Issues in the work Farewell to Rasputin's Mother

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Issues in the work Farewell to Rasputin's Mother

This story raises a number of problems and current topics. The works quickly attracted the attention of people of that time. Here it all starts with an environmental problem, which intertwines with others and creates a very difficult situation. The urban way of life is trying to bring rural concepts into the light. People are used to living simply, they have their own way of life and way of life. However, they prevent civilization from coming to these places. The conflict of generations is also clearly visible here: young people want to go to big cities, because it is impossible to realize their potential in the villages. What can you do here? Unless you grow vegetables and graze livestock. For young people, such prospects look unattractive. For the adult generation, and especially the elderly, their whole life is connected with Matera. They spent all their years here and on the verge of death have no desire to leave their native land. This is their land, their small homeland. Why do older people need large cities with their own rules, where no one needs old people?

Afterwards the themes of memory, life and death are raised. Old people's whole lives have been here; they don't need changes in the last years of their lives. These changes traumatize the elderly, which can hasten their death. Officials don’t think about, or rather, they don’t care one bit about what older people are feeling now. The way of life of a city and a village is fundamentally different. The city is full of new events, changes and movements. The village lives a calm and measured life, where everyone knows each other and can count on the help of their neighbors. In the city, everyone is on their own; in difficult times, no one will support you.

The younger generation has not realized the importance of memory and preserving traditions. This is also the fault of the previous generation, which means it did not explain or teach it. The work clearly shows how the government treats its people and vice versa.

The environmental problem has given rise to and helped highlight many other issues. The heroes, each in their own status and position, begin to think about a better life for themselves. As soon as civilization reached Matera, it demanded that the village be wiped off the face of the earth. By flooding Matera, the authorities want to improve the condition of the people. The authorities want to build a hydroelectric power station. However, no one thinks that changing the natural will entail more global problems. No one thinks that flooding the village will lead to flooding of nearby areas: fields, meadows. How can I fix this later? Will this cause environmental problems? In the future, the area may be constantly flooded, causing serious harm and danger to people.

What’s even scary for the residents is that their relatives are buried here. The memory of them will be erased from the face of the earth. Moreover, in front of relatives’ eyes, graves are destroyed and crosses are torn down, due to the fact that there will be tourists here. This attitude of the authorities embitters the people.

Problems of Valentin Rasputin's story “Farewell to Matera”

The story “Farewell to Matera” is a multifaceted work in which the author covers many problems. The book was written in 1976, but these problems are still relevant today. An ancient Siberian village located on an island is subject to flooding. This is not a whim of high authorities, but an urgent requirement of the time - a dam is being built for a power plant that will raise water in a large river and small rivers. We have to sacrifice 70 settlements, the island of Matera is also about to go under water.

Is it possible to avoid flooding? This is a question for scientists. Progress cuts to the living – people and land. But perhaps there was a way to get the necessary electricity in another way. It costs too much to build a dam. People are being deprived of their usual place of residence, the centuries-old way of peasant life is collapsing, the Russian village is being forcibly uprooted from the ground. Without these roots, everything instantly becomes somehow lightweight, ephemeral, worthless.

Residents of Matera are preparing to move to the “mainland”, to a state farm. Young people rejoice at the changes; the old way of life on the island does not appeal to them; it seems callous, long outdated. Middle-aged people approach change differently. Brigadier Pavel is too exhausted to appreciate the new prospects, but his wife Sonya greets them with pleasure. But the worst thing is for the old people who did not expect to live out their lives in a foreign land. They don't see themselves in a new life. It’s not for nothing that Yegor, who moved to the city, leaves so quickly for another world.

However, this is not the main thing - the old people are tormented by the thought that such a native, familiar, fertile land, where every path has been well-trodden, will go under water. The cemetery with family graves will also be under water, for the elderly this is a real tragedy. The feelings of the residents of Matera are not taken into account; the main thing for the authorities is to meet the deadlines allotted for flooding. The actions of the workers, ravaging the cemetery, cutting down bedside tables and crosses, cause a riot in the village. Sanitary cleaning of the cemetery is necessary, but it could have been done when all the inhabitants left the island.

What does the government offer in return for their native Matera, the island that their ancestors once chose with such love? A state farm on infertile land, on stones and clay, where black soil will have to be transported to a garden of one and a half acres. The houses here are well-equipped, but they were built thoughtlessly - there is water in the underground. It is impossible to keep a cow on a tiny plot; there is only room for chickens and pigs. This is also a big blow for collective farmers who are accustomed to their own milk, sour cream, and cottage cheese. Even the bravest mothers part with their cows; in the new place there are no pastures, no paddocks, no place for mowing.

