Analysis of Leonid Andreev’s story “Petka at the Dacha”

History of creation

Work by L.N. Andreeva has her own writing history. The story “Petka at the Dacha” is based on the life story of a famous Moscow hairdresser and the writer’s namesake named Ivan - his memories of his childhood spent with a barber as an apprentice. During the life of the prototype of the main character, children from poor families worked like adults, because their parents could not support them with their meager salaries. The most common form of earning money was being an apprentice: for food and shelter, the children worked hard and learned the basics of craftsmanship. But the attitude towards them was appropriate - as servants who are indebted to their master.

Ivan Andreev lived a long life and was awarded an honorary diploma at a competition in Paris. The difficult memories of his childhood remained with him forever. But perhaps it was the thorny path that helped him achieve success and stay at the top.

The story was first published in the periodical “Magazine for Everyone” in 1899.

Option 2 summary Petka at the dacha

The hero of the story - Petka works as an errand in a hairdresser's salon. The poor child has nothing else left, otherwise he will die of hunger. And so the owner lets the child go to the dacha, where his mother works as a cook. Life in the lap of nature reminds a child of paradise. And he perceives returning to the city with horror.

The story talks about the isolation of city people from nature and the joy of returning to it. The social theme of the fate of poor children is also important.

The story begins with a scene in a disgusting hairdresser's. It's dirty, it stinks, there are curse words, people behave badly. And the child has to work hard, day after day - without any hope of improvement.

From this urban hell, Petka was lucky enough to get to the dacha with his mother. Naturally, it takes him several days to get used to his surroundings. But soon the child becomes himself again - a joyful, curious, cheerful boy. He plays, runs, fishes, and just enjoys life. Everything is fabulous for him, even the clouds seem like angels.

And soon they announce to him that it is time to return again to that gray, rough world. The child screams and cries as if his childhood is being taken away from him. The master and lady see his suffering and even sympathize with him. But for whom is it easy? And they, forgetting about the unfortunate person whom they could easily help, go to have fun.

And Petka returns to work at the hairdresser. There is his older colleague there - almost a teenager. So he tells dirty stories about visitors and behaves disgustingly. Petka understands that he himself is in danger of becoming like this.

The child does not have the strength to resist the surrounding atmosphere, to change anything in it, or at least, having gained strength at the dacha, to preserve childish purity within himself. One feels that here the hero is doomed to “join the ranks” of sad townspeople.

The story about Petka is based on a real story that happened to the writer’s namesake – a fashionable hairdresser.

The gist: what is the story about?

The main character is a ten-year-old boy Petya from a poor family. He was sent as an apprentice to the hairdresser Osip Abramovich, where he did hard work. The hairdresser looks angrily at the child, whispering threateningly: “Wait a minute!” This means that the child will face punishment. Petya always wants to sleep. He had fine wrinkles around his eyes and under his nose, and some nasty scabs on his head. He was thin and weak. It seemed to the boy that everything that was happening around him was not true, but just a dream. He was apathetic, but at the same time he was drawn to another place. This very different place turned out to be the dacha in Tsaritsyno, where Petya’s mother’s gentlemen lived.

The mother takes the child to the dacha, to the house where she worked as a cook for the owners. On the train, it was surprising and new for the boy to see changing pictures outside the window. He had never been to a village, so when he saw the clearings, forests and river, it all seemed strange but interesting to him. Over time, Petya became imbued with a new life. He realized that this was exactly what his soul, yearning for the unknown, asked for. He made friends with the boy Mitya, a high school student, who helped him get used to the new place, the two of them played and fished. Childish playfulness awoke in him, wrinkles disappeared from his face, and he gained a little weight. Nature revived the child. After staying there for some time, he breathed in freedom.

But suddenly they tell him that it’s time to go back. Petya became hysterical: he cried, fell and began to roll on the ground, but then calmed down and dutifully returned to the city. On the way back, the boy no longer watched the changing landscapes outside the window. When he found himself in the hairdresser, he again heard the screams of Osip Abramovich, shuddered and ran to his call. At night he told Nikolka about what a dacha was.

The main characters and their characteristics

The main characters of the story “Petka at the Dacha” are concentrated in one table, where the Many-wise Litrekon gave a description of each of them:

Moral issues of the story by L.N. Andreeva “Petka at the dacha”

Moral issues of the story by L.N. Andreeva “Petka at the dacha”

Lesson type:

lesson on introducing new material.

