The plot of V. Rasputin's story is built around the preparation for the death of the old woman Anna. Almost all her children gathered at her bedside. Only her beloved daughter Tatyana, whom her mother affectionately calls Tanchora, did not arrive.
Anna wants all her children to have time to say goodbye to her. Unexpectedly for those around her, the old woman feels better. She can now leave the house and eat. Anna's children, who expected the worst, feel bewildered. Sons Ilya and Mikhail decide to get drunk so that the vodka prepared for the funeral does not “stand idle.” Intoxicated, the brothers begin to talk about life. It turns out that she stopped bringing them joy. Work is no longer fun. Hopes for a bright future have long been abandoned; routine absorbs more and more every day. Mikhail and Ilya love and know how to work. But for some reason, right now, work does not bring the desired satisfaction. Their sister Lucy, taking advantage of the fact that her mother has temporarily stopped needing outside help, goes for a walk around the neighborhood. She remembers her childhood and her favorite horse. Having become an adult, the woman left her native place. It seems to Lucy that she left something very important in her native village, without which it is impossible to live.
Anna continues to wait for her beloved daughter Tanchora. She is saddened that Tanya did not come. Tanchora was sharply different from her sisters Vari and Lucy. My beloved daughter had a very kind and gentle character. Without waiting, the old woman decides to die. She doesn't want to linger in this world. Anna does not find a place for herself in her new life.
Old woman Anna
The elderly woman lived a long and difficult life. A mother of many children raised her children to be worthy people. She is confident that she has fully fulfilled her purpose.
Anna is the real master of her life. And not only life, but also death. The old woman herself made the decision about when to leave this world. She does not tremble before death, does not beg her to prolong her earthly existence. Anna awaits death as a guest, and does not feel any fear of it.
Old woman Anna considers children her main asset and pride. The woman does not notice that she has long become indifferent to them. Each of them has their own life, each is busy with themselves. What upsets the old woman most of all is the absence of her beloved daughter Tanchora. Neither the main character nor the reader knew the reason why she did not come. Despite everything, Tanya remains her mother’s beloved daughter. If she couldn't come, then there were good reasons for that.
Invisible girlfriend
Death is Anna's invisible and silent interlocutor. The reader feels her presence throughout the entire story. Anna does not see death as an enemy from which she needs to hide or defend. The old woman managed to make friends with her constant companion.
Death as a natural phenomenon
Death is presented without the slightest horror or tragedy. Its arrival is as natural as the arrival of winter after autumn. This inevitable phenomenon in the life of every person cannot be assessed positively or negatively. Death serves as a conductor between two worlds. Without it, it is impossible to move from one state to another.
The invisible friend shows mercy to the one who does not reject or curse her. She agrees to make concessions to each of her new friends. Wise Anna understands this. Friendship with the most terrible phenomenon for every person gives the old woman the right to choose. Anna chooses how to leave this world. Death willingly agrees to come to her in a dream and carefully replace the worldly dream with an eternal dream. The old woman asks for a delay so she can say goodbye to her beloved daughter. Death again yields to the old woman and gives the necessary amount of time.
Despite the fact that every reader understands how the story will end, the author leaves one of the main participants in his work behind the scenes, which further emphasizes the lack of tragedy of death.
Anna's children
Anna's sons and daughters have long lived their own lives. The approaching death of the old woman forces attention to the mother. However, none of the children were able to maintain this attention for too long. Noticing that Anna is feeling better, they strive to return to their thoughts and activities. The brothers immediately drink the vodka left for the wake and begin to complain to each other about life. The sisters, who shared the inheritance at the dying woman’s bedside, disperse in different directions to also immerse themselves in their worries.
Anna's children try to conscientiously fulfill their duties to their mother. Lucy sews a funeral dress for the old woman. Varvara mourns her mother, as Anna herself wanted. The sons are also ready to do everything necessary to see off the old woman on her final journey. In the depths of their souls, each of them is waiting for that moment when the most unpleasant things will remain in the past and they can return to their daily affairs and responsibilities. Ilya and Mikhail are not so much saddened by the upcoming death of their mother as they are concerned about their own. After their parents pass away, they will be the next generation to pass away. This thought horrifies the brothers so much that they empty one bottle of vodka after another.
Main idea
There are no good or bad events in life. A person himself gives one or another assessment to each event. Despite her difficult existence, full of suffering and hardship, Anna does not seek to exaggerate. She intends to leave this world calm and peaceful.
