The theme of the story is the stationmaster. “The Station Agent”, analysis of Pushkin’s story

In the famous Boldino autumn of 1830, A.S. In 11 days, Pushkin wrote an amazing work - “Belkin's Tales” - which included five independent stories told to one person (his name is in the title). In them, the author managed to create a gallery of provincial images, truthfully and without embellishment to show life in modern Russia for the writer.

The story “The Station Agent” occupies a special place in the cycle. It was she who laid the foundations for the development of the theme of the “little man” in Russian literature of the 19th century.

Meet the heroes

The story of the station superintendent Samson Vyrin was told to Belkin by a certain I.L.P., a titular councilor. His bitter thoughts about the attitude towards people of this rank set the reader up in a not very cheerful mood from the very beginning. Anyone stopping at the station is ready to curse them. Either the horses are bad, or the weather and road are bad, or even the mood is not going well - and the stationmaster is to blame for everything. The main idea of the story is to show the plight of a common man without a high rank or rank.

All the demands of those passing by were calmly endured by Samson Vyrin, a retired soldier, a widower who raised his fourteen-year-old daughter Dunechka. He was a fresh and cheerful man of about fifty, sociable and sensitive. This is how the titular councilor saw him at their first meeting.

The house was clean and cozy, balsams grew on the windows. And Dunya, who learned how to manage a house early on, gave everyone who stopped tea tea from a samovar. She, with her meek appearance and smile, humbled the anger of all those who were dissatisfied. In the company of Vyrin and the “little coquette,” time flew by for the adviser. The guest said goodbye to the hosts as if they were old acquaintances: their company seemed so pleasant to him.

How Vyrin has changed...

The story “The Station Agent” continues with a description of the second meeting of the narrator with the main character. A few years later, fate again threw him into those parts. He drove up to the station with anxious thoughts: anything could happen during this time. The premonition, in fact, did not deceive: instead of a vigorous and cheerful man, a gray-haired, long-unshaven, hunched old man appeared before him. It was still the same Vyrin, only now very taciturn and gloomy. However, a glass of punch did its job, and soon the narrator learned Dunya's story.

About three years ago a young hussar passed by. He liked the girl, and he pretended to be sick for several days. And when he achieved mutual feelings from her, he took her secretly, without blessing, from her father. Thus, the misfortune that befell changed the long-established life of the family. The heroes of “The Station Agent,” father and daughter, will never meet again. The old man's attempt to return Dunya ended in nothing. He reached St. Petersburg and was even able to see her, richly dressed and happy. But the girl, looking at her father, fell unconscious, and he was simply kicked out. Now Samson lived in melancholy and loneliness, and his main companion was the bottle.

The story of the prodigal son

Even when he first arrived, the narrator noticed pictures on the walls with captions in German. They depicted the biblical story of the prodigal son who took his share of the inheritance and squandered it. In the last picture, the humble youth returned to his home to the parent who had forgiven him.

This legend is very reminiscent of what happened to Vyrin and Dunya, which is why it is no coincidence that it is included in the story “The Station Agent”. The main idea of the work is connected with the idea of helplessness and defenselessness of ordinary people. Vyrin, well familiar with the foundations of high society, could not believe that his daughter could be happy. The scene seen in St. Petersburg was not convincing either - everything can still change. He waited for Dunya's return until the end of his life, but their meeting and forgiveness never took place. Perhaps Dunya simply did not dare to appear before her father for a long time.

Return of the daughter

On his third visit, the narrator learns of the death of an old acquaintance. And the boy who accompanied him to the cemetery will tell him about the lady who came after the station superintendent died. The content of their conversation makes it clear that everything turned out well for Dunya. She arrived in a carriage with six horses, accompanied by a nurse and three barchats. But Dunya no longer found her father alive, and therefore the repentance of the “lost” daughter became impossible. The lady lay on the grave for a long time - this is how, according to tradition, they asked forgiveness from a deceased person and said goodbye to him forever - and then she left.

Why did the daughter’s happiness bring unbearable mental suffering to her father?

Samson Vyrin always believed that life without blessings and as a mistress is a sin. And the fault of Dunya and Minsky, probably, first of all, is that both their departure (the caretaker himself convinced his daughter to accompany the hussar to the church) and the misunderstanding at the meeting in St. Petersburg only strengthened him in this conviction, which, in the end, will bring the hero to the grave . There is another important point - what happened undermined my father’s faith. He sincerely loved his daughter, who was the meaning of his existence. And suddenly such ingratitude: in all the years Dunya never made herself known. It was as if she had erased her father from her life.

Portraying a poor man of the lowest rank, but with a high and sensitive soul, A.S. Pushkin drew the attention of his contemporaries to the position of people who were at the lowest level of the social ladder. The inability to protest and resignation to fate make them defenseless in the face of life's circumstances. This turns out to be the stationmaster.

