Live and remember the analysis of the work. Composition
“Andrei Guskov understood: fate had derailed him
into a dead end with no way out."
V. Rasputin. "Live and Remember"
V. Astafiev called the story “Live and Remember” by V. Rasputin one of the best books about the war, noting its stunning, deep tragedy. Published in 1974 in the magazine “Our Contemporary”, it was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1977 and very soon received European recognition.
What explains such interest in this story? First of all, because it deals with important events of human existence.
War... How much has been written about it. Our literature says so much about those who were in the war, who experienced it firsthand, that it would seem difficult for a person who touched this war only with the edge of his destiny to say something new and interesting. But this non-involvement of the author in the war turned out to be not a flaw in the story, but an advantage of the writer over those who were there, because Rasputin managed to rise above the “material.” Among the books about the war that “showed” the tragedy of time, about the fate of man during the war, “Live and Remember” stands out for the depth of the problem, the nationality of the characters, the philosophical comprehension of the price and meaning of an act that puts a person outside of life, outside of good human memory.
“Live and Remember”... Thinking about the title of the story, you can easily correlate its meaning with the fate of Andrei Guskov, prepared for him. What about Nastya? Can she be blamed for keeping silent about her husband’s terrible secret, keeping it until the last minute and taking it with her forever? The fate of a woman who was preparing to become a mother and was ruined by her husband is tragic.
Let's try to answer these questions.
The Siberian village of Atamanovka, described in the story, was far from the battlefields, but the echo of the war reached here too. Events develop in the last months of the war. An ax and part of the tobacco disappeared from the Guskovs’ bathhouse. Nastena’s first reaction was surprise: “Why bother so much over some piece of iron,” she mentally reproached her father-in-law. But that same night a terrible guess came to her, and a few days later she received confirmation: her husband was a deserter. After the hospital, he deserted, afraid of death. And this is not a momentary weakness. Having returned to his native place, Andrei behaves like a coward and an egoist. He is afraid to surrender to the authorities, although this could make life easier for his loved ones. What explains Guskov's behavior?
Andrei Guskov is a crippled soul, a victim of his character, his attitude to life, his “bad memory,” his terrible experience, which the war “pushed” into his consciousness. He is especially haunted by the memories of the last battle: “a short and terrible battle of iron with iron, where people seemed to have no use for anything, ... the gunner looking into his torn stomach.” And this memory pushes Guskov not back to the war, but to home, to refuge. But Andrei Guskov pays the highest price for this evil memory: it will never continue in anyone; no one will remember him. From this moment on, it doesn’t matter what happens to this person. Nothing can await him except savagery, decay and complete oblivion.
Now let’s open the last page of the story: “Leaning her knees on the side, she (Nastyona) tilted it lower and lower... and carefully rolled into the water.” This is how the main character, a wonderful and bright woman Nastena Guskova, died tragically. The heroine dies in the middle of the Angara - a symbolic image of the end of her tossing between two banks, two “truths” that destroy her. Material from the site
So why does Nastya still die, although according to all our feelings, likes and dislikes, her husband should die? Selflessness is the main quality of Nastya Guskova’s soul. From the very beginning, she dreamed of giving more than receiving - that’s why she’s a woman. And she could not betray her husband, although she suffers from the situation in which he put her: “Is it a shame to live when someone else in your place could live better? How can you look people in the eyes after this,” Nastya reproaches herself.
People did not condemn Nastya. They buried her “among their own people, just on the edge, near a rickety fence. After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya’s for the wake and cried: I felt sorry for Nastya.”
This short episode answers the question of whether Nastya Guskova remains in the memory of her fellow villagers. I can add one thing on my own: it’s a pity that they will remember her as the wife of a deserter.
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- Is it possible to justify Guskov’s action? Live and remember
- Why does Nastena begin to die? live and remember Rasputin
- Rasputin live and remember essays
Modern literature provides the richest material for understanding moral issues. Today our conversation is about V.G. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember.” The story “Live and Remember,” written in 1974, stands out from a number of other works by the writer. Readers were shocked by the brightness, strength, and acuteness of her characters’ experiences. But they explained the meaning of the story in different ways.