The main theme of the story is the passing of an elderly person, summing up the results. However, there are other topics in the work that the author prefers to talk about less openly.
Valentin Rasputin wants to tell the reader not only about the personal feelings of the characters. “The Deadline,” a brief summary of which tells only about how each character relates to death, is, first of all, a story about the change of historical eras. Anna and her children observe the destruction of the old order. Collective farms cease to exist. Young people are forced to leave the village due to lack of work and go in search of work in an unknown direction.
Valentin Rasputin’s story “Money for Maria” contains at the heart of the plot the idea of human relationships, mutual assistance and indifference, which are especially clearly manifested in the grief of others.
Another wonderful work by Valentin Rasputin, “French Lessons,” talks about human kindness, fortitude and patience.
Humane socialism will be replaced by ruthless capitalism. Previous values have been devalued. Anna's sons, accustomed to working for the common good, must now work for the survival of their families. Not accepting the new reality, Ilya and Mikhail try to drown out their pain with alcohol. Old woman Anna feels superior to her children. Her death has already come to her and is just waiting for an invitation to enter the house. Mikhail, Ilya, Lyusya, Varvara and Tatyana are young. They will have to live for a long time in a world unfamiliar to them, which is so different from the one in which they were once born. They will have to become different people, abandon previous ideals, so as not to perish in the new reality. None of Anna's four children expresses a desire to change. Only Tanchora’s opinion remains unknown to the reader.
People's dissatisfaction with the new life is not able to change the course of events. The merciless hand of history will put everything in its place. The younger generation is obliged to adapt in order to raise their offspring differently than they themselves were raised. The old generation will not be able to accept the new rules of the game. He will have to leave this world.
5 (100%) 2 votes
Composition
The problem of morality has become especially relevant in our time. In our society, there is a need to talk and think about the changing human psychology, about the relationships between people, about the meaning of life that the heroes and heroines of novels and short stories so tirelessly and so painfully comprehend. Now at every step we encounter the loss of human qualities: conscience, duty, mercy, kindness. In Rasputin's works we find situations close to modern life, and they help us understand the complexity of this problem. The works of V. Rasputin consist of “living thoughts”, and we must be able to understand them, if only because for us it is more important than for the writer himself, because the future of society and each individual depends on us.
The story “The Last Term,” which V. Rasputin himself called the main one of his books, touched on many moral problems and exposed the vices of society. In the work, V. Rasputin showed relationships within the family, raised the problem of respect for parents, which is very relevant in our time, revealed and showed the main wound of our time - alcoholism, raised the question of conscience and honor, which affected every hero of the story. The main character of the story is the old woman Anna, who lived with her son Mikhail. She was eighty years old. The only goal left in her life is to see all her children before death and go to the next world with a clear conscience. Anna had many children. They all left, but fate wanted to bring them all together at a time when the mother was dying. Anna's children are typical representatives of modern society, busy people with a family and a job, but for some reason they remember their mother very rarely. Their mother suffered greatly and missed them, and when the time came to die, only for their sake she stayed a few more days in this world and she would have lived as long as she wanted, if only they were nearby. And she, already with one foot in the next world, managed to find the strength to be reborn, to blossom, and all for the sake of her children. “Whether it happened by a miracle or not by a miracle, no one will say, only when she saw her children did the old woman begin to come to life.” What about them? And they solve their problems, and it seems that their mother does not really care, and if they are interested in her, it is only for the sake of appearances.
And they all live only for decency. Don’t offend anyone, don’t scold anyone, don’t say too much – everything is for the sake of decency, so that it’s no worse than others. Each of them, on difficult days for their mother, goes about their own business, and their mother’s condition worries them little. Mikhail and Ilya fell into drunkenness, Lyusya was walking, Varvara was solving her problems, and none of them thought of spending more time with their mother, talking to her, or just sitting next to her. All their care for their mother began and ended with “semolina porridge,” which they all rushed to cook. Everyone gave advice, criticized others, but no one did anything themselves. From the very first meeting of these people, arguments and swearing begin between them. Lyusya, as if nothing had happened, sat down to sew a dress, the men got drunk, and Varvara was even afraid to stay with her mother. And so the days passed: constant arguments and swearing, insults at each other and drunkenness. This is how the children saw off their mother on her last journey, this is how they took care of her, this is how they took care of her and loved her. They were not imbued with the mother’s state of mind, did not understand her, they only saw that she was getting better, that they had a family and work, and that they needed to return home as soon as possible. They couldn't even say goodbye to their mother properly. Her children missed the “last deadline” to fix something, ask for forgiveness, and just be together, because now they are unlikely to get together again.