Goals:

• introduce students to the story of L.N. Andreev “Petka at the dacha”;
• develop skills: working with text, highlighting the main and essential, composing a message on a specific topic;
• continue work on the development of speech, logical thinking, memory, attention, imagination; to form the qualities of a moral personality;
• cultivate an interest in reading fiction.

Tasks:

• join the high moral and spiritual world of literature and painting;
• to awaken interest in the personality of L.N. Andreev;
• consider the moral problems raised by L.N. Andreev in the story “Petka at the Dacha” (joyless childhood, heartlessness, lack of sensitivity, compassion);
• awaken in them moral qualities: sensitivity, kindness, compassion;
• give an initial idea of ​​the features of L.N. Andreev’s style;

Methods:

dialogical, monologue, research, method of programmed tasks.

Equipment:

textbook “Literary reading. 7th grade, multimedia installation, presentations for the lesson.

DURING THE CLASSES

1. Organizing time

Working with an epigraph. Lesson objectives.

II. Teacher's opening speech

– At home you read L.N. Andreev’s story “Petka in the Dacha.” – Who is the main character of the work? -What is this story about? – Today in class we will talk about the difficult childhood of the hero, we will try to understand his feelings. The author of the story “Petka at the Dacha” is L.N. Andreev, in order to better imagine the personality of the author, we will take a short excursion to the L. Andreev House-Museum, which a group of guides prepared for us.

III.
Messages from the guides, accompanied by a presentation (Symbat, Abylay, Tatyana)
Appendix 1

1 student

.
(Symbat)
Leonid Nikolaevich is a famous Russian writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Each of his works is filled with compassion and love for all living things. He wrote famous stories for children - “Petka in the Dacha”, “Bite”.

2 student.
(Tatyana)
Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev was born in the city of Orel in 1871. In front of us is the house in which the writer spent his childhood.
On August 21,
1991, on the day of his 120th anniversary, a museum was opened here. His father was the son of the leader of the district nobility and a serf girl, his mother came from the family of a bankrupt Polish landowner. My parents barely got out of poverty, thanks to the fact that my father got a job in a bank, bought a house, and began to set up a household. He was respected for his extraordinary physical strength and sense of justice. The mother was a poorly educated woman, but endowed with the gift of a storyteller. She told the children fictitious stories, and it was impossible to separate fact from fable. Leonid Nikolaevich felt the gift of words in himself back in the gymnasium. He copied problems from friends, and in return wrote essays for them, but he dreamed not of literature, but of painting, and was passionate about drawing.

3 student.
(Ablai)
The walls of house No. 41 on 2nd Pushkarskaya remember a lot. From the windows of this living room he watched the life of the street. People of different professions lived here: shoemakers, tailors, carpenters... Here he met the future heroes of his stories.

Andreev associated many joyful and tragic moments with the walls of this house. His brothers and sisters were born in this house, here he survived the tragic death of his father and took on the burden of caring for a large family, from here he left to study at the distant St. Petersburg University.

1 student.
(Symbat)
He was a very talented person.
He drew beautifully and was an excellent photographer. L.N. Andreev was well acquainted with many writers and artists. His portraits were painted by masters of painting. This portrait was painted by the famous Russian artist Repin ( a portrait of L.N. Andreev is on display).
After the October Revolution, the writer lived in a dacha in Finland. He died in 1919.

Teacher.

So, we found out that in the story “Petka at the Dacha” Leonid Andreev describes the difficult childhood of the hero.
Many writers have addressed this topic. Such works of fiction include: (“Vanka”, “I Want to Sleep” by Chekhov, “Children of the Dungeon” by Korolenko)
. The theme of difficult childhood was widespread in the fine arts of the 19th century. Our guys have prepared messages about paintings that depict the difficult life of little workers.

IV. Student messages

.
Images of paintings are shown.
Presentation
(Orynbasar, Rsaldy)
Appendix 2

Painting “Troika. Artisan apprentices carrying water"

was painted by the Russian artist Perov in 1866. Child labor was considered commonplace back then. Cold and hunger forced these children to work for pennies in order to feed themselves and help their families. Tired children with great difficulty pull a huge barrel filled with water from the river; their path runs along the dull monastery wall. Some passerby, seeing the children doing such backbreaking work, decided to help, he pushes a heavy load from behind. Perov painted this painting in brown and gray tones to convey the plight of the children.