With all the drama of Andrei Guskov’s fate, it is not he who occupies the main attention of the author, but Nasten. Her image is larger, it shakes our imagination. If Nastena is emotionally highlighted in the story, therefore, it is with this image that the author associates some deep-seated problems.
- The question arises: what did Nastya do that was so extremely important that the writer, for the sake of understanding this, puts her in the foreground of the story, relegating to the background a person of such a terrible fate as Andrei Guskov? — Nastya saves her husband who is in trouble. “She stresses him physically and mentally, helps him survive. — Don’t you think that this answer needs clarification? It is very important to fully expose the depicted situation in order to clearly imagine all its drama. The fact is that Andrey is not just a respectable family man, Nastya’s husband, who needs support. He is a man who committed a crime. And here Rasputin poses Nastya, and after her the readers, with the most difficult question: does every person have the right to sympathy? Or, as indicated in the title of the topic of our lesson: is “mercy towards the fallen” always justified? Let's first try to reflect on common-life material, based on our own experience.
At the same time, we must keep in mind that we have the opportunity to be guided in assessing this or that action not only by legal laws (as it should be at a court hearing). We must also take into account moral laws. To do this, it is extremely important to understand the internal motives of Nastena’s actions, to understand the logic of her emotional impulses. What motivates Rasputin's heroine. Perhaps this is a concern for one’s own well-being, that is, motives of an egoistic nature?
— The main character’s thoughts refute such an assumption: “So how can I refuse it now? It is absolutely necessary not to have a heart, but instead of a heart to hold a steel scale, weighing out what is profitable and what is unprofitable. Here from someone else. even if he is thrice unclean, you simply cannot brush him off, but he is yours, dear. If not God, then life itself united them in order to keep them together, no matter what happened, no matter what misfortune befell them. “How to get him out of this trouble. how to live in order to help without making mistakes, without getting confused? Whatever happens to him now, she is responsible”; “Guilty - who says it’s not guilty! - but where can we now get the strength to return him to the place from which he jumped to the wrong place where he was supposed to jump? Nastya's thoughts indicate that, saving Andrey. she is not concerned with selfish interests. There is a deep meaning in her action.
— Imagine: there is a cruel, terrible war going on, as they say, not for life, but for death. Streams of blood are flowing in the world. Individual human life is devalued. And under these conditions, somewhere in the Russian outback. in a distant corner of Siberia. a weak, defenseless woman rises for this. in order to protect just one person from death, not physical, but moral, despite the general bitterness. This is a task of incredible complexity. And not only personal. This is a national task. Nastya is well aware of her responsibility to people: “Whether it’s fate or higher than that, but it seemed to Nastya. that she has been noticed. separated from the people." The story repeatedly emphasizes Nastya’s connection with her native, “human” world. What way out of this situation does she see?
— “For so many years Nastya was tied to the village. to home, to work, she knew her place, she took care of herself, because something was attached to her too. pulled together into one whole. And suddenly, all at once, the ropes loosened - they didn’t come off completely, but they weakened.” The most important thing here is the heroine’s awareness that “... she, too, was holding something together, pulling it together into one whole.” This means that Nastena is part of this whole, which can be called people’s life. And she is afraid to break it.
— For Nastya, life without people is impossible. That is why she is so acutely worried about “breaking ties with the world of people,” because she is in a position between her fellow villagers and Andrei. The meaning of all her actions is an attempt to return Andrei to people. This is confirmed in the text of the story: “My mother said a long time ago: there is no guilt that cannot be forgiven. They're not people, are they? When the war ends, we'll see. Or you can go out to repent, or something else.”
— For the sake of saving Andrei, Nastya is ready for any hardship: “Andrei... Maybe we won’t do this, let’s go out? I would go with you anywhere, to whatever penal servitude you want - wherever you go, there I will too...” And how do we find out about the attitude of the second himself towards Nastya? The author does not give direct assessments, but through popular opinion he expresses his attitude towards Nastya and her actions. This is manifested in the ending of the story: “And on the fourth day Nastya washed ashore not far from Karda. They reported to Atamanovka, but Mikheich was dying, and Mishka the farmhand was sent to fetch Nastena. He delivered Nastya back in the boat, and having delivered, he, like a master, intended to bury her in the cemetery of drowned people. The women didn't give it. And they buried Nastya among their own people, just on the edge, near a rickety fence.
