Stages of Gregory's life. Typical and individual

At the beginning of the story, young Gregory - a real Cossack, a brilliant rider, hunter, fisherman and diligent rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. The traditional Cossack commitment to military glory helps him out in his first trials on the bloody battlefields in 1914. Distinguished by exceptional courage, Gregory quickly gets used to bloody battles. However, what distinguishes him from his brothers in arms is his sensitivity to any manifestation of cruelty. To any violence against the weak and defenseless, and as events develop - also a protest against the horrors and absurdities of war. In fact, he spends his entire life in an environment of hatred and fear that is alien to him, becoming embittered and discovering with disgust how all his talent, his entire being, goes into the dangerous skill of creating death. He has no time to be at home, with his family, among people who love him.

All this cruelty, filth, and violence forced Gregory to take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he was after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, doubts appeared about his devotion to the tsar, the fatherland and military duty.

In the seventeenth year we see Gregory in chaotic and painful attempts to somehow make up his mind in this “time of troubles.” He seeks political truth in a world of rapidly changing values, guided more often by the external signs of events than by their essence.

At first he fights for the Reds, but their murder of unarmed prisoners repulses him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, committing robbery and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again Gregory’s search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a person completely lost in the cycle of events.

The deep forces of Gregory’s soul push him away from both the Reds and the Whites. “They are all the same!? he says to childhood friends leaning towards the Bolsheviks.? They are all a yoke on the neck of the Cossacks!” And when he learns about the rebellion of the Cossacks in the upper reaches of the Don against the Red Army, he takes the side of the rebels. Now he can fight for what is dear to him, for what he loved and cherished all his life: “As if the days of searching for the truth, searching, transitions and difficult internal struggles were not behind him. What was there to think about? Why was your soul rushing about? in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions? Life seemed mocking, wisely simple. Now it seemed to him that from eternity there had not been such a truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and embittered to the brim, he thought: everyone has their own truth, their own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life and will continue to fight as long as the sun shines on them, as long as warm blood oozes through their veins. We must fight with those who want to take away life, the right for it; must you fight hard without swaying? like in the wall? and the intensity of hatred, the firmness will be given by struggle!”

Both a return to the dominance of officers in the event of a White victory, and the power of the Reds on the Don are unacceptable for Gregory. In the last volume of the novel, demotion as a consequence of disobedience to a White Guard officer, the death of his wife and the final defeat of the White Army bring Gregory to the last degree of despair. In the end, he joins Budyonny’s cavalry and heroically fights the Poles, wanting to clear himself of his guilt before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former messenger that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Litsvitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but to me everything is still unclear. They both have their own straight roads, their own ends, but since I was seventeen, I’ve been walking along the vilyuzhki like a drunken swaying...”

The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of the Russian Cossacks as a whole. The Cossacks never broke their hats for anyone, they lived separately, isolated from the rest of the world, they feel some of their exclusivity, peculiarity and strive to preserve it. For the majority of ordinary Cossacks, both white and red are “non-residents” who brought discord and war to the Don land. No matter which side the Cossacks fight on, they want one thing: to return to their native farm, to their wife and children, to plow the land, to run their farm.

One night, under the threat of arrest, and therefore inevitable execution, Grigory flees his native farm. After long wanderings, longing for his children and Aksinya, he secretly returns. Aksinya hugs him, presses her face to his wet overcoat and sobs: “It’s better to kill, but don’t leave!” Having asked his sister to take the children, he and Aksinya flee at night in the hope of getting to Kuban and starting a new life. Enthusiastic joy fills the soul of this woman at the thought that she is again next to Gregory. But her happiness is short-lived: on the road they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. When they find shelter in a ditch, Gregory buries his Aksinya: “He carefully crushed the wet, yellow clay on the grave mound with his palms and knelt for a long time near the grave, bowing his head, quietly swaying. There was no need for him to rush now. It was all over..."

Hiding for weeks in the thicket of the forest, Grigory experiences an increasingly strong desire to “walk... around his native places, show off like the kids, then he could die...” He returns to his native farm.

Having touchingly described Grigory’s meeting with his son, Sholokhov ends his novel with the words: “Well, the little that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms. This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

Gregory did not have long to enjoy this joy. It is obvious that he returned to die. To die from communist necessity in the person of Mikhail Koshevoy. In a novel full of cruelty, executions and murders, Sholokhov wisely brings down the curtain on this final episode. Meanwhile, an entire human life flashed before us, flashing brightly and slowly fading away. Sholokhov's biography of Gregory is quite voluminous. Gregory lived, in the full sense of the word, when his idyll of life was not disturbed by anything.

