Solzhenitsyn, what a pity the main characters. We read the story “What a pity. What a pity the analysis

It turned out that there was a lunch break at the institution where Anna Modestovna had to take a certificate. It's a shame, but it made sense to wait: there were about fifteen minutes left, and she still had time for her break.

I didn't want to wait on the stairs, and Anna Modestovna went down to the street.

The day was at the end of October - damp, but not cold. In the night and in the morning the rain was sown, now it has stopped. Cars rushed along the asphalt with liquid mud, some guarding passers-by, and more often dousing them. In the middle of the street, a raised boulevard was gently gray, and Anna Modestovna crossed over there.

There was hardly anyone on the boulevard, even in the distance. Here, bypassing the puddles, walking on the grainy sand was not wet at all. The fallen, wet leaves lay like a dark flooring under the trees, and if you walk close to them, it was as if a slight smell coiled from them - the remnant of what was not given during life or already the first decay, but still the chest was resting between the two roads of burnt gas.

There was no wind, and the whole dense network of brown and blackish wet ... - Anya stopped - ... the entire network of branches, pavetvia, even smaller twigs, and twigs, and buds of the next year, this whole network was covered with many water drops, silvery-white in the cloudy day. It was the moisture that, after the rain, remained on the smooth skin of the branches, and in the calm it dripped, gathered and hung already in drops - round from the tips of the lower branches and oval from the lower arcs of the branches.

Putting the folded umbrella in the same hand where she had her purse, and pulling off the glove, Anya began to bring her fingers under the droplets and take them off. When this was done carefully, the whole drop was transferred to the finger and did not spread here, only slightly flattened. The wavy pattern of the finger was seen through the drop larger than near, the drop enlarged, like a magnifying glass.

But, showing through itself, the same drop simultaneously showed above itself: it was also a ball mirror. On a drop, on a bright field from a cloudy sky, you could see - yes! - dark shoulders in a coat, and a head in a knitted hat, and even an interweaving of branches over the head.

So Anya forgot and began to hunt for larger drops, taking and taking them now on the nail, then on the pulp of her finger. Here, very close to her, she heard firm steps and threw off her hand, ashamed that she was behaving as befits her youngest son, and not her.

However, the passer-by saw neither Anna Modestovna's amusement, nor her herself - he was one of those who notices on the street only a free taxi or a tobacco kiosk. It was a young man with an obvious stamp of education with a bright yellow stuffed briefcase, in a soft-haired colored coat and a fluffy hat crumpled into a pie. Only in the capital are there such early confident, victorious expressions. Anna Modestovna knew this type and was afraid of him.

Frightened, she walked on and drew level with the blue-billed newspaper billboard. Under the glass hung "Trud" outside and inside. In one half, the glass was chipped from the corner, the newspaper was locked, and the glass was watered from the inside. But it was in this half below that Anna Modestovna read the headline above the double basement: "New Life in the Chu River Valley."

This river was not alien to her: she was born there, in Semirechye. After rubbing the glass with a glove, Anna Modestovna began to look through the article.

It was written by a correspondent of an inexpensive pen. He started from the Moscow airfield: how he got on the plane and how, as if in contrast to the gloomy weather, everyone was in a joyful mood. He also described his companions on the plane, who flew why, and even a flight attendant in passing. Then - the Frunze airfield and how, as if in consonance with the sunny weather, everyone was in a very joyful mood. Finally, he went on to actually travel along the valley of the Chu River. He described hydrotechnical works, water discharge, hydroelectric power stations, irrigation canals with terms, admired the view of the now irrigated and fertile desert and was surprised at the harvest figures on collective farm fields.

And at the end he wrote:

“But few know that this grandiose and imperious transformation of an entire region of nature was conceived long ago. Our engineers did not have to re-conduct thorough surveys of the valley, its geological layers and water regime. The entire major large project was completed and substantiated by laborious calculations forty years ago, in 1912, by the talented Russian hydrographer and hydraulic engineer Modest Aleksandrovich V *, who then began the first work at his own peril and risk. "

Anna Modestovna did not flinch, was not delighted - she trembled internally and externally, as if before an illness. She bent down to better see the last paragraphs in the very corner, and still tried to wipe the glass and barely read:

“But under the inert tsarist regime, far from the interests of the people, his projects could not be implemented. They were buried in the land improvement department, and what he had already dug was abandoned.