V.G. Rasputin "Live and Remember"
The events described in the story take place in the winter of '45, in the last war year, on the banks of the Angara in the village of Atamanovka. The name, it would seem, is loud, and in the recent past even more intimidating - Razboinikovo. “...Once upon a time, in the old days, the local peasants did not disdain one quiet and profitable trade: they checked the gold miners coming from the Lena.” But the inhabitants of the village had long been quiet and harmless and did not engage in robbery. Against the backdrop of this virgin and wild nature, the main event of the story takes place - the betrayal of Andrei Guskov.
Questions that are raised in the story.
Who is to blame for the moral decline of man? What is a person's path to betrayal? What is the extent of a person’s responsibility for his fate and the fate of his Motherland?
The war, as an exceptional circumstance, confronted all people, including Guskov, with a “choice” that everyone had to make.
The path to betrayal
War is a severe test for the people. But if in strong people it fostered perseverance, inflexibility, and heroism, then in the hearts of the weak, cowardice, cruelty, selfishness, disbelief, and despair sprouted and began to bear their bitter fruits.
In the image of Andrei Guskov, the hero of the story “Live and Remember,” the soul of a weak man is revealed to us, crippled by the harsh events of the war, as a result of which he became a deserter. How did this man, who honestly defended his Motherland from enemies for several years and even earned the respect of his comrades in arms, decide to do an act despised by everyone, always and everywhere, regardless of century and nationality?
V. Rasputin shows the path to the hero’s betrayal. Of all those leaving for the front, Guskov experienced this the hardest: “Andrei looked at the village silently and offended; for some reason he was ready not to blame the war, but the village for being forced to leave it.”. But despite the fact that it’s hard for him to leave home, he says goodbye to his family quickly and dryly: “What has to be cut off must be cut off immediately...”
At first Andrei Guskov had no intention of deserting; he honestly went to the front and was a good fighter and comrade, earning the respect of his friends. But the horrors of war and injury sharpened the egoism of this man, who put himself above his comrades, deciding that it was he who needed to survive, to be saved, to return alive at all costs.
Knowing that the war was already coming to an end, he tried to survive at any cost. His wish came true, but not entirely: he was wounded and was sent to the hospital. He thought that a serious wound would free him from further service. Lying in the ward, he already imagined how he would return home, and he was so sure of this that he did not even call his relatives to the hospital to see him. The news that he was being sent to the front again struck like a lightning strike. All his dreams and plans were destroyed in an instant.
Author Valentin Rasputin does not try to justify Andrei’s desertion, but seeks to explain it from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved a vacation, wanted to see his wife, but the vacation he was entitled to after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal that Andrei Guskov commits creeps into his soul gradually. At first he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: “If not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, when his turn comes.” Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the intelligence officers Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he take the path of betrayal? At first, Andrey just wants to see his family, Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in winter you couldn’t turn around in three days. Andrei remembered the demonstration execution, when in his presence they shot a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village. Guskov understands that you won’t get a pat on the head for going AWOL. Thus, unaccounted for circumstances made Guskov’s journey much longer than he expected, and he decided that this was fate, there was no turning back. In moments of mental turmoil, despair and fear of death, Andrei makes a fatal decision for himself - to desert, which turned his life and soul upside down, made him a different person.
Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, he settled for some time with a mute woman, Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally found himself in his native place. However, the hero did not feel joy from the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed betrayal, Guskov embarked on the path of the beast. After some time, life, which he valued so much at the front, became no longer pleasant to him. Having committed treason, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax for a minute turn him into a hunted animal.
Forced to hide in the forest from people, Guskov gradually loses all the human, good beginning that was in him. Only anger and irrepressible egoism remain in his heart by the end of the story; he is only concerned about his own fate.
