As you understand the title of the story the last bow. Themes of goodness, memory and homeland in the story "The Last Bow"

"Last bow" Astafiev

“The Last Bow” is a landmark work in the work of V.P. Astafiev. It combines two main themes for the writer: rural and military. In the center of the autobiographical story is the fate of a boy left without a mother early, who is raised by his grandmother.

Decency, reverent attitude to bread, neat- to money - all this, with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with hard work, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.

In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they look and look at everything, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village.

The most penetrating and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature. The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which a plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of the central images of the story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread over the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”

In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, the red lights of strawberries lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently").

In selfless admiration of the beauties of his native nature, the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how pagan and Christian traditions are deeply rooted in the life of a simple Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers.

Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions, the teacher manages to conduct lessons.

Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. And with empty hands he met the peasants reluctantly. With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over the knitted festive tablecloths, and the clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's dead mother (the last memento).

V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of villagers in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, the folk craftsman Kesha, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although the further fate of the geese was still sad (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys still passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor.

Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev. In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth.

V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

"The Image of a Grandmother in Russian Literature XX century on the example of the stories of V.P. Astafiev "The Last Bow" and A. Kostyunin "Compassion".

Target:

Analyze the stories of V.P. Astafiev "The Last Bow" and A. Kostyunin "Compassion". Compare the images of grandmothers created by the authors, identifying the common and different between them. Contribute to the formation of a sense of responsibility for their actions to loved ones.

During the classes:

1. Organizational moment.

2. Teacher's word:

Teacher: In Russian literature, there are a number of traditional images: the image of the Motherland, the image of the mother, and others. No less interesting is the image of the grandmother. Each person has his own idea of ​​​​grandmother, his own memories associated with her. Many writers of the twentieth century turned to this image: M. Gorky in the work "Childhood", V.P. Astafiev in the book "The Last Bow", A. Kim in the story "Arina", as well as our contemporary - A. Kostyunin. Gorky's grandmother is the focus of light, warmth and kindness, wisdom. Kim has a kind grandmother, who loves everyone, trying to help everyone. Today we will try to compare the image of a grandmother drawn by V.P. Astafiev in the story "The Last Bow", with the image presented by the contemporary writer A. Kostyunin in the work "Compassion". We already know some of the characters. We remember the heroes of V.P. Astafiev, thanks to such stories as: “A horse with a pink mane”, “A photograph in which I am not”.

Teacher: How does the heroine appear in situations where the grandson deceived his own grandmother and brought a basket not with a berry, but with grass; when he rode a hill, although she forbade him, and then became very ill?

Student (sample answer): Grandmother rightly punishes her grandson, she tries to raise a real person out of him. She succeeds, because the shame that the boy experiences says that his soul is on the right track. Grandmother loves him very much, because not the one who does not punish, but the one who punishes lovingly loves. She takes care of a sick child, she is very sorry for him, that's why she gets so upset, constantly scolding him, herself, and everyone around her, because she doesn't know what else to do to help her beloved grandson.

3. Work with the text of V.P. Astafiev "The Last Bow". Reading the story with comments.

Teacher: Let's read the story together and try to answer a series of questions.

Teacher: “I made my way back to our house. I wanted to be the first to meet my grandmother, and that's why I didn't go down the street. The old, bare poles in our and neighboring gardens crumbled, where stakes should have been, sticking out props, twigs, and plank fragments. The gardens themselves were squeezed by insolent, freely overgrown boundaries. Our garden, especially from the ridges, was so crushed with folly, I noticed the beds in it only when, having fastened last year's burdocks on the riding breeches, I made my way to the bathhouse, from which the roof had fallen, the bathhouse itself no longer smelled of smoke, the door looked like a leaf carbon paper, lay aside, the current grass pierced between the boards. A small paddock of potatoes and beds, with a densely occupied vegetable garden, weeded from the house, the earth was bare black there. And these, as if lost, but still freshly darkening beds, rotten sleigh in the yard, pounded by shoes, a low pile of firewood under the kitchen window testified that people lived in the house. Suddenly, for some reason, I became terrified, some unknown force nailed me to the spot, squeezed my throat, and, having overcome myself with difficulty, I moved into the hut, but also moved timidly, on tiptoe.

Teacher: Why do you think the hero was overcome by such conflicting feelings and sensations: fear, excitement, pain?

Student (sample answer): Fear, probably, before meeting with his grandmother, whom he had loved since childhood, but our hero was also afraid. Or maybe this fear appeared because of the thought that the grandmother was not alive, because a lot of things in the yard fell into decay. The excitement arose because he had not seen his grandmother for a long time, with his native places. It is always difficult to return home after a long separation.