The main idea that the author wants to convey to the reader is that it is necessary to be sensitive and attentive towards every person, regardless of his character, and only this will help change the indifference and bitterness reigning in the world of people.

The story “The Station Warden” is included in Pushkin’s cycle of stories “Belkin’s Tales”, published as a collection in 1831.

Work on the stories was carried out during the famous “Boldino autumn” - the time when Pushkin came to the Boldino family estate to quickly resolve financial issues, but stayed for the whole autumn due to the cholera epidemic that broke out in the surrounding area. It seemed to the writer that there would never be a more boring time, but suddenly inspiration appeared, and stories began to come out from his pen one after another. So, on September 9, 1830, the story “The Undertaker” was completed, on September 14, “The Station Warden” was ready, and on September 20, “The Young Lady-Peasant” was finished. Then a short creative break followed, and in the new year the stories were published. The stories were republished in 1834 under the original authorship.

Analysis of the work

Genre, theme, composition

Researchers note that “The Station Agent” was written in the genre of sentimentalism, but the story contains many moments that demonstrate the skill of Pushkin the romantic and realist. The writer deliberately chose a sentimental manner of narration (more precisely, he put sentimental notes into the voice of his hero-narrator, Ivan Belkin), in accordance with the content of the story.

Thematically, “The Station Agent” is very multifaceted, despite its small content:

the theme of romantic love (with escaping from one’s home and following one’s loved one against one’s parents’ will),
the theme of the search for happiness,
theme of fathers and sons,
The theme of the “little man” is the greatest theme for Pushkin’s followers, Russian realists.

The thematic multi-level nature of the work allows us to call it a miniature novel. The story is much more complex and more expressive in its semantic load than a typical sentimental work. There are many issues raised here, in addition to the general theme of love.

Compositionally, the story is structured in accordance with the other stories - the fictional author-narrator talks about the fate of station guards, downtrodden people and those in the lowest positions, then tells a story that happened about 10 years ago, and its continuation. The way it begins

“The Station Agent” (an opening argument in the style of a sentimental journey) indicates that the work belongs to the sentimental genre, but later at the end of the work there is the severity of realism.

Belkin reports that station employees are people of a difficult lot, who are treated impolitely, perceived as servants, complain and are rude to them. One of the caretakers, Samson Vyrin, was sympathetic to Belkin. He was a peaceful and kind man, with a sad fate - his own daughter, tired of living at the station, ran away with the hussar Minsky. The hussar, according to her father, could only make her a kept woman, and now, 3 years after the escape, he does not know what to think, for the fate of seduced young fools is terrible. Vyrin went to St. Petersburg, tried to find his daughter and return her, but could not - Minsky sent him away. The fact that the daughter lives not with Minsky, but separately, clearly indicates her status as a kept woman.

The author, who personally knew Dunya as a 14-year-old girl, empathizes with her father. He soon learns that Vyrin has died. Even later, visiting the station where the late Vyrin once worked, he learns that his daughter came home with three children. She cried for a long time at her father’s grave and left, rewarding a local boy who showed her the way to the old man’s grave.

Heroes of the work

There are two main characters in the story: father and daughter.

Samson Vyrin is a diligent worker and father who dearly loves his daughter, raising her alone.

Samson is a typical “little man” who has no illusions both about himself (he is perfectly aware of his place in this world) and about his daughter (for someone like her, neither a brilliant match nor sudden smiles of fate shine). Samson's life position is humility. His life and the life of his daughter take place and must take place on a modest corner of the earth, a station cut off from the rest of the world. There are no handsome princes here, and if they do appear on the horizon, they promise girls only the fall from grace and danger.

When Dunya disappears, Samson cannot believe it. Although matters of honor are important to him, love for his daughter is more important, so he goes to look for her, pick her up and return her. He imagines terrible pictures of misfortunes, it seems to him that now his Dunya is sweeping the streets somewhere, and it is better to die than to drag out such a miserable existence.

Dunya

In contrast to her father, Dunya is a more decisive and persistent creature. The sudden feeling for the hussar is rather a heightened attempt to escape from the wilderness in which she was vegetating. Dunya decides to leave her father, even if this step is not easy for her (she supposedly delays the trip to church and leaves, according to witnesses, in tears). It is not entirely clear how Dunya’s life turned out, and in the end she became the wife of Minsky or someone else. Old Vyrin saw that Minsky had rented a separate apartment for Dunya, and this clearly indicated her status as a kept woman, and when she met her father, Dunya looked “significantly” and sadly at Minsky, then fainted. Minsky pushed Vyrin out, not allowing him to communicate with Dunya - apparently he was afraid that Dunya would return with her father and apparently she was ready for this. One way or another, Dunya has achieved happiness - she is rich, she has six horses, a servant and, most importantly, three “barchats”, so one can only rejoice at her successful risk. The only thing she will never forgive herself is the death of her father, who hastened his death by intense longing for his daughter. At the grave of the father, the woman comes to belated repentance.