He loved and was loved, he lived an extraordinary worldly life on his native farm and was content. He always tried to do the right thing, and if not, well, every person has the right to make a mistake. Many moments of Gregory's life in the novel are peculiar “escapes” from events that are beyond his mind. The passion of Gregory's quest is most often replaced by a return to himself, to natural life, to his home. But at the same time, it cannot be said that Gregory’s life quest has reached a dead end, no. He had true love, and fate did not deprive him of the opportunity to be a happy father. But Gregory was forced to constantly look for a way out of the difficult situations that had arisen. Speaking about Gregory’s moral choice in life, it is impossible to say unambiguously whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better lot in life, and this desire was not a simple desire to “live the best life.” It was sincere and affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him, in particular the woman he loved. Despite his fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although only for a very short time. But even these short minutes of much-needed happiness were enough. They were not lost in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain. There is no particular fault of Gregory in the way his fate turned out: he did not choose the burden in which to live. But one thing can be said: Melekhov is broken, but not broken, crippled, but not disfigured by the war, like Mitka Korshunov or Fomin. He did not bend his soul, and if he went against his conscience somewhere, he paid himself to the end for it. And Mishatka, sitting in his father’s arms, is his best reward for everything from an unkind fate. M. Sholokhov, like Tolstoy, emphasizes the decisive role of the people in history.

Describing his idea for the image of the main character of “Quiet Don,” M. Sholokhov wrote: “I wanted to talk about the charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov, but I was not completely successful.” It failed, as we see it, not because of a lack of skill (the writer perfectly understood the scale of the figure he created), but because in him the human spirit rose to the heights of perfection and sank to the depths of despair. The path of Grigory Melekhov to the ideal of true life is a tragic path of gains, mistakes and losses that was passed by all the Russian people in the 20th century.

Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and fratricidal civil war, the attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, Cossack freedom and the fate of the people merged together. The strong character, integrity and rebellion inherited from his father have haunted him since his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, disdaining public morality and his father’s prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person who stands up for justice. The author shows his hard work in scenes of hunting, fishing, and haymaking. Throughout the entire novel, in harsh battles on one side or the other, he searches for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, its glorious victories, in Voronezh the Cossacks hear from a local old man the phrase thrown after them with pity: “My dear... beef!” The elderly man knew that there is nothing worse than war, this is not an adventure in which you can become a hero, it is dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Gregory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The first to fall from his horse was the cornet Lyakhovsky. Prokhor galloped at him... With a cutter, like a diamond on glass, he cut out Gregory’s memory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhor’s horse with barbed slabs of teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind him... More fell. The Cossacks and horses fell."
In parallel, the author shows events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how much simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under their palms, we won’t be able to wait for those dear to our hearts! No matter how many tears stream from swollen and faded eyes, it will not wash away the melancholy! No matter how much you cry on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the eastern wind will not carry their cries to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!”
The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of hardships and deaths that change all the foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious things that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty, intransigence, and thirst for the blood of his enemies as the Whites. War destroys the smooth life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why the fratricidal war is being waged. For whose sake and what should they die in the prime of life? After all, life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hope, and opportunity. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; it is they, not the commanders, who will starve and die.
There are also characters in the work who think completely differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country solely as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else’s game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier, whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind, fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He is not the only one who thinks about the terrible downside of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It’s easier to kill someone else who has broken their hand in this matter than to crush a louse. The man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Grigory - Aksinya, is perceived as a death sentence for all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all living people; it is not for nothing that Gregory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees above him a black sky and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two warring sides. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t feel sorry for the children either.”
Realizing that the war is killing the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise his children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. in his immortal work, he raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by burning fires, Grigory’s life became black...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.

Lesson topic : The path of quest of Grigory Melekhov.

(based on the novel by M. Sholokhov “Quiet Don”)

Lesson type – conference (lesson of generalization and systematization of knowledge).

Technology: communicative (at the lesson preparation stage - research).

Goals:

Educational: consider the panorama of the life of the Don people in tragic moments of history and note how historical events affected the lives of people using the example of the hero Grigory Melekhov.

Developmental: develop the skills of independent work with text and additional literature and the ability to express your thoughts about what you read.

Educational : to cultivate love for the Motherland, native land and historical heritage of one’s people.

Equipment: literary texts, portraits of the writer and the main character, map of the Rostov region, diagram “The Path of Quest of Grigory Melekhov,” multimedia.

Lesson steps :

Organizational moment: Greeting, introduction of specialists (literary scholars, historians, geographers, creative group),

Introduction:

The teacher's word about the journey;

Poem. “A Man Needs Little” by R. Rozhdestvensky.

