In the play, two plot meanings coexist in parallel. The first can be classified as an everyday action, and the second has a philosophical connotation. These two lines develop independently of each other and exist on different planes - external and internal.
External plan
The action takes place in a rooming house, the owner of which is Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev, a 51-year-old man who lives with his 26-year-old wife Vasilisa Karlovna.
The author of the play calls the guests of the rooming house “ former people"and classifies them as the lower social strata of society. In addition, poor working people also live here.
The main characters of the play are 40-year-old Actor, Satin and mechanic Andrei Mitrich Kleshch with his 30-year-old wife Anna, 28-year-old thief Vaska Pepel, 24-year-old girl of easy virtue Nastya, 44-year-old Bubnov, 33-year-old Baron, 20-year-old Alyoshka and persons without age indication - hookers Krivoy Zob and Tatarin. Sometimes Vasilisa’s 50-year-old uncle, policeman Medvedev and 40-year-old dumpling saleswoman Kvashnya come into the shelter. They all have difficult relationships with each other and often quarrel.
Vasilisa loves Vaska and talks to him all the time about the murder of her middle-aged husband. She wants to become a full-fledged housewife. Looking ahead a little, let's say that in the second part of the play, Ash will start a fight with Kostylev and accidentally kill him, after which he will go to prison. Vaska is crazy about 20-year-old Natalya, who is Vasilisa’s sister. Because of her jealousy towards Vaska Peplu, Natalya is regularly beaten by the hostess of the shelter.
The actor, who at one time shone on the stages of theaters in the provinces under the name Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky, and Satin constantly drink and play cards. Satin often plays a dishonest game.
Coming from the nobility, the Baron at one time “threw away” his fortune and exists as the most unfortunate inhabitant of the rooming house.
Andrei Mitrich Kleshch works as a plumber in order to constantly buy medicine for his sick wife Anna, who will die at the end of the play, and her husband, who dreamed of a new life, will still remain “at the bottom.”
During another drinking session, a wandering man named Luka enters the lodging house. He begins to tell the guests about their bright future, and promises Anna paradise in heaven. Luke told the Actor that there is special hospital, where drunkards are treated, and Natalya and Ash are advised to flee from this place. But when the most urgent need arises for the wanderer’s moral support, he leaves, leaving the inhabitants of the shelter alone with their problems. As a result, the Actor commits suicide. At the end of the play there is a song performed by the characters. Satin, having learned about the death of the Actor, says that he ruined their good song.
Interior plan
The play talks about Satin's worldview and life philosophy Luke, and the lodging house is a generalized symbol of the human race that has reached a dead end, which at the beginning of the 20th century lost faith in God, but did not have time to strengthen itself in own strength. It is for this reason that all the characters in the play look doomed. They can't see in front of them tomorrow. World development is moving towards its decline. Satin understands this and does not try to give people hope that is not destined to come true. He tells Kleshch about the uselessness of his work. But if we act according to his judgments, then how will people live? According to Mitrich, they will die of hunger. On the other hand, if you work only for food, then why live?
In the play, Satin is portrayed as a radical existentialist who understands that the world is unfair and there is no God. But in contrast to him are the reflections of Luke, whose meaning of life is to show pity for the disadvantaged people. He is even ready to tell a lie, if only the unfortunate would feel at least for a moment easier. Sometimes people need to be given at least some hope in life.
From Luke’s mouth comes a parable about a man looking for a righteous land, and a learned man who points out on a map that there is no such place on Earth. Then the first had no choice but to commit suicide, which the Actor subsequently commits.
Luke is shown in the play not as a simple wanderer, but as a consoling philosopher who talks about living no matter what. A person cannot predict his future. He is destined to go all the way to the end. Satin and Luke have an argument. The first one more often agrees with the second one. After Luka appears in the shelter, Satin begins to talk about the Man, whom he does not pity or console, but speaks openly about the fact that life itself has no meaning. Thus, Satin is trying to encourage this very Man to protest against the usual way of life and gain self-respect. His main idea– you shouldn’t despair and you need to realize your uniqueness in this universe. “Man – that sounds proud!”
