How is the place portrayed in the play? Image of the bottom in Gorky's play at the bottom
How is the scene depicted in the play?
(The location of the action is described in the author’s notes. In the first act it is “a cave-like basement”, “heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster.” It is important that the writer gives instructions on how the scene is illuminated: “from the viewer and from top to bottom the light reaches the night shelters from the basement window, as if looking for people among the basement inhabitants. Thin partitions fence off Ash’s room. “Everywhere along the walls there are bunks.” Apart from Kvashnya, Baron and Nastya, who live in the kitchen, no one has their own corner. Everything is on display in front of each other, a secluded place is only on the stove and behind the chintz canopy separating the bed of the dying Anna from the others (by this she is already, as it were, separated from life.) There is dirt everywhere: “dirty chintz canopy,” unpainted and dirty table, benches, stool , tattered cardboards, pieces of oilcloth, rags.
The third act takes place in an early spring evening in a vacant lot, “littered with various rubbish and a courtyard overgrown with weeds.” Let's pay attention to the coloring of this place: the dark wall of a barn or stable, the “gray wall covered with the remains of plaster,” the wall of the bunkhouse, the red wall of the brick firewall that covers the sky, the reddish light of the setting sun, the black branches of elderberries without buds.
In the setting fourth act Significant changes are taking place: the partitions of Ash’s former room are broken, the Tick’s anvil has disappeared. The action takes place at night, and light from the outside world no longer penetrates into the basement - the scene is illuminated by a lamp standing in the middle of the table. However, the last “act” of the drama takes place in a vacant lot - there the Actor hanged himself.)
What kind of people live in the shelter?
(People who have sunk to the bottom of life end up in a shelter. This is the last refuge for tramps, marginalized people, “former people”. All social strata of society are here: the bankrupt nobleman Baron, the owner of the shelter Kostylev, the policeman Medvedev, the mechanic Kleshch, the cap maker Bubnov, the merchant Kvashnya , the sharper Satin, the prostitute Nastya, the thief Ashes. Everyone is equalized by the position of the dregs of society. Very young (shoemaker Alyoshka is 20 years old) and not very old people live here (the oldest, Bubnov, is 45 years old). However, their lives are almost over. Dying Anna introduces herself we are an old woman, and she, it turns out, is 30 years old.
Many night shelters do not even have names, only nicknames remain, expressively describing their bearers. The appearance of the dumpling seller Kvashnya, the character of Kleshch, and the Baron’s ambition are clear. The actor once bore the sonorous surname Sverchkov-Zadunaisky, but now there are almost no memories left - “I forgot everything.”)
What is the subject of the play?
(The subject of the drama “At the Bottom” is the consciousness of people thrown as a result of deep social processes to the “bottom” of life).
What is the conflict of the drama?
(The social conflict has several levels in the play. The social poles are clearly indicated: on one - the owner of the rooming house Kostylev and the policeman Medvedev supporting his power, on the other - the essentially powerless night shelters. Thus, the conflict between the authorities and people deprived of rights is obvious. This conflict is almost does not develop, because Kostylev and Medvedev are not so far from the inhabitants of the shelter.
Each of the night shelters experienced his own social conflict in the past, as a result of which he found himself in a humiliating position.)
Reference: A sharp conflict situation, playing out in front of the audience, is the most important feature of drama as a type of literature.
What brought its inhabitants - Satin, Baron, Kleshch, Bubnov, Actor, Nastya, Ash - to the shelter? What is the backstory of these characters?
(Satin fell “to the bottom” after serving time in prison for murder: “He killed a scoundrel in passion and irritation... because of his own sister”; the Baron went broke; Klesh lost his job: “I am a working man... I’m with I’ve been working since I was little”; Bubnov left home out of harm’s way so as not to kill his wife and her lover, although he himself admits that he is “lazy” and also a heavy drinker, “he would have drunk away his workshop”; the actor became an alcoholic, “he drank away his soul... died"; the fate of Ash was predetermined already at his birth: "I have been a thief since childhood... everyone always told me: Vaska is a thief, Vaska is a thief's son!" The Baron talks in more detail than others about the stages of his fall (act four): "To me It seems that all my life I've only been changing clothes... but why? I don't understand! I studied - I wore the uniform of a noble institute... and what did I study? I don't remember... I got married - I put on a tailcoat, then a robe... and took a bad wife and - why? I don’t understand... I lived through everything I had - I wore some kind of gray jacket and red trousers... but how did I go broke? I didn’t notice... I served in the government chamber... uniform, cap with a cockade. .. I squandered government money, - they put a prisoner's robe on me... then - I put on this... And that's it... like in a dream... huh? That's funny? Each stage of the thirty-three-year-old Baron’s life seems to be marked by a certain costume. These changes symbolize the gradual decline social status, and nothing stands behind these “dressing up”; life passed “like in a dream.”)