Main part:

A word about the writer;

Kh. Tatarsky - collective settlement;

About the Melekhov family;

About the main character;

Military service;

In the First World War;

Into the revolution;

Civil War;

Participation in the Verkhnedon uprising;

At the Reds;

In Fomin's gang;

Mental emptiness, returning home;

Teacher: Guys, today we are teaching you an unusual lesson - a lesson - a journey. Do you like to travel? What happens to a person while traveling?

Answer : Meetings are interesting, unforgettable; learning something new and useful; experiencing feelings of joy, surprise, admiration.

We will take a virtual trip, and it will be conducted by experts. You guys will try yourself in a new role, as historians, literary critics, geographers. We also have a creative group: Sergey Kabargin, Evgeniy Chebotarev, who prepared slides and videos. We have everything for beginner specialists.

The unusual thing about the trip is that it is a journey through a wonderful book and literary places. We will complete it along the life path and fate of not only the main character, but also the entire Don Cossacks, whose descendants we are.

We have a secret question that we will have to answer at the end of the journey: what is hidden under this circle? Maybe someone has already guessed? (students' answers) This question will be a riddle that we will answer at the end of the lesson.

So guys, what is the most important thing when traveling?

Answer : Homecoming.

Teacher : Of course, the main thing is the road home.

Let's get started: let's go to literary scholars.

Poem “A Man Needs Little” by R. Rozhdestvensky .

A person needs little:

To search and find.

To start with

One friend and one enemy...

A person needs little...

So that the path leads along.

May my mother live in the world.

She lived as long as she needed...

A person needs little:

After thunder - silence,

Blue patch of fog

One life. And one death...

Not a great reward.

Low pedestal.

A person needs little.

If only someone was waiting at home.

Teacher : Guys, you already understand that we will make the journey with the main character of the novel “Quiet Don” Grigory Melekhov, and this brilliant work was written by M.A. Sholokhov. And we set off on the journey from the home of Mikhail Alexandrovich, a wonderful Don Cossack, a famous writer and just a man in love with his land! And the more talented the writer, the more truthful his path.

Geographer: So, the Kruzhilin farm. (show on map)

Historians: M.A. was born. Sholokhov in 1905 in x. Kruzhilina village of Veshenskaya, Donetsk district (now it is the Sholokhov district of the Rostov region). His childhood passed in St. Karginskaya: here he studied, here he began to write his first literary works. From here he volunteered for the Civil War.

Then, in peacetime, there was work in Moscow. In 1926 Mikhail Alexandrovich begins to work on the novel Quiet Don, often visiting his native places: x. Kruzhilin, st. Bazkovskaya, Veshenskaya. In Bazki, he sometimes talked all night long with Kharlampy Ermakov, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov, our guide on today’s journey.

There is so much in common in the fate of the real Cossack, Kharlampy Ermakov, and the literary hero, Grigory Melekhov. Even in origin: Ermakov’s grandmother is Turkish, brought from Turkey by her grandfather, a participant in the war of 1877-1878. And that’s why the grandson, Kharlampy, was dark-skinned in an oriental way, with a hunchback, and the villagers called him “gypsy.” This description in the novel corresponds to our hero.

Teacher: The next stop on our journey is a literary place.

Literary scholars: The action of the novel begins in Tatarsky. This is a purely literary farmstead, but it exists in the work among real farmsteads and villages. Let's try to determine its location. According to Sholokhov, x. Tatarsky - near the Don, on the shore of “the gate from the cattle station leads north, to the Don.” The Don is located to the north only in relation to the right-bank farmsteads. So x. Tatarsky on the right bank. Residents of ancient farms have long been arguing about which farm is described in M.A.’s novel. Sholokhov. Some say that x. Tatar is x. Kalinsky, others claim that this is x. Bazkovsky. And yet x. Tatar is a collective settlement.

Teacher: the beginning of the book is very poetic.

Literary scholars: “Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farm. The gates from the cattle base lead north to the Don. A steep eight-fathom descent between mossy green chalk blocks, and here is the shore: a mother-of-pearl scattering of shells, a gray broken border of pebbles kissed by the waves, and further – the stirrup of the Don boiling under the winds with blued ripples” - these are the opening lines of the great novel. The Melekhovsky kuren, which stood on the edge of the Tatarsky farm, found itself at the very center of events in world and Russian history, since the waves of life diverge widely from it and converge to it from everywhere.

Literary scholars : Among the waves of the raging sea of people's life, the writer chose the Melekhov family. She is no better than others, but she is from the very depths, a true heir to what has been accumulated over the centuries, she contains human spiritual wealth. That’s why it’s good to be around the Melekhov family: with them it’s simple, reliable, confident and interesting, although you have to work from morning to night, and there are many surprises, and there are scorching explosions. And at the same time, what a gratifying feeling of security, a feeling of home!