“At the bottom” not only and not so much social drama as much as philosophical. The action of the drama as special literary genre, is tied to a conflict, an acute contradiction between the characters, which gives the author the opportunity in a short time to fully reveal his characters and present them to the reader.
Social conflict is present in the play on a superficial level in the form of a confrontation between the owners of the shelter, the Kostylevs, and its inhabitants. In addition, each of the heroes who found themselves at the bottom experienced their own conflict with society in the past. Under one roof live the sharper Bubnov, the thief Ash, the former aristocrat Baron, and the market cook Kvashnya. However, in the shelter, the social differences between them are erased, they all become just people. As Bubnov notes: “... everything faded away, one naked man stayed..." What makes a person human, what helps and hinders him to live, to gain human dignity— the author of the play “At the Bottom” is looking for answers to these questions. Thus, the main subject of depiction in the play is the thoughts and feelings of the night shelters in all their contradictions.
In drama, the main means of depicting the hero’s consciousness, conveying it inner world, as well as expressions author's position monologues and dialogues of the characters become. The inhabitants of the bottom touch on many philosophical issues in their conversations and vividly experience them. The main leitmotif of the play is the problem of faith and unbelief, with which the question of truth and faith is closely intertwined.
The theme of faith and unbelief arises in the play with the arrival of Luke. This character becomes the center of attention of the inhabitants of the shelter because he is strikingly different from all of them. The old man knows how to find the key to everyone with whom he starts a conversation, instill hope in the person, faith in the best, console and reassure. Luke is characterized by speech using pet names, proverbs and sayings, and common vocabulary. He, “affectionate, soft,” reminds Anna of her father. On the night shelters, Luke, as Satin puts it, acts “like acid on an old and dirty coin.”
The faith that Luke awakens in people is expressed differently for each of the inhabitants of the bottom. At first, faith is understood narrowly - as Christian faith, when Luke asks the dying Anna to believe that after death she will calm down, the Lord will send her to heaven.
As the plot develops, the word “faith” acquires new meanings. The old man advises the actor, who has lost faith in himself because he “drank his soul away,” to seek treatment for drunkenness and promises to tell him the address of a hospital where drunkards are treated for nothing. Natasha, who doesn’t want to run away from the shelter with Vaska Ashes because she doesn’t trust anyone, is asked by Luka not to doubt that Vaska is a good guy and loves her very much. Vaska himself advises him to go to Siberia and start a farm there. Above Nastya, who retells romance novels, passing off their plot as real events, he does not laugh, but believes her that she had true love.
Luke’s main motto—“what you believe is what you believe”—can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it forces people to achieve what they believe in, to strive for what they desire, because their desires exist, are real and can be fulfilled in this life. On the other hand, for most night shelters such a motto is simply “a comforting, reconciling lie.”
The characters of the play are divided depending on their attitude to the concepts of “faith” and “truth”. Because Luka promotes white lies, the Baron calls him a charlatan, Vaska Pepel calls him a “crafty old man” who “tells stories.” Bubnov remains deaf to Luka’s words; he admits that he does not know how to lie: “In my opinion, tell the whole truth as it is!” Luka warns that the truth can turn out to be a “butt”, and in a dispute with Bubnov and Baron about what the truth is, he says: “It’s true, it’s not always due to a person’s illness... you can’t always cure a soul with the truth...” . Kleshch, who at first glance is the only character who does not lose faith in himself, strives to escape from the shelter at all costs, puts the most hopeless meaning into the word “truth”: “What kind of truth? Where is the truth?.. There is no work... no strength! That’s the truth!.. It’s a devil to live, you can’t live... that’s the truth!..”
Nevertheless, Luke's words find a warm response in the hearts of most of the heroes, because he explains the failures of their lives external circumstances and does not see the reason for a failed life in themselves. According to Luke, after leaving the shelter, he is going to go “to the crests” to see what kind of new faith people have discovered there. He believes that people will someday find “what is better”, you just need to help them and respect them. Satin also speaks about respect for people.