How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict?
(The social conflict is taken off stage, pushed into the past; it does not become the basis of the dramatic conflict. We observe only the result of off-stage conflicts.)
What kind of conflicts, other than social ones, are highlighted in the play?
(There is a traditional love conflict in the play. It is determined by the relationship between Vaska Pepla, Vasilisa, the wife of the owner of the rooming house, Kostylev and Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister. The exposition of this conflict is the conversation of the rooming houses, from which it is clear that Kostylev is looking for his wife Vasilisa in the rooming house, who is cheating him with Vaska Ash. The beginning of this conflict is the appearance of Natasha in the rooming house, for whom Ash leaves Vasilisa. As the love conflict develops, it becomes clear that the relationship with Natasha revives Ash, he wants to leave with her and start new life. The culmination of the conflict is taken off stage: at the end of the third act, we learn from Kvashnya’s words that “they boiled the girl’s legs with boiling water” - Vasilisa knocked over the samovar and scalded Natasha’s legs. The murder of Kostylev by Vaska Ash turns out to be the tragic outcome of a love conflict. Natasha stops believing Ash: “She’s at the same time! Damn you! You both…")
What is unique about a love conflict?
(Love conflict becomes borderline social conflict. He shows that inhuman conditions cripple a person, and even love does not save a person, but leads to tragedy: death, injury, murder, hard labor. As a result, Vasilisa alone achieves all her goals: she takes revenge ex-lover Ash and her rival sister Natasha, gets rid of her unloved and disgusted husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows monstrosity social conditions, which mutilated both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners. The night shelters are not directly involved in this conflict, they are only third-party spectators.)
How is the scene depicted in the play? Maxim Gorky "at the bottom" and got the best answer
Answer from Wonderful Miracle[guru]
“Cave-like basement. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster.” Musty and stuffy air, squalid surroundings. The location of the action, succinctly indicated in the very first remark, immediately creates an image of a pressing, unbearable world that presses on people. People live in a stuffy atmosphere of constant drunkenness, swearing and debauchery. It’s hard to imagine a greater “bottom.”
Answer from ???Prophet???[guru]
In the 1900s, a severe economic crisis broke out in Russia.
After each crop failure, masses of ruined, impoverished peasants wandered around
country in search of income.
And factories and factories were closed. Thousands of workers and peasants found themselves without
shelter and livelihood. Under the influence of the gravest economic
oppression, a huge number of tramps appear who sink to the “bottom”
life. Taking advantage of the hopeless situation of impoverished people, enterprising
the owners of the dark slums have found a way to benefit from their fetid
basements, turning them into dosshouses where the unemployed found shelter,
beggars, tramps, thieves and others" former people".
Answer from 3 answers[guru]
Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: How is the setting depicted in the play? Maxim Gorky "at the bottom"
Symbolism of M. Gorky’s play “At the Depths”
A cave-like basement. Morning. - M. Gorky knew the life and life of tramps very well. In Nizhny, he loved to go to the sleeping house of the merchant Bugrov, talked with tramps, and wrote letters for the illiterate.
In the dramas of A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky's stage directions (especially those relating to the description of the scene of action), always brightly emotionally colored, turn almost into a lyrical sketch (compare, for example, the stage directions in A. P. Chekhov's “The Cherry Orchard”).
And this is no coincidence: space - in this case Kostylev’s flophouse - ceases to be just a background of action, but turns out to be one of the specific “ characters“, at least, this is one of the hypostases of the bottom. In essence, we are not even dealing with a description of the scene of action as such, but with an image-symbol, recognized to awaken in the mind of the reader (not the viewer!) multiple associations of Agaresov G.G. Learning to see a literary text // Issues of writers' skill. Sat. articles. S. 1965, p. 28.