In this story, Rasputin very well showed the relationships of a modern family and their shortcomings, which clearly manifest themselves at critical moments, revealed the moral problems of society, showed the callousness and selfishness of people, their loss of all respect and ordinary feelings of love for each other. They, dear people, are mired in anger and envy. They care only about their interests, problems, only their own affairs. They don’t even find time for their loved ones. They didn’t find time for their mother, the dearest person. For them, “I” comes first, and then everything else. Rasputin showed the impoverishment of morality of modern people and its consequences. The story “The Last Term”, on which V. Rasputin began working in 1969, was first published in the magazine “Our Contemporary”, in issues 7, 8 for 1970. She not only continued and developed the best traditions of Russian literature - primarily the traditions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - but also imparted a new powerful impetus to the development of modern literature, giving it a high artistic and philosophical level.
The story was immediately published as a book in several publishing houses, was translated into other languages, and published abroad - in Prague, Bucharest, Milan. The play “The Deadline” was staged in Moscow (at the Moscow Art Theater) and in Bulgaria. The fame brought to the writer by the first story was firmly established. The composition of any work by V. Rasputin, the selection of details, and visual means help to see the image of the author - our contemporary, citizen and philosopher.
One of the most famous modern Russian writers is Valentin Rasputin. I read a lot of his works, and they attracted me with their simplicity and sincerity. In my opinion, among Rasputin’s defining life impressions, one of the most powerful was the impression he received from ordinary Siberian women, especially old women. There were many things that attracted them: calm strength of character and inner dignity, selflessness in difficult village work and the ability to understand and forgive others.
This is Anna in the story The Last Term. The situation in the story is set right away: an eighty-year-old woman is dying. It seemed to me that life, introduced by Rasputin in his stories, is always taken at the moment of a breakthrough in its natural course, when suddenly a great misfortune looms with inevitability. It seems as if the spirit of death is hovering over Rasputin's heroes. The old tofamark from the story And Ten Graves in the Taiga thinks almost exclusively about death. Aunt Natalya is ready for her date with death in the story Money for Maria. Young Leshka dies in the arms of his friends (I forgot to ask Leshka...). A boy accidentally dies from an old mine (There, on the edge of the ravine). Anna in the story The Last Time is not afraid to die, she is ready for this last step, because she is already tired, feels that she has lived down to the very bottom, has boiled away to the last drop. All my life I’ve been running, on my feet, in work, in worries: children, house, garden, field, collective farm... And then the time came when there was no strength left at all, except to say goodbye to the children. Anna couldn’t imagine how she could leave forever without seeing them, without finally hearing her own voices. During her life, the old woman gave birth many times, but now she has only five left alive. It turned out this way because first death began to wander into their family, like a ferret into a chicken coop, and then the war began. They separated, the children scattered, they were strangers, and only the imminent death of their mother forces them to come together after a long separation. In the face of death, not only the spiritual depth of a simple Russian peasant woman is revealed, but also the faces and characters of her children appear before us in a revealing light.
I admire Anna's character. In my opinion, it has preserved the unshakable foundations of truth and conscience. There are more strings in the soul of an illiterate old woman than in the souls of her urban children who have seen the world. There are also heroes in Rasputin who, perhaps, have few of these strings in their souls, but they sound strong and pure (for example, the old Tofamarca woman from the story The Man from This World). Anna and, perhaps to an even greater extent, Daria from the story Money for Maria, in terms of wealth and sensitivity of spiritual life, in intelligence and knowledge of a person, can be compared with many heroes of world and Russian literature.
Take a look from the outside: a useless old woman is living out her life, she hardly gets up in recent years, why should she continue to live? But the writer describes her to us in such a way that we see how in these last, seemingly completely worthless years, months, days, hours of her , minutes there is intense spiritual work going on in her. Through her eyes we see and evaluate her children. These are loving and pitying eyes, but they accurately notice the essence of changes. The change in face is most clearly visible in the appearance of Ilya’s eldest son: Next to his bare head, his face seemed unreal, drawn, as if Ilya had sold his own or lost at cards to a stranger. In him, the mother either finds traits familiar to her, or loses them.