Satin protects the old man because he understands that if he lies, it is only out of pity for the inhabitants of the shelter. Satin's thoughts do not completely coincide with Luke's ideas. In his opinion, a “comforting” lie, a “reconciling” lie is necessary and supports those who are weak in soul, and at the same time covers up those who “feed on other people’s juices.” Satin contrasts Luke’s motto with his own motto: “Truth is the god of a free man!”
The author's position in relation to Luke's consolatory sermon cannot be interpreted unambiguously. On the one hand, it cannot be called a lie that Luke shows Ash and Natasha the path to an honest life, consoles Nastya, and convinces Anna of the existence of an afterlife. There is more humanity in his words than in the despair of the Tick or the vulgarity of the Baron. However, Luke’s words are contradicted by the very development of the plot. After the sudden disappearance of the old man, everything does not happen as the heroes would like to believe. Vaska Pepel will indeed go to Siberia, but not as a free settler, but as a convict convicted of the murder of Kostylev. Natasha, shocked by her sister's betrayal and the murder of her husband, refuses to believe Vaska. The actor accuses the old man of not leaving the address of the treasured hospital.
The faith that Luke awakened in the souls of the heroes of “At the Bottom” turned out to be fragile and quickly faded away. The inhabitants of the shelter are unable to find the strength to oppose their will to reality, to change the reality around them. The main accusation that the author addresses to the heroes of the play is the accusation of passivity. manages to open one of the characteristic features Russian national character: dissatisfaction with reality, a sharply critical attitude towards it and at the same time a complete unwillingness to do anything to change this reality. Therefore, Luke’s departure turns into a real drama for the inhabitants - the faith that the old man awakened in them is unable to find internal support in their characters.
Luke's philosophical position is most fully expressed in the parable he told to the inhabitants of the shelter. The parable talks about a man who believed in the existence of a righteous land, and this faith helped him live, instilled joy and hope in him. When the visiting scientist convinced him that, according to all his faithful maps and plans, “there is no righteous land anywhere at all,” the man hanged himself. With this parable, Luke expressed the idea that a person cannot be completely deprived of hope, even if it is illusory. In a bizarre way, the plot of the parable is played out in the fourth act of the drama: having lost hope, the Actor hangs himself. The fate of the Actor shows that it is false hope that can lead a person into a loop.
Another interpretation of the question of truth is connected with the image of the Actor, namely the problem of the relationship between truth and fiction. When the Actor tells Natasha about the hospital, he adds a lot to what he heard from Luke: “An excellent hospital... Marble... marble floor! Light... cleanliness, food..." It turns out that for the Actor, faith is an embellished truth, this hero does not separate two concepts, but merges them into one on the border between reality and art. The poem, which the Actor, unexpectedly remembering, quotes, is decisive for the conflict between truth and faith and at the same time contains a possible resolution to this conflict:
Gentlemen! If the truth is holy
The world doesn't know how to find a way,
Honor the madman who inspires
A golden dream for humanity!
The tragic ending of “At the Bottom” shows that the “golden dream” of humanity can sometimes turn into a nightmare. The Actor's suicide is an attempt to change reality, to escape from saving faith into nowhere. For the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter, his attempt seems desperate and absurd, as indicated by Satin’s last remark: “Eh... ruined the song... fool!” On the other hand, the song here can be interpreted as a symbol of the passivity of the characters in the play, their reluctance to change anything during their lives. Then this remark expresses that the death of the Actor completely disrupts the usual course of life of the inhabitants of the shelter, and Satin is the first to feel this. Even earlier, Luke’s words force him to deliver a monologue that answers the question of truth: “What is truth? Man, that’s the truth!” Thus, according to the author’s plan, Luke’s “faith” and Satin’s “truth” merge together, affirming the greatness of man and his ability to withstand life’s circumstances, even at the bottom.
