Man is an invariable part of society, its main element. In the complex mechanism of life, he always has to subordinate personal motives and interests to social frameworks that protect him, and, at the same time, become the cause of spiritual unfreedom. The limitations and standards put forward by the environment sometimes cannot curb the strength of the human character, his desire for knowledge of the world and self-expression. Therefore, the conflicts between the individual and the collective are reflected in many works of Russian literature. One of these works is M. Gorky's drama "At the Bottom". The action takes place in a rooming house for the poor, where people of various kinds have gathered, but they are all rejected by society. Each of them has his own life tragedy, which is based on simple human weaknesses.

1. Once rejected by society, found himself on " social day“A person is no longer able to rise, to cope with the vicissitudes of fate. So says one of the inhabitants of the rooming house - Bubnov. Life for him has lost its significance: once he owned a dyeing workshop, the hero suddenly loses everything. Thrown "to the bottom", having lost faith in people and the truth, having survived the betrayal of his wife, now he is convinced that everything in the world is subject to cruel and immutable laws, which it is pointless to resist. The thought of getting out of the rooming house, changing the course of things and starting new life Bubnov seems absurd. “All people on earth are superfluous ...” - the hero notes. Abandoned by the environment, he is embittered at society and is incapable of faith and forgiveness.
2. “A person can do anything – if only he wants to,” another hero of the play, the new guest of the rooming house, the wanderer Luka, is sure, who enters into a conditional conflict with the ideological statements of Bubnov. Luke is a mysterious old man, almost blissful, who knows where he came from and where he is heading. Nobody knows about his fate, however, according to the preacher, a lot of grief and difficulties fell to his lot. However, the righteous man is sure that one can cope with the external ugliness, cruelty of life and society, it is enough to believe in a person, inspire hope in him, albeit sometimes deceptive. “You can’t always cure the soul with the truth,” the old man is convinced, consoling the heroes of the rooming house. Rejected by society, like the other characters in the play, Luke continues to believe in the inhabitants of the "bottom", in the high destiny of each of them.
3. Despite the seeming doom of life, some of the heroes do not lose faith in a bright future, they dream of rising from the bottom of the social to a better stage of life. Vaska Pepel is a rebellious character in the play. His father was a thief, and he himself was accustomed to such a craft from childhood. Unlike others actors Ashes are rejected by society from the very beginning, as a lost person, whose fate is predetermined and known in advance. He seeks to change himself, thereby proving to the team that his share can be better, and he himself can become an honest and decent citizen. He loves Natasha, dreams of taking her away from the rooming house, where she is forced to endure her sister's beatings, and moving to Siberia, where no one will know about his past, and, therefore, will not be judged for past mistakes.
4. "Man - that sounds proud!" - asserts his bitter truth, another guest of the rooming house, a former telegraph operator Satin. He is convinced that human life is expensive, so everyone needs sympathy. Satin, like Luke, is compassionate towards his neighbors, ready to help those in need. However, being on the social "bottom" makes him indifferent to life in general. He does not see the point in action, so he consciously destroys himself. Once sent to prison for murder, and now living in a rooming house, he does not want to change, because he considers existence "on the bottom" to be the natural course of existence. He rejects a society in which he no longer sees the truth. The truth, in his opinion, is in the person himself, however, even before that Satine does not care. Broken by circumstances, he refuses to fight, remaining indifferent to his future fate.
5. Doomed to death, the heroes of the play inevitably go to the bottom. They are connected by a common destinies and the situation in which they are, the tragedy of the surrounding world, which rejected each of the guests of the rooming house for different reasons. The actor, who has successfully performed on stage in the past, now drinks heavily. He dreams of recovering from alcoholism and returning to the stage, constantly quoting famous literary passages. However, the realization of one's own weakness, the oblivion of society, the inability to get out of poverty push the hero to suicide. Other characters in the drama are also looking for "truth in wine": Andrey Mitrich Kleshch, a locksmith, found himself at the bottom due to his wife's illness. With her death, he expects relief from the burden of responsibility, but loses his job, becoming even more embittered at people and having lost the last goal of existence, messing around with Satin. The heroes are unable to find the right path, expelled from the collective to the social “bottom”, they die there, deprived of hope for the future.