Andrei Guskov deserts consciously, for the sake of his life, and forces Nastya, his wife, to hide him, thereby dooming her to live a lie: “Here’s what I’ll tell you right away, Nastya. No dog needs to know I'm here. If you tell anyone, I'll kill you. I'll kill - I have nothing to lose. I have a firm hand on this, it won’t go wrong,”- with these words he meets his wife after a long separation. And Nastya had no choice but to simply obey him. She was at one with him until her death, although sometimes she was visited by thoughts that it was he who was to blame for her suffering, but not only for her, but also for the suffering of her unborn child, conceived not at all in love, but in a rude impulse, animal passion. This unborn child suffered along with its mother. Andrei did not realize that this child was doomed to live his whole life in shame. For Guskov it was important to fulfill his manly duty, to leave an heir, but how this child would live further was of little concern to him. The author shows how, having betrayed himself and his people, Guskov inevitably betrays the person closest and most understanding to him - his wife Nastena, who is ready to share the guilt and shame of her husband, and his unborn child, whom he cruelly condemns to tragic death.
Nastena understood that both the life of her child and she herself were doomed to further shame and suffering. Shielding and protecting her husband, she commits suicide. She decides to throw herself into the Angara, thereby killing both herself and her unborn baby. Andrei Guskov is certainly to blame for all this. This moment is the punishment with which higher powers can punish a person who has violated all moral laws. Andrei is doomed to a painful life. Nastena’s words: “Live and remember,” will pound in his fevered brain until the end of his days.
Why did Guskov become a traitor? The hero himself would like to shift the blame to “fate”, before which “will” is powerless.
It is no coincidence that the word “fate” runs like a red thread throughout the story, to which Guskov clings so much. He's not ready. He does not want to take responsibility for his actions; he tries with all his might to hide behind “fate” and “fate” for his crime. “This is all war, all of it,” he again began to justify himself and conjure. “Andrei Guskov understood: his fate had turned into a dead end, from which there was no way out. And the fact that there was no way back for him freed Andrei from unnecessary thoughts.” The reluctance to admit the need for personal responsibility for one’s actions is the reason for the appearance of a wormhole in Guskov’s soul, which determines his crime (desertion).
War on the pages of the story
The story does not describe battles, deaths on the battlefield, the exploits of Russian soldiers, or life at the front. Only life in the rear. And yet, this is precisely a story about war.
Rasputin explores the deforming influence on a person of a force whose name is war. If there had been no war, apparently, Guskov would not have succumbed to the fear instilled only by death and would not have reached such a fall. Perhaps, since childhood, the selfishness and resentment that had settled in him would have found a way out in some other forms, but not in such an ugly one. If it weren’t for the war, the fate of Nastena’s friend Nadka, who was left at twenty-seven years old with three children in her arms, would have turned out differently: a funeral came for her husband. If there had been no war... But it was there, it was going on, and people were dying in it. And he, Guskov, decided that it was possible to live by different laws than the rest of the people. And this incommensurable opposition doomed him not just to loneliness among people, but also to inevitable retaliatory rejection.
The result of the war for Andrei Guskov’s family was three shattered lives. But, unfortunately, there were many such families, many of them collapsed.
Telling us about the tragedy of Nastena and Andrei Guskov, Rasputin shows us war as a force that deforms a person’s personality, capable of destroying hopes, extinguishing self-confidence, shaking unstable characters and even breaking the strong. After all, Nastena, unlike Andrei, is an innocent victim, suffering as a result of the impossibility of choosing between her people and the person with whom she once connected her life. Nastena never cheated on anyone, always remaining true to the moral principles that were instilled in her since childhood, and therefore her death seems even more terrible and tragic.
Rasputin highlights the inhumane nature of war, which brings suffering and misfortune to people, without understanding who is right, who is wrong, who is weak, who is strong.
War and love
Their love and war are the two driving forces that determined Nastena’s bitter fate and Andrei’s shameful fate. Although the heroes were initially different - the humane Nastena and the cruel Andrei. She is kindness and spiritual nobility itself, he is blatant callousness and selfishness. The war even brought them closer together at first, but no amount of trials endured together could overcome their moral incompatibility. After all, love, like any other relationship, is broken by betrayal.
Andrey's feeling for Nastya is rather consumerist. He always wants to receive something from her - be it objects of the material world (an axe, bread, a gun) or feelings. It is much more interesting to understand whether Nastena loved Andrey? She threw herself into marriage “like diving into water,” in other words, she didn’t think twice about it. Nastena’s love for her husband was partly built on a feeling of gratitude, because he took her, a lonely orphan, into his home and did not let anyone hurt her. True, her husband’s kindness only lasted for a year, and then he even beat her half to death, but Nastena, following the old rule: if we get together, we must live, she patiently carried her cross, getting used to her husband, to her family, to a new place.