Teacher: Comment on the following quote: "some unknown force nailed me to the spot, squeezed my throat, and, having overcome myself with difficulty, I moved into the hut ...". How do you understand it?

Student (sample answer): " A lump in the throat”, “an unknown force is squeezing the throat” - this is what they say when they feel that a person cannot cope with the surging emotions, it is very difficult for him, he wants to cry ...

Teacher: “The door is open. A lost bumblebee buzzed in the vestibule, and there was a smell of rotten wood. There was almost no paint left on the door and on the porch. Only shreds of it shone in the rubble of the floorboards and on the jambs of the door, and although I walked carefully, as if I had run over the excess and now was afraid to disturb the cool peace in the old house, the cracked floorboards still stirred and moaned under my boots. And the farther I went, the more muffled, darker it became in front, the floor sagging, decrepit, eaten by mice in the corners, and more and more palpably there was a smell of the pretense of wood, the moldiness of the underground. Grandmother was sitting on a bench near the dim-sighted kitchen window, winding thread into a ball. I froze at the door. The storm has passed over the earth! Millions of human destinies were mixed up and mixed up, new states disappeared and appeared, fascism, which threatened the human race with death, died, and here, as a wall-mounted cabinet made of boards hung and a speckled cotton curtain hung on it, it still hangs; as the cast-iron pots and the blue mug stood on the stove, so they stand; just as forks, spoons, and a knife stuck out behind the wall plate, so they stick out, only there are few forks and spoons, a knife with a broken toe, and there was no smell in kuti of kvass, cow swill, boiled potatoes, and everything was as it was, even grandmother on her usual place, with the usual thing in hand.

Teacher: Why two pictures of the world appeared before the author's eyes at once. One remained behind the threshold: a rapidly changing world, warring states, a global problem - fascism; a different picture in the house: everything that surrounded him in childhood, and his own grandmother. What did the author want to convey to us by using such an antithesis?

Student (sample answer): The hero understands that in protecting world peace, he first of all defended the small world of his native places, his native home and his grandmother.

Teacher:

“- Why are you standing, father, at the threshold? Come on, come on! I'll cross you, dear. I got shot in the leg... If I get frightened or rejoice, it will shoot...

And my grandmother spoke in a familiar, familiar, ordinary voice, as if I, in fact, went out into the woods or ran away to my grandfather's abode and then returned, a little too late.

I thought you didn't recognize me.

How can I not know? What are you, God is with you!

I straightened my tunic, wanted to stretch out and bark what I had thought up beforehand: "I wish you good health, comrade general!" What a general! Grandmother made an attempt to get up, but she staggered, and she grabbed the table with her hands. The ball rolled off her knees, and the cat did not jump out from under the bench onto the ball. There was no cat, that's why it was eaten in the corners.

I am old, father, completely old... Legs... I picked up the ball and began to wind the thread, slowly approaching my grandmother, not taking my eyes off her.

How small grandmother's hands have become! Their skin is yellow and shiny, like onion skins. Every bone is visible through the worked skin. And bruises. Layers of bruises, like caked leaves from late autumn. The body, the powerful grandmother's body, could no longer cope with its work, it lacked the strength to drown out and dissolve the bruises, even the lungs, with blood. Grandma's cheeks sunk deep. All of ours will fall like holes in old age

cheeks. We are all grandma, high cheekbones, all with steeply protruding bones.

What are you looking at? Has it become good? Grandma tried to smile

worn out, sunken lips.

I threw the ball and grabbed my grandmother in the pregnant.

I stayed alive, baby, alive! ..

Prayed, prayed for you, - grandmother hastily whispered and in a bird's

poked me in the chest. She kissed where the heart was, and kept repeating: "I prayed, I prayed...

That's why I survived.

Did you receive a parcel, did you receive a parcel?

Time has lost its definitions for the grandmother. Its boundaries were erased, and what happened a long time ago, it seemed to her, was quite recently; much of today was forgotten, covered with a fog of fading memory. In the forty-second year, in the winter, I was trained in a reserve regiment, just before being sent to the front. They fed us very badly, they didn’t give us tobacco at all. I shot and smoked from those soldiers who received parcels from home, and the time came when I had to pay off my comrades. After much hesitation, I asked in a letter to send me some tobacco. Crushed by need, Augusta sent a bag of samosad to the reserve regiment. In the bag were also a handful of finely chopped crackers and a glass of pine nuts. This gift - crackers and nuts - grandmother sewed into a bag with her own hand!