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People often speculate about what exactly is indifference. Indifference is a state of a person, complete indifference to someone else's fate. In our time, this is a big moral problem that makes a person without sensual, heartless, and his life is empty and gray. However, indifference to one degree or another is characteristic of all people. And each of us at least once in life faced with it.

But this cold-blooded indifference to what surrounds us can lead to very sad consequences.

M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom" convinces me of the correctness of this point of view. IN this work the author depicted the life of the poor who live in Kostylev's rooming house. There are absolutely ugly conditions, the rooming house is more like a prison. The most found shelter here different people, with a variety of life situations, because of which they were "at the bottom". The inhabitants of the rooming house are indifferent to each other's fates. They are angry at the whole world and at themselves. These people are distrustful, indifferent and even cruel. For example, the death of the seriously ill Anna, who throughout her life has suffered from the assault of her husband, does not touch the roomers, they are even glad that she "will no longer cough and interfere with them."

These people have already come to terms with their pitiful fate, and are not ready to change anything for the sake of themselves and their loved ones. This shows indifference to oneself. Even love does not help the inhabitants of the rooming house to find happiness and peace of mind. The heroes of the play are weak and unable to withstand difficult life circumstances. When Luca appears at the rooming house, everything seems to have changed. He inspires these people with hope for a brighter future, tries to support each person, speaks kind words to them, reassures and pities them. Luke is certainly deceiving them, but can he be condemned for this lie? After all, he does this not for his own benefit, but in order to help desperate people with a word. Luka is well aware that their hopes will never come true, but even simple kind words he wants to inspire his neighbors. No one appreciates these efforts and only accuse him of lying. But when the bow disappears, self-confidence again leaves the inhabitants and, having lost hope for a brighter future, they lose interest in life. The hero continues to steal, drink and wander. Because of the monstrous living conditions, the moral decline of these people is taking place. The indifference of others spiritually destroys them, makes life unbearable. This manifests the need to help each other, mutual support and just a kind word from loved ones.

Arguing on the topic of indifference, I cannot help but turn to one more work fiction A.P. Chekhov - "Tosca". In this story, the writer reveals the theme of indifference in the best possible way. The son of the cabman Iona Potapov dies. The old man suffers greatly, he is overcome by melancholy and despondency. But the tragedy of Jonah does not interest either the military, or the youth, or even his man. social status- the same driver. Each of them is full of their own problems and worries. Everyone is annoyed, they are in a hurry somewhere, and only Iona Potapov has nowhere to hurry. No one notices a thoughtful, sad, self-absorbed person. The old man makes attempts to pour out his soul strangers but they are not successful. He is desperately trying to find support and compassion, but those around him are indifferent to the cabman's grief. In the end, Iona Potapov understands that there are no people who are able to sympathize with his tragedy. Nobody wants to think about frailty and unhappiness, everyone wants to hide from the cruel reality. So without waiting for human attention, the old man goes to the stable where his horse is and pours out his soul to his favorite.

This problem was relevant in the 19th century and remains no less relevant today. Why is indifference dangerous? It destroys the soul of a person, destroys his ability to sympathize, pity and even love. As A.P. himself said Chekhov: "Indifference is paralysis of the soul." I believe that we should be a little different from our problems and look around, because each of us can help at least one person.