In part, her attachment to Andrei can be explained by a feeling of guilt because they did not have children. Nastena didn’t think that it might be Andrey’s fault. So later, for some reason, she blamed herself for her husband’s crime. But in essence, Nastena cannot love anyone other than her husband, because one of the sacred family commandments for her is marital fidelity. Like all women, Nastena was waiting for her husband, eager to see him, worried and afraid for him. He also thought about her. If Andrei had been a different person, he would most likely have returned from the army, and they would have lived an ordinary family life again. Everything happened wrong: Andrei returned ahead of schedule. Returned as a deserter. A traitor. Traitor to the Motherland. In those days, this stigma was indelible. Nastena does not turn away from her husband. She finds the strength to understand him. Such behavior is the only possible form of existence for her. She helps Andrey because it is natural for her to feel sorry, give and sympathize. She no longer remembers the bad things that darkened their pre-war family life. She knows only one thing - her husband is in big trouble, he must be pitied and saved. And she saves as best she can. Fate brought them together again and sent them a child as a huge ordeal.
A child should be sent as a reward, as the greatest happiness. How Nastena once dreamed about him! Now the child - the fruit of the love of his parents - is a burden, a sin, although he was conceived in a legal marriage. And again Andrei thinks only about himself: “We don’t care about him.” He says “we”, but in reality only he “gives a damn”. Nastena cannot be as indifferent to this event. For Andrey, the main thing is that the child is born and the family line continues. At this moment he is not thinking about Nastya, who will have to endure shame and humiliation. This is the extent of his love for his wife. Of course, it cannot be denied that Guskov is attached to Nastya. Sometimes even he has moments of tenderness and enlightenment, when he thinks with horror about what he is doing, into what abyss he is pushing his wife.
Their love was not the kind they write about in novels. These are ordinary relationships between a man and a woman, husband and wife. The war revealed both Nastena’s devotion to her husband and Guskov’s consumerist attitude towards his wife. The war destroyed this family, like the family of Nadya Berezkina and thousands of other families. Although someone still managed to maintain their relationship, like Lisa and Maxim Voloshin, And Lisa could walk with her head held high. And the Guskovs, even if they had saved their family, would never have been able to raise their eyes in shame, because in both love and war you need to be honest. Andrey could not be honest. This determined Nastena’s difficult fate. This is how Rasputin solves the theme of love and war in a unique way.
The meaning of the name. The title of the story is associated with the statement of V. Astafiev: “Live and remember, man, in trouble, in grief, in the most difficult days and trials: your place is with your people; any apostasy, whether caused by your weakness or lack of understanding, turns into even greater grief for your Motherland and people, and therefore for you.”
Andrei Guskov is least concerned about the fact that he betrayed his land, his Motherland, abandoned his comrades in arms in a difficult moment, depriving, according to Rasputin, his life of the highest meaning. Hence Guskov’s moral degradation, his savagery. Having left no offspring and having betrayed everything dear to him, he is doomed to oblivion and loneliness; no one will remember him with a kind word, because cowardice combined with cruelty has been condemned at all times. Nastena appears before us completely differently, not wanting to leave her husband in trouble, voluntarily sharing the guilt with him, accepting responsibility for someone else’s betrayal. Helping Andrei, she does not justify either him or herself in the human court, because she believes: betrayal has no forgiveness. Nastena’s heart is torn into pieces: on the one hand, she considers herself not entitled to abandon the person with whom she once connected her life in difficult times. On the other hand, she suffers endlessly, deceiving people, keeping her terrible secret and therefore suddenly feeling lonely, cut off from the people.
In a difficult conversation on this topic, the symbolically important image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, on the right hand of the Angara. And now there are two: people and me. It is impossible to bring them together: the Angara must dry out“says Andrey Nastene.
During the conversation, it turns out that the heroes once had the same dream: Nastena, in her girlish form, comes to Andrei, who is lying near the birch trees and calls him, telling him that she was tortured with the children.
The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful intractability of the situation in which Nastena found herself.
