A. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin": description, characters, analysis of the poem

The poem "Vasily Terkin" is dated 1941-1945 - the difficult, terrible and heroic years of the struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. In this work, Alexander Tvardovsky created an immortal image of a simple, Soviet fighter, defender of the Fatherland, who became a kind of personification of deep patriotism and love for his Motherland.

History of creation

The poem began to be written in 1941. Separate excerpts were printed in a newspaper version in the period from 1942 to 1945. In the same 1942, a still unfinished work was published separately.

Oddly enough, but work on the poem was started by Tvardovsky back in 1939. It was then that he already worked as a war correspondent and covered the course of the Finnish military campaign in the newspaper On Guard for the Motherland. The name was coined in collaboration with members of the editorial board of the newspaper. In 1940, a small brochure "Vasya Terkin at the front" was published, which was considered a great award among the fighters.

The image of the Red Army soldier was liked by the readers of the newspaper from the very beginning. Realizing this, Tvardovsky decided that this topic was promising and began to develop it.

From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, being at the front as a war correspondent, he finds himself in the hottest battles. He gets surrounded with the soldiers, leaves it, retreats and goes on the attack, experiencing from his own experience everything that he would like to write about.

In the spring of 1942, Tvardovsky arrives in Moscow, where he writes the first chapters "From the Author" and "On a Halt", and they are immediately published in the newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda.

Such an explosion of popularity Tvardovsky could not imagine even in his wildest dreams. The central publications Pravda, Izvestia, Znamya reprint excerpts from the poem. Orlov and Levitan read the texts on the radio. Artist Orest Vereisky creates illustrations that finally formed the image of a fighter. Tvardovsky holds creative evenings in hospitals, and also meets with labor collectives in the rear, raising morale.

As always, what the common people liked did not receive the support of the party. Tvardovsky was criticized for pessimism, for the lack of mention that the party leads all the accomplishments and achievements. In this regard, the author wanted to finish the poem in 1943, but grateful readers did not allow him to do this. Tvardovsky had to agree to censorship edits, in return he was awarded the Stalin Prize for his immortal work. The poem was completed in March 1945 - it was then that the author wrote the chapter "In the Bath".

Description of the artwork

The poem has 30 chapters, which can be conditionally divided into 3 parts. In four chapters, Tvardovsky does not talk about the hero, but simply talks about the war, about how much ordinary Soviet peasants had to endure, who defended their homeland, and hints at the progress of work on the book. The role of these digressions cannot be underestimated - this is a dialogue between the author and readers, which he conducts directly, even bypassing his hero.

There is no clear chronological sequence in the course of the story. Moreover, the author does not name specific battles and battles, however, individual battles and operations highlighted in the history of the Great Patriotic War are guessed in the poem: the retreat of the Soviet troops, which were so common in 1941 and 1942, the battle near the Volga, and, of course, the capture Berlin.

There is no strict plot in the poem - and the author did not have the task of conveying the course of the war. The central chapter is "Crossing". The main idea of ​​the work is clearly traced there - a military road. It is on it that Terkin and his comrades are striding towards the achievement of the goal - complete victory over the Nazi invaders, which means to a new, better and free life.

The hero of the work

The main character is Vasily Terkin. A fictional character, cheerful, cheerful, straightforward, despite the difficult circumstances in which he lives during the war.

We observe Vasily in different situations - and everywhere we can note his positive qualities. Among brothers-in-arms, he is the soul of the company, a joker who always finds an opportunity to joke and make others laugh. When he goes on the attack, he is an example for other fighters, he shows such qualities as resourcefulness, courage, endurance. When he rests after a fight, he can sing, he plays the accordion, but at the same time he can answer quite harshly and with humor. When soldiers meet with civilians, Vasily is charm and modesty itself.

Courage and dignity, shown in all, even the most desperate situations, are the main features that distinguish the protagonist of the work and form his image.

All other heroes of the poem are abstract - they don't even have names. Brothers in arms, a general, an old man and an old woman - they all just play along, helping to reveal the image of the main character - Vasily Terkin.