The people on the island are different - some with blood, with pain, tearing themselves away from their native land, the hut. There are those who don’t mind anything - Petrukha, Klavka Strigunova, they can’t wait to get money for their houses. The unlucky Petrukha himself sets fire to his hut, a monument of wooden architecture, the transportation of which was somehow forgotten by the staff of the Academy of Sciences. But old Daria disposed of her home differently - she whitewashed it, dressed it up for her last journey, and decorated it with larch branches. She spent her home as a respected person, with all due honors.

Petrukha, a worthless little fellow, has not learned to think or work in forty years of his life. In the village they call him a windbag. His mother Katerina, having lived to an advanced age, cannot count on a calm old age. She, having lost all hope of bringing her unlucky son to reason, talks about the proper upbringing of children. Katerina seems that little depends on the teacher’s personality and the strength of his character; she cites the example of the dissolute Klavka Strigunova, whose children are affectionate and obedient.

But the children of the same Daria are good, decent people who treat their mother with deep respect. Daria herself can be called the conscience of the village, she is so reasonable, firm, and wise. This means that, in fact, everything depends on the personality of the adult; Katerina simply found a convenient explanation for her own mistakes. She consoles herself with the hope that her son will get married. her dreams of her son's marriage are unrealistic, Petrukha twice tried to arrange his personal life, but the women, having gotten to know him better, ran away from the island. Lazy empty-headed men have never been in demand among the opposite sex.

Pavel, Daria's son, does not want to part with Matera; he is not satisfied with the new place. In order for life here to become truly comfortable, a lot of work will have to be done, and it will cost the state a pretty penny. Was it worth putting Matera, which was convenient in all respects, under water for this? For centuries, excellent harvests were harvested on the old fertile land; there was a place for mowing, hunting, fishing, picking mushrooms and berries.

Pavel feels sorry for his mother, realizing that in the new village everything will be alien and disliked to her. And Daria feels guilty before her deceased relatives for not being able to save Matera and pass it on to her children and grandchildren for use. But are Daria, Pavel, and other mothers to blame, did anything depend on them? All subsequent generations will have to pay for the decision of the high authorities.

Moral problems in V. Rasputin’s story “Farewell to Matera”

V. G. Rasputin is a writer who, in his works, reveals concepts that at all times have not lost their relevance and paramount importance: morality, humanity, mercy, determination. (slide 2)

Each person has his own small homeland, that piece of Earth that remains in the heart of a person for eternal memory. Rasputin also has such a “piece” - this is his native village of Atalanka near the Angara. Nature, so familiar from childhood, comes to life in his books. (slides 3-4)

In 1972, Rasputin wrote the essay “Up and Down the Stream.” The hero of the essay is sailing on a boat to the village to visit his parents. True, his native village where he grew up is no longer there: it was flooded and remained at the bottom of a man-made sea, along with a cemetery, vegetable gardens, and meadows. The essay is autobiographical: it talks about Atalanka. He embodied her fate in the story “Farewell to Matera” (slide 5)

The story was published in the pages of Sovremennik magazine in 1976. (slide 6)

Rasputin admitted: “I could not help but write “Mather,” as sons, no matter what they are, cannot help but say goodbye to their dying mother.
This story is, in a certain sense, a milestone in literary work.” (slide 7)
The main moral problems in the story:

the problem of human gratitude for what past generations have done and responsibility for the future;
the problem of young people who do not feel part of a single chain of generations;
the problem of true patriotism;
problems of conscience, morality and honor.
Problems of preserving traditions.
Searching for the meaning of human existence and human memory.

Matera is both an island and a village of the same name. Russian peasants inhabited this corner of the Earth for three hundred years. Rasputin writes: “The one who first discovered Matera decided that this land could not be found better.”

The lands here are excellent, rich, fertile and productive.
Life goes on slowly, without haste, on this island, and over those more than three hundred years, Matera has made many people happy. She accepted everyone, became a mother to everyone and carefully fed her children, and the children responded to her with love. But Matera leaves, and the soul of this world also leaves. (slides 8-12)
Matera is living his last days, the last summer of his existence. There were rumors that they were building a dam for a power plant, many lands would be flooded (especially Matera), and the residents would be transported to a new village under construction. (slides 13-15)

The death of Matera is a difficult time for the village residents. And difficult times are always a test for a person; character, soul are revealed in such moments, it becomes clear who is who. For a writer, a person’s attitude to his native land, small homeland, and his roots is important.