Literary scholars: The protagonist of the novel spent his childhood and youth here. Here he grew up, matured, learned to grow grain, mow hay, and became a good Cossack. Here he met his first love - married Aksinya. In this farm he started his family, at the behest of his father, Pantelei Prokofievich, and married the kind and decent Natalya Korshunova. Already before the wedding, Grigory realized that his destiny was Aksinya, and he realized that Natalya was unloved. Therefore, after living with his wife for a while, he leaves with Aksinya to the Yagodnoye estate, which is not far from x. Tatarsky. Here they are hired as workers by the wealthy landowner Listnitsky.

Teacher: And please help, historians and geographers.

Geographers : The Yagodnoye estate is also a fictitious literary name, but historians tell us that this fictitious name means x. Yasenovka.

Geographers: Let's travel further: the brightest and favorite place of the Cossacks -Veshenskaya village .

Historians: Art. Veshenskaya is rightfully considered one of the oldest and most beautiful Cossack villages, the banks of which are washed by the clean waters of Father Don. It was moved from the site of the Chigonatskaya village, devastated under Peter 1, and renamed Veshenskaya. Here, before serving, Grigory Melekhov swore an oath of allegiance to the Tsar and the Fatherland.

And before that, the old Cossack gives instructions (Cossack commandments):« If you want to be alive, to emerge from mortal combat intact, you must preserve human truth. Don’t take someone else’s in war - once. God forbid I should touch women, and also know such a prayer.”

In these ancient testaments there are also humane words about the attitude towards women, and that the army should not engage in robbery and violence.

Literary scholars : It was a matter of honor for the whole family to escort a serviceman into the army with dignity, so Panteley Prokofievich, having swallowed the insult, comes to Yagodnoye to Grigory and brings the right: two greatcoats, a saddle, trousers, and Grigory is very worried: “Christmas is coming, but he had nothing.” ready".

Historian-geographers : On the eve of the First World War, Gregory was drafted into the imperial army. “From the Chertkovo station (this is an ancient station named after the Military Ataman Mikhail Ivanovich Chertkov and is located on the border of the Rostov region and Ukraine), the Cossacks of conscript service were transported by a train loaded with Cossacks, horses and fodder to Voronezh, and then Western Ukraine, where its war began service. And soon the outbreak of the First World War found the main character here.

(reading an episode of the novel)

Literary scholars : In the small Western Ukrainian town of Leshnev, Grigory was destined to participate in the first battle and for the first time kill a man, an Austrian soldier: “Along the iron grating of the garden, swinging, unconscious, an Austrian ran without a rifle... Grigory met the Austrian’s gaze - they looked at him deadly, filled with death horror of the eyes. The Austrian slowly bent his knees, a gurgling wheeze buzzing in his throat. Squinting his eyes, Grigory waved his saber. The blow with a long pull split the skull in two. The Austrian fell, sticking out his hands as if he had slipped; the half of the skull thumped dully on the stone of the pavement. The horse jumped, snoring, and carried Gregory into the middle of the street.”

This was the first military attack in which Melekhov took part, the first battle and the first person he killed - an unnamed Austrian soldier.

Literary scholars: For the first time, Gregory felt with all his soul the wild, terrible absurdity of the massacre, the need to kill people who had not brought him the slightest harm, just like him, yesterday’s farmers or workers. It was not easy for him to forget that August day...Grigory Melekhov...heavily grinded through the inner pain within himself, often on campaigns and on vacation, in his dreams and in slumbers, he imagined the Austrian, the one who was cut down at the bars.

It was the “hard science of war,” after which the hero matures and becomes a brave warrior, defender of the Fatherland.

Literary scholars : The war continues. In one of the battles, the wounded Gregory saves the life of the officer-commander, for which he was nominated for an award - the St. George Cross.

Historians:

Here, during the war, he first heard about the injustice of the existing system. The idea of overthrowing the tsarist government was increasingly heard. And although the Don Army Region lived autonomously, and the Cossacks were free people, Gregory began to have his first doubts. He also recalled a conversation with the machine gunner Garanzha, who spoke about hitherto unknown “truths, exposing the real reasons for the outbreak of the war, caustically ridiculing the autocratic government.”

Literary critic - geographer : After the second wound, Grigory is sent for treatment to the village of Kamenskaya. Now this is the modern city of Kamensk - Shakhtinsky. After the hospital - a short vacation home in x. Tatar. Here he is greeted with love and respect not only by his family and friends, but also by the Cossack villagers. And thoughts about the new power of the Bolsheviks, about a new life, dissipate in Gregory’s head. He returns to the front again. At the end of 1916, Grigory Melekhov was promoted to cornet for military distinction and appointed platoon officer.