Analysis of the work

Since Vasily Terkin does not have a real prototype, we can safely say that this is a kind of collective image that was created by the author, based on his real observations of the soldiers.

The work has one distinctive feature that distinguishes it from similar works of that time - this is the absence of an ideological beginning. In the poem there is no praise of the party and personally Comrade Stalin. This, according to the author, "would destroy the idea and figurative structure of the poem."

The work uses two poetic meters: four-foot and three-foot trochee. The first size is found much more often, the second - only in separate chapters. The language of the poem has become a kind of Tvardovsky's card. Some moments that look like sayings and lines from funny songs, as they say, “gone to the people” and began to be used in everyday speech. For example, the phrase “No, guys, I’m not proud, I agree to a medal” or “Soldiers surrender cities, generals take them out” are still used by many today.

It was on such as the protagonist of this poem in verse that all the hardships of the war fell. And only their human qualities - fortitude, optimism, humor, the ability to laugh at others and at themselves, in time to defuse the tense situation to the limit - helped them not only win, but also survive in this terrible and merciless war.

The poem is still alive and loved by the people. In 2015, the Russian Reporter magazine conducted sociological research on hundreds of the most popular poems in Russia. Lines from "Vasily Terkin" took 28th place, which indicates that the memory of the events of 70 years ago and the feat of those heroes is still alive in our memory.

Name symbolism. The real, non-feuilleton Terkin, the hero of The Book of a Fighter, appeared in the first two chapters of Tvardovsky's book in September 1942. The front-line "biography" of Terkin is as follows: he begins to fight during the Finnish campaign, re-enters service in June 1941, retreats with the entire army, is surrounded several times, then goes on the offensive and ends his journey in the depths of Germany.

Vasily Terkin is a multifaceted image. He is a symbolic image, a man-people, a collective Russian type. It is no coincidence that nothing is said about his personal biography: they are, as it were, average. He is "a great hunter to live up to ninety years", a peaceful, civil man, a soldier by necessity. His usual life on the collective farm was interrupted by the war. War for him is a natural disaster, hot work. The whole poem is permeated with the dream of a peaceful life.

Already at the first mention, the surname Terkin clearly outlines the boundaries of character: Terkin means an experienced, grated person, "grated kalach", or, as the poem says, "a grated person with life." Compare, for example, with the Russian proverb: "Patience and work will grind everything," etc. This is the core of the name, the core of the image varies many times, is played out in the poem:

The image of Terkin is a generalized image, for all its realism and ordinariness. Tvardovsky endows his hero with a "general Russian" appearance, avoids portrait signs (this would make him overly individualized): "He was endowed with beauty / He was not excellent. / Not tall, not that small, / But a hero-hero." Terkin is a bright, unique personality, and at the same time he includes the features of many people, he seems to be repeated many times in others 1 . See, for example, the chapter "Terkin - Terkin": it turns out that there are two Terkins in the book. This is the hero of the book Vasily Ivanovich and his namesake Ivan. Duality emphasizes the generalizing nature of the protagonist. But their duality is not absolute: the second Terkin turns out to be red-haired, does not smoke, and his front-line profession is an armor-piercer. The situation is resolved by a "strict foreman":

Tvardovsky selects the most general, typical episodes of the war, rarely uses specific geographical names and exact chronological designations (the place and time of his book is a field, forest, river, swamp, village, road, winter, spring, summer, autumn). The same applies to Terkin's military profession: in different situations, he turns out to be either a signalman, or a shooter, or a scout. It is important that Terkin belongs to the most massive branch of the military - the infantry. The hero is an infantryman. "In it - the pathos of the infantry, the troops closest to the earth, to the cold, to fire and death," Tvardovsky wrote at the very beginning of his plan. Terkin is one of the laborers of the war, on whom the country rests, who bore the brunt of the war on their shoulders. The hero of Tvardovsky's poem is the hero of a specific war with the Germans, and at the same time there is something in him that brings him closer to the Russian soldier of all times. Tvardovsky himself always liked this idea about the deep national roots of his hero, and there are lines in the handwritten versions of the poem:

