What is the meaning of the title of the story?
It is known that the word "secret" traditionally, following the definition in the dictionary of V. I. Dahl, - "hidden, hidden, concealed, secret, hidden or hidden from someone" - means something opposite to the concepts of "frank", "external" , "visible". In modern Russian, the definition of "secret" - "undetected, sacredly kept" - is often added "sincere", "intimate", "cordial". However, in connection with Foma Pukhov of Platonov, an outspoken mockingbird who subjected to a harsh analysis the sanctity and sinlessness of the revolution itself, looking for this revolution not in posters and slogans, but in something else - in characters, in the structures of the new power, the concept of "secret", as always, sharply modified, enriched. What a secretive, “buried”, “closed” this Pukhov is, if Pukhov opens up at every step, swings open, literally provokes dangerous suspicions about himself. ". At the suggestion of some workers - "Now you would become a leader, why are you working?" - he mockingly replies: “There are so many leaders. And there are no locomotives! I will not be a parasite!” And to the proposal to become a hero, to be at the forefront, he answers even more frankly: “I am a natural fool!”
In addition to the concept of "secret", Andrey Platonov was very fond of the word "unintentional".
"I by accident I stopped, I walk alone and think,” says, for example, a boy in the story “A Clay House in the County Garden”. And in the "Secret Man" there is an identification of the concepts "unexpected" and "secret": " Unexpected Sympathy for people manifested itself in the soul of Pukhov overgrown with life. We will hardly be mistaken if, on the basis of many of Platonov's stories for children, his fairy tales, in general, "signs of abandoned childhood", we say that children or people with an open, childlike elemental soul are the most "intimate", behaving extremely naturally, without pretense, hiding, especially hypocrisy. Children are the most open, artless, they are also the most “intimate”. All their actions are “accidental”, i.e., not prescribed by anyone, sincere, “careless”. Foma Pukhov is constantly told: “You will achieve your goal, Pukhov! You will be slapped somewhere!”; “Why are you a grumbler and a non-party member, and not a hero of the era?” etc. And he continues his path as a free contemplator, an ironic spy who does not fit into any bureaucratic system, hierarchy of positions and slogans. "Secrecy" of Pukhov - in this Freedom Self-development, freedom of judgment and evaluation of the revolution itself, its saints and angels in the conditions of the revolution stopped in a bureaucratic stupor.
"What are the features of the plot development of Pukhov's character and what are they due to?" the teacher will ask the class.
Andrei Platonov does not explain the reasons for Pukhov's continuous, endless wanderings through the revolution (this is 1919-1920), his desire to seek good thoughts (that is, confidence in the truth of the revolution) "not in comfort, but from the intersection with people and events." He did not explain the deep autobiographical nature of the whole story (it was created in 1928 and
It precedes his story "Doubting Makar", which caused a sharp rejection by the officialdom of the entire position of Platonov).
The story begins with a defiantly declared, visual theme of movement, a break with peace, with home comfort, with the theme of the onslaught of life on the other side of his soul; from wind blows, storms. He enters a world where "wind, wind in the whole wide world" and "man does not stand on his feet" (A. Blok). Foma Pukhov, still unknown to the reader, does not just go to the depot, to the steam locomotive, to clear the tracks for the red echelons from snow, he enters the space, into the universe, where "a blizzard unfolded terribly over the very head of Pukhov", where "he was met by a blow snow in the face and the noise of the storm. And this pleases him: the revolution has entered nature, lives in it. In the future, the story more than once appears - and not at all as a passive background of events, a picturesque landscape - an incredibly mobile world of nature, rapidly moving masses of people.
The blizzard howled evenly and stubbornly, Stock up on huge stress Somewhere in the steppes of the southeast.
"Cold night Poured A storm, and lonely people felt melancholy and bitterness.
"At night, Against the strong wind, the detachment went to the port for landing.
« The wind was hardening And smashed a huge space, extinguishing somewhere hundreds of miles away. Water drops, Pulled from the sea rushed in the shaking air and hit in the face like pebbles.