Characteristics of the work

The story is riddled with symbolism. The very name “station warden” in Pushkin’s time had the same shade of irony and slight contempt that we put into the words “conductor” or “watchman” today. This means a small person, capable of looking like a servant in the eyes of others, working for pennies without seeing the world.

Thus, the stationmaster is a symbol of a “humiliated and insulted” person, a bug for the mercantile and powerful.

The symbolism of the story was manifested in the painting decorating the wall of the house - this is “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” The stationmaster longed for only one thing - the embodiment of the script of the biblical story, as in this picture: Dunya could return to him in any status and in any form. Her father would have forgiven her, would have reconciled himself, as he had reconciled himself all his life under the circumstances of fate, merciless to “little people.”

“The Station Agent” predetermined the development of domestic realism in the direction of works that defend the honor of the “humiliated and insulted.” The image of Father Vyrin is deeply realistic and amazingly capacious. This is a small man with a huge range of feelings and with every right to respect for his honor and dignity.

In this article we will look at a brief analysis of the story "The Station Warden", which Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1830, and which was included in the collection "Belkin's Stories".

There are two distinct main characters in this work. This is the stationmaster himself, who serves at the station, his name is Samson Vyrin. And his beloved beautiful daughter Dunya. There is also the hussar Minsky, who also played an important role. So, briefly, in a nutshell, the plot of the story “The Station Agent”:

Samson Vyrin is a minor official serving at the station. He is kind and peaceful, although he is constantly exposed to passing bad moods. Vyrin's daughter Dunya is a beauty and a helper. One day, the hussar Minsky comes to them, pretending to be sick in order to spend a few days with the girl he fell in love with. Then, having deceived his father, the hussar takes Dunya to St. Petersburg. Samson Vyrin tries to pick up his daughter, but nothing works. Out of grief, he begins to drink, and, in the end, drinks himself to death from such an unhappy life, turning into a decrepit old man. Dunya, apparently, marries Minsky, gives birth to three children, and does not need anything. Having learned about the death of her father, she deeply regrets and reproaches herself all her life.

This is the plot of the story; without considering it, the analysis of “The Station Agent” would be incomplete.

Problems of the story

Of course, Pushkin raises a number of problems in this story. For example, we are talking about a conflict - an eternal conflict - between parental will and children. Often parents do not let their child leave the parental home, and grown children want to live an independent life.

So it is in “The Station Agent,” which we are analyzing. Daughter Dunya helps Vyrin well, because his work is not easy, there are not enough horses, people get nervous and angry because of this, some kind of conflicts are constantly brewing, and Dunya’s charm and her pleasant appearance help to settle a lot of things. In addition, she works in the comfort of her home, serving in front of clients. It is not surprising that Samson Vyrin values his daughter so much and does not want to let her go, because for him she is the most important thing in life.

When Minsky takes Dunya away, Vyrin thinks it’s like a kidnapping; he doesn’t believe that she herself wants to go with him. Having gone to rescue his daughter, Vyrin is faced with a firm reaction - the hussar does not want to part with his beloved, although it seems to the station attendant that he is simply using her like a new toy - he will play with her and abandon her.

Samson Vyrin is confused and dejected, and although he leaves back to his place, he imagines the fate of his daughter very sadly. He can’t believe that Dunya and the hussar Minsky will be happy, and he ends up just drinking himself to death.

What does the story “The Station Agent” teach, what did the author especially want to emphasize? There are many conclusions that can be drawn, everyone will find something for themselves. But in any case, one can see the impulse to value family ties, love loved ones and think about their feelings. In addition, you should never despair and allow circumstances to drive you into a corner.

We hope that the summary of this work will also help you. You have now read a short analysis of The Station Agent. We also bring to your attention an article with an essay on this story.

History of creation

Boldino autumn in the works of A.S. Pushkin became truly “golden”, since it was at this time that he created many of his works. Among them are “Belkin’s Tales”. In a letter to his friend P. Pletnev, Pushkin wrote: “... I wrote 5 stories in prose, from which Baratynsky laughs and fights.” The chronology of the creation of these stories is as follows: “The Undertaker” was completed on September 9, “The Station Agent” was completed on September 14, “The Young Lady-Peasant” was completed on September 20, after an almost month-long break the last two stories were written: “The Shot” - October 14 and “Blizzard” " - The 20th of October. The cycle of Belkin's Tales was Pushkin's first completed prose creation. The five stories were united by the fictitious person of the author, whom the “publisher” spoke about in the preface. We learn that P.P. Belkin was born “from honest and noble parents in 1798 in the village of Goryukhino.” “He was of average height, had gray eyes, brown hair, a straight nose; his face was white and thin.” “He led a very moderate life, avoided all kinds of excesses; It never happened... to see him drunk..., he had a great inclination towards the female sex, but the modesty in him was truly girlish.” In the autumn of 1828, this sympathetic character “succumbed to a cold fever, which turned into a fever, and died...”.