Tvardovsky paints the life of the war as a whole, but the overall picture of the war is made up of individual, very vivid and accurate details of the war. The concreteness and tangibility of the pictures drawn by Tvardovsky are extremely enhanced by the numerous and precise details of front-line life: in the parking lot, "water with ice rattled from a bucket from a smoky tank"; the telephone operator "blew into the receiver for order"; soldiers write letters "on a halt, by fire, on each other's backs, removing gloves with their teeth, in the wind in any frost," etc. The pictures of the war in the poem are always dynamic, alive, visually perceptible.

The system of rhymes used in relation to the name and surname of the hero also contributes to the achievement of generalization of the image of the protagonist. Tvardovsky uses rhymes that characterize the life of the army and the mood of the hero ("Terkin" - "bitter", "shag", "sayings", "in the tunic", "in the supply room", etc.). The most responsible in the poem is the rhyme "Vasily - Russia", repeated several times in the text, that is, it is emphasized that the hero is the embodiment of the heroism of the Russian people, representing all of Russia, all the people.

The poem "Vasily Terkin" was written by Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky during the Great Patriotic War and was published chapter by chapter in various newspapers. This work supported the fighting spirit of the soldiers, gave them hope, inspired and, most importantly, it could be read from any chapter. This is due to the fact that each chapter in the poem is a separate story, which is full of deep patriotism, optimism, faith in the future.

The image of the main character Vasily Terkin, a simple Russian soldier, is an example of human dignity, courage, love for the Motherland, honesty and selflessness. All these qualities of the hero are revealed in each chapter of the work, but, of course, only the study and analysis of the entire poem as a whole can give a complete picture of the character of the hero, of all his virtues.

Since the work was written during the war, it goes without saying that the main qualities of the hero, on which the author focuses, are selfless courage, heroism, a sense of duty and responsibility.

In the chapter “Crossing”, Vasily Terkin bravely agrees to swim across the icy river, and when he finds himself on the opposite bank, frozen and tired, he immediately begins to report, showing his responsibility and sense of duty:

Allow me to report...

The platoon on the right bank is alive and well

To spite the enemy!

In the chapter "Who shot?" the protagonist, instead of hiding in a trench like everyone else, bravely shoots down an enemy plane from a rifle, risking his life in the process.

The image of Vasily Terkin is multifaceted, he is not only a courageous soldier, but also a wonderful worker-craftsman. And we find confirmation of this in the chapter "Two Soldiers".

Terkin got up:

Or maybe, grandfather, she does not have a divorce?

He takes the saw himself - Come on ...

And in his hands she drank, for sure

Raised pike, Sharp back led.

The same thing happens with the clock, which stood for many years, and in the hands of Vasily it went again. To the old people, in whose house the hero manifests himself as a "jack of all trades", he has deep respect and reverence.

Vasily arouses great sympathy for the people around him also because he has a kind, cheerful disposition, his jokes are witty, they defuse the tense atmosphere, raise the morale of his colleagues, his funny stories distract the soldiers from gloomy thoughts. Terkin has amazing artistic abilities, he plays, sings, dances.

Another important feature of the hero is his spiritual tact, sensitivity and delicacy. When, after being wounded, Vasily was catching up with his detachment, he met tankers on the way. They had an accordion that belonged to a recently killed commander. The hero was imbued with sympathy for the soldiers and immediately gave up the desire to play on it, but the soldiers allowed him to do this and were fascinated by his game.

Throughout the work, Tvardovsky gives characteristics to his hero, expresses a personal attitude to his actions. He does this most openly in the last chapter, and it is this phrase that can be considered one of the main characteristics of Vasily Terkin:

A dashing soldier in the war

At the party, the guest is not superfluous,

At work, anywhere.

But the most important and capacious characteristic lies in the following words:

Serious, funny

No matter what rain, what snow -

Into battle, forward, into the pitch fire,

He goes holy and sinner,

Russian miracle man...