Historians: But then comes the tragic year, for our hero and for the entire Don Cossacks, 1917. The October Revolution took place (formerly referred to as the Great October Socialist Revolution).

Geographer: The city of Novocherkassk was the center of the Don Army Region, and in 1918 it became the center of attraction for all those fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. Here, on the Don, where Alexey Maksimovich Kaledin was the commander-in-chief, the surviving White Guard generals and officers come. They decide that it is necessary to protect the freedom-loving and independent Don from the new government of the Bolsheviks. And the Cossacks were divided in two. The civil fratricidal war began. With its flame it engulfed the entire Don Army Region. Particularly fierce battles took place near Kamensk, in the area of the village. Glubokoe, Chertkovo, Millerovo, near Rostov, Novocherkassk and, of course, on the Upper Don. (show on map)

Historians : Having returned from the war as a “chevalier of the cross”, Gregory after the revolution takes the side of the Reds, participates in the overthrow of the Regional Government of General A.M. Kaledina. And only the innocent blood of the captured Chernetsov officers killed by Podtyolkov forced Grigory to retreat from the active struggle for Soviet power on the Don. In the spring of 1919, the Upper Don uprising broke out, Grigory reluctantly takes part in it, but gradually this struggle turns for him into a fierce struggle for his homeland, for the Don. Grigory mercilessly deals with the Red Army soldiers, avenges his murdered brother. The hero experiences a terrible shock after one of the attacks, where he hacked to death four sailors. In hysterics he shouts: “Brothers, I have no forgiveness! Who did he chop down? Grigory finds no excuse for his blind hatred of the Reds.

Literary scholars: Why does the hero experience such a shock? Maybe because “whether you work with your own people or with strangers, it’s equally hard if the work is not conscientious.” And fratricidal war is “not a job of conscience.” Gregory thought a lot about the injustice that he encountered at this time, about the meaninglessness and hopelessness of this armed struggle into which he was drawn.And what was ripening, what was gradually accumulating in his consciousness, in his soul, broke through into a decision: to voluntarily surrender to the Red Army and join its ranks.He became a fighter in the 14th division, which was part of the cavalry army under the command of Budyonny. They raided Ukraine, fought in Crimea, and liberated Simferopol and Sevastopol.

Literary scholars : The last part of the novel is the autumn of the twentieth year. Grigory, a demobilized Red commander, arrived in Kh. Tatar. Here Grigory Melekhov was destined to drink to the bottom the bitter cup of suffering (out of the entire large Melekhov family, only Dunyashka, his sister, and the children, Polyushka and Mishatka, as Grigory affectionately calls them), the bitter cup of tragic delusions and mistakes remained.He fled from his native farm, joined Fomin’s gang, scoured the Don lands with her, fleeing from the Red Cavalry detachments. Here, on the Don, the hero realizes: he has fought enough, he is tired, death is not scary, he is not afraid of anyone, but he has only one thought: go home. He understands that the most valuable things are home, family, love. Grigory left the remnants of the defeated gang and secretly made his way to H. Tatarsky, to escape with Aksinya, even to the ends of the earth.

Teacher: Let us mentally follow the two fugitives.

Literary scholars: At a halt, Aksinya asks Gregory:

Where do we go from here?

To Morozovskaya,” Grigory answers. “We’ll get to Platov, and from there we’ll go on foot.”

Geographers : Morozovskaya is our railway station, and x. Platov still exists today, retaining its ancient name.

Literary scholars: On the very first night, Grigory and Aksinya reached Sukhoi Log: about eight versts from Tatarsky. We spent the day in the forest and when night fell, we hit the road again.

After two hours of travel we descended from the hillock to Chir.(The geographer shows the Chir River).

It was here that the final tragedy unfolded: the night travelers came across a food detachment outpost and tried to escape, but a stray bullet found Aksinya in the darkness. He buried her in the bright morning light. Grigory said goodbye to her, firmly believing that they would not be parting for long... He carefully crushed the wet yellow clay on the grave mound with his palms and knelt for a long time near the grave, bowing his head, quietly swaying. There was no need for him to rush now. Everything is over.

Teacher: The beginning and end of the book have something in common .

Literary scholars:

“Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farm. The gates from the cattle base lead north to the Don. A steep eight-fathom descent between mossy green chalk blocks, and here is the shore: a pearlescent scattering of shells, a gray, broken border of wave-kissed pebbles, and beyond – the stirrup of the Don, boiling under the winds with blued ripples.”