The painting “Date” was painted by the Russian artist Makovsky in
1883.
It depicts a mother and son who met after a long separation. It can be assumed that the difficult situation in the family and poverty forced the parents to send their son to study with some artisan. The boy is dressed in old trousers made of coarse gray linen and a worn shirt, over which is an apron. Apparently, the owner does not take very good care of his students: the little hero greedily devolves a bun brought from home. The mother looks at her son with pity. The meeting takes place in a cold hallway. The walls have darkened with time, the floor is earthen.

– Tell me, what feelings did you experience when looking at these paintings? (Joyless feeling, depressed mood, pity)

– What do you think helped the artists evoke these feelings in us?
(Colors, clothes of the characters, squalor of the premises, poses of the characters)
- And now, guys, let’s look at how the theme of difficult childhood is revealed in the story by L.N. Andreeva “Petka at the dacha.

— But before we move on to analyzing the work, you will complete the following task: Quiz “The Most Attentive Reader”

Quiz goals

: teach children to read texts of works of art; paying attention to artistic details important for characterizing the hero; learn to give a clear and precise answer to a question; broaden the horizons of students.

– When you read a story at home, you highlighted the semantic parts in it and titled them. – How did you title these parts?

(1. Petka’s hard everyday life at the hairdresser. 2. Happy days at the dacha.

3. Return to the city.)

V. Creating a problematic situation

– So, we found out that the story can be divided into 3 parts. Two of them (the majority of the work) tell about Petka’s life in the city, and one (smaller in volume) tells about his life in the country. Why did L.N. tell his story? Did Andreev call it “Petka at the Dacha”? We will answer this question at the end of the lesson.

– What did we learn about the main character from part 1 of the work? Find in the text and read a passage in which the author describes the appearance of the hero. (Petka is 10 years old. His mother was a cook for rich gentlemen; there was no father. For 3 years Petka lived and worked at a hairdresser, so that in the future he would also become a hairdresser)

.
– How did you guys usually spend your days at Petka’s? Find in the text and read the lines in which the author describes this. – How did others treat Petka? (The owner constantly shouted at him, could hit him, the visitors did not sympathize with him...)
- How did you feel when you read about Petka’s life in the city?
(Pity)
- How did Petka feel while in the city? Find and read the lines in which the author talks about this. (Petka didn’t know whether he was bored or having fun, but he wanted to go to another place, about which he could not say anything...)

— What was the name of Petka’s friend at the hairdresser? (Nikolka)

- Now use a Venn diagram to compare two friends:

– In what part of the story does the hero find himself in another world? (In the 2nd part).

The hero perceives everything that happens next as a fairy tale. The fairy tale begins already in the train carriage. – How does Petka behave during the trip? (He looks out the window, jumps up from his seat, runs to another window)

– What feelings does he experience during the trip?
(Feelings of delight, joy).
That is, its internal state changes.
Feelings of delight and joy overwhelm the boy. He begins to be interested in what is happening around him. – How did unfamiliar passengers react to his delight? (Many smiled at him, and only one gentleman glanced at the boy with hostility once or twice).
– Has the boy changed in appearance?
Prove it with lines of text. (“Petkina’s eyes have long ceased to look sleepy, and the wrinkles have disappeared. It’s as if someone ran a hot iron over this face, smoothed out the wrinkles and made it white and shiny”).
– Indeed, quite recently the boy left the city, but he changed not only internally, but even externally.
And here Petka is at the dacha in Tsaritsyno. Beautiful pictures unfolded before him. To imagine what a 10-year-old boy could feel when he got to this fabulous place, let’s look at old photographs depicting Tsaritsyno
.
( Presentation)
Slide 2.

The train was approaching Tsaritsino.
From the window of the carriage, the boy saw in the distance houses that looked like toy ones, the same toy white church on the mountain, and under the mountain - a silvery strip of the river. Slide 3.
And this is the station building where the train arrived.
Slide 4.
Tsaritsynsky Park.
Slide 5.
Dipman's garden.
Here in the evenings music played and rich gentlemen danced. Slides 6-7.
And this is what the dachas looked like.
Slide 8.
Petka swam in this pond.
Slide 9.
And I was walking in this forest.

– How did Petka live at the dacha and what changed in the hero during his week at the dacha?

— You will answer this question yourself, working in groups.

Group 1 describes Petka in the city, and group 2 - in the country.

(He began to behave like a child, changed in appearance, even seemed to become younger, no longer looked like a small dwarf)

. Indeed, being at the dacha transformed the boy. “He looked amazingly younger”; I completely forgot that Osip Abramovich and a hairdresser exist in the world. And most importantly, for the first time he enjoys the joys of childhood, before us is a happy child. But the happiness was short-lived.

