their places, and they would need help. Then the woman decided to start a household. She cut up the killed horse for meat and stored it for the winter, treating it with salt. And the bones went to the dogs who also lived with her. She often went to abandoned fascist trenches to collect things from dead soldiers.
Hardworking Maria will refurbish the old barn, where, in addition to the cows, other animals will live, which the heroine of the story saved. Without sitting idle for a minute, she, like a real needlewoman, created dresses out of bags, and washed, dried and neatly folded the rest of the things she found. The hardworking peasant woman collected the entire harvest of vegetables and stored them in the cellar.
One day, during the next harvest, Maria discovered seven children who miraculously escaped while their train was traveling from Leningrad. After washing and feeding them, the woman began to take care of the children as if they were her own child. At the end of the story we see how Maria gave birth to a son and named him after the deceased child - Vasya. This is exactly how the heroine of her people met our soldiers in her village. And it seemed to her that she had given birth not only to her son, but also to other children who were left orphans.
Death of a family
The narrator liked to walk in the park. There he often saw two elderly spouses who daily brought fresh flowers to the monument to the Madonna with a baby in her arms. He often thought about the life of Mary, who gave birth to Christ, who saved all people, and about the strong influence of the Mother of God on the fate of the planet's population. Suddenly the hero remembered a woman who had the same name.
A simple Soviet family lived in the village. Like other people, my parents worked on the collective farm. When the fighting began, my father was taken to war. After a short time, he returned without one arm and began to persuade his wife to leave the village. My father had a presentiment that very soon the Nazis would come to them .
But suddenly the man developed a high fever, so the family was unable to leave the village. It was captured by the Germans. The Nazis carried out a punitive operation: the villagers were killed and their homes were burned to the ground. Only pregnant Maria managed to survive because she hid in a haystack.
A few days later, Maria met two dogs, five cows and a small number of pigeons. She cleaned the cellar, which remained undamaged after the fire in the house, and began to live there. She also had to clean out a local well. The Germans, leaving the burned village, threw many corpses of their pets into it.
The woman ate vegetables from surviving gardens and fresh cow's milk. Once she sheltered a wounded fascist and cared for him for a long time until he died. There was no hatred for the occupiers in her soul.
Summary
Walking through the ancient Carpathian city, the narrator saw a statue of a “Madonna and Child in her arms” in a stone niche. He remembered the woman with whom he accidentally crossed paths during the war.
***
September night, shelling. Hidden in the corn, pregnant Mary lay pressed to the ground. The Germans burned her farm, and the surviving farmers were gathered into a column and driven away. On the way, Sanya Zimenkova began to be indignant, and the German fired a burst of machine gun fire at her. When everything calmed down, Maria crawled to the wounded woman. The girl turned out to be alive. The woman took her to the corn field, but at dawn Sanya died. Having dug out the grave with her hands, Maria buried the girl.
The Germans hanged the woman's husband Ivan and little son Vasya. Together with her husband, Maria worked in the third brigade of the Lenin collective farm. On the very first day of the war, Ivan was called to the military registration and enlistment office and sent to the front. A few months later he returned with an amputated arm.
Exhausted from hunger, Maria crawled to the vegetable gardens, where the farm’s half-fed cows and a dog were wandering around. The woman milked the cows, after which the animals began to follow her. The next morning Maria went to the farm: everything was burned and destroyed. Approaching her house, the woman remembered the cellar, where she could hide from the cold, bullets, and even live. Opening the cellar, Maria saw a very young German soldier sitting there, looking at her in horror. “Hate and hot, blind malice overwhelmed Maria,” she wanted to avenge the deaths of her relatives. But when the woman had already raised her pitchfork, the soldier quietly shouted: “Mom!” Maria let go of the pitchfork and fainted. The soldier's name was Werner Bracht, and he was wounded - a shrapnel stuck in his chest. Maria immediately realized that he would not survive, but she looked after him. When Werner Bracht died, the woman was again “left alone, surrounded by the dead.”
Soon another dog strayed to Maria, and the pigeons of one of the dead farmers flew in. The woman arranged the cellar so that she could easily spend the winter here. To prevent the unharvested crop from going to waste, the woman decided to collect it herself, hoping that people from the collective farm would come to the farm. Soon the chickens returned to the farm, sheep and three red horses strayed.
Maria had already lived without people for four months. One frosty December day, she went to a remote brigade site. Hearing voices and children crying, the woman discovered seven children hiding in a haystack. They were from an orphanage in Leningrad - when they were being transported by train, they were attacked by the Germans. The teachers and other children died, but they managed to escape. Maria took the children to her place, bathed them, and fed them. Soon the children began calling her mom and helping her in the fields.
April has arrived. One day at dawn contractions began. Having asked the children to leave, Maria gave birth to a son and named him Vasya. It seemed to her that “she gave birth not only to a son and those seven boys and girls, <...> but, shuddering from excruciating pain and happiness, she gave birth to all the children of the tormented land, demanding from her, the mother, protection and affection.”
At the end of April, scouts from the Guards Cavalry Regiment arrived at the farm. The narrator served in the same regiment. When they were heading through the village as a whole regiment, their commander approached Maria, knelt down in front of her and pressed his cheek to her hand.
***
Looking at the statue of the Madonna, the narrator thought that the time would come when “wars will disappear on earth, there will be no murders, robberies, lies, treachery, slander” and grateful people will erect a monument to the “woman-toiler of the earth” - the Mother of Man.
The hard life of a heroine
Autumn has come. It was necessary to prepare for the imminent cold weather. Maria equipped and insulated her home, built a stove, found a shelter for pets and stocked up on vegetables. On the collective farm field, she cut sunflowers and stacked them so that they would not spoil until spring, and also insulated the beehives in the apiary .
The woman worked a lot, so she had no time to grieve for her dead relatives. She thought only about her own unborn baby. In order not to go crazy from boredom, in the evenings she talked with the dogs that ran after her everywhere, and sang folk songs. One night, sheep came to Mary’s home, and then chickens and horses. Now she had to take care of them too. She fed the pets and took them to water.
The woman periodically left her own shelter to look for things that might be needed in the household. On a cold winter day, she found children who had been hiding from the Germans for several months. Then Mary gave birth to her own child. In such a situation, they waited for the advance of the Soviet troops and the retreat of the Nazis.
Plan and main idea
A summary of the story will allow students to write an essay on its plot. If you read “Mother of Man” in its entirety chapter by chapter, you can make the following plan:
- Peaceful life.
- The beginning of the war and the arrival of the Germans.
- Loss of family and arrangement of housing.
- The difficult life of the heroine.
- The birth of a child and the liberation of the village.
In his novel, the writer talks about the fate of a simple Soviet woman who was not broken by the loss of relatives and home. On the remaining ashes, she managed to revive life, despite the fact that there was fighting all around. Zakrutkin compares Mary with the Madonna and raises her to the heavenly heights of the Mother of God.
After reading the retelling of the work, it is worth reading the book in its entirety.
Instead of an introduction
Memories of the heroic deed of 29-year-old Maria were evoked in the narrator’s soul by a stone statue. During a trip to the Carpathian city, he liked to relax in the park. Next to the bench there was a stone niche, and in it was a sculpture of the Virgin Mary with a baby in her arms. Her appearance made me think about hundreds and thousands of mothers who experienced more terrible torment in their lives than she did. Among them was a young woman from a small village lost in the steppe. After the Germans arrived, she lost her family and home. Left alone in the area, Maria continued to fight and save everyone who needed help.