But the middle daughter, Lyusya, became all city, from head to toe, she was born from an old woman, and not from some city woman, probably by mistake, but then she still found her own. It seems to me that she has already been completely reborn to the last cell, as if she had neither childhood nor village youth. She is offended by the manners and rustic language of her sister Varvara and brother Mikhail, and their indelicacy. I remember one scene when Lucy was going to take a healthy walk in the fresh air. A picture of the once native place appeared before her eyes, painfully striking the woman: an abandoned, neglected land lay spread out before her, everything that had once been well-groomed, brought into expedient order by the loving labor of human hands, now converged in one alien, wide desolation. Lucy understands that she has been tormented by some silent long-standing guilt, for which she will have to answer. This is her fault: she completely forgot everything that happened to her here. After all, she was given to know both the joyful dissolution in her native nature, and the daily example of her mother, who felt a deep kinship with all living things (it was not for nothing that Lyusa remembered the incident when her mother, affectionately, like a loved one, raised the hopelessly exhausted horse Igrenka, who had fallen hopelessly behind the plowing), remembered it is also the terrible consequences of national tragedies: split, struggle, war (the episode with the hunted, brutalized Bandera member).
Of all Anna's children, I liked Mikhail the most. He stayed in the village, and Anna is living out her life with him. Mikhail is simpler, ruder than her city children, he gets more shots at him with complaints and complaints, but in fact he is warmer and deeper than the others, not like Ilya, he rolls through life like a cheerful little boy, trying not to touch any corners.
The two chapters in the story are magnificent about how, having bought two boxes of vodka for the supposed wake, the brothers, overjoyed that their mother had suddenly miraculously recovered from death, began to drink them, first alone, and then with their friend Stepan. Vodka is like an animated creature, and, like an evil, capricious ruler, you need to be able to handle it with the least possible losses for yourself: you need to take it out of fear, ... I don’t respect drinking it alone. Then she, cholera, is angrier. The highest moment in the lives of many, especially men, alas, was drinking. Behind all the colorful scenes, behind the picaresque stories of drunkards (here is the story of Stepan, who fooled his mother-in-law and snuck into the underground for moonshine), behind the comical conversations (say, about the difference between a woman and a woman) there arises real social, popular evil. About the reasons for drunkenness, Mikhail said: Life is completely different now, almost everything has changed, and they, these changes, demanded supplements from a person... The body demanded rest. It's not me who drinks, it's him who drinks. Let's return to the main character of the story. In my opinion, old woman Anna embodied all the best aspects of the original Siberian character in her tenacity in carrying out everyday tasks, in her firmness and pride. In the last chapters of the story, Rasputin focuses entirely on his main character and the final segment of her life. Here the writer introduces us to the very depths of a mother’s feelings for her last, most beloved and closest child, her daughter Tanchora. The old woman is waiting for her daughter to arrive, but she, unfortunately, did not arrive, and then something in the old woman suddenly snapped, something burst with a short groan. Of all the children, again only Mikhail was able to understand what was happening to his mother, and he again took sin upon his soul. Your Tanchora will not arrive, and there is no point in waiting for her. I sent her a telegram not to come, overpowering himself, he puts an end to it. It seems to me that this act of his cruel mercy is worth hundreds of unnecessary words.
Under the pressure of all the misfortunes, Anna prayed: Lord, let me go, I will go. Let's go to the mine of my death, I'm ready. She imagined her death, her mortal mother, as the same ancient, emaciated old woman. Rasputin’s heroine envisions her own departure to the far side with amazing poetic clarity, in all its stages and details.
Leaving, Anna remembers her children in those moments when they expressed the best in themselves: young Ilya very seriously, with faith, accepts his mother’s blessing before leaving for the front; Varvara, who grew up such a whiny, unhappy woman, is seen in early childhood digging a hole in the ground just to see what is in it, looking for something that no one else knows about her, Lucy desperately, with all her being, rushes from the departing ship to meet her mother, leaving home; Mikhail, stunned by the birth of his first child, is suddenly pierced by an understanding of the unbreakable chain of generations in which he has thrown a new ring. And Anna remembered herself at the most wonderful moment of her life: She is not an old woman, she is still a girl, and everything around her is young, bright, beautiful. She wanders along the shore along a warm, steamy river after the rain... And it is so good, so happy for her to live at this moment in the world, to look at its beauty with her own eyes, to be among the stormy and joyful action of eternal life, consistent in everything, that she feels dizzy head and a sweet, excited ache in my chest.