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The Great Patriotic War is one of those events in the history of the country that remain in the memory of the people for a long time. Such events largely change people's ideas about life and art. The war caused an unprecedented surge in literature, music, painting, and cinema. But, perhaps, there has not been and will not be a more popular work about the war than the poem by Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin".
A. T. Tvardovsky wrote firsthand about the war. At the very beginning of the war, he, like many other writers and poets, goes to the front. And passing along the roads of war, the poet creates an amazing monument to the Russian soldier, his feat. The hero of the “Book about a fighter”, as the author himself defined the genre of his work, is Vasily Terkin, who is a collective image of a Russian soldier. But there is another hero in the book - the author himself. We cannot even say that it is always Tvardovsky himself. Rather, we are talking about the generalized image of the author-narrator, which is present in "Eugene Onegin", "A Hero of Our Time" and other works that form the basis of the Russian literary tradition. Although some facts from the poem coincide with the real biography of A. T. Tvardovsky, the author is clearly endowed with many features of Terkin, they are constantly together (“Terkin - further. The author - after”). This allows us to say that the author in the poem is also a man of the people, a Russian soldier, who differs from Terkin, in fact, only in that “the course passed in the capital”. A. T. Tvardovsky makes Terkin his countryman. And therefore the words

I tremble with sharp pain,
Malice bitter and holy.
Mother, father, siblings
I have beyond that line -

become the words of both the author and his hero. Amazing lyricism colors those lines of the poem that speak of the “small homeland” that each of the soldiers who took part in the war had. The author loves his hero, admires his actions. They are always unanimous:

And I'll tell you, I won't hide,
In this book, here and there,
What to say to the hero,
I speak personally.
I am responsible for everything around
And notice, if you haven't noticed,
Like Terkin, my hero,
Sometimes speaks for me.

The author in the poem is an intermediary between the hero and the reader. A confidential conversation is constantly conducted with the reader, the author respects the “friend-reader”, and therefore seeks to convey to him the “real truth” about the war. The author feels his responsibility to the readers, he understands how important it was not only to tell about the war, but also to instill in the readers (and we remember that “Vasily Terkin” was published in separate chapters during the war, and the idea goes back to the time of the Finnish war) faith in the invincibility of the spirit of the Russian soldier, optimism. Sometimes the author, as it were, invites the reader to check the truth of his judgments and observations. Such direct contact with the reader greatly contributes to the fact that the poem becomes understandable to a large circle of people.
The poem constantly shows subtle author's humor. At the very beginning of the poem, the author calls a joke the most necessary thing in a soldier's life:

You can live without food for days
You can do more, but sometimes
In a one minute war
Can't live without a joke
Jokes of the most unwise.

The text of the poem is filled with jokes, sayings, sayings, and it is impossible to determine who their author is: the author of the poem, the hero of the poem Terkin, or the people in general.
The author's powers of observation, the vigilance of his gaze and the skill of conveying the details of front-line life are striking. The book becomes a kind of "encyclopedia" of the war, written "from nature", in a field situation. The author is faithful not only to details. He felt the psychology of a man in the war, felt the same fear, hunger, cold, just rejoiced and grieved... the author to tell his contemporaries and descendants about the war in which “the battle is holy and right. Mortal combat is not for the sake of glory, for the sake of life on earth.

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born in 1910 on one of the farms in the Smolensk region, into a peasant family. For the formation of the personality of the future poet, the relative erudition of his father, love for the book, which he brought up in his children, also mattered. “Entire winter evenings,” Tvardovsky writes in his autobiography, “we often devoted ourselves to reading a book aloud. My first acquaintance with "Poltava" and "Dubrovsky" by Pushkin, "Taras Bulba" by Gogol, the most popular poems by Lermontov, Nekrasov, A.K. Tolstoy, Nikitin happened in this way.