What a pity! - (the correspondent ended with an exclamation) - what a pity that the young enthusiast did not live to see the triumph of his bright ideas! that he cannot look at the transformed valley! "

Fear dangled like a boiling water, because Anya already knew what she would do now: she would rip this newspaper! She looked furtively to the right, to the left - there was no one on the boulevard, only someone's back was far away. It was very indecent, shameful, but ...

The newspaper was held on the top three buttons. Anya put her hand through the glass break. Here, where the newspaper got wet, it immediately raked in a corner into a damp paper ball and left the button. Standing up on tiptoe, Anya reached for the middle button, swayed it and took it out. And it was impossible to reach the third, farthest, - and Anya simply pulled. The newspaper fell off - and it was all in her hand.

But immediately behind the back there was a sharp fractional drum of a policeman.

As scorched (she knew how to be very scared, and the police whistle always scared her), Anya pulled out her empty hand, turned around ...

It was too late and undignified to run. Not along the boulevard, but through the opening of the boulevard fence, which Anya had not noticed before, a tall policeman was walking towards her, especially large from a raincoat soaked on him with a thrown back head.

He did not speak from afar. He walked up slowly. From top to bottom he looked at Anna Modestovna, then at the fallen newspaper curving behind the glass, again at Anna Modestovna. He towered strictly over her. By his broad-nosed, ruddy face and hands, it was clear how healthy he was - it was quite for him to pull people out of the fire or grab someone without a weapon.

What is that, citizen? Will we pay twenty-five rubles? ..

(Oh, if only a fine! She was afraid - it would be worse interpreted!)

- ... Or do you want people not to read newspapers?

A. I. Solzhenitsyn is a talented writer who created both voluminous novels and short stories. Among the latter is the work "What a Pity", which makes a strong impression on the reader.

"What a pity": summary

Once Anna Modestovna came to a certain institution, where she needed to get a certificate, but the employees left for lunch. It's a shame, of course, but the woman decided to wait: in fifteen minutes they had to return to work. There was no desire to stand on the stairs, and Anna Modestovna went out into the street. A light rain was falling.

Newspaper article

Anna walked along the boulevard and suddenly noticed a newspaper stand, standing on columns of light blue. Behind the glass was "Trud", both its inner and outer sides hung. The woman noticed a large headline: "New Life in the Chu Valley." Anna Modestovna rubbed the glass with a glove and began to read what she had written. By the way, Solzhenitsyn created the story “What a Pity” thinking about one real woman.

The article was written by a clearly talented journalist. He wrote about hydraulic works, irrigation canals and water discharge, generously seasoning it all with terms. He talked about how beautiful the desert is now bearing fruit, and admired the abundance of the harvested crops.

And in conclusion, he wrote that the entire main project was completed by painstaking calculations four decades ago, back in 1912, by the gifted hydrograph V * Modest Alexandrovich, who worked diligently, despite the unfavorable and dangerous time in which he lived. It was about his selflessness and hard work that Solzhenitsyn wanted to tell. The summary "What a pity" does not convey all the charm of the work.

Anna bent down to take a closer look at the text located in the corner, rubbed the glass again and, barely restraining her emotions, continued reading. The journalist wrote that under the tsarist regime, which never took into account the ideas of the hydrograph, they could not be realized. What a pity! It's a shame that such a talented person died without waiting for the implementation of his plans.

An attempt to steal a newspaper, a meeting with a policeman

Suddenly Anna felt as if she had been overwhelmed with fear, since she already knew what her next action would be: she would steal the newspaper! As soon as she tore it off, she heard a distinct and loud whistle of a policeman behind her. The woman did not run away: it was already late, and it would have looked somehow silly. Probably, Solzhenitsyn himself adhered to this opinion. The summary "What a pity" allows you to get acquainted with the plot of the famous story.

Outcome of the situation

In a low voice, the police officer asked if Anna would pay a fine of twenty-five rubles. The woman could only answer that she was very sorry, and she was ready to hang the publication back if the policeman would allow. She looked at her accuser and expected punishment. The policeman asked why she did not like this print edition. Anna replied that it was written about her father. Now the law enforcement officer understood her and assumed that, probably, he was criticized. Will one torn newspaper help in this case? The woman hurried to explain that her father was being praised. The policeman asked why she did not want to buy a newspaper in the store. Anna explained that this is an old edition and nowhere to be found. The policeman took pity on the woman and allowed her to take the newspaper until no one noticed. Anna thanked him warmly and hastened to leave. It is good that Solzhenitsyn foresaw such a favorable outcome of the situation. The summary "What a pity", however, can be called rather gloomy, like the story itself.