“Sometimes past the Shani (a ship with a Red amphibious assault. - V. Ch.) swept
Entire water columns, embraced by the whirlwind of the north-east.
Behind them they laid bare deep abysses, Almost showing the bottom of the sea».
“The train went all night, - thundering, tormented and Letting out a nightmare The wind stirred the iron on the roof of the car into the bone heads of forgotten people, and Pukhov thought about the dreary life of this wind and felt sorry for him.
Pay attention to the fact that among all the feelings of Foma Pukhov, one thing prevails: if only the storm did not stop, the majesty of contact with people heart to heart did not disappear, stagnation did not come, “parade and order”, the kingdom of those who sat in session! And if only he himself, Pukhov, were not placed, like the hero of the civil war Maxim Pashintsev in Chevengur, in a kind of aquarium, a “reservoir”!
By 1927-1928, Platonov himself felt himself, the former romantic of the revolution (see his collection of poems of 1922 "Blue Depth"), terribly offended, offended by the era of bureaucratization, the era of "ink darkness", the realm of desks and meetings. He, like Foma Pukhov, asked himself: are those bureaucrats from his satirical story “The City of Gradov” (1926) really right, who “philosophically” deny the very idea of movement, renewal, the idea of a path, saying: “what flows, will flow, will flow and - stop? In The Secret Man, many of Pukhov's contemporaries - both Sharikov and Zvorychny - have already "stopped", sat down in bureaucratic chairs, believed to their advantage in the "Cathedral of the Revolution", that is, in the dogmas of the new bible.
The character of Pukhov, a wanderer, a righteous person, a bearer of the idea of freedom, “accident” (i.e., naturalness, unprescribed thoughts and actions, the naturalness of a person), is difficult to unfold precisely in his movements, meetings with people. He is not afraid
Dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, uncompromising, mocking, careless. As soon as the dangerous trip with the snowplow was over, Pukhov immediately suggested to his new friend Pyotr Zvorychny: “Let's move, Pyotr! .. Let's go, Petrush! .. The revolution will pass, but there will be nothing left for us!” He needs the hot spots of the revolution, without the tutelage of bureaucrats. In the future, restless Pukhov, an unbeliever Thomas, a mischievous person, a person of playful behavior, ends up in Novorossiysk, participates (as a mechanic on the Shan landing ship) in the liberation of Crimea from Wrangel, moves to Baku (on an empty oil tank), where he meets an interesting character - sailor Sharikov.
This hero no longer wants to return to his pre-revolutionary working profession. And to Pukhov’s proposal “take a hammer and patch up the ships personally”, he, having “become a scribe” being actually illiterate, proudly declares: “You are an eccentric, I am the universal leader of the Caspian Sea!”
The meeting with Sharikov did not stop Pukhov on the spot, did not "sew him to work", although Sharikov offered him to be in charge: "to become the commander of the oil flotilla." “As if through, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unfortunate people to Tsaritsyn. It always happened to him - almost unconsciously he chased life through all the gorges of the earth, sometimes in oblivion of himself, ”Platonov writes, reproducing the confusion of road meetings, Pukhov’s conversations, and finally, his arrival in his native Pokharinsk (of course, Platonov’s native Voronezh) . And finally, his participation in the battle with a certain white general Lyuboslavsky (“he has cavalry - darkness”).
Of course, one should not look for any correspondence to specific historical situations in the routes of Pukhov's wandering, wandering (although extremely active, active, full of dangers), to look for sequences of events of the civil war, of course. The entire space in which Pukhov moves is largely conditional, like the time of 1919-1920. Some of the contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the real events of those years, such as Platonov’s friend and patron, the editor of the Voronezh Commune G. Z. Litvin-Molotov, even reproached the writer for “deviations from the truth of history”: Wrangel was expelled in 1920, then what could the white general then besiege Pokharinsk (Voronezh)? After all, the raid of the corps of the white Denikin generals Shkuro and Mamontov (they really had a lot of cavalry), who took Voronezh, happened in 1919!