Teacher: How has Grandma changed? What upset the hero so much?

Student (sample answer): Grandmother is very old, her health has deteriorated.

Teacher: T I wished share throughout life made itself felt - affected the health of the poor woman. Evaluate the grandmother's act when she sent a parcel to the front for her grandson. Why did she become so dear to him?

Student (sample answer): It was difficult not only at the front during the war, but also in the rear, people were starving and in poverty. Grandmother gave, maybe, the last crackers and nuts, but she was not sorry for her own grandson.

Teacher: « - Let me take a look at you.

I obediently froze in front of my grandmother. On her decrepit cheek, the dent from the Red Star remained and did not leave - a grandmother became up to my chest. She stroked me, felt me, memory stood in her eyes like a thick slumber, and my grandmother looked somewhere through me and beyond.

How big you have become, big-oh!.. If only the mother of the dead woman looked and admired ... - At this point, grandmother, as always, trembled in her voice and looked at me with questioning timidity - are you angry? I didn’t like before when she started talking about this. I sensitively caught - I'm not angry, and I also caught and understood, you see, the boyish ruffiness has disappeared and my attitude to good is now completely different. She wept, not infrequently, but in solid senile weak tears, regretting something and rejoicing in something.

What a life it was! God forbid! .. And God does not clean me up. I'm confused under my feet. You can't go into someone else's grave, after all. I will die soon, father, I will die.

I wanted to protest, to argue with my grandmother, and I was about to move, but she somehow wisely and inoffensively stroked my head - and there was no need to speak empty, comforting words.

I'm tired, father. All tired. Eighty-sixth year ... She did the work - it fits a different artel. Everything was waiting for you. Waiting strengthens. Now it's time. Now I will die soon. You, father, come to bury me ... Close my

little eyes...

Grandmother became weak and could no longer speak, she only kissed my hands, wetted them with tears, and I did not take her hands away from her. I also cried silently and enlightenedly.

Teacher: What has changed in the relationship between the grandmother and the hero, what has changed in the hero himself?

Student (sample answer): The hero has changed, not only matured, but also began to understand his grandmother better, stopped being ashamed of his emotions, feelings towards her.

Teacher: Thanks to the grandmother was able to survive the fiery forties, what gave her strength?

Student (sample answer): Faith in God, prayers for the grandson and waiting for him from the war.

Teacher: Soon the grandmother died. They sent me a telegram to the Urals with a summons to the funeral. But I was not released from production. The head of the personnel department of the car depot where I worked, after reading the telegram, said:

Not allowed. Mother or father is another matter, but grandmothers, grandfathers and godfathers ...

How could he know that my grandmother was my father and mother - everything that is dear to me in this world! I should have sent that boss to the right place, quit my job, sold my last pants and boots, and rushed to my grandmother's funeral, but I didn't. I did not yet realize then the enormity of the loss that befell me. If this happened now, I would crawl from the Urals to Siberia in order to close my grandmother's eyes, to give her the last bow. And lives in the heart of wine. Oppressive, quiet, eternal. Guilty before my grandmother, I try to resurrect her in memory, to find out from people the details of her life. But what interesting details can there be in the life of an old, lonely peasant woman? I found out when my grandmother became debilitated and could not carry water from the Yenisei, she washed potatoes with dew. She gets up before daylight, pours a bucket of potatoes onto the wet grass and rolls them with a rake, as if she tried to wash the bottom with dew, like a resident of a dry desert, she saved up rainwater in an old tub, in a trough and in basins ...

Suddenly, very, very recently, quite by accident, I find out that not only did my grandmother go to Minusinsk and Krasnoyarsk, but she also traveled to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra to pray, for some reason calling the holy place the Carpathians.

Aunt Apraksinya Ilyinichna has died. In the hot season, she lay in her grandmother's house, half of which she occupied after her funeral. The deceased began to plow, it would be necessary to smoke incense in the hut, but where can you get it now, incense? Today, words are incensed everywhere and everywhere, so thickly that sometimes the white light cannot be seen, the true truth cannot be discerned in the haze of words.

An, there was also incense! Aunt Dunya Fedoranikha, a thrifty old woman, lit a censer on a coal scoop and added fir branches to the incense. The oily fumes are smoking, swirling around the hut, it smells of antiquity, it smells of foreignness, it repels all bad smells - you want to sniff a long-forgotten, alien smell.

Where did you take it? I ask Fedoranikha.

And your grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, the kingdom of heaven to her, when she went to pray in the Carpathians, gave us all incense and goodies. Since then, I’ve been saving, a little is completely left - it’s left for my death ...