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Updated: 2017-10-18

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The action of the play "At the Bottom" takes place in a gloomy, semi-dark basement, similar to a cave, with a vaulted, low ceiling that presses on people with its stone weight, where it is dark, there is no space and it is difficult to breathe. The furnishings in this basement are also wretched: instead of chairs, there are dirty stumps of wood, a rough-hewn table, along the walls - bunks

Thieves, cheaters, beggars, cripples have gathered here - everyone who is thrown out of life; different in their habits, life behavior, past fate, but equally hungry, exhausted and useless: the former aristocrat Baron, the drunk Actor, the former intellectual Satin, the artisan locksmith Kleshch, the fallen woman Nastya, the thief Vaska. They have nothing, everything is taken away, lost, erased and trampled into the mud.

The motley gallery of characters in the play are the victims of a soulless social order. Even here, at the very bottom of life, completely exhausted and destitute, they serve as an object of exploitation, even here the owners, petty-bourgeois owners, do not stop at any crime and try to squeeze a few pennies out of them.

The fate of all these people and the very existence of the “bottom” serve as a formidable accusation against the bourgeois world.

A. M. Gorky, in one of his interviews, spoke about the problems of the play as follows: “The main question I wanted to pose is what is better, truth or compassion? What is more needed? "

A. M. Gorky attacked the bourgeois philosophy of consoling lies with great force. Luke considers all people insignificant, miserable, weak, incapable of actively fighting for their rights and in need of condolence and consolation. Luka is a sower of illusions, comforting tales, which desperate weak people greedily clutched at. "White lies" is the principle followed by Luke. He inspires Vaska Pepl with the idea of ​​a trip to Siberia, where he can start a new, honest life; The actor promises to name the city where they cure alcoholism in a luxurious hospital; dying Anna calms down with the hope that for her unbearable torments on earth, after death, she will find peace and eternal bliss in heaven. Luke's comforting lie meets with sympathy from the bed-seekers. They believe him, because they want to believe in the existence of another truth, because they passionately want to escape from the rooming house and make their way to another life, although the paths to it are unclear.

A. M. Gorky, in one of his interviews, spoke about the problems of the play as follows: “The main question I wanted to pose is what is better, truth or compassion? What is more needed? "