“What pleased Pukhov in the revolution and what immensely upset, intensified the flow of ironic judgments?” The teacher asks the class with a question.
Literary direction and genre
The question of Platonov's belonging to a certain literary movement is very complicated. We can only say unequivocally that his work never fit into the framework of socialist realism. Platonov is a follower of the Russian realists of the 19th century, while many researchers find features of modernism in his work, and many even claim that he was a hundred years ahead of his time. Such a story could well come out from the pen of a postmodernist.
"The Secret Man" has the features of a historical and philosophical story.
Theme, main idea and issues
The theme of the story is the civil war as a source of human grief, wanderings and deaths.
The main idea is that a person experiences revolutions and wars as a natural disaster and then again lives a natural good and easy life. The whole story affirms the superiority of the natural principle over the social.
The problem of premature death, the senseless sacrifice of revolution and civil war, is perhaps the most frequent in Platonov's work. Heroes accept death as deliverance (the head of the distance, Afonin, the white officer Mayevsky). They try to save themselves from mortal wounds with the help of bread placed on the wound and wrapped in a footcloth, cleaning ends, and a nail hammered into the ear. That is, useful objects surrounding a person are close to a living body.
The heroes of Platonov are not afraid of death; before death, the crew of the sinking "Mars" plays the harmonica, "frightening all the laws of human nature." Death in the novel is also personified, it acts with calmness. Heroes, except for Pukhov, perceive death as protection from life's torment. But Pukhov knows that this is not so, perhaps that is why death passes him by, like a fabulous invulnerable fool.
Important in the text is the problem of the meaning of human life, the rightness of a person, the collapse of human lives during the revolution and war. A satirical problematic of the conformity of the mind of the communist leaders to the place they occupy, the problem of understanding, is outlined.
Plot
The action of the story takes place during the civil war, in 1920-1921. The story begins with Foma Pukhov cutting sausage on the coffin of his wife, who died "prematurely, from hunger, neglected diseases and in obscurity." Foma works on the railroad on a snow plow and gets the task of clearing the railroad tracks for the people's commissar's train. But the two locomotives pulling the snowplow burrowed into the snow. From this, the driver and workers were injured, Foma had 4 teeth knocked out, and the assistant pricked his head on a pin and died.
At the moment of stopping, a Cossack detachment drove up to the train, but was defeated.
During a vacation in Liski, Pukhov read an advertisement calling for enrollment in the detachments of technical forces helping the Red Army. So he ended up in Novorossiysk, where he first served as a fitter on a ship, and then went to the Crimea to cut off Wrangel's retreat. Foma is ready to sacrifice "the dignity of life for the good of the revolution." He likes to be busy with the "common life".
The story breaks up into several separate plots connected by the journey of the restless Thomas. The first story is connected with the work of Foma as a mechanic on a snowplow, the second - with the work of a mechanic on the ship "Shan", which unsuccessfully tried to land in the Crimea in order to hit Wrangel in the rear. After the unsuccessful landing, Pukhov lived in Novorossiysk for 4 months. The next episode is connected with the life of Thomas in Baku, where he met the sailor Sharikov from the Shani. The sailor was now in charge of the Caspian Fleet. He sent Pukhov to Tsaritsyn to order submarines from the factories.
Foma did not cope with the task, again left in an unknown direction and unexpectedly ended up in his homeland. The fourth episode is connected with the attack on the native city of the armored train and cavalry of General Lyuboslavsky. Foma figured out how to defeat the white armored train. He lowered down the slope towards him laden wagons without a locomotive.
For this act, Zvorychny called Pukhov a murderer, because a detachment of railway workers, and then sailors, was shot from an armored train, which turned out to be intact.
This is the final episode of the story. In Baku Foma "forever it became good." The story ends with a description of a “good revolutionary morning”, in which Thomas feels his unity with nature, rebirth and accepts the revolution as a continuation of nature.