On this very descent to the Don, ten years later (and it seems to us - after a whole life) Grigory meets his son Mishatka. “Well, that little bit of what Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights has come true. He stood at the gates of his home and held his son in his arms...

This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

A person needs little.

If only someone was waiting at home.

Teacher : Guys, in addition to the geographical map, there is also a diagram hanging in front of you. While reading the novel, we composed it in previous lessons. Now let’s look at it carefully and try to title it, determine the topic of our diagram and the topic of our lesson.

- The path of quest of Grigory Melekhov. (children answer).

In conclusion, I would like to say that all the feelings, all the experiences we experienced while getting to know the novel are reflected in the poem by N. Skrebov:

On the road from Bazki to Veshki

I heard a crane cry.

And the one who was taking me to the ferry said

An old man on the state farm gas station:

The crane shares her sadness,

Feels a restless flight:

Do you hear, it’s as if Natalya is dying

Calling the children goodbye... -

We don't say a word anymore

And are more words needed here?

If you suddenly remember again

This pain that has been alive since childhood,

This is restless grief,

This life has a crumpled end...

And you are silent, as Gregory was silent,

Remembering the sorrow of offended hearts.

And it rises - page by page -

The epic of that long-ago war.

And the village seems quiet

From the opposite side.

And the cries of the crane fall silent.

And our ferry crosses

Quiet Don, no longer quiet for a long time

In a figurative sense and literally.

Conclusion. We talked a lot about the hero, his journey, doubts and suffering. What is he like? Grigory Melekhov is a Cossack, a man.

Guys, what does this question mean?

Printed before you are the character traits of our hero, and, consequently, of the writer himself - M.A. Sholokhov. Choose those that are characteristic of Grigory Melekhov.

A kind Cossack, desperate courage, truthfulness, delusion, cruelty, respect for elders, love for home, children, hard work.

Now let's turn the circle around, and what do we see? -I

Simple as that. What will I be like?I ?

Students' answers...

D.z. Write a mini-essay “Grigory Melekhov - a good Cossack.”

In conclusion, I would like to thank all the specialists who prepared our lesson. Excellent marks to all. And special thanks to the geographers who so accurately marked historical places on the map. Look, guys, how rich our region is in literary places. So this is only based on the novel by M.A. Sholokhov.

The journey is over. Have a good journey through life with the commandments of real Cossacks.

4. Conclusion:

Impression of reading the novel;

Returning to the topic;

What character traits did the main character have?

Educational resources used:

M.A. Sholokhov. "Quiet Don"

V. Akimov. "On the Winds of Time", 1981

Truth and lies about M.A. Sholokhov, Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat LLC, 2004.

Sholokhov in the modern world, ed. Leningrad University, 1977

Internet resources: slides, videos - Yandex website.

Throughout the novel "Quiet Don" Grigory Melekhov, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, is in search of truth. He, unlike those around him, is not ready to be a soulless killing machine, to kill his compatriots for someone else's interests. Gregory is looking for meaning and justice in the Civil War, in which he had to take part, and, unfortunately, does not find it.

The fate of Grigory Melekhov was largely predetermined by the revolutionary and military events of his time. Before joining the ranks of the White Army, Melekhov could not look at death with a shudder - he was even saddened by the death of a duckling at his hand - but during military operations he has to kill. He is especially bright. I remember the scene with the Austrian he killed. He took a man’s life, but for what? Melekhov could not get an answer to this question. Grigory finds simple and obvious answers to the questions that puzzled him from the Bolsheviks.

“Here it is, our power-darling! Everyone is equal!” He, like many of his other compatriots, is seduced by the simple and understandable ideology of the “reds”. Gregory goes over to the side of the anti-monarchists, he is ready to fight for general equality and happiness, but even here he encounters cruelty and looting that disgust him. A detachment of unarmed prisoners is shot by the “Reds” despite Gregory’s attempts to stop this action. When the Bolsheviks begin to commit violence on his native land, he becomes their fierce enemy. But after he goes over to the side of the officers, it cannot be considered that Gregory considers himself a monarchist, he He can’t choose which side he’s on in this war, he can’t choose the lesser of two evils, he’s tossing around. He says about the whites Koshevoy and Listnitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but to me everything was still unclear. Both of them have their own straight roads, their own ends, and since 1917 I have been walking along the vilyuzhki like a drunken swaying...” Such a neutral position of Gregory does not suit the military bipolar world. Melekhov seems dangerous both for the Bolsheviks and for the “whites” .He tries to escape to Kuban, but on the way his beloved Aksinya is killed. “And Gregory, dying of horror, realized that it was all over, that the worst thing that could ever happen in his life had already happened.” The war takes away from Gregory the most precious thing - the “Reds” kill his brother Petro, his beloved Aksinya, his mother and father, his daughter Polyushka, his legal wife Natalya die. All that remains for him is his son and sister Dunyasha. Grigory lost a lot in the senseless meat grinder of the revolution and civil war. A person like him, a person true to his heart, a seeker of truth, deserves happiness. But is there a place for such a person in the new world?