The woman walked swiftly, forgetting why she came to this boulevard, clutching an unevenly folded edition to her chest. Rather to mom! An urgent need to read the article together! Soon dad will be assigned permanent residence, and after that mom will go there, taking the newspaper with her.

Tragic ending

The journalist did not know that this great man is still alive. He managed to wait for the realization of his brilliant ideas, since it was decided to replace the death penalty with imprisonment, and he spent twenty years in hard labor and in prisons. What a tragic and stunning ending Solzhenitsyn wrote! The summary "What a pity", however, makes a weaker impression than the full story.

Analysis of the story

The work “What a Pity”, created in 1965, differs markedly from other stories by Solzhenitsyn, despite the fact that it also tells about human destiny, crippled by a totalitarian society. The plot does not take place in a prison or in a camp. There are no horrifying pictures describing the work of convicts (as, for example, in the novels of the author "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago"). There are no moments depicting the suffering and torment of the prisoners. But after reading the work, the reader is still impressed for a long time. Human fate in a totalitarian society is gloomy and bleak, both in prison and outside. By the way, there can be no truly free people in such a state. This is what the story "What a Pity" is about. Solzhenitsyn would approve of the analysis, because it clearly explains the meaning of the work.

Interestingly, the writer does not tell us anything about Anna's age and appearance. This indicates that he wanted to portray in her person a collective image of a citizen living in a period of a kind of terror carried out by Stalin. The author managed to draw a generalized portrait of an educated person eking out an unhappy existence in those terrible years.

The lesson is held after acquaintance with the works of Solzhenitsyn "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", the stories of Varlam Shalamov ("Berries", "Sherry Brandy", "How it began").

Epigraphs for the lesson:

I'm not hiding, but the night is cold.
I am not, but time is dangerous ...

O. Chukhontsev

An instant and - there is no end and no edge
Fire ... Everything around is in pieces,
then in dust ...

I shout: "Help!", I shout: "I am dying!" ...
... And someone is pushing a speech up there.

During the classes

1. Introduction by the teacher.

For several lessons we have been talking about the era of Stalinism and its reflection in literature. Reading the works of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, we are convinced that the time was tragic, for there was a systematic and purposeful struggle against the individual, against the living soul of man. Was resistance possible? And if so, which one? We are talking about this today, reading the story of A. Solzhenitsyn "What a pity".

2. "Immersion" in the atmosphere of time.Reading and discussing notes on cards (excerpts from familiar works, anecdotes of “that” time are given randomly, here each teacher can choose his own options).

1) “Rybakov lay unexpectedly small between the bumps. The sky, the mountains, the river were huge, and God knows how many people can be put in these mountains, on the paths between the bumps ... ”(V. Shalamov.“ Berries ”).

2) “For many months, day and night, countless execution orders were read during morning and evening checks. In the fifty-degree frost, the imprisoned musicians from the "household workers" played carcasses before reading and after reading each order. Smoke torches did not break the darkness, drawing hundreds of eyes to the frosty sheets of thin paper on which such terrible words were imprinted. And at the same time, it was as if they were not talking about us. Everything was, as it were, alien, too scary to be reality ”(V. Shalamov.“ How It Started ”).

3) “Shukhov is pleased that everyone is pointing their fingers at him like that: he’s about to finish his term, but he himself doesn’t painfully believe in it. Those who had their term expired during the war were kept until further notice, until the forty-sixth year. Someone and the main one was three years. So five years of re-sitting happened. The law is inverted. If you run out of ten, they will say you have one more. Or link. So you live on the ground with a face, and there is no time to think: how did you sit down? how will you get out? " (A. Solzhenitsyn. "One day of Ivan Denisovich").

4) “The poet died for so long that he stopped realizing that he was dying. Sometimes, painfully and almost perceptibly pushing through the brain, some simple and strong thought would come - that they had stolen the bread that he had put under his head, and it was so scorchingly scary that he was ready to argue, swear, fight, search, to prove ... But there was no strength for all this ... ”(V. Shalamov.“ Sherry Brandy ”).

5) Anecdote.

Stalin lost his pipe. He calls Beria. He readily reports:

Clear. Action of the enemies of the people. Let's find out who exactly.

A few days later, Stalin found the pipe in the pocket of his jacket. Calls Beria again:

There was a pipe ...