At the end of October 1831, “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” were published. The preface ended with the words: “Considering it to be our duty to respect the will of our venerable friend the author, we offer him our deepest gratitude for the news he has brought us and we hope that the public will appreciate their sincerity and good nature. A.P.” The epigraph to all the stories, taken from Fonvizin’s “Minor” (Ms. Prostakova: “Then, my father, he is still a hunter of stories.” Skotinin: “Mitrofan for me”), speaks of the nationality and simplicity of Ivan Petrovich. He collected these “simple” stories, and wrote them down from different narrators (“The Caretaker” was told to him by titular adviser A.G.N., “The Shot” by Lieutenant Colonel I.L.P., “The Undertaker” by clerk B.V., “Blizzard” and “Young Lady” by the girl K.I.T.), having processed them according to her own skill and discretion. Thus, Pushkin, as a real author of stories, hides behind a double chain of simple-minded narrators, and this gives him great freedom of narration, creates considerable opportunities for comedy, satire and parody and at the same time allows him to express his attitude to these stories.

With the full name of the real author, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, they were published in 1834. In this series, creating an unforgettable gallery of characters living and acting in the Russian provinces, Pushkin talks about modern Russia with a kind smile and humor. While working on “Belkin’s Tales,” Pushkin outlined one of his main tasks: “We need to give our language more freedom (of course, in accordance with its spirit).” And when the author of the stories was asked who this Belkin was, Pushkin replied: “Whoever he is, stories must be written this way: simply, briefly and clearly.”

The story “The Station Warden” occupies a significant place in the work of A.S. Pushkin and is of great importance for all Russian literature. Almost for the first time, it depicts life’s hardships, pain and suffering of what is called the “little man.” This is where the theme of “the humiliated and insulted” begins in Russian literature, which will introduce you to kind, quiet, suffering heroes and allow you to see not only meekness, but also the greatness of their souls and hearts. The epigraph is taken from a poem by P.A. Vyazemsky’s “Station” (“Collegiate registrar, / Postal station dictator”), Pushkin changed the quote, calling the stationmaster a “collegiate registrar” (the lowest civilian rank in pre-revolutionary Russia), and not a “provincial registrar”, as it was in the original , since this one is of higher rank.

Genre, genre, creative method

“The Stories of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” consists of 5 stories: “The Shot”, “The Blizzard”, “The Undertaker”, “The Station Warden”, “The Young Lady-Peasant”. Each of Belkin's Tales is so small in size that one could call it a story. Pushkin calls them stories. For a realist writer reproducing life, the forms of the story and novel in prose were especially suitable. They attracted Pushkin because of their intelligibility to the widest circles of readers, which was much greater than poetry. “Stories and novels are read by everyone, everywhere,” he noted. Belkin's stories" are, in essence, the beginning of Russian highly artistic realistic prose.

Pushkin took the most typical romantic plots for the story, which may well be repeated in our time. His characters initially find themselves in situations where the word “love” is present. They are already in love or just long for this feeling, but this is where the unfolding and escalation of the plot begins. "Belkin's Tales" were conceived by the author as a parody of the genre of romantic literature. In the story “The Shot,” the main character Silvio came from the bygone era of romanticism. This is a handsome, strong, brave man with a solid, passionate character and an exotic non-Russian name, reminiscent of the mysterious and fatal heroes of Byron’s romantic poems. In "Blizzard" French novels and romantic ballads of Zhukovsky are parodied. At the end of the story, a comic confusion with the suitors leads the heroine of the story to a new, hard-won happiness. In the story “The Undertaker,” in which Adrian Prokhorov invites the dead to visit him, Mozart’s opera and the terrible stories of the romantics are parodied. “The Peasant Young Lady” is a small, elegant sitcom with cross-dressing in the French style, set in a Russian noble estate. But she kindly, funny and witty parodies the famous tragedy - Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

In the cycle of “Belkin’s Tales” the center and peak is “The Station Agent”. The story lays the foundations of realism in Russian literature. In essence, in terms of its plot, expressiveness, complex, capacious theme and shadowy composition, and in terms of the characters themselves, this is already a small, condensed novel that influenced subsequent Russian prose and gave birth to Gogol’s story “The Overcoat.” The people here are depicted as simple, and their story itself would be simple if various everyday circumstances had not interfered with it.