When Anna dies, her children literally abandon her. Varvara, citing the fact that she left the boys alone, leaves, and Lyusya and Ilya do not explain the reasons for their flight at all. When the mother asks them to stay, her last request goes unheard. In my opinion, this will not be in vain for either Varvara, Ilya, or Lyusa. It seems to me that this was the last of the last terms for them. Alas…
That night the old woman died.
Thanks to Rasputin's works, I was able to find answers to many questions. This writer remains in my opinion one of the best, leading modern prose writers. Please do not pass by his books, take them off the shelf, ask at the library and read slowly, slowly, thoughtfully.
In the story, the catastrophe of leaving life, or rather, its expectation, is softened: the old woman Anna really went through a lot, raised children, she dies in her home, she sees a circle of people close to her (except for her beloved daughter Tanchora, who mysteriously did not appear). And her death itself happened as if behind the scenes: the children did not wait for her and left before the death of their mother.
The story as a whole sometimes does not look tragic at all.
Anna’s sons Mikhail and Ilya, having stocked up on vodka for the funeral, could not stand the “downtime”, the prolonged wait, and drank heavily. The daughters - the selfish Lyusya and the simple-minded Varvara - almost quarreled over their share at their mother’s bedside: It seems to Varvara that Lyusya did not care about her mother at all, but placed all the worries on her and her brother Mikhail. These are purely everyday problems, discord among one’s own.
By the way, the motive of the quarrel even at the grave brings the story together
V. Rasputin with A. Platonov’s story “The Third Son” (1938). Platonov’s six sons (“huge men - aged from twenty to forty years old”) gathered for their mother’s funeral and after the meeting, memories of childhood, they began a cheerful romp, imitating each other, they were overwhelmed by the joy of the date. Platonov - also a Christian soul, even more strict, ascetic - sternly “shouted out” to the naughty children: one of them, the “third son,” returned to the darkness of the room where the coffin stood and fell silently (“his head hit like someone else’s, about floor boards"), and others got dressed in the middle of the night, scattered around the yard and cried, “as if a mother was standing over everyone”...
Rasputin does not have such pressure on souls; his sadness is light and condescending to the weaknesses of children. Old woman Anna does not know how to judge children, hang over their souls, she, perhaps, does not even see their sins. Her behests are extremely simple, and she prepares for the meeting with the monastery of eternal life, like a hostess for a holiday: she said goodbye to her friend, the same old one, Mironikha, and taught her daughter Varvara how she should mourn her mother according to custom, “to weep.” The only mystery for her is: why the kindest, gentle, loving daughter Tatyana (Tanchora) did not come. What's happened? Why didn’t the spiritual call seem to reach her?
Even more tragic, more ambivalent is the state of mind of his son Mikhail (his mother lived and dies in his house). On the one hand, he vaguely guesses about the depth of his mother’s feelings, insights, about her great role in his life: “Let’s say that our mother has long been of no use, but it was believed that her turn came first, then ours. It seemed like she was blocking us, we didn’t have to be afraid... It seemed like he came out into the open and could see you...” On the other hand, he is already scared for the current generation, for his children: whom he will protect, block, if he and his job no longer feels (it’s not the work that’s going on, but “just to blow off the day”), and hopelessly surrenders to vodka. Like entire families of others, “carried away by vodka,” living not in life, but in the degradation of pseudo-life: “Life is now completely different, everything, count it, has changed, and they, these changes, demanded supplements from a person... The body demanded rest. It’s not me who drinks, it’s him who drinks...”
Valentin Rasputin objectively captured a situation that was very dramatic for Russian people at the end of the 20th century: he had lost his support in the unshakable, as it seemed before, official ideology, prescribed morality, new forces, incomprehensible to him, were approaching him - the power of money, the stupid voluntarism of all kinds of perestroikas, breakdowns, “floods”, “fires” that illuminated the appearance of “non-humans”... How to resist, where to get strength, faith, to save yourself? Or beg for help from God, or introduce an “additive” - in the form of vodka - into the body, like Mikhail, that is, slowly kill yourself?