Mother dear! And I didn’t know such a detail in my grandmother’s life, probably, back in the old years she got to Ukraine, blessed, returned from there, but she was afraid to talk about it in troubled times, that if I blabbed about my grandmother’s prayer, they would trample me from school, Kolcha, the youngest, will be discharged from the collective farm ... I want, I still want to know and hear more and more about my grandmother, but the door to the silent kingdom slammed shut behind her, and there were almost no old people left in the village. I’m trying to tell people about my grandmother so that they can find her in their grandparents, in loved ones and loved ones, and my grandmother’s life would be endless and eternal, just as human kindness itself is eternal - yes, this work is from the evil one. I have no such words that could convey all my love for my grandmother, would justify me before her. I know my grandmother would forgive me. She always forgave me everything. But she is not. And never will. And there is no one to forgive ... "

Teacher: What new things did you learn about the life of the hero's grandmother from the last lines of the story? What trait of the heroine is shown here?

Student (sample answer): Until the last, she clung to life, even when she could not walk, she still tried to do something, to move somehow. She was active and hardworking.

Student (sample answer): She always thought not only about herself, but also about others. I even brought incense to everyone I could.

Teacher: Why does the hero feel guilty?

Student (sample answer): I didn’t come to the funeral, I didn’t give my last bow to my grandmother - the only kindred person in the world.

Teacher: How does the hero try to pay his last respects to his grandmother?

Student (sample answer): Oh He tells all his friends about her.

Student (sample answer): This is his symbolic last bow to his grandmother. The author tries to warn us against such mistakes made by the hero.

Teacher: What is your impression of the text you read and listened to? What thoughts and feelings did this story evoke?

Student (sample answer): The story evoked a feeling of pity for both the hero and the grandmother. I feel sorry for the hero because he is tormented by guilt, I feel sorry for the grandmother because so many difficulties fell on her life.

Student (sample answer): You are amazed at how much the grandmother still loved her grandson, now you understand that it seems, at times, unfair to us on the part of adults, is, on the contrary, necessary, correct and educative. Not everyone is worth rejecting what the elders say.

Teacher: Now read on your own the story of our contemporary writer A. Kostyunin "Compassion".

Let me remind you of one incident from my childhood. One day you came home from school. Your old grandmother was sitting in the kitchen. She is mentally ill. However, since her illness did not manifest itself aggressively, she lived right there, with you. Despite his illness, it was kindness itself. And a hard worker - what to look for. In order to somehow help her adult daughter with the housework, she took on any job. And although it was customary to wash the dishes after her, she tried her best. So this time she knitted socks with love. You. The most precious person for her! Your appearance for her is a quiet bright joy. Karelian was her native language - the language of a small disappearing people. Your classmates were very amused when she quietly prayed in a language they did not understand, and sang obscene ditties in Russian. You were ashamed of your grandmother in front of your friends. Annoyance accumulated. When you came in, she interrupted her work. A kindly open smile lit up her face. Eyes radiating kindness looked at you over the glasses. His weary hands with knitting needles rested relaxed on a darned apron. And suddenly. a ball of woolen thread mischievously, as if alive, jumped off his knees, unwinding and shrinking. Plump, leaning on the kitchen cupboard, she rose heavily from a stable wooden stool. So what is next. (it should have happened!), bending down for a ball, she, quite by accident, touched you at the moment when you poured milk into your mug. Your hand swayed and the milk spilled. At least half a cup!

Stupid! - you shouted in rage. And then he angrily grabbed a heavy frying pan and, running out of the kitchen, threw it with all his might at the grandmother from the threshold. Everything happened so fast. (Some kind of obsession.) The frying pan hit the swollen grandmother's leg. Her full lips trembled, and she, wailing something in her native language, holding the sore spot with her hand, sank down on a stool with a cry. Tears streamed profusely down her flushed face.

Then, for the first time, you suddenly perceived someone else's pain as your own. And since then these memories for your Soul are an open wound. I, like your Mind, tried to understand why the world is unfairly cruel? Maybe he's just unintelligent. There is an interesting aphorism: "We think too small. Like a frog at the bottom of a well. It thinks that the sky is the size of a well opening. But if it got out to the surface, it would acquire a completely different view of the world." However, neither the frog nor we have such an opportunity. And a person is able to see and understand only what the Arbiter of Fates is ready to reveal to him at a particular moment. Everything has its time. And you can’t speed it up by mechanically moving the hands of the clock forward. Only the simplest organisms develop rapidly. It suddenly dawned on me that the “tears of an innocent child” in Dostoevsky’s work, and the ironic attitude to someone else’s pain of your own father, and your “feat” in relation to your grandmother - everything was given solely to arouse compassion in you. Let not really change the fate of the book hero and the act of the soulless Body not be corrected in hindsight. (The past is not subject to anyone, not even God.) But there is still the present and the future. How to deal with similar situations in the future? Someone again and again plays a vivid video in the mind, consisting of the most direct questions and unpleasant memories. This is a kind of test offered from above. During the search for optimal answers, thoughts and feelings are formed. And now childhood is coming to an end. Childhood is a dream of Reason and Soul.