The heroine finds the strength to sacrifice her happiness, peace, her life for the sake of her husband. But realizing that by doing so she breaks all ties between herself and the people, Nastena cannot survive this and tragically dies.
And yet, the highest justice triumphs at the end of the story, because people understood and did not condemn Nastena’s actions. Guskov, on the other hand, evokes nothing but contempt and disgust, since “a person who has set foot on the path of betrayal at least once follows it to the end.”
Andrey Guskov pays the ultimate price: there will be no continuation; No one will ever understand him the way Nastena does. From this moment on, it no longer matters how he, having heard the noise on the river and prepared to hide, will live further: his days are numbered, and he will spend them as before - like an animal. Maybe, having already been caught, he will even howl like a wolf in despair. Guskov must die, but Nastena dies. This means that the deserter dies twice, and now forever.
...In all of Atamanovka there was not a single person who simply felt sorry for Nastena. Only before her death does Nastena hear Maxim Vologzhin’s cry: “Nastena, don’t you dare!” Maxim is one of the first front-line soldiers to know what death is and understands that life is the greatest value. After Nastena’s body was found, she was not buried in the cemetery of drowned people, because “the women wouldn’t allow it,” but she was buried among her own people, but on the edge.
The story ends with the author’s message, from which it is clear that they don’t talk about Guskov, they don’t “remember” - for him “the connection of times has broken down”, he has no future. The author speaks of the drowned Nastena as if she were alive (without ever replacing her name with the word “deceased”): “After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadka’s for a simple wake and cried: they felt sorry for Nasten.”. With these words, signifying the “connection of times” restored for Nastena (the traditional ending for folklore is about the memory of a hero throughout the centuries), V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember” ends.
The title of the book is “Live and Remember.” These words tell us that everything that is written on the pages of the book should become a lesson in the life of every person. Live and remember that in life there is betrayal, baseness, human fall, the test of love by this blow. Live and remember that you cannot go against your conscience and that in moments of difficult trials you must be with the people. The call “Live and Remember” is addressed to all of us: a person is responsible for his actions!
Composition
Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin was born on March 15, 1937 in the village of Ust-Uda, Irkutsk region. After graduating from the philological department of Irkutsk University in 1957, he worked for several years in youth newspapers in Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, traveled a lot to construction sites, and often visited villages. The result of these trips were books of essays - “Bonfires of New Cities” and “The Land Near the Sky.” The writer's first great success was the story “A Day for Mary” (1967). Other works by V. G. Rasputin also received wide public recognition: the stories “The Last Term” (1970), “Live and Remember” (1974), “Farewell to Matera” (1976). For the story “Live and Remember,” V. Rasputin was awarded the USSR Prize (1977). In his works, the writer touches on such important topics as the theme of ecology and the theme of morality. The problem of moral choice is highlighted with particular urgency in the story “Live and Remember. Rasputin appears here as a subtle psychologist and expert on folk life.
The events of the story take place in the last days of the war. Returning home from the hospital, and not to the front, one of the main characters of the story, Andrei Guskov, becomes a deserter. While in the hospital after being wounded, he dreamed of returning home and was completely sure that he would no longer be sent to the front. It was 1944. However, all his hopes of returning were destroyed, and he decided to take a desperate step. “He prepared all of himself, to the last drop and to the last thought, for a meeting with his family - with his father, mother, Nastena - and lived by this, recovered and breathed by this, that’s all he knew... How could he go back, again under the bullets , to death, when close, in your own side, in Siberia? Is this right and fair? He just needs to be at home for one single day, to calm his soul - then he’s again ready for anything.” Having become a deserter, he is afraid to admit it even to himself and therefore makes a deal with his conscience. He was ready, upon seeing his relatives, to die at the front, but gradually the great desire to live drowns out the weak voice of conscience. He opens up to his wife Nastena.
The feeling of guilt for what her husband did does not allow her to live in peace. She, sheltering her fleeing husband, took his desertion upon herself. After each meeting with Andrei, Nastena became more and more isolated from the people with whom she had shared both grief and joy all her life. Even waiting for a child becomes painful for her. The story ends with the death of Nastena, she cannot find a logical solution and with her death atones for the guilt of involuntary shame for the grave act of her husband.