What a grief this is for the elderly. Having lived their whole lives in their native Matera, now they need to leave their homeland, leave everything that they have lived with for so many years. Grandma Daria’s soul was bleeding, because she was not the only one who grew up in Matera. This is the homeland of her ancestors, and Daria herself considered herself the keeper of the traditions of her people. She sincerely believes that “they only gave Matera to us to keep... so that we could take good care of her and feed her.”

Is it really necessary to flood fertile lands, uproot people from their homes, and turn their souls upside down? It would seem that hydroelectric power stations are being built for the benefit of the people, in the interests of the state, our state is a people's state. But can any goals be justified? The transformations are being carried out using barbaric methods.

Let us turn to a very important episode - the scene of the destruction of the cemetery

.
(slide 16)
Grandfather Bogodul was the first to know about the ruin. On the one hand, old men and women are the only ones who stand up to defend what is dear to them, what is sacred, to protect memory, and on the other hand, there are the so-called officials and soulless executors of their orders.

Let's read the remarks from each side.

The spiritual callousness and indifference of these people and officials is striking. Benefit for millions and blasphemy over dozens are incompatible things!

The writer endows officials with caustic characteristics: Vorontsov is a tourist, i.e. a man walking carefree on the earth; A gypsy beetle is a person without a homeland, without roots, a tumbleweed is a field.

Words of literary critic Yu. Seleznev : “
If the land is a territory, then the attitude towards it is corresponding. The land, the native land, the Motherland is being liberated, the territory is being seized. The owner is on earth; on the territory - a conqueror, conqueror. A person who sees only “territory” in the earth is not too interested in what came before him or what will remain after him...
So who is this land for us: a little land - a breadwinner or a territory?
Who are we on this earth: masters or temporary aliens? We came, stayed and left on our own - we don’t need the past, we don’t have a future? They took everything they could, and then there was even a flood, small, “maternal” or worldwide...” (slide 17)

Unfortunately, only old men and women remained loyal to Matera. Young people live in the future and calmly part with their small homeland. It’s sad that conscience evaporates so easily, the loss of which Rasputin’s heroes directly associate with a person’s separation from the earth, from his roots, from age-old traditions, from his family.

The author speaks ironically and condemningly about those mothers who live by the principle: “Just to live today,” calling them with a capacious word - “sowing.”

This is, first of all, Katerina’s 40-year-old son Nikita Zotov, popularly nicknamed Petrukha for his drunkenness, sloppiness, and worthlessness. The limit of his fall will be the mockery of his own mother and the burning of his home. He left his mother without a roof, without a crust of bread, her beloved samovar turned into a melted ingot . (slides 18-20)

Katerina, running, screamed and began to wail, stretching out her hands to the burning hut, leaning over in sobs, bowing in her direction... When the top of the hut collapsed and there was no hut, people’s attention to the fire weakened.

As if by some kind of instigation, they looked back at Petrukha. They looked back at Katerina, who was sobbing, and felt more pity for her, but they kept their eyes on Petrukha. How is he? What is he doing? What is he experiencing now? Happy or scared? Petrukha stood, rubbing his bare chest with his hands and restlessly twitching his head; the inquisitive glances of people angered him. It's been a long time since

from the time his mother came running, he was tormented by the fact that she didn’t come up to him, didn’t ask or scold him, didn’t shame him, she seemed to have completely forgotten about him, abandoned him, so Petrukh was tempted to come up to him himself and remind him that he was here, to see how the mother will behave. And now, having become angry, he made up his mind and, approaching, said - yes, it was so impudent and rude that he himself was scared:

- Mother, let me smoke.

Uncomprehendingly and still sobbing, she raised her face to him.

Without regret, she is ready to burn down her home for money, where her father and grandfather, Klavka Strigunova, lived. She curses Matera and the mothers who clung to the village. “We should have drowned him a long time ago,” she says.

This is Pavel, the son of the old woman Daria. Yes, he is worried, his soul is reluctant, he would like to help, prevent, but he resigns himself. He never found the time to fulfill his mother’s request: to move and rebury the remains of his grandfather’s and grandmother’s ancestors.