Heroes
The protagonist of the story, Foma Pukhov, is initially described as a person devoid of sensuality. He also does not feel a heartfelt attachment to the house, considering himself at home in a car or next to a car. By the middle of the story, it turns out that Pukhov grieved for his wife, but never told anyone about this.
The name "Secret Man", referring to Foma Pukhov, means that Pukhov lives according to some of his own natural laws, which do not go well with social laws. Foma not only feels himself a part of nature, no more important than grasses that have died for the winter, but also perceives all nature as a person, it is anthropomorphic for him. Nature has hands like the wind that shakes travelers, she is desirable for a person, like a virgin. Pukhov loves the land with conjugal love and feels like a master on it.
Nature is opposed to history and the evil forces of the ferocious world substance, which shake and shake people.
Pukhov's personality is completely inconvenient for the new government. However, no power likes such people and can not cope with them. From the point of view of Pukhov, one must live not according to someone else's orders, but according to the dictates of the heart, checking everything with oneself. So the hero has a speaking name, not a surname. Thomas is like his unbelieving namesake in the Bible, who must put his hands into nail wounds to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Foma does not believe in revolution, honestly speaking about this to the sailor Sharikov, who considers him a handicraftsman of the Soviet power.
The commissar calls Pukhov a complete counter. And Pukhov himself feels like a rootless, lost person.
Foma accuses the commissar of doing not things, but relationships, "relationships Pukhov understood as nothing." Foma's answers to the questions of the commission, which tested not so much the knowledge of specialists as their political literacy, are indicative. Foma agrees to shed blood for the people, "only not in vain and not a fool."
And indeed, a year after this conversation, returning home, Thomas observes the general homelessness of the "huge empty land" and sees "the people who have turned into beggars." Pukhov's conclusion is completely "anti-revolutionary": "There is soil, but there is no bread, which means that fools live."
At the end of the story, Pukhov calls himself a natural fool, that is, he becomes a kind of folk fairy-tale invincible hero.
Zvorychny is an assistant mechanic on a steam locomotive and a friend of Pukhov. He refuses to go to Novorossiysk, feeling sorry for his family. Pukhov calls him a prejudiced person. When Pukhov returns to his homeland a year later, Zvorychny is already in the special forces and in the party. Pukhov understands that Zvorychny yearns for the death of his son.
People living during the civil war are deeply unhappy. The head of the distance was twice put against the wall, so that he turned gray and waited for death every moment. In addition, he is under investigation because the bridge near Tsaritsyn, which was restored by unskilled workers under the engineering supervision of the head of the distance, sank under a military train. The murder of this man by a detachment of Cossacks was a deliverance from trial and execution.
The story of a cripple who wanted to change knives for wheat and reached Argentina is amazing, and in Mesopotamia he got into a wreck in a tunnel, and his crippled leg was cut off in a Baghdad hospital.
The author's point of view in the novel is sympathy for people who are ready to "sacrifice the dignity of life for the good of the revolution", who are busy with "common life". The author is an exponent of common sense. He mentally objected to the Red Army soldiers who had gathered to die that there was nothing to rejoice at, he called the world destroyed by war and revolution a perishing one.
The Red Army in the novel is portrayed as peasants dressed in overcoats, "hidden cultivators". Their victories are due to the fact that they do not value their lives, that they are ready to “be torn apart twice”, if only the enemy would die with them. Warriors are like secret hunters, in which an anxious delight lingers in their hearts. They are a natural force, an element. Platonov bitterly notes that their dream of happiness is not their own, but imposed by the political instructor. They are opposed by white officers, individualists, for example, officer Mayevsky, who did not believe in human society.
Stylistic features
Time and space in the story behave amazingly. The protagonist travels a lot, but hardly notices the time of travel "in oblivion of himself", because the journey is "long and difficult". Platonov's symbol of a true traveler is the wind, which boldly "fights over defenseless spaces." When trains stop, then time stands around Pukhov like a doomsday.