Despite the fact that Maxim Gorky's play "" is already more than a hundred years old, it continues to be staged in many theaters around the world. This work, which showed the life of people who have sunk to the bottom, has not lost its relevance in our time. Gorky showed us daily life the poorest segment of the population in its usual terms.
The play takes place in a flophouse that shelters people of different age categories, different professions. Many of them had another life before, but now they are all at the bottom of this life.
Speaking about the social conflict of the play, it is worth noting that it is ambiguous and multifaceted. It is revealed in the confrontation between the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners, and also manifests itself in the personal tragedy of each hero of the work and the reasons that forced them to sink to the bottom of life.
To understand the conflict between the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners, it is necessary to understand what kind of people they were.
So, the owner of the shelter was Mikhail Kostylev. He was a hypocritical and greedy man. On the one hand, he gave shelter to those in need, and on the other, he ripped off their last money for accommodation.
His wife Vasilisa also treated the residents of the shelter with disgust. She was in love with Vaska Pepla, and was constantly jealous of his sister Natalya. Natalya Vasilisa and her husband were bullied with special zeal. Natalya, on the contrary, was quiet girl and did not allow herself to contradict her sister and her husband.
In the relationship between two sisters, Gorky showed us how social status affects the relationship of two people, even despite the fact that they were sisters.
Vaska Pepel was one of the inhabitants of the Kostylevo shelter. He said to himself that since childhood he had been called a thief. Therefore, all his life he did nothing else except steal. It should be noted that Vasilisa encouraged Ash’s occupation by buying stolen things from him.
Another inhabitant of the shelter, Anna, had an unenviable fate. She was sick fatal disease and lived out last days. Her husband, a mechanic, Kleshch had been waiting for his wife’s death for a long time. She was a burden to him. He thought that after Anna's death he would be able to earn money and live a new life. But this was not destined to happen. Anna lived and endured, endured daily humiliation and beatings from her husband. There was no place for joy and happiness in her life. The girl no longer remembered when she ate her fill and put on something other than old rags.
The person who could not find use for his knowledge and skills, and now found himself in a shelter with its other inhabitants, was Satin. WITH early age he worked at the telegraph office and was fond of reading. But now he has become a beggar, not expecting anything from life. From the old days he only had a few intricate words left in foreign language which he loved to show off to others.
Orphan Nastya was forced to sell her body in order to somehow make ends meet. She was a dreamer. Nastya was fond of romance novels and believed that one day true love would come to her. For her dreaminess and naivety, the girl endured daily ridicule from other inhabitants of the shelter.
Another inhabitant of the shelter was Bubnov. He ended up here because he found out about his wife’s betrayal and, not finding best option, went to Kostylev’s shelter.
In my opinion, the most tragic fall to the bottom was the fall of Baron. He was a former nobleman and held a high position. But now he is forced to spend time with those people whom he simply did not notice before. The Baron often recalled his past “well-fed” years. All that remained from that life was his arrogant manner of communicating with others.
The next inhabitant of the shelter was a man of the stage, a man who basked in applause, but who, succumbing bad habit, rolled down. The worst thing is that the Actor understands the cause of his suffering, but cannot do anything about it.
Now all these once different people equal in their lack of rights. They find themselves at the bottom of their lives and are forced to accept their fate. These people have no future, they only have memories of past life. They are all united by one road - the road down into the abyss. Such a life destroyed all human feelings and qualities in the inhabitants of the shelter and gave rise to not only social, but also moral degradation.
Old man Luka becomes a ray of light for the inhabitants of the shelter, who tried to “stir them up” by giving them hope. Unfortunately, it was already too late, no one could find the strength to climb up again. The actor commits suicide, Vaska Pepel was exiled to Siberia, and the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter suffered a worse fate.
Maxim Gorky in his play “At the Depths” tried to show us all the lack of rights of a person burdened social problems how important it is to be able to solve them in time in order to change your life.