Why is life so cruel and unfair? Andrey - a man without conscience - remains to live! and the life of such a beautiful, honest, kind, pure woman Nastena is cut short. But not only Nastena became a victim of Andrei’s terrible act, but also his father. Mikheich experiences a hard time, withdraws into himself, sensing evil, and then becomes seriously ill. In this story, V. Rasputin shows the gradual degradation of man. After all, Andrei turns from a kind, loving son and husband into an insignificant animal. The choice made has an irreparable impact on his future life. The line between good and bad, right and wrong is blurred. In fact, Andrei no longer has control over his life and his actions, he goes with the flow.
Andrey, as scary as it may be, distances himself from his loved ones in order to save his life. He is not touched by the death of his wife, who could become the mother of his child, or by his father’s illness. He cares only about his own well-being. Andrei, having moved away from people, gradually loses everything human. He even tries to howl at the moon, like wolves. For a moment he still understood that he was moving away from normal life, but there was nothing he could do. External circumstances were stronger, and his will was not enough to resist them. He obeyed.
Cruelty towards others settled in Andrei’s soul. He shot a roe deer and watched its death throes. To this he said to his wife: “If you tell someone, I’ll kill you.” So step by step Andrei sinks lower and lower. So who is to blame for the fact that a person has fallen so low: circumstances or himself? This question worried many writers of Russian literature. In Rasputin’s story, the main character is placed in exceptional circumstances, the circumstances of war, and blames his lack of will for them: “This is all war, all of it,” he again began to justify himself and conjure. With these words, he seemed to absolve himself of all responsibility for his actions, shifting everything to fate. Thus, Andrei’s moral fall is not a tragedy. He doomed himself to a lonely existence, forced to constantly hide. It even became a habit for him. Like a wild animal sensing danger, Andrei “jumped up and got ready in a minute, habitually bringing the winter quarters into an uninhabited, neglected appearance, he had an escape route prepared... There, in the cave, not a single dog would find him.”
The tragedy in the story is the death of Nastena. This woman represents a true Russian character, which is embodied in many heroines of Rasputin's stories. Nastena is a highly moral person who feels guilty for her husband’s actions, but carries this cross. She committed suicide, but at the same time became morally cleansed. In her soul, moral laws won, just as they win in the soul of the entire people. For Andrei, her suicide was another step down, because he saw his salvation in the child Nastena was carrying. And their death is a punishment for the fact that he transgressed all the moral laws in his soul.
With his story, V. Rasputin seems to say “Live and remember, man! In times of trouble, your place is next to the people. Any retreat turns into grief for you and your people.” The name itself, of course, refers to Andrey, because I just want to add: “If you can live.” But I think this applies to each of us. The main thing is for everyone to live honestly, according to their conscience, without lies, then our society will be highly moral. Eternal human values will return to us again: mercy, kindness, justice. Our literature is designed to teach us to live not by lies.
Other works on this work
The mastery of depicting folk life in one of the works of Russian literature of the 20th century. (V.G. Rasputin. “Live and Remember.”) The story of V. Rasputin "Live and Remember" Why "Live and Remember"? Problems of morality in modern literature Problems of morality in modern literature (based on the story by V. Rasputin “Live and Remember”) Review of the book by V. G. Rasputin “Live and Remember”It so happened that during the last war year, local resident Andrei Guskov secretly returned from the war to a distant village on the Angara. The deserter does not think that he will be greeted with open arms in his father’s house, but he believes in his wife’s understanding and is not deceived. His wife Nastena, although she is afraid to admit it to herself, instinctively understands that her husband has returned, and there are several signs for him. Does she love him? Nastena did not marry for love, the four years of her marriage were not so happy, but she is very devoted to her man, because, having been left without parents early, for the first time in her life she found protection and reliability in his house. “They came to an agreement quickly: Nastena was also spurred on by the fact that she was tired of living with her aunt as a worker and bending her back on someone else’s family...”
Nastena threw herself into marriage like water - without any extra thought: she’ll have to get out anyway, few people can do without it - why wait? And she had little idea what awaited her in a new family and a strange village. But it turned out that from a working woman she became a working woman, only the yard was different, the farm was larger and the demand was stricter. “Maybe the attitude towards her in the new family would be better if she gave birth to a child, but there are no children.”