-What happened? (A letter arrived from the city).

- Now let's move on to part 3 of the story.
– What, guys, is the author talking about in part 3? (About Petka’s return home and his life in the city).
– Petka’s fairy tale is over.
He's back in the real world, working at the barbershop again. – What has changed in his inner world? (He had memories of the dacha, he learned that there is happiness).
– What lines of part 3 of the text indicate that for the hero the trip became the most important event in his life?
Find these lines and read them. (“And at night, in the place where Nikolka and Petka slept next to each other, a quiet voice rang and worried and talked about the dacha, and talked about what does not happen, what no one has ever seen or heard...”)
- But Does the author leave his hero hope for a good life?
(Yes)
- What episodes talk about this?
(Abandoned fishing rod, stories about the dacha).
Creative work:

Write an essay, answering in writing the question: “What did L.N. Andreev’s story “Petka in the Dacha” make me think about?

VIII. Teacher's final words

– The time has come to answer the question posed in the first half of the lesson: Why did the author call his story “Petka in the Dacha”? (This is the most striking event in the hero’s life; this event gave him hope for a better life.)

– Indeed, with the title “Petka at the Dacha,” the author emphasizes the importance of this event for the hero. Petka lives a difficult, not at all childish life. From the age of seven, as an adult, he goes to work every day and earns his own food. And the trip to the dacha became the most exciting event in his life. It is the memories of the dacha that help the hero cope with difficulties and give hope for a better life.

– What did the author make us think about? (About how people should treat each other; that one must be kinder, be able to be compassionate).

– Thus, telling about the difficult childhood of his hero, the author makes us, the readers, think about the moral problems that are observed in society: joyless childhood, callousness of soul, selfishness, indifference, and teaches us such moral qualities as: kindness, sensitivity, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, goodwill, mercy.

(Presentation 2.

Slide “Seven-flowered flower”)

IX. Lesson grades

X. Homework

Write in writing “If you were the author of this story, how would you finish the story...”.

Themes

The theme of the story “Petka at the Dacha” will help you argue your point of view in any essay related in content:

• The main theme in the story “Petka at the Dacha” is childhood. How does a child feel when he finds himself in a completely unchildlike environment? He turns into a little old man with fine wrinkles, becomes helpless and intimidated, sees nothing but a dirty hairdresser, feels nothing but the rudeness of Osip Abramovich. A child is an unformed personality. What adults put into him can stay with him for the rest of his life. A boy can simply lose his childhood, finding himself in endlessly repeating days, not filled with new impressions, giving him nothing but torment. The hero wants to sleep all the time because he feels it is an outlet and an escape from reality. His constant feeling of endless sleep becomes the belief that someday he will wake up. And he really wakes up when the train carries him into a new and clean world. This contrast makes the reader see the child's condition.
• The contrast between poverty and wealth, city and countryside also makes us think about how deep the gulf between these extremes is. Nikolka is just the person who will probably carry those evil and dirty feelings within himself, having absorbed them in childhood, because he is abandoned in an urban environment to the mercy of fate. He stopped resisting, so his gaze always emanates a certain contempt for the world around him, insolence and a grin sent to a difficult reality. Mitya, unlike the boys, grew up in the wild, where he was left to nature and light. He seems to be completely saturated with the sun: he is cheerful, brave, sociable and open. He does what he loves: exploring the ruins of an ancient palace with Petya, fishing and inventing various games.
• Also in the story, the main theme is love. It comes from Petya’s mother, who is trying with all her might to improve the child’s life, but so far she has little success. She persuaded the master to allow her to bring her child to them for a while. When Nadezhda and her son travel on the train, she does not try to stop him or scold him for running from window to window and watching the blue sky. On the contrary, she protects him from the master, who frowns at the child who is disturbing him. At the end of his journey, Petya whispers to his mother to hide the fishing rod with which he went fishing. In response, she promises to fulfill his request, saying that perhaps Petya will be able to visit the dacha again. Nadezhda is glad that the child has grown stronger in freedom. Also, the theme of love is heard in Petya’s new childhood sensations: he loves the flowers that grow in the clearing, he follows the beauty of the sky, along which small white clouds float. An attachment to nature awakens in him. He is unlikely to forget everything he experienced upon arrival in the city. Such impressions will remain in the little heart and will live in it until a new trip out of town.
• The topic of poverty is one of the pressing topics raised by the author in the story “Petka at the Dacha.” Unwashed Petka, sad and lonely Nadezhda, who cannot support her son, are the foreground. And in the background, as a backdrop to a terrible situation, the reader sees a dirty hairdresser. On the wall hangs a painting of naked women, dusty and covered in flies. We also see a spiritually poor quarter, where houses of “cheap debauchery” are located not far from the hairdresser’s. Swearing can be heard endlessly in the surrounding area; residents and passers-by constantly observe fights and drunkenness. L.N. Andreev describes how a husband beats his drunken wife on the street, and she lies on the ground with disheveled hair. And against this background there is a child whose consciousness has not yet been formed. All the horrors unknown to him are happening before his eyes. He grows up in an ugly environment, living day after day in the same and gray way, so his soul is dried up.
• Among this chaos of spiritual and material poverty, you can see a barely visible, but such an important theme that you want to rely on every day - this is hope. Petya will undoubtedly still have hope for a return to Tsaritsino, to meet Mitya. Bright hope is heard in the mother’s words: “Maybe you’ll come again.” After all, there was a fishing rod left at the dacha, because life does not end with one hairdresser, because somewhere it still exists, and Petya found it! It’s not for nothing that his mother’s name is Nadezhda, because it was she who took him to his dream, she showed him a new wonderful world.