Heroes overcome space with the help of trains, and they go in the direction where the train is taking, regardless of which direction they are interested in, accidentally getting where they need to be.
Spaces resist the advancement of a person through them. The expanses of land are covered with snow, the sea rises in billows. Even the darkness of the night is like a porridge through which you have to wade. The elements are mixed up, as are the fates of people. The wind becomes hard, drops of water beat in the face like pebbles. During a sea storm, the top and bottom change places, so that the Red Army soldiers, who got on the crest of a wave in their boat, find themselves just above another ship and escape by jumping down.
Even the history of these years is compared to a steam locomotive that drags behind it "a load of poverty, despair and humble inertia."
Time for Pukhov at the time of his stops goes "without brakes." On the other hand, every day for a person is the creation of the world, so that everyone lives as if at the beginning of time. The revolution, from the point of view of Thomas, is the end of the world.
The protagonist of the work, Foma Pukhov, looks very strange against the background of characters of proletarian origin traditional for Soviet art. Unlike the heroes A.A. Fadeev and N.A. Ostrovsky, who do not know any doubts, Pukhov does not believe in the revolution, he doubts it. He worries about “where and to what end of the world all revolutions and all human anxiety go.” In his soul is rooted a deep passion for a true knowledge of the world, the desire to check everything and make sure of everything for himself. A parallel arises with the Gospel apostle Thomas the Unbeliever. He was not with the other apostles when the resurrected Jesus Christ came to them, and Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection of the Teacher until he himself touches his wounds. There is an interpretation according to which Thomas was the only apostle who was able to comprehend the secret, hidden meaning of the teachings of Christ.
The hero of Platonov, like Nekrasov's peasants in the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'", is attracted by the eternal mystery of happiness. He is interested not so much in everyday life as in being. The story opens with a very strange scene: a hungry Foma cuts a sausage on his wife's coffin. In this episode, the eternal and the momentary are expressively correlated with each other, the whole measure of Thomas's dissimilarity to an ordinary person is shown. Thomas is orphaned, but he has to continue to live.
So from the first episode in the story everyday and philosophical dimensions of life are intertwined. All questions that concern Thomas will be both abstract and spiritual, and practical, everyday. Why, after all, does the revolution, Thomas thinks, if it does not bring the highest justice, does not solve the problem of death? For Foma's acquaintances, the goal of the revolution is quite specific - it is material equality, a practical improvement in the lives of workers. Pukhov, on the other hand, is worried that, apart from this material goal, there is nothing in the revolution.
Foma Pukhov is an eternal wanderer. At first glance, he travels aimlessly, while everyone around is busy with very specific things. He does not find a permanent home for himself, because in the revolution there is no place for his soul. Others find their place: Zvorychny, becoming the secretary of the party cell; sailor Sharikov, having settled down as a commissioner for hiring labor in Baku, foreman of the assembly shop Perevoshchikov. From their point of view, the revolution is fulfilling its promise to bring happiness to everyone. Thomas is looking for - alas, to no avail - confirmation of the revolutionary faith. Only the reality of the revolutionary storm is revealed to him—the reality of dying. Leaving home after the death of his wife, he works on a railway snowplow. Before his eyes, an assistant driver dies in a locomotive accident, a white officer kills an engineer, a red armored train shoots a Cossack detachment “cleanly”. And there is no end to this feast of death.
Three deaths are written out in the story especially vividly. The death of the worker Afonin, who fought on the side of the Reds. The death of the white officer Mayevsky who shot himself: "and his despair was so great that he died before his shot." The death of an engineer, head of the distance, whom the bullet of a Cossack officer "saves" from execution by decision of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The reality of the revolution seen by Thomas only strengthens his doubts about its holiness.