Thus, the Don Hamlet is left by the author battered and aged, experienced and suffering. Using the example of Melekhov, Sholokhov shows us the cruelty and senselessness of the civil war, the war of brother against brother. You cannot simply split the world into whites and reds, enemies and allies at once, the author claims, that life is multifaceted and complex and that such division is simply unacceptable.

Sections: Literature

Lesson plan.

History of the Melekhov family. Already in the history of the family, the character of Gregory is laid down.
Portrait description of Gregory in comparison with his brother Peter (it was Gregory, and not Peter, who was the successor of the “Turk” family - the Melekhovs.)
Attitude to work (house, Listnitsky estate Yagodnoye, longing for the land, eight returns home: an ever-increasing craving for home, thriftiness.
The image of Gregory at war as the embodiment of the author's concept of war (debt, coercion, senseless cruelty, destruction). Gregory never fought with his Cossacks, and Melekhov’s participation in the internecine fratricidal war is never described.
Typical and individual in the image of Gregory. (why does Melekhov return home without waiting for the amnesty?)
Points of view of writers and critics on the image of Grigory Melekhov

In criticism, debates about the essence of the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov still continue.

At first there was an opinion that this is the tragedy of the renegade.

He, they say, went against the people and therefore lost all human traits, became a lone wolf, a beast.

Refutation: the renegade does not evoke sympathy, but they cried over the fate of Melekhov. And Melekhov did not become a beast, did not lose the ability to feel, suffer, and did not lose the desire to live.

Others explained Melekhov's tragedy as a delusion.

Here it was true that Gregory, according to this theory, carried within himself the traits of the Russian national character, the Russian peasantry. They further said that he was half owner, half hard worker. /quote Lenin about the peasant (article about L. Tolstoy))

So Gregory hesitates, but in the end he gets lost. Therefore, he must be condemned and pitied.

But! Gregory is confused not because he is the owner, but because in each of the warring parties does not find absolute moral truth, which he strives for with the maximalism inherent in Russian people.

1) From the first pages Gregory is depicted in everyday creative peasant life:

Fishing
With a horse at a watering hole
In love,
Scenes of peasant labor

C: “His feet confidently trampled the ground”

Melekhov is merged with the world, is part of it.

But in Gregory, the personal principle, Russian moral maximalism with its desire to get to the essence, without stopping halfway, and not to put up with any violations of the natural course of life, is unusually clearly manifested.

2) He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions.(this is especially evident in relations with Natasha and Aksinya:

The last meeting of Gregory with Natalya (Part VII Chapter 7)
The death of Natalya and related experiences (Part VII Ch. 16-18)
Death of Aksinya (Part VIII Chapter 17)

3) Gregory characterized by an acute emotional reaction to everything that happens, him responsive on the impressions of life heart. It has developed feeling of pity, compassion, This can be judged by the following lines:

While making hay, Grigory accidentally cut off ********* (Part I Chapter 9)
Episode with Franya part 2 chapter 11
Vanity with the murdered Austrian (Part 3, Chapter 10)
Reaction to the news of Kotlyarov’s execution (Part VI)

4) Staying always honest, morally independent and upright in character, Gregory showed himself to be a person capable of action.

Fight with Stepan Astakhov over Aksinya (Part I Ch. 12)
Leaving Aksinya for Yagodnoye (Part 2 Ch. 11-12)
Collision with the sergeant (Part 3, Chapter 11)
Breakup with Podtelkov (Part 3, Chapter 12)
Collision with General Fitzhalaurav (Part VII Chapter 10)
The decision, without waiting for an amnesty, to return to the farm (Part VIII, Chapter 18).

5) Captivates the sincerity of his motives– he did not lie to himself anywhere, in his doubts and tossing. His internal monologues convince us of this (Part VI Ch. 21,28)

Gregory is the only character who given the right to monologues- “thoughts” that reveal his spiritual origin.

6) It is impossible to “obey dogmatic rules” They forced Grigory to abandon the farm, the land, and go with Aksinya to the Listnitsky estate with a koshokh.

There, Sholokhov shows , social life disrupted the course of natural life. There, for the first time, the hero broke away from the earth, from his origins.

“An easy, well-fed life,” spoiled him. He became lazy, put on weight, and looked older than his years.”