In 1938, an important event took place in the life of Tvardovsky - he joined the ranks of the Communist Party. In the autumn of 1939, immediately after graduating from the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature (IFLI), the poet participated in the liberation campaign of the Soviet Army in Western Belarus (as a special correspondent for a military newspaper). The first meeting with the heroic people in a military situation was of great importance for the poet. According to Tvardovsky, the impressions received then anticipated those deeper and stronger ones that flooded over him during the Second World War. Artists drew amusing pictures depicting the unusual front-line adventures of an experienced soldier Vasya Terkin, and poets composed text for these pictures. Vasya Terkin is a popular popular character who performed supernatural, dizzying feats: he got a tongue, pretending to be a snowball, covered his enemies with empty barrels and lit up, sitting on one of them, “he takes the enemy with a bayonet, like sheaves with a pitchfork.” This Terkin and his namesake - the hero of the poem of the same name by Tvardovsky, who gained nationwide fame - are incomparable.
For some slow-witted readers, Tvardovsky will subsequently specifically hint at the deep difference that exists between a genuine hero and his namesake:
Can't you conclude now?
What, they say, grief does not matter,
What the guys got up, took
Tree without difficulty?
What about constant luck
Terkin accomplished a feat:
Russian wooden spoon
Eight Fritz laid down!

Such lubok heroism was in the spirit of Vasya Terkin, the hero of the humorous page of the newspaper On Guard for the Motherland.
However, the captions to the drawings helped Tvardovsky achieve ease of colloquial speech. These forms are preserved in the "real" "Vasily Terkin", having improved significantly, expressing a deep life content.
The first plans to create a serious poem about the hero of the people's war date back to the period 1939-1940. But these plans changed significantly later under the influence of new, formidable and great events.
Tvardovsky was always interested in the fate of his country at turning points in history. History and people are its main theme. Back in the early 1930s, he created a poetic picture of the complex era of collectivization in the poem "Country Ant". During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) A..T. Tvardovsky writes the poem "Vasily Terkin" about the Great Patriotic War. The fate of the people was decided. The poem is dedicated to the life of the people in the war.
Tvardovsky is a poet who deeply understood and appreciated the beauty of the national character. Large-scale, capacious, collective images are created in “The Land of the Ant”, “Vasily Terkin”: the events are enclosed in a very broad plot framework, the poet turns to hyperbole and other means of fabulous convention. In the center of the poem is the image of Terkin, which unites the composition of the work into a single whole. Terkin Vasily Ivanovich - the protagonist of the poem, an ordinary infantryman from Smolensk peasants.

"Just a guy himself
He is ordinary"

Terkin embodies the best features of the Russian soldier and the people as a whole. A hero named Vasily Terkin first appears in the poetic feuilletons of the Tvardov period of the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940). The words of the hero of the poem:

"I am the second, brother, war
I'm fighting for the ages"

The poem is built as a chain of episodes from the military life of the protagonist, which do not always have a direct event connection with each other. Terkin tells young soldiers about the everyday life of the war with humor; says that he has been fighting since the very beginning of the war, he was surrounded three times, was wounded. The fate of an ordinary soldier, one of those who bore the brunt of the war on his shoulders, becomes the personification of the national fortitude, the will to live. Terkin swims across the icy river twice to re-establish contact with advancing units; Terkin occupies a German dugout alone, but comes under fire from his own artillery; on the way to the front, Terkin finds himself in the house of old peasants, helping them with the housework; Terkin steps into hand-to-hand combat with the German and, with difficulty, overcoming, takes him prisoner. Unexpectedly for himself, Terkin shoots down a German attack aircraft from a rifle; Terkin reassures the envious sergeant:
“Do not worry, the German has this
Not the last plane

Terkin takes over command of the platoon when the commander is killed and breaks into the village first; however, the hero is again seriously wounded. Lying wounded in the field, Terkin converses with Death, who persuades him not to cling to life; in the end, he is discovered by the fighters, and he tells them:

"Remove this woman,
I am a soldier still alive

In the image of Vasily Terkin, the best moral qualities of the Russian people are combined: patriotism, readiness for a feat, love for work.
The character traits of the hero are interpreted by the poet as traits of the collective image: Terkin is inseparable and inseparable from the militant people. It is interesting that all fighters - regardless of their age, tastes, military experience - feel good with Vasily; wherever he appears - in battle, on vacation, on the way - contact, friendliness, mutual disposition are instantly established between him and the fighters. Literally every scene is about it. The fighters listen to Terkin's playful bickering with the cook at the first appearance of the hero:
And sitting under a pine tree,
He eats porridge, hunched over.
"Mine?" - fighters among themselves, -
"Mine!" - exchanged glances.