Subjects

In "Belkin's Tales", along with traditional romantic themes from the life of the nobility and estate, Pushkin reveals the theme of human happiness in its broadest sense. Worldly wisdom, rules of everyday behavior, generally accepted morality are enshrined in catechisms and prescriptions, but following them does not always lead to success. It is necessary for fate to give a person happiness, for circumstances to come together successfully. “Belkin's Tales” shows that there are no hopeless situations, one must fight for happiness, and it will be, even if it is impossible.

The story “The Station Agent” is the saddest and most complex work in the cycle. This is a story about the sad fate of Vyrin and the happy fate of his daughter. From the very beginning, the author connects the modest story of Samson Vyrin with the philosophical meaning of the entire cycle. After all, the stationmaster, who does not read books at all, has his own scheme for perceiving life. It is reflected in the pictures “with decent German poetry” that are hung on the walls of his “humble but neat abode.” The narrator describes in detail these pictures depicting the biblical legend of the prodigal son. Samson Vyrin looks at everything that happened to him and his daughter through the prism of these pictures. His life experience suggests that misfortune will happen to his daughter, she will be deceived and abandoned. He is a toy, a little man in the hands of the powerful, who have turned money into the main measure.

Pushkin stated one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 19th century - the theme of the “little man”. The significance of this theme for Pushkin lay not in exposing the downtroddenness of his hero, but in the discovery in the “little man” of a compassionate and sensitive soul, endowed with the gift of responding to someone else’s misfortune and someone else’s pain.

From now on, the theme of the “little man” will be heard constantly in Russian classical literature.

Idea

“There is no idea in any of Belkin’s Tales. You read - sweetly, smoothly, smoothly; when you read - everything is forgotten, there is nothing in your memory except adventures. “Belkin’s Tales” are easy to read, because they do not make you think” (“Northern Bee”, 1834, No. 192, August 27).
“True, these stories are entertaining, they cannot be read without pleasure: this comes from the charming style, from the art of storytelling, but they are not artistic creations, but simply fairy tales and fables” (V.G. Belinsky).

“How long has it been since you re-read Pushkin’s prose? Make me a friend - read all of Belkin's Tales first. They need to be studied and studied by every writer. I did this the other day and I cannot convey to you the beneficial influence that this reading had on me” (from a letter from L.N. Tolstoy to P.D. Golokhvastov).

Such an ambiguous perception of Pushkin’s cycle suggests that there is some kind of secret in Belkin’s Tales. In “The Station Agent” it is contained in a small artistic detail - wall paintings telling the story of the prodigal son, which were a common part of the station environment in the 20-40s. The description of those pictures takes the narrative from a social and everyday level to a philosophical one, allows us to comprehend its content in relation to human experience, and interprets the “eternal plot” about the prodigal son. The story is imbued with the pathos of compassion.

Nature of the conflict

In the story “The Station Agent” there is a humiliated and sad hero, the ending is equally mournful and happy: the death of the station agent, on the one hand, and the happy life of his daughter, on the other. The story is distinguished by the special nature of the conflict: there are no negative characters here who would be negative in everything; there is no direct evil - and at the same time, the grief of a simple person, a stationmaster, does not become any less.

A new type of hero and conflict entailed a different narrative system, the figure of the narrator - the titular adviser A.G.N. He tells a story heard from others, from Vyrin himself and from the “red-haired and crooked” boy. The removal of Dunya Vyrina by a hussar is the beginning of the drama, followed by a chain of events. From the postal station the action moves to St. Petersburg, from the caretaker’s house to a grave outside the outskirts. The caretaker is unable to influence the course of events, but before bowing to fate, he tries to turn history back, to save Dunya from what seems to the poor father to be the death of his “child”. The hero comprehends what happened and, moreover, goes to his grave from the powerless consciousness of his own guilt and the irreparability of the misfortune.

“Little man” is not only a low rank, lack of high social status, but also loss in life, fear of it, loss of interest and purpose. Pushkin was the first to draw the attention of readers to the fact that, despite his low origins, a person still remains a person and he has all the same feelings and passions as people of high society. The story “The Station Warden” teaches you to respect and love a person, teaches you the ability to sympathize, and makes you think that the world in which the station guards live is not structured in the best way.

Main characters

The author-narrator speaks sympathetically about the “real martyrs of the fourteenth class,” station guards accused by travelers of all sins. In fact, their life is real hard labor: “The traveler takes out all the frustration accumulated during a boring ride on the caretaker. The weather is unbearable, the road is bad, the driver is stubborn, the horses are not moving - and the caretaker is to blame... You can easily guess that I have friends from the venerable class of caretakers.” This story was written in memory of one of them.