7) But too much the people's beginning is strong in Gregory so as not to be preserved in his soul. As soon as Melekhov found himself on his own land during the hunt, all the excitement disappeared, and an eternal, main feeling trembled in his soul.

8) This abyss, fueled by man’s desire for regret and the destructive tendencies of the era, widened and deepened during the First World War. (true to duty - active in battles - rewards)

But! The more he delves into military operations, the more he is drawn to the earth, to work. He dreams of the steppe. His heart is with his beloved and distant woman. And his soul is gnawing at his conscience: “... it’s hard to kiss a child, to open and look into his eyes.”

9) The revolution returned Melekhov to the land, with his beloved, to his family, and children. And he wholeheartedly sided with the new system . But the same revolution his cruelty towards the Cossacks, his injustice towards prisoners, and even towards Gregory himself pushed again him on the warpath.

Fatigue and embitterment lead the hero to cruelty - Melekhov’s murder of sailors (it was after this that Grigory will wander around the earth in “monstrous enlightenment,” realizing that he has gone far from what he was born for and what he fought for.

“Life is going wrong, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” he admitted.

10) Having stood up with all his inherent energy for the interests of the workers and therefore became one of the leaders of the Veshensky uprising, Gregory is convinced that it did not bring the expected results: the Cossacks suffer from the white movement just as they suffered from the red ones before. (peace did not come to the Don, but the same nobles who despised the ordinary Cossack, the Cossack peasant, returned.

11) But Gregory the feeling of national exclusivity is alien: Grigory has deep respect for the Englishman, a mechanic with work problems.

Melekhov prefaces his refusal to evacuate overseas with a statement about Russia: “No matter what the mother is, she is dearer than a stranger!”

12) And salvation for Melekhov again - a return to the land, to Aksinya, and children . Violence disgusts him. (he releases relatives of the Red Cossacks from prison) drives a horse to save Ivan Alekseevich and Mishka Koshevoy.)

13) Moving on to the reds in the last years of the civil war, Gregory became , according to Prokhor Zykov, “fun and smooth " But it is also important that the roles Melekhova did not fight with his own , but was on the Polish front.

In Part VIII, Gregory’s ideal is outlined: “ He was going home to eventually get to work, live with the children, with Aksinya...”

But his dream was not destined to come true. Mikhail Koshevoy ( representative revolutionary violence) provoked Gregory to run away from home, from children, Aksinya .

15) He is forced to hide in the villages, join Fomin's gang.

The lack of a way out (and his thirst for life did not allow him to go to execution) pushes him to an obvious wrong.

16) All that Grigory has left by the end of the novel are children, mother earth (Sholokhov emphasizes three times that Grigory’s chest pain is cured by lying on the “damp earth”) and love for Aksinya. But even this little remains with the death of the beloved woman.

“Black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun” (this characterizes the strength of Gregory’s feelings and the degree of sensation or loss).

“Everything was taken from him, everything was destroyed by merciless death. Only the children remained, but he himself still frantically clung to the ground, as if, in fact, his broken life was of some value to him and to others.”

In this craving for life there is no personal salvation for Grigory Melekhov, but there is an affirmation of the ideal of life.

At the end of the novel, when life is reborn, Grigory threw his rifle, revolver, cartridges into the water, and wiped his hands “ He crossed the Don across the blue March ice and walked briskly towards the house. He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms...”

Critics' opinions on the ending.

Critics argued for a long time about the future fate of Melekhov. Soviet literary scholars argued that Melekhov would join socialist life. Western critics say the venerable Cossack will be arrested the next day and then executed.

Sholokhov left the possibility of both paths open with an open ending. This is not of fundamental importance, because at the end of the novel, what constitutes essence humanistic philosophy of the main character of the novel, humanity inXX century: ““under the cold sun” the vast world shines, life continues, embodied in the symbolic picture of a child in the arms of his father.(the image of a child as a symbol of eternal life was already present in many of Sholokhov’s “Don Stories”; “The Fate of a Man” also ends with it.

Conclusion

The path of Grigory Melekhov to the ideal of true life - this is a tragic path gains, mistakes and losses that the entire Russian people went through in the 20th century.

“Grigory Melekhov is an integral person in a tragically torn time.” (E. Tamarchenko)

Portrait, character of Aksinya. (Part 1 Ch. 3,4,12)
The origin and development of love between Aksinya and Gregory. (Part 1, Chapter 3, Part 2, Chapter 10)
Dunyasha Melekhova (part 1 chapter 3,4,9)
Daria Melekhova. The drama of fate.
Ilyinichna's maternal love.
Natalia's tragedy.