Man is an unchanging part of society, his main element. In the complex mechanism of life, he always has to subordinate personal motives and interests to a social framework that protects him and, at the same time, becomes the cause of spiritual lack of freedom. Restrictions and standards put forward by the environment sometimes cannot curb power human character, his desire to understand the world and self-expression. Therefore, conflicts between the individual and the collective are reflected in many works of Russian literature. One of these works is M. Gorky’s drama “At the Lower Depths”. The action takes place in a shelter for beggars, where people of all kinds have gathered, but all of them are rejected by society. Each of them has their own life tragedy, which is based on simple human weaknesses.
- Once rejected by society, finding himself on the “ social day“A person is no longer able to rise up and cope with the vicissitudes of fate. This is what one of the inhabitants of the shelter, Bubnov, thinks. Life has lost its significance for him: the hero, who once owned a dyeing shop, suddenly loses everything. Thrown “to the bottom,” having lost faith in people and the truth, having experienced his wife’s betrayal, he is now convinced that everything in the world is subject to cruel and immutable laws, which are pointless to resist. The idea of getting out of the shelter, changing the usual course of things and starting new life seems absurd to Bubnov. “All people on earth are superfluous...” notes the hero. Abandoned by his surroundings, he is embittered towards society and is incapable of faith and forgiveness.
- “A person can do anything, as long as he wants to,” says another hero of the play, the new guest of the shelter, the wanderer Luka, who enters into a conditional conflict with Bubnov’s ideological statements. Luke is a mysterious old man, almost blessed, who came from nowhere and where he is going. No one knows about his fate, however, according to the preacher, he suffered a lot of grief and difficulties. However, the righteous man is confident that one can cope with the external ugliness and cruelty of life and society; it is enough to believe in a person, to instill hope in him, even if sometimes deceptive. “You can’t always heal a soul with truth,” the old man is convinced as he consoles the heroes of the shelter. Rejected by society, like the other characters in the play, Luka continues to believe in the inhabitants of the “bottom”, in the high destiny of each of them.
- Despite the seeming doom of life, some of the heroes do not lose faith in a bright future and dream of rising from the bottom of the social to a better stage in life. Vaska Ash is a rebellious character in the play. His father was a thief, and he himself was accustomed to such a craft since childhood. Unlike others characters, Ash was rejected by society initially, as lost man, whose fate is predetermined and known in advance. He strives to change himself, thereby proving to the team that his lot can be better, and he himself can become an honest and decent citizen. He loves Natasha, dreams of taking her away from the shelter, where she is forced to endure beatings from her sister, and moving to Siberia, where no one will know about his past, and, therefore, will not judge him for past mistakes.
- “Man – that sounds proud!” - another guest of the shelter, former telegraph operator Satin, asserts his bitter truth. He is convinced that human life is expensive, so everyone needs sympathy. Satin, like Luke, is compassionate towards his neighbors and is ready to help those in need. However, being on the social “bottom” makes him indifferent to life in general. He does not see the point in action, so he consciously destroys himself. Once sent to prison for murder, and now living in a flophouse, he does not want to change, because he considers existence “at the bottom” to be the natural course of existence. He rejects a society in which he no longer sees the truth. The truth, in his opinion, is in the person himself, however, Satin has nothing to do with this. Broken by circumstances, he refuses to fight, remaining indifferent to his future fate.
- The characters of the play, doomed to death, inevitably go to the bottom. They are connected by the common destinies and the situation in which they find themselves, the tragedy of the surrounding world, which rejected each of the guests of the shelter various reasons. The actor, who has successfully performed on stage in the past, now drinks heavily. He dreams of recovering from alcoholism and returning to the stage, constantly quoting famous literary passages. However, awareness of his own weakness, oblivion of society, and the inability to get out of poverty push the hero to commit suicide. Other characters in the drama are also looking for “truth in wine”: Andrei Mitrich Kleshch, a mechanic, found himself at the bottom due to his wife’s illness. With her death, he expects relief from the burden of responsibility, but he loses his job, having become even more embittered towards people and having lost the last purpose of existence, he is idle with Satin. The heroes are unable to find the right path, expelled from the collective to the social “bottom”; they die there, deprived of hope for the future.