The plot of the story “The Deadline” is simple: Mikhail, the son of the old woman Anna, who has not gotten up for a long time, has dried up, only reminding with her breath that she is still alive, calls his relatives by telegram. A large family gathers: sons, daughters, themselves no longer young, who have become parents. They are waiting for their delayed sister Tatyana and, afraid to admit it to themselves, are waiting for their mother to die. And this painful expectation reveals everyone. The children of the old woman Anna - Ilya, Lyusya, Varvara - who arrived some by hitchhiking from a neighboring village, and some by ship and plane hundreds of kilometers away, involuntarily want everything to happen as soon as possible. They themselves, ashamed of themselves and their expectations, explain that they broke away from their affairs and work, because they came “to a place other than the near world”), and fulfilled their duties. The death of the mother is perceived as a tragedy only by the author; the heroes are deprived of this. The eldest, Varvara, “opened the gate, saw no one in the yard, and immediately, as soon as she turned herself on, began to voice:
“You are my mother-a-a-!”
And then Rasputin will add: “Varvara got up and went to the table to cry - where it was more convenient.” No, she is not soulless, not callous, she “cryed for a long time, banging her head on the table, burst into tears and could not stop.” But the author, in parallel with this picture of crying (rather ritual, ceremonial), gives its perception through the eyes of a child. Five-year-old Ninka, Mikhail’s daughter, still does not understand what is happening, she “bent down to look why Varvara’s tears were not running to the floor.” The child in Russian literature is a special, iconic image. This is that pure, angelic soul that is given the ability to see or feel the truth or carry it to other heroes. There is a feeling that this five-year-old Ninka saw (and with her help we felt it) something not scary, unnatural in Varvara’s lamentations.
Anna herself is not afraid of death, she even gets angry when once again “the injections of the paramedic, whom Ninka was running after, brought her from the other world.” She wailed and begged her granddaughter:
- How many times have I told you: don’t touch me, let me go on my own in peace... Don’t run after her anymore, don’t run... hide behind the bathhouse, wait, then say: she’s not at home.
And the grandmother ingenuously finished her instructions to her granddaughter:
“I’ll give you some candy for this—a sweet one.”
Conveying Anna's unhurried, drawn-out thoughts and memories, Rasputin builds a simple story of her life. And she lived simply, like a river flows: she worked, raised children, the years flew by one after another... and it was the same with her mother, and with her mother’s mother... What is this, a plant life, not spiritualized by the mind, without a single thought, a life of habit ? Or that very natural, harmonious connection of life with the eternal movement of nature, merging with the world, when your place in this eternal cycle does not require awareness? Because it's yours?! Anna herself, reflecting, believes that she has lived a good life, and we understand where she gets this feeling from: she has a place to go and someone to leave. Her life is seen as a link in an endless chain of existence, and therefore, having fulfilled what was intended for her (she was a worker, wife and mother) by nature and the universe itself, she will merge with this eternal order and peace. Not scary!
But the children do not know what to do, and this confusion, the author claims, is not from the fear of losing their mother, but because they have been torn out of the eternal circle of habitual worries and troubles, and they do not know what to do in the face of such a phenomenon in the world. And if we feel that the author depicts with undoubted respect the last days of the old woman Anna and her thoughts, then the behavior of the children is perceived as false (the word “vain” is requested). Moreover, we feel more and more acutely that this vanity stands out in those heroes who broke with the village (and with their mother too). This is how the theme of mother and mother nature arises in the story, a break with which is tragic for a person. We see this most acutely in the image of Lucy (and I will remind you once again that for Russian literature it was female heroines who were the bearers of special, very important traits that conveyed the mental makeup, the highest values of the national character, and Rasputin picks up this tradition). The city left its mark on Lucy in every way: in her character, in her behavior, in her way of thinking, in her habits. Everything about her is unnatural, unnatural. So the mother asked for food, for the first time in several days she swallowed the thin porridge, and the daughter could not find any other words except the sadly formal ones:
“You can’t overload your stomach now.”
Let him digest this first...
And her letters from the city?! “Tell your mother that medicines help with any illness at any age... Make sure that your mother dresses better in winter...” It seems like care and attention, but what an air of officialdom emanates from these truisms! Who doesn’t know that medicines cure, but it’s cold in winter? And with her sister Lyusya speaks in the same formal manner: “It has become completely impossible to talk to you, Varvara. Don’t forget, please, we are also quite old and probably understand what we are doing.” Varvara is offended - the city sister has become proud, but Rasputin is convinced that the matter is completely different. Lucy is already different, a stranger to this world, where everything is simple and wise, and she now lives not with her soul, but with some other rules. Rasputin gives Lyusa a chance to return to the world of natural feelings and natural words when she remembers her childhood, berry places, Listvenichnik Island, mushrooms... “Do you remember how mother sent us all to pick wild onions across the Verkhnaya River? We'll all get wet and dirty until we pick. And they also competed to see who can pick the most. “Left in the forest, alone with herself, with her memory, Lucy will suddenly stop, as if trying to return something very important, it will seem that a little more, and she will open her soul to the natural that is about to embrace her, she will understand something... then in the surging feelings, she will sort out the memories... But Lucy’s life is meaningless.