4. Conversation with students.

Teacher: Why does the hero remember this incident from his life all his life?

Student (sample answer): He is still ashamed of the act he committed in childhood.

Teacher: How did he treat his grandmother? And she to him?

Student (sample answer): The hero was ashamed of her, as she adhered to old traditions, was out of date.

Teacher: What state was the hero in that he acted so terribly with his grandmother?

Student (sample answer): In fury and anger.

Teacher: What words indicate that he did not fully understand the full horror of that situation?

Student (sample answer): Everything happened quickly, that is, he acted so recklessly, without thinking, without realizing the gravity of his act.

Student (sample answer): The word "obsession" also indicates that the boy was not himself.

Teacher: Why did he perceive someone else's pain as his own for the first time? What could melt the callous soul of the boy?

Student (sample answer): Grandmother began to cry, and then he realized what he had done, he felt sorry for her.

Teacher: For what purpose does fate send us such moments of compassion for another person, according to the author?

Student (sample answer): Such moments in a person's life are not accidental, as they save him from the dark side, thereby giving hope for the present and future. They teach us from our bitter mistakes that we once made, not to do this again in the future.

Teacher: Comment on the last sentence: "Childhood is a dream of Reason and Soul." How do you understand its meaning?

Student (sample answer): Childhood ends when shame for one's behavior appears, because in childhood a child does not understand a lot, is guided by whims, emotions, a child is an unconscious egoist.

5. Conceptual ring. Associative line.

Teacher: We read two stories, each of them presents the image of a grandmother. What is the difference between the two images?

Student (sample answer): The difference between them is in time: the grandmother from the story “The Last Bow” is a representative of the middle of the 20th century; grandmother from the story "Compassion" is practically our contemporary.

Student (sample answer): If the grandmother from the first story had a huge influence on the hero, she was a kind of authority for him, the only native person, then the grandmother from Kostyunin's story is an unhealthy person whom no one considers, no one listens to, no one appreciates.

Teacher: What do these images have in common? Let's imagine this as a conceptual ring, which will include the main features that unite both images.

(Jointly compiling the conceptual ring)
6. The final word of the teacher.

Teacher: In both stories, we are presented with the image of a woman from the village, a real worker, honoring traditions and not thinking of her life without helping other people, without love and care for her relatives. Writers in their autobiographical stories speak so touchingly about their relatives, are so frank with us, they are not ashamed to open up to all readers, because this is also a kind of repentance, the last bow. They warn you and me against such mistakes, because their burden is so heavy for the soul. Writers try to reach out to our souls, save them before it's too late. Love your family, cherish every minute spent with them.

7. Homework.

1. Come home to your grandmother and confess your love to her, do something nice for her.

2. Write a homemade mini-essay on the topics: “What do I want to thank my grandmother for?”, “My grandmother”, “My best minutes spent with my grandmother.”

"Last bow"

Decency, reverent attitude to bread, neat

To money - all this, with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with diligence, helps the family to survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.

In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they look and look at everything, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village.

The most penetrating and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature. The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which a plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of the central images of the story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread over the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”

In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, the red lights of strawberries lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently").

In selfless admiration of the beauties of his native nature, the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how pagan and Christian traditions are deeply rooted in the life of a simple Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers.

Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions, the teacher manages to conduct lessons.

Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. And with empty hands he met the peasants reluctantly. With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over there both knitted festive tablecloths, and clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's deceased mother (the last memento).

V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of villagers in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, the folk craftsman Kesha, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although the further fate of the geese was still sad (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys still passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor.

Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev. In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth.

V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

Creativity V.P. Astafiev is mainly studied in the ideological and thematic terms: the theme of war, the theme of childhood and the theme of nature.

In The Last Bow, two main themes for the writer are conjugated: rural and military. In the center of the autobiographical story is the fate of a boy who was left without a mother early and is raised by his grandmother. Decency, a reverent attitude to bread, a careful attitude to money - all this, combined with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with hard work, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.