I do not need, brothers, orders,
I don't need fame.

Terkin is characterized by respect and careful attitude of the master to the thing, as to the fruit of labor. It is not for nothing that he takes away the saw from his grandfather, which he mangles, not being able to sharpen it. Returning the finished saw to the owner, Vasily says:

On-ko, grandfather, take it, look.
Will cut better than new
In vain do not measles the tool.

Terkin loves work and is not afraid of it (from the hero's conversation with death):

I am an employee
I would go into business at home.
- The house is destroyed.
- I'm a carpenter.
- There is no stove.
And the baker...

a hero is usually a synonym for his mass character, the absence of features of exclusivity in him. But this simplicity has another meaning in the poem: the transparent symbolism of the hero's surname, Terkin's “tolerate-tolerate” sets off his ability to overcome difficulties simply, easily. Such is his behavior even when he swims across an icy river or sleeps under a pine tree, completely content with an uncomfortable bed, and so on. In this simplicity of the hero, his calmness, sober outlook on life, important features of the national character are expressed.

In the field of view of A.T. Tvardovsky in the poem "Vasily Terkin" is not only the front, but also those who work in the rear for the sake of victory: women and the elderly. The characters of the poem not only fight - they laugh, love, talk with each other, and most importantly - dream of a peaceful life. The reality of war is united by what is usually incompatible: tragedy and humor, courage and fear, life and death.
The chapter "From the Author" depicts the process of "mythologization" of the main character of the poem. Terkin is called by the author "a holy and sinful Russian miracle man." The name of Vasily Terkin has become legendary and a household name.
The poem "Vasily Terkin" is distinguished by a kind of historicism. Conventionally, it can be divided into three parts, coinciding with the beginning, middle and end of the war. The poetic comprehension of the stages of the war creates a lyrical chronicle of events from the chronicle. A feeling of bitterness and sorrow fills the first part, faith in victory - the second, the joy of the liberation of the Fatherland becomes the leitmotif of the third part of the poem. This is explained by the fact that A.T. Tvardovsky created the poem gradually, throughout the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
The composition of the poem is also original. Not only individual chapters, but also periods, stanzas within chapters are distinguished by their completeness. This is due to the fact that the poem was printed in parts. And it should be accessible to the reader from "any place".
The poem has 30 chapters. Twenty-five of them fully, comprehensively reveals the hero, who finds himself in a wide variety of military situations. In the last chapters, Terkin does not appear at all (“About an Orphan Soldier”, “On the Road to Berlin”). The poet has said everything about the hero and does not want to repeat himself, to make the image illustrative.
It is no coincidence that Tvardovsky's work begins and ends with lyrical digressions. An open conversation with the reader brings the work closer to the inner world, creates an atmosphere of common involvement in the events. The poem ends with a dedication to the fallen.
Tvardovsky talks about the reasons that pushed him to such a construction of the poem:
“I did not long languish with doubts and fears about the uncertainty of the genre, the lack of an initial plan that embraces the whole work in advance, the weak plot connection of the chapters with each other. Not a poem - well, let yourself not a poem, - I decided; there is no single plot - let yourself not, do not; there is no very beginning of a thing - there is no time to invent it; the culmination and completion of the whole story is not planned - let it be written about what is burning, not waiting ... ”
Of course, the plot in the work is necessary. Tvardovsky knew and knows this very well, but in an effort to convey to the reader the "real truth" of the war, he polemically declared his rejection of the plot in the usual sense of the word.

There is no plot in war...
................
However, the truth does not hurt.