The author is preparing an unexpected plot twist. Children expect grief, listen to their mother’s breathing, Varvara cries and cries, Lyusya holds a mirror to the dying woman’s lips - is there breathing... And the mother opens her eyes, asks for porridge, the one “that she cooked for little Ninka,” and then she gets up and leaves the hut, and Lucy is wearing a black dress, finishing her mourning dress at night, and the brothers have already bought a box of vodka for the funeral, and the writer shows how this vodka helps to find a way out of an awkward situation: they were preparing to drink to the death, now they decided to drink to their health! At first the men hid in the bathhouse, and then they came out into the yard, emboldened, because it was a joy! And these scenes, frankly comical, especially the genuine horror of Mikhail, who learned that his stupid daughter almost took bottles to the store in order to return them and buy candy with the proceeds, these funny events accumulate imperceptibly, as if something unpleasant was gathering, increasing, intensifying anxiety, shame, unworthy of a person - and so ordinary. This is vanity, that petty vanity of life, which clearly carries a hint of vulgarity, some kind of moral deafness. And it’s not even about the sons’ drinking, not about the scandal that will break out at the mother’s bedside, not about the senseless, empty bickering of brothers and sisters... The feignedly cheerful and such false words of children who need to leave, no matter how their mother begs, will sound. For some reason, the words that the children of their mother will say on the threshold of their home will seem scary:
- And don’t be offended by us. That's how it should be.
Yes, it is necessary, but not according to human rules, but according to the same law of vanity that he broke and rebuilt the souls of children for himself. Mother lives differently. To this day, she punishes herself for being guilty in front of her children. During the famine, when little Varvara was dying, her mother secretly milked Zorka, her former cow, but now the collective farm cow. It was with this milk that my daughter gave birth, but she still cannot forgive herself for this sin (she took someone else’s!), she even sincerely believes that Varvara’s failed life - there are problems with her husband, her unlucky daughter - are traces of that long-standing sin, and she is executing herself. Children are different: they know for sure that they live correctly. And only one person in the house, the youngest son Mikhail, a drinker and a good-for-nothing, suddenly feels something very important and says, left alone with his mother:
- Don't be angry with me. I'm a fool, of course... Don't be too angry with me. I'm a fool.
And after the departure of the city guests, the granddaughter, five-year-old Ninka, will approach her grandmother, and, as if understanding something, feeling something, she will put her greatest value - candy - into her hand, and the old woman’s lips will move in a smile. The old, the young and the fool stayed together, but the smart, educated, cultured ones left without understanding anything. But we understand how important it is for Rasputin to show that everything that makes a person truly human is still alive, alive in the heart, but only in one that knows how to empathize, sympathize, and perceive someone else’s misfortune as keenly as its own. But this ability, according to Rasputin, is lost by those who break the spiritual connection with the earth, with nature, with natural life. This is how “The Deadline” ends: “The old woman listened without answering and no longer knew whether she could answer or not. She wanted to sleep. Her eyes closed. Until the evening, before darkness, she opened them several more times, but not for long, only to remember where she was.” No epithets, no dialectisms, colloquialisms reproducing Anna’s dialect, no complex syntax, no branched structures. Rasputin uses the simplest linguistic means to talk about the death of the old woman Anna, realizing that any complication of the phrase, embellishment in such a situation would be a deviation from artistic taste, from the truth, even some kind of blasphemy. The last sentence of the story will be extremely simple: “The old woman died at night.” Just as simply as she lived, in that great naturalness) which alone preserves man and which turned out to be inaccessible to her children, who were torn away from the earth, from the soil) on which all living things feed. They were torn away from the mother, but at the same time from mother earth, from maternal roots.
Deadline Analysis of Rasputin's work
5 (100%) 1 voteOld woman Anna lies motionless, without opening her eyes; it has almost frozen, but life still glimmers. The daughters understand this by raising a piece of a broken mirror to their lips. It fogs up, which means mom is still alive. However, Varvara, one of Anna’s daughters, believes it is possible to mourn, to “voice her back,” which she selflessly does first at the bedside, then at the table, “wherever it’s more convenient.” At this time, my daughter Lucy is sewing a funeral dress tailored in the city. The sewing machine chirps to the rhythm of Varvara’s sobs.