Childlessness forced Nastena to endure everything. Since childhood, she had heard that a hollow woman without children is no longer a woman, but only half a woman. So by the beginning of the war, nothing came of the efforts of Nastena and Andrei. Nastena considers herself to blame. “Only once, when Andrei, reproaching her, said something completely unbearable, she answered out of resentment that it was still unknown which of them was the reason - she or he, she had not tried other men. He beat her to a pulp." And when Andrei is taken to war, Nastena is even a little glad that she is left alone without children, not like in other families. Letters from the front from Andrei come regularly, then from the hospital, where he is wounded, too, maybe he will soon come on vacation; and suddenly there was no news for a long time, only one day the chairman of the village council and a policeman came into the hut and asked to see the correspondence. “Did he say anything else about himself?” - “No... What’s wrong with him? Where is he?" - “So we want to find out where he is.”
When an ax disappears in the Guskov family bathhouse, only Nastena wonders if her husband has returned: “Who would think of a stranger to look under the floorboard?” And just in case, she leaves bread in the bathhouse, and one day she even heats the bathhouse and meets someone in it whom she expects to see. The return of her husband becomes her secret and is perceived by her as a cross. “Nastena believed that in Andrei’s fate since he left home, in some way there was also her participation, she believed and was afraid that she probably lived for herself alone, so she waited: here, Nastena, take it "Don't show it to anyone."
She readily comes to her husband’s aid, is ready to lie and steal for him, is ready to take the blame for a crime for which she is not guilty. In marriage you have to accept both the bad and the good: “You and I agreed to live together. When everything is good, it’s easy to be together, when everything is bad - that’s why people come together.”
Nastena's soul is filled with enthusiasm and courage - to fulfill her wifely duty to the end, she selflessly helps her husband, especially when she realizes that she is carrying his child under her heart. Meetings with her husband in the winter hut across the river, long mournful conversations about the hopelessness of their situation, hard work at home, insincerity that has settled in relations with the villagers - Nastena is ready for anything, realizing the inevitability of her fate. And although love for her husband is more of a duty for her, she pulls her life’s burden with remarkable masculine strength.
Andrei is not a murderer, not a traitor, but just a deserter who escaped from the hospital, from where, without proper treatment, they were going to send him to the front. Set to go on vacation after being away from home for four years, he can’t resist the idea of returning. As a village man, not urban and not a military man, already in the hospital he finds himself in a situation from which the only salvation is escape. This is how everything turned out for him, it could have turned out differently if he had been more steady on his feet, but the reality is that in the world, in his village, in his country there will be no forgiveness for him. Having realized this, he wants to delay until the last minute, without thinking about his parents, his wife, and especially about his unborn child. The deeply personal thing that connects Nastena with Andrey conflicts with their way of life. Nastena cannot raise her eyes to those women who are receiving funerals, she cannot rejoice as she would have rejoiced before when the neighboring men returned from the war. At a village celebration of the victory, she remembers Andrei with unexpected anger: “Because of him, because of him, she does not have the right, like everyone else, to rejoice in the victory.” The runaway husband posed a difficult and insoluble question to Nastena: who should she be with? She condemns Andrei, especially now, when the war is ending and when it seems that he would have remained alive and unharmed, like everyone who survived, but, condemning him at times to the point of anger, hatred and despair, she retreats in despair: yes after all, she is his wife. And if so, you must either completely abandon him, jumping onto the fence like a rooster: I am not me and the fault is not mine, or go with him to the end. At least on the chopping block. It is not without reason that it is said: whoever marries whom will be born into that one.
Noticing Nastena's pregnancy, her former friends begin to laugh at her, and her mother-in-law completely kicks her out of the house. “It was not easy to endlessly withstand the grasping and judgmental glances of people - curious, suspicious, angry.” Forced to hide her feelings, to restrain them, Nastena is increasingly exhausted, her fearlessness turns into risk, into feelings wasted in vain. It is they who push her to suicide, drag her into the waters of the Angara, shimmering like a river from an eerie and beautiful fairy tale: “She is tired. If anyone knew how tired she is and how much she wants to rest.”