Comrade Stalin, we have also fulfilled your assignment: thirty-seven people have fully confessed.

6) Anecdote.

On the tram. A citizen stands, reads a newspaper and says in an undertone:

He will bring us to the handle!

He is immediately taken away. Interrogation.

So what did you say? Who will bring us to the handle?

Like who? Of course, Truman!

Oh, so! Okay, go in that case.

He jumped out. Then he returned, stuck his head through the door:

Tell me, who did you mean?

The students conclude that in the works of V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn the image of a tragic, disharmonious world appears. Even the anecdotes of those terrible years testify to how cheap human life was, how easy it was to pay with years of captivity or even life for a thoughtlessly spoken word, for the right to be yourself.

3. Work on the storyA.I. Solzhenitsyn "What a pity" (it is taken into account that the students are familiar with the biography of the writer).

- How does the story differ from other works about totalitarianism that we have read before?

Events do not take place in places of detention. There are no scary pictures depicting exhausting work, the eternally sucking hunger that the prisoners experienced. There are no scenes of destruction, humiliation of prisoners. And yet the story makes an impression no less strong.

- What do you think the story is about?

About the fate of a person living in a totalitarian state, about how fear dictates a certain style of behavior, about how the unlimited power of some and the dependence of others disfigures the system of relationships between people, that the innocent suffer, the talented die.

- What is the basis of the story?

Surprise, chance. A chain of accidents, unpredictable events reveals the relationship between the characters.

- What, in your opinion, is the originality of the composition?

Along with the classic version - exposition, setting, culmination, denouement - the students propose to see the two-part organization of the story - “wave structure” (a term proposed by the high school students themselves). Both parts (meeting with a person with a briefcase, meeting with a policeman) have the same, albeit different "strength", structure: starting calmly (the effect of still water is created), they are replaced by an explosion of feeling (fear - in the first; shock, fright - in the second ), end in different ways (in the first, the heroine withdraws into herself; in the second, she feels joy both from the fact that the policeman understood her, and from the fact that she became the owner of the treasure - articles about the repressed father).

In these parts, the name of the heroine is played out in an interesting way. She is called either Anya or Anna Modestovna. On behalf of Anya, she breathes something homely, warm, soft, even childish, and at the same time, it emphasizes the vulnerability, insecurity of a young woman. This is how it becomes Anna Modestovna, when she is alone with nature (playing with water drops) or in those minutes when she is sure that she is not in danger. But, having heard the “firm steps” of a young man with a briefcase (a symbol of belonging to power!) Or “a policeman's turk”, the heroine seems to put on the mask of an ordinary man in the street, becomes like all the people around her - just Anna Modestovna.

Such reincarnations of the heroine in the story occur twice: in the first part and in the second. But in the first part she remains Anna Modestovna, and in the second she again turns into Anya at the very end. A policeman who saw the heroine tear down a newspaper with an article about her prisoner father could have punished her (and not only with a fine). However, he listens to the woman, understands her, that is, he behaves not as a representative of power, but as a person: he allows him to take the newspaper and lets her go without punishing her. And we see how the soul of a young woman is freed from fear and she again becomes Anya: like a child, she takes a bloody finger in her mouth and thinks about the policeman: "He is not scary at all."

- “History is embodied in small things,” A. Solzhenitsyn argued. Name details that help represent historical time.

High school students highlight such “speaking” details as a drop of water in which Anya is reflected. Associative lines are drawn: a circle - a globe - a drop of water in L. Tolstoy's novel from Pierre Bezukhov's dream - circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. The drop reflects not only Anya, but also the sky, a tree against the sky, branches, pavetvi, twigs, buds - isn't this a symbol of the fact that all life on earth is endowed with equal rights to the sun, air, water, freedom? This is how the author brings us to an understanding of the truth: no one has the right to deprive another of this right. And if it does, then society is “sick”.

Pupils note that the name of the Chu River is significant.

chu! (interjection - a call for silence, for attention);
Chu-zhoi (rejected in the context - “the river was not a stranger”);
sensitivity (lack of sensitivity is a tragedy!);
chu-do (miracle of understanding: “the policeman understood”!).

The talent of the writer, the students conclude, is reflected in expressive details that help to understand the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe story: in a totalitarian state, the personality of a person who turns into a part of a huge mechanism is not put at all; resisting this process is courage.An important role is played in the story by the technique of silence: we ourselves guess what fate befell the young talented scientist, Anna Modestovna's father (who breathed life into the Chu river valley, he himself spent many years in prisons, turned into a “useless old man”; he is deleted from the list of the dead and alive), we can guess what kind of suffering his family had to go through (Anna Modestovna lives with a constant sense of danger, and this speaks volumes).