It is necessary - that means it is necessary, but, remembering how the land will be flooded, the best, well-groomed and fertilized for centuries by grandfathers and great-grandfathers and nourished more than one generation, my heart sank in disbelief and alarm: isn’t the price too high? Wouldn't you like to overpay?

“No, I’m obviously getting old,” Pavel put himself in his place. “I’m getting old if I can’t understand. The young people understand. It never occurs to them to doubt it. The way they do it is how it should be .
(slide 21)
And his son Andrei, Daria’s grandson, he perceives life superficially. His desire to work on the construction site of the century, to be at the forefront, is commendable. He won’t burn the hut, but the island is not dear to him either. You can’t be Ivans who don’t remember their kinship!

Let's talk about those for whom the earth is their breadwinner. It must be preserved, preserved for descendants. They feel like masters, so everything that grows on this land is theirs for them, dear, blood. You can’t help but remove the potatoes (slide 22)

you can’t help but mow the grass
(slide 23)
And they worked with joy, with a passion that they haven’t experienced for a long time. They waved the Lithuanians as if they wanted to show who knew better the business, which here, along with this land, would have to be left forever. Having swung themselves, they fell onto the cut grass and, intoxicated, excited by the work, undermined by the feeling that this would never happen again, they egged each other on, egging each other on with the old and the new, what was and was not. And the middle-aged women grew younger before each other’s eyes, knowing that immediately after this summer, no, immediately after

this month, which miraculously brought them ten years back, will immediately have to grow older by ten years. They talked, played, fooled around like little kids... It was a bitter, but a holiday, when two people rushed to each other, who had not seen each other for many years, who had already lost and forgotten each other, and, having met, found each other, hugged in the middle of the street, screamed and sobbed to the point of devastation, to the point that my legs gave out. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers brought their children with them, invited strangers to show them the land from which they came and which later would no longer be seen or found.

It is impossible to read the pages of Yegor and Nastasya’s departure without trepidation. She finds no place for herself, rushes around the hut, rushes to every thing with words of justification and affection.

“After that, she began to slander almost everything she touched. “And you, let’s go, let’s go, don’t hide. I won’t leave you, without you I’m like without hands. And don’t ask, I won’t leave you. That’s how I would stay, but I can’t.” “Oh, I completely forgot about you. You climb too, there is room here. Climb, climb." “I would be glad, but how? How will I take you? It would be nice to take it, but it won’t work. Stay - what can you do? I’ll come and we’ll see each other.”

Finally, Daria is a person with an amazing soul. (slide 24)

She feels the holiness of the cemetery so much that she cannot come here with a restless soul. She comes here to talk with her father and mother, and is ordered to wash the hut and see her off, dressing her like a deceased person in the best possible clothes. Daria whitewashes the hut, washes the floor and window sills. Window. All night Daria mourned her hut, and the hut seemed to understand ... (slide 25)

What is a hut to her? This is her connection with her father and mother, with the past. She refuses the help of her friends, this is her duty to the memory of her ancestors. Her actions are incomprehensible to the arsonists.

When they left, Daria sat down on the rubble and, leaning against the hut, feeling the worn, rough, but warm and living tree on her back, she cried to the fullest of her misfortune and resentment - with dry, painful tears: this last one was so bitter and so joyful, a day given out of mercy.
It may also happen that before her death they will allow: okay, live until tomorrow - and what to do on that day, what to spend it on? Eh, how good we are all individually, and how recklessly and a lot, as if on purpose, we all do evil together! But these were her last tears. Having cried, she ordered herself that the latter, even if they burn her along with the hut, would endure everything and not make a peep. Crying means asking for pity, and she didn’t want to be pitied, no. Before the living, she is not guilty of anything - except for the fact that she has healed. But someone needs, apparently, and this, it is necessary, for her to be here, now tidying up the hut and seeing Matera off in her own way, in her own way. (slides 26-29)

The author is on the side of people like Daria, Nastasya, Egor, Bogodul.

On the record:

“Farewell to Matera” is a story about how Matera, the island and the village that existed on the island for more than three hundred years, perish due to the fault of people, conquerors of nature. This is a story about a destroyed and flooded house. People forgot the age-old commandments, they spent their souls - they did not notice how they lost them. Your memory and history. Love for the Motherland, for the graves of parents. Daria is sure that the truth is in memory. He who has no memory has no life.