Does this mean that Pukhov does not find happiness in the world? Not at all. Joy and spiritual peace gives him a sense of communion with the whole world (and not with a part of it). Platonov carefully writes out Pukhov’s feeling of the fullness of life: “The wind shook Pukhov, like the living hands of a large unknown body, revealing its virginity to the wanderer and not giving it, and Pukhov rustled his blood from such happiness. This conjugal love of the whole, immaculate land aroused in Pukhov the feelings of a master. He looked around all the accessories of nature with a homely tenderness and found everything appropriate and living in essence. This is the happiness of Thomas - the feeling of the need and relevance of everything in life, the organic connection and cooperation of all beings. It is interconnection and cooperation, and not struggle and destruction. Foma is a person who is equally open to all the hardships of the life of the country in the conditions of the civil war, and the "luxury" of "desperate nature", "Good morning!" - says Pukhov to the driver he replaces at the end of the story. And he replies: "Revolutionary completely."
Another work in which the sanctity of the revolutionary cause is "tested" is the novel Chevengur (1929). Chevengur is the name of a small town where a group of Bolsheviks tried to build communism. In the first part of the novel, its characters roam in search of happiness in Russia engulfed in civil war. In the second part, they come to a peculiar city of the Sun - Chevengur, where communism has already been realized. In their revolutionary passion, the Chevengurs exterminated most of the population, "unworthy" of living under communism. Now they have to confront the regular army, sent to pacify the city evading from the government. The finale of the novel is tragic: the road to communism ends in death. For the heroes, this death is in the nature of a collective suicide. Chevengurs die in battle with a feeling of joyful liberation from the futility of the earthly "paradise" they built. "Chevengur" - awareness of the falsity of the goals proclaimed by the revolution of the Bolsheviks. True, in relation to Platonov to his heroes there is no unequivocal condemnation. The author is on their side in a passionate desire to "make a fairy tale come true", to realize an age-old dream. But he leaves them when they begin to divide people into "clean" and "impure". The heroes of Chevengur appear as victims of an incorrectly set goal, an incorrectly understood idea. This is their fault and misfortune.
The writer will return to the problems posed in the novel until the end of his career. Gradually, the circle of these problems narrowed, because in the 1930s. it will become more and more difficult to discuss them in print. However, the main result of the time travel undertaken by Platonov in the 1920s, the result of testing the past and the future, is the recognition of the "false project", the falsity of the plan for the revolutionary remaking of life. In the work of the writer of the late 1920s - 1930s. the place of alluring mirages of utopia will be replaced by a formidable reality.
Platonov's works such as the novel City of Gradov (1927), rich in irony, the "organizational-philosophical" essay "Che-Che-O" (1929), and the story "Doubting Makar" (1929) are devoted to the "test of the present". Literary scholars sometimes refer to these works as the "philosophical-satirical trilogy". Based on modern material, Platonov's plays Fourteen Red Huts (1937-1938, published in 1987) and Barrel Organ (1933, published in 1988) were created. The most significant works of this period are the stories "The Pit" (1930, published in 1986), "The Juvenile Sea" (1934, published in 1987) and "Jan" (1934).
The hero of the story “The Secret Man” Foma Pukhov did not lose his naive perception of the world even in his mature years.
At the beginning of the story, he simply brushes off all the difficult questions. The mechanic Pukhov appreciates only one thing: his work. But on the other hand, he appears as a spontaneous philosopher, in some ways a mischievous person, in some ways a moralizer.
The party cell even concludes "that Pukhov is not a traitor, but simply a foolish man."
The effort of the "foolish peasant" to understand the revolution is expressed in the special individual language of Plato's prose - sometimes inert, as if illiterate, but always precise and expressive. The speech of the narrator and the characters bears the stamp of special humor, which manifests itself in the most unexpected fragments of the text: “Afanas, you are now not a whole person, but a defective one! - said Pukhov with regret.
Throughout the story, the “hidden man” seems to collect his eternally hungry flesh, practical wisdom, mind and soul into one whole: “if you only think, you won’t go far either, you also need to have a feeling!”