In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they make everything look and taste, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village. The most penetrating and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature.

The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which a plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of the central images of the story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread over the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”

In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, the red lights of strawberries lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently"), In the selfless admiration of the beauties of his native nature, the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how pagan and Christian traditions are deeply rooted in the life of a simple Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers. Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions, the teacher manages to conduct lessons. Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. And with empty hands he met the peasants reluctantly.

With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over there both knitted festive tablecloths, and clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's deceased mother (the last memento).

It is important for us that V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of villagers in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, the folk craftsman Kesha, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

Note that V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although the further fate of the geese was still sad (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys still passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor. Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev.

In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth. V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

Let's turn to the work of researchers. A.N. Makarov in the book "In the depths of Russia" was one of the first to say that "Astafiev writes the history of his contemporary", indicating by this a certain connection between all his works, characterized the nature of his talent as lyrical-epic.

A. Lanshchikov focused on the autobiography that pervades the writer's works. I. Dedkov calls folk life the main subject of V. Astafiev's prose. B. Kurbatov touches on the issues of plot addition in the works of V.P. Astafiev, thus outlining his creative evolution, a change in genre thinking, poetics.

In literary works, the question was raised about the connection between V.P. Astafiev with the classical tradition of Russian literature:

• - Tolstoy tradition (R.Yu. Satymova, A.I. Smirnova);
• - Turgenev tradition (N.A. Molchanova).

The work is written in the form of a short story. Note that the form emphasizes the biographical nature of the narrative: the memories of an adult about his childhood. Memories, as a rule, are vivid, but do not line up in a single line, but describe individual cases from life.

Note that the work is about the Motherland, in the sense that Viktor Astafiev understands it. Homeland for him:

• - this is a Russian village, hardworking, not spoiled by prosperity;
• - this is nature, harsh, unusually beautiful - the powerful Yenisei, taiga, mountains.

Each separate story of the "Bow" reveals a separate feature of this general theme, whether it is a description of nature in the chapter "Zorka's song" or children's games in the chapter "Burn, burn brightly."

The story is told in the first person - the boy Vitya Potylitsyn, an orphan who lives with his grandmother. Vitya's father is a reveler and a drunkard, he left his family. Vitya's mother died tragically - she drowned in the Yenisei. Viti's life proceeded like all the other village boys - helping the elders with the housework, picking berries, mushrooms, fishing and playing. The main character of "Bow" - Vitka's grandmother Katerina Petrovna becomes for the reader of Astafiev's work, as it were, "our common Russian grandmother", because she collects in herself in a rare, living fullness everything that is still left in her native land of a strong, hereditary, primordially native, that we recognize ourselves by some kind of non-verbal instinct as our own, as if it shone to all of us and in advance and forever from somewhere bestowed, given. The writer did not embellish anything in her, leaving both a thunderstorm of character, and her grouchiness, and an indispensable desire to be the first to find out everything and to dispose of everything - everything in the village (one word - “general”). And she fights and suffers for her children and grandchildren, and breaks into anger and tears, but she begins to talk about life, and now, it turns out, there are no hardships for her grandmother: “Children were born - joy. Children got sick, she saved them with herbs and roots, and not a single one died - also a joy ... Once she put her hand on arable land, she herself set it right, there was just suffering, they harvested bread, she stinged with one hand and did not become a kosoruchka - is it not joy? This is a common trait of old Russian women, and it is a Christian trait, a trait that, when faith is depleted, is also inevitably depleted, and a person increasingly counts fate, measuring evil and good on the unreliable scales of "public opinion", counting his own suffering and jealously emphasizing his mercy. .

In "The Last Bow" everything around is still ancient - dear, lullaby, grateful to life, and this is all around life-giving. Life-giving, original beginning.

It should be noted that such an image of a grandmother is not the only one in Russian literature. For example, he is found in Maxim Gorky's "Childhood". And his Akulina Ivanovna is very, very similar to Viktor Petrovich Astafiev's grandmother Katerina Petrovna.

But here comes a turning point in Vitka's life. He is sent to his father and stepmother in the city to study at school, since there was no school in the village. Then the grandmother leaves the story, new everyday life begins, everything gets dark, and in childhood such a cruel, terrible side appears that the writer for a long time avoided writing the second part of the "Bow", a terrible turn of his fate, his inevitable "in people". It is no coincidence that the last chapters of "Bow" were completed by Astafiev only in 1992.