The story ends tragically. The boat, which was supposed to pick up the last inhabitants of Matera, got lost in thick fog. (slides 30-32)

On the record:

By committing reprisals against nature, people destroy themselves: memory, morality, soul.

Rasputin's story sounds like a warning! (slide 33)

(slide 34)

“Problematics of V. Rasputin’s story “Farewell to Matera””

“Farewell to Matera” was written in 1976, and a year later it was published in the magazine “Our Contemporary”. The story immediately attracted attention, as it raised both current problems of its time and eternal questions of human existence. This is also the problem of the environmental consequences of scientific and technological progress, the onset of the “urban” way of life on the few remaining corners of the “rural” way of life of people, untouched by civilization.

The story also reveals eternal problems: relations between generations, life and death, memory, the search for the meaning of human existence, conscience, love for the Motherland.

In a small work, Rasputin was able to show us the global problems of human existence on earth and in society. He showed the differences between urban and rural ways of life, the destruction of traditions by the younger generation, and the attitude of the people towards power.

In the story, the environmental problem is intertwined with many others. But it is precisely from here that the tangle of moral and philosophical reflections of the heroes begins to unfold. Science and technology have reached a remote Siberian village and demand that it be completely wiped off the face of the earth. We all understand that the flooding of Matera is explained by goals aimed at improving the well-being of the entire people. A hydroelectric power station is being created on Angara, which will generate electricity for the entire country. But at the same time, the river will overflow, flood many floodplain meadows and lands, and the ecological situation here will change.

On the other hand, relocation from an island that will be flooded to new uninhabited places is a tragedy for the old residents of the village. And not only because everything in the city is foreign and unusual, but also because on this island the graves of their ancestors will have to be left “to be drowned.” In front of the heroes’ eyes, they begin to plunder graves and burn crosses, explaining it this way: “You know, the sea will overflow in this place, large steamships will sail, people will travel. Tourists and foreign tourists will go. And here your crosses are floating.”

“Administrative people” do not understand the feelings of the residents of Matera, for whom the cemetery is the “home” of their departed relatives. This is the place where they remember their ancestors, talk to them, and this is the place where they would be brought after death. The residents of Matera are being deprived of all this, and even before their own eyes. People understand that flooding will still happen, but “this cleanup could have been done in the end so that we won’t see…”. So in the story the problem of power and people arises.

It turns out that the national goal requires human sacrifice, the welfare of the entire people, and not individuals, comes first. But it is precisely from individuals that a nation consists. And it turns out that the state, the government, cares not about the members of its society, but about itself. In principle, this has always been and will be so. That is why clashes between the authorities and the people arise. The authorities want to transfer people who have lived their whole lives in the countryside to urban conditions. But the village dweller is not adapted to such a “hard” life, where water, electricity, and gas are in the house, and you don’t even have to go anywhere. In the apartment, he feels his uselessness, his lack of involvement in life. But a person cannot feel useless for a long time. It is no coincidence that grandfather Yegor, who moved to the “apartment”, dies there a few months later. So he was tormented by longing for home, for his beloved island, for work.

The writer shows how ties with Matera weaken from generation to generation. Daria's son Pavel is no longer sure whether the old people are right in their fierce defense of the island, and his son Andrei is arguing with his grandmother about technical progress. He sees no point in the further existence of the island and agrees to give it up “for electricity,” thereby renouncing his home, his homeland and uniting with “officials” for whom the inhabitants of Matera are “submerged citizens.”

The author is not at all against progress, but he sees that behind it a person is lost, he is no longer visible to his full height. No wonder Rasputin puts the words into Daria’s mouth: “You will completely lose yourself along the way.” This heroine sees that it is no longer machines that serve people, but people who serve machines. And that man, chasing progress, has changed a lot. Previously, there were few people, there was enough conscience for everyone, but now - just not to forget this word altogether, just to explain it in words. But people are in a hurry, they don’t even have time to think about it.

“Farewell to Matera” also touches on the problem of life and death. Why does a person live? The author is sure that a person lives in order to prepare the lives of new generations and leave them with spiritual experience. And a person dies in order to let his descendants live. This is a natural process of nature. People live full lives only if they feel connected to previous generations. That is why the old people of Matera wish for death now, while they live on their land, in their home, with people they know.

So, we see that Rasputin raises in the story problems that concern people at all times. But he only shows them; we, the younger generation, will have to solve these problems.