The main character in the story “The Station Agent” is Samson Vyrin, a man about 50 years old. The caretaker was born around 1766, into a peasant family. The end of the 18th century, when Vyrin was 20-25 years old, was the time of Suvorov’s wars and campaigns. As we know from history, Suvorov developed initiative among his subordinates, encouraged soldiers and non-commissioned officers, promoting them in their careers, cultivating camaraderie in them, and demanding literacy and intelligence. A peasant man under the command of Suvorov could rise to the rank of non-commissioned officer, receiving this rank for faithful service and personal bravery. Samson Vyrin could have been just such a person and most likely served in the Izmailovsky regiment. The text says that, having arrived in St. Petersburg in search of his daughter, he stops at the Izmailovsky regiment, in the house of a retired non-commissioned officer, his old colleague.

It can be assumed that around 1880 he retired and received the position of stationmaster and the rank of collegiate registrar. This position provided a small but constant salary. He got married and soon had a daughter. But the wife died, and the daughter was joy and consolation to the father.

Since childhood, she had to shoulder all women's work on her fragile shoulders. Vyrin himself, as he is presented at the beginning of the story, is “fresh and cheerful,” sociable and not embittered, despite the fact that undeserved insults rained down on his head. Just a few years later, driving along the same road, the author, stopping for the night with Samson Vyrin, did not recognize him: from “fresh and vigorous” he turned into an abandoned, flabby old man, whose only consolation was a bottle. And it’s all about the daughter: without asking for parental consent, Dunya - his life and hope, for whose benefit he lived and worked - ran away with a passing hussar. The act of his daughter broke Samson; he could not bear the fact that his dear child, his Dunya, whom he protected as best he could from all dangers, could do this to him and, what is even worse, to herself - she became not a wife, but a mistress.

Pushkin sympathizes with his hero and deeply respects him: a man of the lower class, who grew up in poverty and hard work, has not forgotten what decency, conscience and honor are. Moreover, he places these qualities above material wealth. Poverty for Samson is nothing compared to the emptiness of his soul. It is not for nothing that the author introduces such a detail into the story as pictures depicting the story of the prodigal son on the wall in Vyrin’s house. Like the father of the prodigal son, Samson was ready to forgive. But Dunya did not return. My father’s suffering was aggravated by the fact that he knew very well how such stories often end: “There are a lot of them in St. Petersburg, young fools, today in satin and velvet, and tomorrow, you’ll see, sweeping the street along with the tavern’s nakedness. When you sometimes think that Dunya, perhaps, is disappearing right away, you will inevitably sin and wish for her grave...” An attempt to find her daughter in huge St. Petersburg ended in nothing. This is where the stationmaster gave up - he completely drank and died some time later, without waiting for his daughter. Pushkin created in his Samson Vyrin an amazingly capacious, truthful image of a simple, small man and showed all his rights to the title and dignity of a person.

Dunya in the story is shown as a jack of all trades. No one could cook dinner better than her, clean the house, or serve a passer-by. And her father, looking at her agility and beauty, could not get enough of it. At the same time, this is a young coquette who knows her strength, entering into conversation with a visitor without timidity, “like a girl who has seen the light.” Belkin sees Dunya for the first time in the story when she is fourteen years old - an age at which it is too early to think about fate. Dunya knows nothing about this intention of the visiting hussar Minsky. But, breaking away from her father, she chooses her female happiness, even if it may be short-lived. She chooses another world, unknown, dangerous, but at least she will live in it. It’s hard to blame her for choosing life over vegetation; she took a risk and won. Dunya comes to her father only when everything she could only dream of has come true, although Pushkin does not say a word about her marriage. But six horses, three children, and a nurse indicate a successful ending to the story. Of course, Dunya herself considers herself to blame for her father’s death, but the reader will probably forgive her, just as Ivan Petrovich Belkin forgives.

Dunya and Minsky, the internal motives of their actions, thoughts and experiences, are described throughout the entire story by the narrator, the coachman, the father, and the red-haired boy from the outside. Maybe that’s why the images of Dunya and Minsky are given somewhat schematically. Minsky is noble and rich, he served in the Caucasus, the rank of captain is not small, and if he is in the guard, then he is already high, equal to an army lieutenant colonel. The kind and cheerful hussar fell in love with the simple-minded caretaker.

Many of the actions of the heroes of the story are incomprehensible today, but for Pushkin’s contemporaries they were natural. So, Minsky, having fallen in love with Dunya, did not marry her. He could do this not only because he was a rake and a frivolous person, but also for a number of objective reasons. Firstly, in order to get married, an officer needed permission from his commander; marriage often meant resignation. Secondly, Minsky could depend on his parents, who would hardly have liked a marriage with a dowry-free and non-noblewoman Dunya. It takes time to resolve at least these two problems. Although in the final Minsky was able to do it.