Foma Pukhov not only loves nature, but also understands
her. Unity with nature evokes a whole range of feelings in him: “One day, during the sunshine, Pukhov was walking around the city and thought - how much vicious stupidity in people, how much inattention to such a single occupation as life and the whole natural environment.
Comprehension of the events of the Civil War in his mind takes on a fantastic character. However, basically, in the main thing, he does not lie, but on the contrary, he seeks the truth.
In a difficult, confused time, when the illiterate poor rose up against the learned "White Guard" and an impossible unimaginable feat - and a thirst for feat! - overcame the enemy, from an “external”, thoughtless, empty Foma Poohov, checking everything on his own experience, turns into an “intimate person”.
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The artistic world of A.P. Platonov. The faith of A.P. Platonov in the power of goodness, in the light of the human soul, could not help but find its embodiment on the pages of the writer's works. The heroes of Platonov are people-transformers, boldly subordinating nature to themselves, aspiring to a brighter future. The search for answers to eternal questions and the construction of a new one is often associated with the motive of wandering, orphanhood. These people, constantly doubting and thirsting for the truth, beloved heroes of A.P. Platonov, are looking for "the meaning of life in the heart." The richness of the narrative, the philosophic nature and universality of generalizations distinguish the works of A.P. Platonov, the writer defined his method as follows: “It is necessary to write with the essence, with a dry stream, in a direct way. This is my new way."
The story "The Secret Man" (1928). The work is dedicated to events related to the revolution and the Civil War. The main character, engineer Foma Pukhov, after the death of his wife, goes to the front and participates in the Novorossiysk landing. He does not understand the meaning of his existence, jokes and provokes people to argue, doubts everything, and the very name of the hero is associated with unbelieving Thomas. He is carried along the earth in the general human stream along the “roads of the revolution”. At first, the hero tries not to pay attention to difficult life issues, but the intimate inner world takes precedence over everything external. Widespread in the "new" literature of the 20s, the "transformation" of the hero's consciousness under the influence of the revolution does not occur with Pukhov. Against the background of the latent degeneration of good ideas, the “natural fool” Pukhov acutely feels the mismatch between expectations and reality and is disappointed, and therefore some of his jokes provoke reader sadness. A vivid episode of the exam that Foma Pukhov takes is indicative: “What is religion? the examiner did not hesitate. - The prejudice of Karl Marx and popular moonshine. What is the religion of the bourgeoisie for? - So that the people do not mourn. - Do you love, comrade Pu-khov, the proletariat as a whole and are you ready to lay down your life for it? “I love you, comrade commissar,” answered Pukhov, in order to pass the exam, “and I agree to shed blood, only so that it’s not in vain and not a fool!”
Feelings of disillusionment in the late 1920s becomes acute, painful for Platonov himself. The element, which was supposed to transform society, submitted to official rituals. The joy of life, born of the revolution, and anxiety for its future are reflected in the story.
The whole composition of the story is subject to the decision of the author's intention, reflected in the title itself: to go with the hero on his path, on which Pukhov tries to understand everything that is happening around him. On the way, the self-development of the character takes place. “Inadvertent sympathy for people who were working alone against the substance of the whole world cleared up in Pukhov’s soul overgrown with life. Revolution is just the best fate for people, you can’t think of anything more true. It was difficult, abrupt and immediately easy, like a birth. The author does not openly name the reasons why the hero sets off on a journey, but the reader understands them on his own. The “hidden person” is a person with an unusual world hidden in the depths of his soul, striving for knowledge of the environment and not giving in to generally accepted ideas about life imposed from the outside.