In the play "At the Bottom" the author combined many of his theories, thoughts, assumptions. Gorky made his heroes the inhabitants of the rooming house, people who had sunk to the social and moral bottom. And it is no coincidence. It is at that depth of falling, which is reflected in the play, that a person is able to discuss the eternal problems of being, because in real life he has nothing, and his existence comes rather from the mercy of those above. At the "bottom" all social signs and differences between people are erased: "There are no masters here ... everything has faded, one naked man remained". So, what problems can be identified in this work? The author prompts us to think about man, about truth and saving lies, about mercy and cruelty, suffering and patience. The controversy about conscience is very interesting in the work. The question of whether she is needed in life arises after Kleshch’s remark that “a tear, a golden company lives in a rooming house ...” Objecting to Kleshch, Vaska Pepel notes that he agrees with those who, like Satin, consider having a conscience completely unprofitable. Bubnov's position is the same: "What's the conscience for?" And the reader begins to wonder if people really need it at the very “day” of life. Also in his work, Gorky outlined the problem of a real way out of the situation. It is associated with the image of the locksmith Klesch, who wants to return to a "normal" life through hard, honest work. At first, Kleshch proudly opposes himself to those around him, believes in the feasibility of his plan, and works hard. But then his dream is shattered by harsh reality: he loses his job, goes through a crisis. At the end of the play, the hero abandons his dreams of work, reconciles himself with the "idle tramps", gets drunk along with Satin, who preaches the principle of "non-doing". Through the image of Anna, the wife of the Tick, the problem of life and death, as well as compassion, develops. Anna - "patient", dutifully bears her cross and appeals only to sympathy. Also, thanks to her, the cruelty of the Mite is emphasized. At Anna's request not to shout, not to quarrel, he only tiredly throws: “Whined!” Anna suffocates, asks to open the door to the hallway, but Kleshch refuses to do so, fearing to catch a cold. In such social conditions, people have no room for elementary pity. In this sense, Bubnov acts as a preacher of the principle of indifference to one's neighbor, lack of compassion. By the way, it is Bubnov that can be called the special hero of the play, his statements often seem cynical, but they show the true meaning of the situation, not allowing illusions to succumb. A very important role in the work is played by the problem of cruel truth and saving lies. The philosophy of humane deceit in the play is preached by the wanderer Luke. He appears, and with him, pity and compassion enter the life of the roomers. For everyone, this old man has a warm, affectionate word. The Stranger believes that a person should be approached only through kindness and pity. With his story about two runaway convicts who climbed into the dacha, Luka confirms the connection between pity for a person and goodness: “If I didn’t take pity on them, they might have killed me ... or something else ... Prison will not teach goodness, but a person will teach ... Yes! » Here Luka is opposed to Bubnov. This hero says: “In my opinion, bring down the whole truth as it is! Why be ashamed?" But the truth, to which he calls, is not for everyone. And in this dispute, the Tick opens up in a new way. He “trembles with excitement”, “screams” about his hatred for the truth: “You need to breathe ... here it is, the truth! It does not let you breathe, you can’t live with it ... ”A peculiar culmination in this dispute of heroes is the parable of Luke about righteous land. One person was going to go looking for a righteous land where “good people live ... they respect each other, they help each other for anything and everything ... and everything is nice and good with them!” For this, he was ready to endure everything. He could not stand only the explanation of the scientist that the righteous land is not on the maps. After this news, he "went home and - strangled himself! .." Faith in the ideal of goodness helps to live, "gives joy." Trying to find out the truth, a person becomes convinced that its embodiment in reality is impossible, and this deprives him of his vitality, the ability to fight fate. Satin, in turn, said: “man is the truth!” And in fact, a dispute about a person occupies a significant place in the play. Bubnov says that “no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased ... everything will be erased, yes!” Luke does not see between people big difference: "I don't care! I respect crooks too; in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: all are black, all are jumping ... ”Satin, in his famous monologue, proclaims:“ What is a person? .. It's not you, not me, not them ... no! - it's you, me, they, the old man, Napoleon, Mohammed ... in one! .. Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! Human! It's great! That sounds…proud!”

With his play "At the Bottom" A. M. Gorky refuted idealistic ideas: the ideas of non-resistance, forgiveness, humility. The whole play is imbued with faith in a real person, a Man with a capital letter. The author raises in his play a lot of all sorts of problems that cannot be answered unambiguously. We can say that each of the heroes of the work, to one degree or another, reveals Gorky's position on moral issues.

Moral issues plays by M. Gorky "At the bottom"

Morality is eternal life value. A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov spoke about it in their works. Didn't pay attention moral questions in the socio-philosophical play "At the Bottom" and M. Gorky. As soon as it appeared, this play was immediately staged on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, translated into many European languages. Performances based on Gorky's play are still popular in different countries.

The focus of the playwright in the play "At the Bottom" was consciousness, attitude, inner world people thrown as a result of deep social processes to the bottom of life. Before the reader in its entirety appear images of tramps, poor inhabitants of the rooming house. The poverty and overcrowding in which they live gives rise to constant quarrels, fights, strife between them. And everyone tries to hit the other harder, to say a more offensive word, to hurt the living. The rooming-houses have no pity for each other, they do not show living human participation. People "at the bottom" lose their human appearance, forget shame and conscience. They trample moral standards violate the laws of morality.

The prostitute Nastya, who dreams of great and pure love, is ridiculed by her roommates. "Hey, you, fatal love! Wake up!" they shout to her. Nastya has no relatives or friends. She is alone in the whole world. Not going outside means starving to death for her. To stop believing in romantic love is to lose the meaning of life. It is not sympathy for the trampled fate and honor of the girls that sounds in the words of the roommates, but an evil, cruel irony. Sitting in their "cave", in their "prison", they hardened their hearts, lost the ability to sympathize and support each other.