Anna is the mother of five children, two of her sons died, the first, born one for God, the other for the soar. Varvara came to say goodbye to her mother from the regional center, Lyusya and Ilya from nearby provincial towns.
Anna can't wait for Tanya from distant Kyiv. And next to her in the village was always her son Mikhail, along with his wife and daughter. Having gathered around the old woman on the morning of the next day after her arrival, the children, seeing their mother revived, do not know how to react to her strange revival.
“Mikhail and Ilya, having brought vodka, now did not know what to do: everything else seemed trivial to them in comparison, they toiled, as if passing through every minute.” Huddled in the barn, they get drunk with almost no snacks, except for the food that Mikhail’s little daughter Ninka carries for them. This causes legitimate female anger, but the first glasses of vodka give men a feeling of genuine celebration. After all, the mother is alive. Ignoring the girl collecting empty and unfinished bottles, they no longer understand what thought they want to drown out this time, maybe it’s fear. “The fear from the knowledge that the mother is about to die is not like all the previous fears that befall them in life, because this fear is the most terrible, it comes from death... It seemed that death had already noticed them all in the face and had already won't forget again."
Having gotten thoroughly drunk and feeling the next day “as if they had been put through a meat grinder,” Mikhail and Ilya are thoroughly hungover the next day. “How can you not drink? - says Mikhail. - Day, two, even a week - it’s still possible. What if you don’t drink at all until your death? Just think, there is nothing ahead. It's all the same thing. There are so many ropes that hold us both at work and at home that it’s impossible to gasp, so much you should have done and didn’t do, you should, should, should, should, and the further you go, the more you should - let it all go to waste. And he drank, as soon as he was released, he did everything that was necessary. And what he didn’t do, he shouldn’t have done, and he did the right thing in what he didn’t do.” This does not mean that Mikhail and Ilya do not know how to work and have never known any other joy than from drunkenness. In the village where they all once lived together, there was a common work - “friendly, inveterate, loud, with a discord of saws and axes, with the desperate hooting of fallen timber, echoing in the soul with enthusiastic anxiety with the obligatory banter with each other. Such work happens once during the firewood harvesting season - in the spring, so that the yellow pine logs with thin silky skin, pleasant to the eye, have time to dry over the summer, are placed in neat woodpiles.” These Sundays are organized for oneself, one family helps another, which is still possible. But the collective farm in the village is falling apart, people are leaving for the city, there is no one to feed and raise livestock.
Remembering her former life, the city dweller Lyusya with great warmth and joy imagines her beloved horse Igrenka, on which “slam a mosquito, and it will fall down,” which in the end happened: the horse died. Igren carried a lot, but couldn’t handle it. Wandering around the village through the fields and arable land, Lucy realizes that she does not choose where to go, that she is being guided by some outsider who lives in these places and professes her power. ...It seemed that life had returned back, because she, Lucy, had forgotten something here, had lost something very valuable and necessary for her, without which she could not...
While the children drink and indulge in memories, the old woman Anna, having eaten the children's semolina porridge specially cooked for her, cheers up even more and goes out onto the porch. She is visited by her long-awaited friend Mironikha. “Ochi-mochi! Are you, old lady, alive? - says Mironikha. “Why doesn’t death take you?.. I’m going to her funeral, I think she was kind enough to console me, but she’s still a tut.”
Anna grieves that among the children gathered at her bedside there is no Tatyana, Tanchora, as she calls her. Tanchora was not like any of the sisters. She stood, as it were, between them with her special character, soft and joyful, human. Without waiting for her daughter, the old woman decides to die. “She had nothing more to do in this world and there was no point in postponing death. While the guys are here, let them bury them, carry them out as is customary among people, so that they don’t have to return to this concern another time. Then, you see, Tanchora will come too... The old woman thought about death many times and knew it as herself. In recent years they had become friends, the old woman often talked to her, and Death, sitting somewhere on the side, listened to her reasonable whisper and sighed knowingly. They agreed that the old woman would go away at night, first fall asleep, like all people, so as not to frighten death with her open eyes, then she would quietly snuggle, remove her short worldly sleep and give her eternal peace.” This is how it all turns out.