The second part of "The Last Bow" was sometimes reproached for cruelty. But it was not a supposedly vindictive note that was truly effective. What revenge is there? What does it have to do with it? The writer recalls his bitter orphanhood, his exile and homelessness, his general rejection, his uselessness in the world. “When it seemed that it would sometimes be better for everyone if he died,” as he himself wrote as an adult. And this was not said to them in order to now triumph victoriously: what, they took it! - or to evoke a sympathetic sigh, or once again imprint that inhuman time. All these tasks would be too alien to Astafiev's confessional and loving literary gift. It is probably possible to reckon and take revenge when you realize that you live unbearably due to someone's obvious fault, remember this evidence and look for resistance. But was the small, tenacious hero of "The Last Bow" Vitka Potylitsyn something prudently aware? He only lived as best he could, and dodged death, and even in some moments managed to be happy, not to miss the beauty. If anyone broke loose, it was not Vitka Potylitsyn, but Viktor Petrovich Astafyev, who, from the distance of the years already lived and from the height of his understanding of life, asked the world in dismay: how could it happen that innocent children were placed in such terrible, inhuman conditions of existence?

He does not feel sorry for himself, but for Vitka, as his child, who now can only be protected by compassion, and only by the desire to share with him the last potato, and the last drop of warmth, and every moment of his bitter loneliness.

If Vitka got out then, then we must thank his grandmother Katerina Petrovna for this, the grandmother who prayed for him, reached his suffering with her heart and thus, from a distant distance, inaudibly for Vitka, but salutarily softened him at least by the fact that she managed to teach forgiveness and patience, and the ability to discern in complete darkness even a small grain of goodness, and hold on to this very grain, and give thanks for it.

Astafiev dedicated a number of works to the theme of the Russian village, among which I would especially like to mention the stories "The Last Bow" and "Ode to the Russian Garden".

In essence, in "The Last Bow" Astafiev developed a special form of tale - polyphonic in its composition, formed by the interweaving of different voices (Vitka-small, wise author-narrator, individual hero-narrators, collective village rumor), and carnival in aesthetic pathos, with an amplitude from unbridled laughter to tragic sobs. This narrative form has become a characteristic feature of Astafiev's individual style.

As for the first book of The Last Bow, its speech texture strikes with unimaginable stylistic diversity.

The first book of The Last Bow, published in 1968 as a separate edition, caused a lot of enthusiastic responses. Subsequently, in 1974, Astafiev recalled:

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev is a famous Russian writer, prose writer, who lived from 1924 to 2001. The main theme in his work was the preservation of the national dignity of the Russian people. Famous works of Astafiev: “Starfall”, “Theft”, “War is thundering somewhere”, “Shepherdess and Shepherd”, “Tsar Fish”, “Sighted Staff”, “Sad Detective”, “Merry Soldier” and “Last Bow ”, which, in fact, will be discussed further. In everything that he described, one felt love and longing for the past, for his native village, for those people, for that nature, in a word, for the Motherland. Astafiev's works also told about the war, which ordinary village people saw with their own eyes.

Astafiev, "The Last Bow". Analysis

Astafiev devoted many of his works to the theme of the village, as well as to the theme of war, and The Last Bow is one of them. It is written in the form of a long story, composed of separate stories, of a biographical nature, where Viktor Petrovich Astafyev described his childhood and life. These memories are not built in a sequential chain, they are captured in separate episodes. However, it is difficult to call this book a collection of short stories, since everything there is united by one theme.

Viktor Astafiev dedicates "The Last Bow" to the Motherland in his own understanding. This is his village and native land with wild nature, harsh climate, powerful Yenisei, beautiful mountains and dense taiga. And he describes all this in a very original and touching way, in fact, this is what the book is about. Astafiev created "The Last Bow" as a landmark work, which addresses the problems of ordinary people of more than one generation in very difficult critical periods.

Plot

The protagonist Vitya Potylitsyn is an orphan boy raised by his grandmother. His father drank a lot and walked, eventually left his family and left for the city. And Viti's mother drowned in the Yenisei. The life of a boy, in principle, did not differ from the life of other village children. He helped the elders with the housework, went for mushrooms and berries, went fishing, well, he had fun, like all his peers. So you can start a summary. Astafiev's "last bow", I must say, embodied in Katerina Petrovna a collective image of Russian grandmothers, in whom everything is primordially native, hereditary, forever given. The author does not embellish anything in it, he makes her a little formidable, grouchy, with a constant desire to know everything first and dispose of everything at his own discretion. In a word, "general in a skirt." She loves everyone, takes care of everyone, wants to be useful to everyone.