Plot and composition

Russian writers have repeatedly turned to the compositional structure of Belkin's Tales, consisting of five separate stories. F.M. wrote about his idea to write a novel with a similar composition in one of his letters. Dostoevsky: “The stories are completely separate from one another, so they can even be sold separately. I believe Pushkin was thinking about a similar form of the novel: five stories (the number of "Belkin's Tales"), sold separately. Pushkin’s stories are indeed separate in all respects: there is no cross-cutting character (in contrast to the five stories of Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time”); no general content. But there is a general method of mystery, “detective”, that lies at the basis of each story. Pushkin's stories are united, firstly, by the figure of the narrator - Belkin; secondly, by the fact that they are all told. The storytelling was, I suppose, the artistic device for which the entire text was conceived. The narration as common to all stories simultaneously allowed them to be read (and sold) separately. Pushkin thought about a work that, being whole as a whole, would be whole in every part. I call this form, using the experience of subsequent Russian prose, a cycle novel.”

The stories were written by Pushkin in the same chronological order, but he arranged them not according to the time of writing, but based on compositional calculation, alternating stories with “unsuccessful” and “prosperous” endings. This composition imparted to the entire cycle, despite the presence of deeply dramatic provisions in it, a general optimistic orientation.

Pushkin builds the story “The Station Agent” on the development of two destinies and characters - father and daughter. Station warden Samson Vyrin is an old, honored (three medals on faded ribbons) retired soldier, a kind and honest person, but rude and simple-minded, located at the very bottom of the table of ranks, on the lowest rung of the social ladder. He is not only a simple, but a small man, whom every passing nobleman can insult, shout, or hit, although his lower rank of 14th class still gave him the right to personal nobility. But all the guests were met, calmed down and given tea by his beautiful and lively daughter Dunya. But this family idyll could not continue forever and, at first glance, ended badly, because the caretaker and his daughter had different destinies. A passing young handsome hussar, Minsky, fell in love with Dunya, cleverly feigned illness, achieved mutual feelings and, as befits a hussar, took away a crying but not resisting girl in a troika to St. Petersburg.

The little man of the 14th grade did not reconcile himself with such insult and loss; he went to St. Petersburg to save his daughter, whom, as Vyrin, not without reason, believed, the insidious seducer would soon abandon and drive out into the street. And his very reproachful appearance was important for the further development of this story, for the fate of his Dunya. But it turned out that the story is more complicated than the caretaker imagined. The captain fell in love with his daughter and, moreover, turned out to be a conscientious, honest man; he blushed with shame at the unexpected appearance of the father he had deceived. And the beautiful Dunya responded to the kidnapper with a strong, sincere feeling. The old man gradually drank himself to death from grief, melancholy and loneliness, and despite the moralizing pictures about the prodigal son, the daughter never came to visit him, disappeared, and was not at her father’s funeral. The rural cemetery was visited by a beautiful lady with three little dogs and a black pug in a luxurious carriage. She silently lay down on her father’s grave and “lay there for a long time.” This is a folk custom of the last farewell and remembrance, the last “farewell.” This is the greatness of human suffering and repentance.

Artistic originality

In "Belkin's Tales" all the features of the poetics and stylistics of Pushkin's fiction were clearly revealed. Pushkin appears in them as an excellent short story writer, to whom a touching story, a short story with a sharp plot and twists and turns, and a realistic sketch of morals and everyday life are equally accessible. The artistic requirements for prose, which were formulated by Pushkin in the early 20s, he now implements in his own creative practice. Nothing unnecessary, only one thing necessary in the narrative, accuracy in definitions, conciseness and conciseness of style.

"Belkin's Tales" are distinguished by their extreme economy of artistic means. From the very first lines, Pushkin introduces the reader to his heroes and introduces him to the circle of events. The depiction of the characters' characters is just as sparse and no less expressive. The author hardly gives an external portrait of the heroes, and almost does not dwell on their emotional experiences. At the same time, the appearance of each of the characters emerges with remarkable relief and clarity from his actions and speeches. “The writer must continually study this treasure,” Leo Tolstoy advised a literary friend about “Belkin’s Tales.”

Meaning of the work

In the development of Russian fiction, a huge role belongs to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Here he had almost no predecessors. Prose literary language was also at a much lower level compared to poetry. Therefore, Pushkin was faced with a particularly important and very difficult task of processing the very material of this area of verbal art. Among Belkin's Tales, The Station Warden was of exceptional importance for the further development of Russian literature. A very truthful image of a caretaker, warmed by the author’s sympathy, opens the gallery of “poor people” created by subsequent Russian writers, humiliated and insulted by the social relations of the then reality, which were most difficult for the common man.

The first writer who opened the world of “little people”* to the reader was N.M. Karamzin. Karamzin’s word echoes Pushkin and Lermontov. Karamzin's story "Poor Liza" had the greatest influence on subsequent literature. The author laid the foundation for a huge series of works about “little people” and took the first step into this previously unknown topic. It was he who opened the way for such writers of the future as Gogol, Dostoevsky and others.