In modern civilization, according to the writer, the kinship of human souls, the connection between man and the natural world, has been lost. A long way of finding the truth in oneself, in order to change something around, is made by Foma Pukhov. He is much more honest than the “builders of the future” around him. The Natural Fool does not seek to take advantage of career opportunities. The hero goes to Novorossiysk, determining for himself his decision by internal necessity: “We will see the mountain horizons; yes, and it will be more honest somehow! And then I saw - typhoid echelons of a rod, and we sit - we get rations! .. The revolution will pass, but we will have nothing left! Indicative in this regard is another character in the story, embodying a different truth of the time, the sailor Sharikov. Foma does not tolerate sloganism, empty chatter, while Sharikov perfectly mastered the spirit of the times, found himself a “warm” place and, to Pukhov’s advice, personally “strengthen the revolution” by deed (“take a hammer and patch up ships”), he answers with the real owner: “Eccentric you, I'm the head of the Caspian Sea! Who, then, will run the entire red flotilla here?
It is significant that the spiritual search does not lead to external changes in the protagonist: at the beginning of the story we see him as a snowplow driver, and at the end as an oil engine driver. The train (and in the work of A.P. Platonov it is a symbol of the revolution, the writer himself noted: “The words about the locomotive-revolution turned the locomotive into a feeling of revolution for me”), in which the hero sits, goes in an unknown direction ( this symbol becomes epic). An interest in his own future that flared up (“Where is he [the train] going?”) is quickly replaced by Pukhov’s humility (“The train was moving somewhere further. From its course, Pukhov calmed down and fell asleep, feeling warmth in an evenly working heart "). Foma needs to walk along the roads of the country himself, see everything with his own eyes, feel it with his heart (unbelieving nature affects). Novorossiysk, the liberation of the Crimea from Wrangel (the mechanic on the ship "Shan"), a trip to Baku and a meeting with the sailor Sharikov constitute certain stages in the life of the hero and the acquisition of the meaning of his existence by Pukhov. The road itself, the movement becomes a plot-forming beginning, and as soon as the hero stops somewhere, his life loses its sharpness, his spiritual search is lost. Zvorychny and Sharikov, for example, do not receive such a development in their frozen state.
The hero's attempt to figure out how people's lives have changed under the influence of the "historical storm" leads the character to the idea that the true goal, true feelings are lost. The motive of death that sounds on the pages of the story is closely connected with the motive of universal orphanhood. (Both of them become central in the work of A.P. Platonov.) The theme of death is introduced into the narrative not by chance. The revolution not only failed to resurrect the dead (N. Fedorov's philosophical idea was accepted by A.P. Platonov himself), but brought, and the author constantly draws the reader's attention to this, new deaths.
A certain insensitivity of the main character's heart at the beginning of the journey (cutting sausage on the coffin of his wife) is replaced by a feeling of deep unity with the world, which is understood as the meaning of life. At the end of the story, an epiphany occurs: “Pukhov walked with pleasure, feeling, as he had long ago, the affinity of all bodies to his body. He gradually guessed about the most important and painful. He even stopped, lowering his eyes - the unexpected in his soul returned to him. Desperate nature passed into people and into the courage of the revolution. material from the site
The peculiarity of the language. The work reflects the author's idea of the indissolubility of the world of the external and internal, material and non-material. In the story "The Secret Man", the image of life is realized in the unity of the comic and tragic principles. The language of Plato's work reflected the search for a new language, under the sign of which the beginning of the 20th century passed. Symbolic images, which are repeated in a number of the writer's works, begin to perform a leitmotif function. The “strange” language of the narrator Platonov uses to express the inner world of the hero, who has no words to convey his experiences and conclusions. Platonov's language is based on bookish speech with an abundance of abstract vocabulary (A manufactory with propaganda words hung on the walls of the station), a shift in the usual language connections, when the next word is difficult to predict, the folding and unfolding of sentences (Finally, the train left, shooting at air - to frighten transport-hungry bagmen), the deliberate use of tautological repetitions, etc.
A.P. Platonov creates works in which he depicts not things, not objects, but their meaning, the writer is not interested in life, but being, the essence of things. The image of Foma Pukhov, combining "high tragic and comic culture", becomes one of the whole gallery of seeking and doubting Platonic heroes.
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