High school students also talk about the author's attitude to the depicted, note that the writer skillfully “hid” behind his characters. But it is easy to notice his sympathetic attitude towards the innocent victims of an unjust society: Anna, towards her mother, father; ironic - to the journalist who wrote an article about the heroine's father; condemnation of the fact that indifferent and cruel attitude towards a person has become the norm in the writer's native country; pride in ordinary people who have not lost hope and faith in such inhuman conditions, who have kept their “soul alive”. The collective soullessness is opposed by fragile, defenseless women, mother and daughter, who have preserved the memory of their father and husband, loyalty to him, eager to return the unfortunate prisoner to the belief that his life was not in vain: at the first opportunity, Anya's mother will go to him and take the newspaper, which talks about how the Chu River Valley was transformed by the scientist's discoveries.

4. Concluding remarks from the teacher.

The stories of V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn show how the totalitarian machine of destruction of people, their living souls operates. But its uninterrupted movement meets resistance, imperceptible, but persistent. Are not the words of the poet Oleg Khlebnikov about them:

Poor, poor! My soul
they took care of everything as the last
soldering -
scanty and stale -
in a pile
did not lose in an unequal battle.
The dim light is shining
in the darkness.
There is no other - this one also illuminates
a dark piece of white light
path on the ground ...

Ordinary people found the strength to survive and, moreover, to preserve all human qualities, carried in their souls the ability to care for others, loyalty, mercy, have not forgotten how to love life and each other. This is the hope that Solzhenitsyn leaves to man in the painful movement of history.

I didn't want to wait on the stairs, and Anna Modestovna went down to the street.

This river was not alien to her: she was born there, in Semirechye. After rubbing the glass with a glove, Anna Modestovna began to look through the article.

And at the end he wrote:

But immediately behind the back there was a sharp fractional drum of a policeman.

As scorched (she knew how to be very scared, and the police whistle always scared her), Anya pulled out her empty hand, turned around ...

What is that, citizen? Will we pay twenty-five rubles? ..

(Oh, if only a fine! She was afraid - it would be worse interpreted!)

- ... Or do you want people not to read newspapers?

(Exactly!)

Oh, what are you! Oh no! Sorry! - Anna Modestovna even began to bend somehow. - I am very sorry ... I will now hang back ... if you will permit ...

No, even if he had allowed, this newspaper with one cut off and one soaked end would be difficult to hang.

The policeman looked at her from above, without expressing a decision.

He had been on duty for a long time, and he endured the rain, and by the way it would be good for him now to take her to the department along with the newspaper: while the protocol is to dry himself manenko. But he wanted to understand. Decently dressed lady, in good years, not drunk.

She looked at him and expected punishment.

What don't you like the newspaper?

Here about my dad! .. - All apologizing, she pressed the handle of the umbrella, and the purse, and the removed glove to her chest. I myself did not see that I had bloodied my finger on the glass.

Now the guard understood her, and took pity on the finger and nodded:

Are they scolding? .. Well, what will one newspaper help? ..

Not! No no! On the contrary - they praise!

(He's not evil at all!)

Then she saw blood on her finger and began to suck it. And all looked at the large rustic face of a policeman.

His lips parted slightly.

So that you? Can't buy at the stall?

Look at the number! - She vividly took her finger from her lips and showed him in the other half of the window on an unbroken newspaper. - She wasn’t filmed for three days. Where can you find now ?!

The policeman looked at the number. Once again on the woman. Once again on the fallen newspaper. Sighed:

The protocol needs to be drawn up. And fine ... Okay, the last time, take it soon, until no one has seen ...

Oh thanks! Thank! What a noble you are! Thank! - Anna Modestovna frequented, still bending a little or bowing a little, and thought to get a handkerchief to her finger, and she nimbly slipped the same hand with a pink finger there, grabbed the edge of the newspaper and dragged it. - Thank!

The newspaper stretched out. Anya, as she could with the soaked edge and one free hand, folded it. With another polite curve, she said:

Thank you! You can't imagine what a joy it is for mom and dad! May I go?

Standing sideways, he nodded.

And she walked quickly, completely forgetting why she came to this street, clutching a folded newspaper obliquely and sometimes sucking her finger as she walked.