The poet emphasized the veracity and reliability of broad pictures of life by calling Vasily Terkin not a poem, but a “book about a fighter.” The word "book" in this popular sense sounds somehow special in a significant way, as a subject "serious, reliable, unconditional," says Tvardovsky.
The poem "Vasily Terkin" is an epic canvas. But lyrical motifs also sound powerful in it. Tvardovsky could call (and called) the poem "Vasily Terkin" his lyrics, because in this work for the first time the appearance of the poet himself, the features of his personality, were so vividly, diversely and strongly expressed.

Alexander Tvardovsky saw the war and the battlefield with his own eyes, as he worked as a war correspondent, so he managed to very accurately bring his work closer to the people and the feelings that engulfed the country at that time.

The poem "Vasily Terkin" Tvardovsky began to write during a military campaign, then the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe work arose. The first chapters were published in 1942, at the height of hostilities. After the appearance of the first part, the poem becomes the main work at the front. The work was greeted with approval, the image of the hero-soldier Vasily Terkin was liked by the people and was close to them. Tvardovsky carefully worked on each chapter, trying to create finished parts that "could be read from any open page." Alexander Trifonovich tried to write in an easy, understandable language for people: “I rewrote each chapter many times, checking for slugs, worked for a long time on any one stanza or line.”

Vasily Terkin is a collective image that absorbed the characteristics and features of the Russian people in wartime. Terkin is also the image of a Soviet hero, ready to fight to the death and defend the Motherland.

The protagonist of the poem, a simple Russian soldier, has a wide range of positive traits, but does not stand out in appearance.

Vasily is brave, courageous, confident, modest, simple, honest, brave, noble, kind, is the image of a sincere person who is welcome anywhere and who can join any team.

There is also unshakable faith and hope in Turkin. In the chapter "On the Reward" he talks about the world after the war:

Here I came from the station

To your native village council.

I came, and here is a party.

No party? Okay, no.

He dreams of meeting a girl:

And I would joke with everyone

And there would be one among them ...

His dreams are interrupted by a colleague:

Where are the girls, where are the parties?

…….Visit your native village

Despite this, Vasily does not lose faith and continues to hope. In the same chapter, we learn that Terkin is not proud and does not fight for the sake of awards and titles:

No guys, I'm not proud.

Without looking into the distance

So I will say: why do I need an order?

I agree to a medal.

The hero never loses heart, and even on the verge of death, he is able to laugh it off and not give up to the end. In the chapter "Death and the Warrior" one can see his great love for life.

Fulfillment of duty to the Motherland for Vasily is in the first place. In the "Crossing" part, he swam to deliver the order that he could save the platoon. The chapter "Who shot" shows how Terkin makes a brave and courageous act. He shoots down an enemy plane, possibly saving many lives. Such a heroic deed requires the greatest willpower and great courage, which Vasily shows. This shows the courage of Russian soldiers, who are ready to lay their chest on the embrasure for the sake of the Motherland.

Front-line everyday life is undoubtedly difficult, and it is necessary to have incredible fortitude in order to fight and hold on to the end, fight and live. From the chapter "Two Soldiers" we can feel the heaviness and mood of everyday days in the war.

In the field of a blizzard-zaviruha,

Three miles away, war is buzzing.

Turkin is at war again

Respect for the dead, the general spirit and attitude is shown by the chapter "Accordion". From the dialogue of the soldiers, we understand the severity of the war days and the sadness at the loss of a comrade. Simple, human things, the atmosphere and the general spiritual cohesion make the soldiers closer and during the cold, snowy winter it suddenly becomes warmer.

And from that old harmonica,

Who was left an orphan

It suddenly got warmer

On the front road.

Vasily Terkin was close to the soldiers of the Second World War, in him they saw their features, the features of their comrades, in his image there is something native, pleasant and sincere, which reminds of home. Terkin could inspire, support, amuse. Vasily is a separate person, but at the same time an extensive collective image. This is a man of great faith and heroism, this is a Russian man, he does not surrender, neither to the enemy, nor to death:

I will cry, howl in pain,

Dying in the field without a trace

But you are willing