Deaf night shelters and to grief dying Anna, the great "tolerant" and unfortunate who has seen nothing but beatings and insults in her life. They reproach her husband Kleshch: “Your wife has withered from your villainy,” and immediately throw at Anna, exhausted by suffering: “Noise is not a hindrance to death!” The tick actually mocked Anna all his life, and now he is indifferent to her misfortune. The embittered Tick waits for the death of his wife, hoping to finally get out of the rooming house and start a new happy life without Anna the burden.

With great impatience awaited the death of her husband and Kvashnya. “As my dear hubby died, ... so I sat all day with joy: I sit and still do not believe my happiness,” she admits. Her husband beat her for eight years, and she hardened her soul towards him, hated the closest, in fact, person. “Nobody should be beaten in vain....they beat them for the sake of order,” the stupid servant of the law Medvedev comments on the situation, fully allowing “reasonable” violence.

Vasilisa, the wife of the hostel's owner, also dreams of her husband's death. Kostylev pulled her out of poverty and pours reproaches against her endlessly. Marriage based on material gain does not bring happiness. Vasilisa has a lover whom she tries to persuade to kill her husband. She craves money and will to be the sole owner of the rooming house. Without hesitation, he sends Kostylev former lover to hard labor, without hesitation, beats his restless sister. “How much atrocity is in her, in this woman!” - say the people around. Envy, hatred, revenge control Vasilisa. Out of jealousy, she scalds her own sister with boiling water, beats her mercilessly every day.

Vaska Pepel, Vasilisa's lover, is a thief. And he is not a thief in the first generation, although it is Vasilisa who accuses Pepel of inciting to theft. He steals someone else's property, and Kostyleva gladly buys it from Vaska.

Kostylev himself is a more than unpleasant figure. “Who - except the devil - loves you? - they tell him. “You’ll die soon, but you’re still thinking about fifty dollars.” He calls his wife “poor pig”, eats Natasha, does evil under the guise of virtue. Kostylev refuses the Actor's request to knock off half of the debt and immediately hypocritically says: “Can the kindness of the heart be equal to money? Kindness is above all blessings. The owner of the rooming house talks about sin, takes care of the oil in the lamps, and immediately violates the first moral commandments.

Rooming houses reject many generally accepted truths. Bubnov cynically declares: “What is the conscience? I am not rich”, The actor was mired in unrestrained drunkenness, which made him forget even his favorite poem. Bubnov, a former furrier, almost killed his wife for treason, who preferred the master to him. The baron, whose grandfather held a high post under Nicholas I, was fabulously rich, had hundreds of serfs, horses, cooks, sank to the very bottom and lives in a rooming house next to a thief and a prostitute.

Rooming houses lost proper names, now they call each other by nicknames that have stuck forever, and former entertainer Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky does not even have that. The presence of nicknames also gives out in the heroes indifference and indifference to the fate and personality of each other. The appearance of Luka stirred up life in the rooming house. He is a smart, subtle psychologist. Outwardly, the former dacha watchman does not affect the life of the rooming-houses in any way, but hard work begins in their minds. It is not known where the wanderer who has come from is immediately in the center of their attention. In each of the heroes who have lost themselves, Luke necessarily sees the bright side of the personality. The cunning old man finds a key and a simple approach to each of the rooming houses. They, in turn, suddenly discover in themselves the ability to talk about new and a better life. An actor, for example, talks about creativity and thinks about returning to the stage.

Luka, in contrast to the Kostylevs and even the hostels themselves, refuses to see crooks in tramps. “I respect crooks too, in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: all are black, all are jumping,” he says peacefully. The old man is guided by the conviction that a person is naturally good, and negative social circumstances prevent him from remaining that way, make him bad and imperfect. Luke is disinterested, he strives with his sermon to reach out to the hearts of the overnight stays, to awaken the best, hidden sides their personalities. He sincerely wishes them well and happiness, suggests ways out of the crisis, gives faith in achieving a new, better life.