She is constantly worried and tormented either for her children or for her grandchildren, because of this, anger and tears alternately break out. But if the grandmother begins to talk about life, it turns out that there were no adversities for her at all. The children were always happy. Even when they were sick, she skillfully treated them with various decoctions and roots. And none of them died, well, isn't that happiness? Once, on arable land, she dislocated her arm and immediately set it back, but she could have remained a kosoruchka, but she didn’t, and this is also a joy.

This is the common feature of Russian grandmothers. And lives in this image something fertile for life, native, lullaby and life-giving.

Twist in fate

Then it becomes not as fun as the short summary describes the village life of the protagonist at the beginning. Astafiev's "last bow" continues with the fact that Vitka suddenly has an unkind streak in life. Since there was no school in the village, he was sent to the city to his father and stepmother. And here Astafiev Viktor Petrovich recalls his torment, exile, hunger, orphanhood and homelessness.

How could Vitka Potylitsyn then realize something or blame someone for his misfortunes? He lived as best he could, escaping from death, and even managed in some moments. The author here pities not only himself, but all the then younger generation, who were forced to survive in suffering.

Vitka later realized that he got out of all this only thanks to the saving prayers of his grandmother, who at a distance felt his pain and loneliness with all her heart. She also softened his soul, teaching patience, forgiveness and the ability to see even a small grain of goodness in the black haze and be grateful for it.

School of survival

In the post-revolutionary period, Siberian villages were dispossessed. Ruin was all around. Thousands of families turned out to be homeless, many were driven to hard labor. Having moved to his father and stepmother, who lived on casual income and drank a lot, Vitka immediately realizes that no one needs him. Soon he experiences conflicts at school, the betrayal of his father and the oblivion of relatives. This is the summary. Astafiev’s “Last bow” goes on to say that after the village and the grandmother’s house, where, perhaps, there was no prosperity, but comfort and love always reigned, the boy finds himself in a world of loneliness and heartlessness. He becomes rude, and his actions are cruel, but still, his grandmother's upbringing and love of books will later bear fruit.

In the meantime, an orphanage awaits him, and this is just a brief summary. Astafyev's "Last Bow" illustrates in great detail all the hardships of the life of a poor teenager, including his studies at a factory course school, going to war and, finally, returning.

Return

After the war, Victor immediately went to the village to his grandmother. He really wanted to meet her, because she became for him the only and most dear person in the whole world. He walked through the vegetable gardens, catching burdocks, his heart clenched strongly in his chest with excitement. Victor made his way to the bathhouse, on which the roof had already collapsed, everything had long been without the master's attention, and then he saw a small pile of firewood under the kitchen window. This indicated that someone was living in the house.

Before entering the hut, he suddenly stopped. Victor's throat went dry. Gathering his courage, the guy quietly, timidly, literally on tiptoe, went into his hut and saw how his grandmother, just like in the old days, was sitting on a bench near the window and winding threads into a ball.

Minutes of oblivion

The protagonist thought to himself that during this time a whole storm flew over the whole world, millions of human destinies got mixed up, there was a deadly struggle against hated fascism, new states were formed, and here everything is as always, as if time had stopped. The same mottled calico curtain, a neat wooden wall cabinet, cast-iron stoves, etc. Only it no longer smelled of the usual cow swill, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut.

Grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna, seeing her long-awaited grandson, was very happy and asked him to come closer to hug and cross him. Her voice remained the same kind and gentle, as if the grandson did not return from the war, but from fishing or from the forest, where he could linger with his grandfather.

Long-awaited meeting

A soldier returning from the war thought that perhaps his grandmother might not recognize him, but that was not the case. Seeing him, the old woman wanted to get up abruptly, but her weakened legs did not allow her to do this, and she began to hold her hands to the table.

Grandma is very old. However, she was very glad to see her beloved grandson. And I was glad that, finally, I waited. She looked at him for a long time and could not believe her eyes. And then she let slip that she prayed for him day and night, and in order to meet her beloved granddaughter, she lived. Only now, having waited for him, grandmother could die in peace. She was already 86 years old, so she asked her grandson to come to her funeral.

Oppressive melancholy

That's all the summary. Astafiev's "last bow" ends with Viktor leaving to work in the Urals. The hero received a telegram about the death of his grandmother, but he was not released from work, citing that at that time they were only allowed to go to the funeral of his father or mother. The management did not want to know that his grandmother replaced both of his parents. Viktor Petrovich never went to the funeral, which he later regretted very much all his life. He thought that if this happened now, he would simply run away or crawl from the Urals to Siberia, just to close her eyes. So all the time this guilt lived in him, quiet, oppressive, eternal. However, he understood that his grandmother forgave him, because she loved her grandson very much.