June 14 2011
Gorky's play “At the Depths” was written in 1902. For a long time, Gorky could not find an exact title for his work. Initially it was called “Nochlezhka”, then “Without the Sun” and, finally, “At the bottom”.
In Gorky, viewers saw for the first time an unfamiliar world of outcasts. World drama has never known such a harsh, merciless truth about the life of the lower social classes, about their hopeless fate. In the shelter there were people of very different personalities and social status.
A special burden in the drama falls on the conflict, sharp clashes between the characters on reasons that are significant to them. At the same time, there cannot be in a drama extra people- all heroes must be involved in the conflict. The presence of social tension is already indicated in the title of the play. But we can't talk about what social conflict organizes the drama. This tension is devoid of dynamics; all the heroes’ attempts to escape from the “bottom” are in vain. Perhaps the drama is organized by a love conflict, traditional for many plays. It would seem strange to see such a thing pure feeling in such an atmosphere of dirt and poverty. But Gorky’s heroes do not pay attention to the dirt and stench, they are accustomed to such a life, to each other, and almost do not notice those around them. Each hero exists as if on his own, living his own life. Therefore, at the beginning of the play, everyone present speaks at once, without expecting an answer, weakly reacting to the comments of others. Kvashnya is proud that she is a free woman, not bound by marriage, and this angers Kleshch. He has his dying wife in his arms, Nastya, a fallen woman, reading “ Fatal love", which causes the Baron to laugh ironically. Prostitute Nastya dreams of a bright and pure love, but this only causes laughter from others. The girl is trying to get out of the vicious circle, leave the shelter and start a new one, but these are just her dreams.
But the play does contain a love line. It is created by the relationships between Vasilisa, Vaska Pepel, Kostylev’s wife, the owner himself and Natasha.
The plot of the love story begins when Kosta the Lion appears in the shelter. From a conversation with the inhabitants, it is clear that he is looking for his wife Vasilisa there, who is cheating on him with Vaska Ash. With the appearance of Natasha, the love plot begins to develop. For her sake, Vaska leaves Ashes to Vasilisa. As this conflict develops, it becomes clear to us that his relationship with Natasha enriches Vaska and revives him to a new life. Vaska Pepel never had a profession. There are no ideals for him, he does not strive to work, since he lives by theft. However, this man also retains kindness and naivety; he strives for purity and goodness. But Vaska Pepel falls into slavery " powerful of the world this." The owner of the flophouse, Kostylev, turns out to be even more low man: he does not give Vasily the money for the stolen watch, believing that Ash already owes him a lot. His wife Vasilisa is also in bondage to her husband, who is twice her age. She is also unhappy, and her love for Vaska Ash is a challenge to family despotism. For the sake of Vasilisa, the thief is ready to commit - to kill Kostylev. Vasilisa was inflamed with terrible hatred for her sister Natalya when she learned about her lover’s betrayal. She is ready to kill her, just to keep Vasily for herself. The climax, the highest point in the development of the conflict, is fundamentally taken off stage by the author. We do not see how Vasilisa is scalded with boiling water. We learn about this from the noise and screams behind the stage and from the conversations of the night shelters.
Love conflict in the play, of course, is one of the facets of the social conflict. Love line shows that the anti-human conditions of the “bottom” cripple a person, and the most sublime feelings in such conditions they do not lead to personal enrichment, but to death or hard labor.
Untied like this in a terrible way love conflict, Vasilisa achieves all her goals at once. Takes revenge ex-lover Vaska Pepl and his rival Natasha, gets rid of her unloved husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows us the enormity of the social conditions in which the inhabitants of the shelter are forced to live.
But a love conflict cannot become the basis of the dramaturgical conflict of the play, since, unfolding before the eyes of the night shelters, it does not affect them themselves. They do not participate in them, remaining only outside spectators.
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