After the disappearance of the old man, he is reproached for giving false hope, promising a lot and beautifully, but the promise did not come true. But the whole point is not that Luke did not bring the night-beds out of the bottom of life, but in the weakness and spinelessness of the heroes, in their inability, inability and unwillingness to overcome life's circumstances. The main accusation is not against Luke, but against the lack of will of the heroes.

Big moral problem is, undoubtedly, the attitude of society towards such people who inhabited Kostylev's rooming house, indifference to their fates, losses, to their personality.

In the play "At the Bottom" Gorky acts as a humanist writer who raised the most high notes sounding the most acute moral problems.

Gorky, with his play "At the Bottom", acted as "the creator of a new type of social drama." The play "At the Bottom" is an indictment of a society that throws people to the bottom of life, humiliating them, depriving them of honor and dignity, eradicating high human feelings. To better understand the atmosphere prevailing in the rooming house, let's analyze the opening scenes of the play. The play begins as if the reader accidentally opens the door to the basement and becomes a witness to a long-begun conversation. An atmosphere of mutual insults reigns in the rooming house.

"The day has begun! For God's sake... don't shout - don't swear!" Anna asks. Each of the shelters is absolutely indifferent to the fate of the other and to his own. At Anna's request not to swear, Tick in his hearts replies: "I've been whining!" Bubnov reacts more indifferently, "Noise is not a hindrance to death..." Bubnov most accurately expressed the essence of what is happening and the fate of each of the shelters: "What was, was, but only trifles remained ... There are no masters here ... everything faded, one naked the man remained. The picture of doom human soul opens from the first scenes of the play. And the person who broke the indifference and awakened at least some hope in the shelters is Luke.

Luka understands that a person cannot live without faith in himself, and therefore he tries to convince the inhabitants of the rooming house that not everything is lost in their lives. He says to an actor who has almost drunk himself: “You ... get treated! They treat drunkenness now, hear! that a drunkard is also a person...and even happy when he wants to be treated!Only here's what: you get ready for now!refrain!Pull yourself together - and endure...And then - you will be cured...and start living again.. .it will be good, brother, again!” He advises Vaska Pepl to leave for Siberia and take Natasha with him: good side- Siberia! Golden side! Whoever is in power and in the mind is there - like a cucumber in a greenhouse!

Many do not believe Luka, they say that he is a "crook" and a "charlatan". To which Luke replies: "What you believe is what you are." Luke believes that people should be pitied: "Christ pitied everyone. Prison will not teach good and Siberia will not teach, but a person will teach, a person will be able to teach good." In the play "At the Bottom" Gorky contrasts Luke's philosophy with Satine's philosophy. Satin no longer hopes for anything, he does not want to get out of the rooming house, he does not want to work. He believes that someone should create good conditions for his life: "Work? Make work pleasant for me - maybe I will work ... yes! Maybe! When work is pleasure, life is good! When work is a duty, life is slavery!" The philosophy of satin justifies his life. At the end of the play, Satin appears before us in a new form. He speaks like a "decent man". He reflects on a man: "There is only a man, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain! Man! This is magnificent! It sounds ... proudly! Man-age! One must respect a person!" about truth and lies: "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters ... Truth is the god of a free man!"

You involuntarily catch yourself thinking that in many respects you are right. He gradually begins to win our attention and you already begin to understand that this is not just a sharpie, but a rather intelligent person. But a tragedy occurs in the rooming house - the Actor hanged himself. And each of the hostels reacts differently upon learning of this news. And all sympathies collapse when you hear last phrase satin: "Eh ... ruined the song ... fool-cancer!" It seems to me that Satin "put on a mask" of a philosopher, but did not put soul into his words, like Luke. And if a person says one thing, but in his heart is completely different, then sooner or later he will show himself as he really is, without embellishment.