Problems

The fate of the main character is typical for a child from a poor family who lived at the end of the 19th century. With his story “Petka at the Dacha,” the author tries to attract public attention to the situation of children in a capitalist environment in which injustice reigns.

The work illustrates the social stratification of society, in which children do not have the opportunity to remain children. From childhood, as adults, they must earn money through their labor. The author at one time noted that only real steps and activities of the state can change the situation. This is the moral problematic of the work “Petka in the Dacha.”

What does it teach?

L.N. Andreev in his story “Petka at the Dacha” makes you think that it is impossible to raise a child in conditions of disharmony, in a society in which there are no moral standards and conflicts flourish. The author teaches that children are an extension of life, and everything possible must be done to make the future brighter and kinder through properly raised people. These are the moral lessons that can be seen in the work “Petka in the Dacha.”

From the text you can give an example of the attitude of adults towards Petya. The master and lady living at the dacha where the boy visited see him in a fit of uncontrollable crying because they want to take him back to the city. They say that they feel sorry for him, but then they remember that someone is now much worse off than him. After this conclusion, they dress up and go to the dance. The conclusion suggests itself: true humanity lies in helping a child, and not just showing pity for him. This is the moral of the story by L.N. Andreeva.

Read the summary of Andreev Petka at the dacha

A child’s happiness is games, freedom of action, unity with nature. What is the story “Petka in the Dacha” about? The boy Petya, ten years old, works full time as an assistant hairdresser in a run-down barber shop. At just 10 years old, Petka has already seen a lot. And angry people who are glad of his mistakes and are ready to instantly slap him on the head, drunk women and young guys who are always fighting. And he’s used to all this and doesn’t consider it something bad, it’s everyday life around him.

A wide-eyed boy looks at the world around him, absorbs it like a sponge, and learns to cope with reality. But his thoughts, which he never voices, are busy with dreams of “another place” where he has never been, but where he will feel good and happy. But one day Petka’s mother, who worked in the city as a cook, took the boy to her dacha gentlemen.

Petka had never been to the dacha. How many shocks Petka suffered. First, he rode a train for the first time through fields and forests. Then he finally arrived at the dacha, which is surrounded by nature. The forest, river, fields and paths - all this at first frightened the boy, and he became quiet, slightly thoughtful and timid. But only two days passed and Petka, having made friends with a neighbor’s boy, began to explore the world around him. However, all good things tend to come to an end.

So one day the boy’s mother received a letter from the hairdresser, indicating that Petka should return and begin his duties. And although the boy understood with his mind that it was necessary to return, that the vacation at the dacha would not be endless, the child’s heart did not want this. Petka held on as best he could, but couldn’t cope and burst into tears in front of the adults. And his tears spoke of his reluctance to become an adult again, to start working again.

These tears were a surge of mental suffering, from the grief of separation from the surrounding nature, about unfinished children's antics. The boy returned to the town, but in memory of the happy holidays, Petka brought with him a homemade fishing rod, which he asked his mother to keep, who, in turn, agreed to do it .

After all, Petka’s mother, although in appearance she is not at all a very gentle woman and is not used to nurturing her child, in fact loves Petka very much, but due to circumstances she cannot stop his work, cannot give him what would be called a happy childhood. And in the city there are still the same drunk women, angry men and a hairdresser. Dejection, melancholy and the adult life of the little boy Petka.