A.S. Pushkin was the next writer whose sphere of creative attention began to include the whole of vast Russia, its open spaces, the life of villages, St. Petersburg and Moscow opened up not only from a luxurious entrance, but also through the narrow doors of poor houses. For the first time, Russian literature so poignantly and clearly showed the distortion of personality by an environment hostile to it. Pushkin's artistic discovery was aimed at the future; it paved the way for Russian literature into the still unknown.

History of creation

Boldino autumn in the works of A.S. Pushkin became truly “golden”, since it was at this time that he created many of his works. Among them are “Belkin’s Tales”. In a letter to his friend P. Pletnev, Pushkin wrote: “... I wrote 5 stories in prose, from which Baratynsky laughs and fights.” The chronology of the creation of these stories is as follows: “The Undertaker” was completed on September 9, “The Station Agent” was completed on September 14, “The Young Lady-Peasant” was completed on September 20, after an almost month-long break the last two stories were written: “The Shot” - October 14 and “Blizzard” " - The 20th of October. The cycle of Belkin's Tales was Pushkin's first completed prose creation. The five stories were united by the fictitious person of the author, whom the “publisher” spoke about in the preface. We learn that P.P. Belkin was born “from honest and noble parents in 1798 in the village of Goryukhino.” “He was of average height, had gray eyes, brown hair, a straight nose; his face was white and thin.” “He led a very moderate life, avoided all kinds of excesses; It never happened... to see him drunk..., he had a great inclination towards the female sex, but the modesty in him was truly girlish.” In the autumn of 1828, this sympathetic character “succumbed to a cold fever, which turned into a fever, and died...”.

Genre, genre, creative method

Subjects

From now on, the theme of the “little man” will be heard constantly in Russian classical literature.

Idea

“There is no idea in any of Belkin’s Tales. You read - sweetly, smoothly, fluently: once you read - everything is forgotten, there is nothing in your memory except adventures. “Belkin’s Tales” are easy to read, because they do not make you think” (“Northern Bee”, 1834, No. 192, August 27).
“True, these stories are entertaining, they cannot be read without pleasure: this comes from the charming style, from the art of storytelling, but they are not artistic creations, but simply fairy tales and fables” (V.G. Belinsky).

Such an ambiguous perception of Pushkin’s cycle suggests that there is some kind of secret in Belkin’s Tales. In “The Station Agent” it is contained in a small artistic detail - wall paintings telling about the prodigal son, which were a common part of the station environment in the 20-40s. The description of those pictures takes the narrative from a social and everyday level to a philosophical one, allows us to comprehend its content in relation to human experience, and interprets the “eternal plot” about the prodigal son. The story is imbued with the pathos of compassion.

Nature of the conflict

A new type of hero and conflict entailed a different narrative system, the figure of the narrator - the titular adviser A.G.N. He tells the story heard from others, from Vyrin himself and from the “red-haired and crooked” boy. The taking away of Dunya Vyrina by a hussar is the beginning of the drama, followed by a chain of events. From the postal station the action moves to St. Petersburg, from the caretaker’s house to a grave outside the outskirts. The caretaker is unable to influence the course of events, but before bowing to fate, he tries to turn history back, to save Dunya from what seems to the poor father to be the death of his “child”. The hero comprehends what happened and, moreover, goes to his grave from the powerless consciousness of his own guilt and the irreparability of the misfortune.

Main characters

The author-narrator speaks sympathetically about the “real martyrs of the fourteenth class,” station guards accused by travelers of all sins. In fact, their life is a real hard labor: “The traveler takes out all the frustration accumulated during a boring ride on the caretaker. The weather is unbearable, the road is bad, the driver is stubborn, the horses don’t carry - and the caretaker is to blame... You can easily guess that I have friends from the venerable class of caretakers.” This story was written in memory of one of them.

Since childhood, she had to shoulder all women's work on her fragile shoulders. Vyrin himself, as he is presented at the beginning of the story, is “fresh and cheerful,” sociable and not embittered, despite the fact that undeserved insults rained down on his head. Just a few years later, driving along the same road, the author, stopping for the night with Samson Vyrin, did not recognize him: from “fresh and vigorous” he turned into an abandoned, flabby old man, whose only consolation was a bottle. And it’s all about the daughter: without asking for parental consent, Dunya - his life and hope, for whose benefit he lived and worked - fled with a passing hussar. The act of his daughter broke Samson; he could not bear the fact that his dear child, his Dunya, whom he protected as best he could from all dangers, could do this to him and, what is even worse, to herself - she became not a wife, but a mistress.

Plot and composition

Artistic originality

Meaning of the work