First of all, attention is drawn to the fact that the basement in which the shelter is located is likened to a cave. The symbolism of the cave is one of the most archaic, and therefore extremely polysemantic mythologies, interpreted differently depending on the context, but the basis of this symbolism is the idea of the dual nature of existence, containing the ambivalent principles of birth and death.
The very form of drama created by M. Gorky - “discussion drama” - to a certain extent goes back to the tradition of Plato’s “Socratic dialogues”, in which the search for truth looked like a dispute between Socrates and one or more opponents.
It is worth remembering how the writer himself formulated the problematic of “At the Bottom”: “Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This is not a subjective question, but a general philosophical one...” On the pages of The Republic, Plato more than once addresses the problem of “useful lies.” And he solves it this way: “Verbal lies, isn’t it sometimes useful for something, so it’s not worth hating? For example, in relation to the enemy and those whom we call friends? If in their frenzy or madness they try to do something bad, wouldn’t a lie be a useful remedy, like a medicine, to keep them away?” Plato makes it a duty for the rulers of the state to “use lies not only against the enemy, but also for the sake of their citizens - for the benefit of their state, but everyone else should not resort to it” Kalashnikov V.A. Writer and his heroes. Minsk, 1969, p. 77.
Finally, in the last (IV) act of the drama, which contains a considerable number of mirrored episodes of the first act, the moirai Lachesis and Atropos are mentioned, which are described in the tenth chapter of Plato’s Republic.
So, Plato’s “cave”... Ancient Greek philosopher believed that in relation to enlightenment and ignorance, human nature can be likened to the following state: “... people seem to be in an underground dwelling like a cave, where a wide opening stretches along its entire length.
It is interesting to look at the conflict of the drama “At the Bottom” from this point of view. Here, too, we seem to be dealing with tormented souls who retain memories of something else - better world. Luka comes to the “cave” - he seems to be the same as the other inhabitants of the shelter, but in fact he is different, having seen a lot, and talks about “that” life: about Siberia - the “good, golden side”, about the “righteous land” . And hope awakens... How similar to Plato’s construction!
It turns out that compared to the Kostylevo flophouse, in which the compassionate Kvashnya treats Anna to dumplings, and she, in turn, refuses them in favor of her husband, who drove her into a coffin with beatings, the flophouse in which Vaska Ash gives her friends two kopecks for a drink (and, of course, think, completely free of charge), a night shelter, where the cynic and drunkard Bubnov treats all his roommates, Kleshch repairs Aleshka’s accordion for free... - in comparison with this cave, the “higher” world is a true vale of tears, inhumanity, cruelty... Let us recall that in On the “golden side” of Siberia, where Luke persuades Ash to go, the nameless wretched man dreamed of a “righteous land”, because “he was poor, he lived poorly” and sometimes “he had to<...>it’s hard that even lie down and die” (and the “fugitives” Stepan and Yakov, too, in Siberia, “for Christ’s sake” could not be interrogated!)... But what about Siberia! And Satin, Bubnov, Klesch! It would seem that they were at the “bottom” various reasons, but this difference is more visible, external, rather than essential Gorky M. Complete. Collection cit.: Artist. prod. In 25 volumes. M., 1968, p. 124.
The point here is not that they are all innocent sufferers - no, of course: Satin is a murderer, Kleshch "drove" his wife, Bubnov is a drunkard, and also cheated customers.
A world in which decent people speak like sharpers, and a sharper speaks like a decent person - such a world, according to M. Gorky, is fundamentally dysfunctional and needs to be remade. L. Tolstoy drew attention to this feature of the young writer’s worldview: “...you don’t believe out of stubbornness, out of resentment: the world was not created the way you need it.”
Therefore, it seems, the path of individual “salvation” proposed by Luke was absolutely unacceptable for the author of “At the Bottom”: the wanderer calls for patience, because he is convinced that evil is a necessary part of existence and, therefore, ineradicable. This means that the “wisdom of life” lies in the ability to “adapt” (Already the second remark of the wanderer contains, so to speak, the quintessence of his philosophy: “I don’t care!<...>Where can I adapt here, dear?”), the ability to “endure” life (this quality of Satin delights Luka: “You bear life easily! But just now here... the mechanic howled so much... a-a-yay!” ), and therefore to Anna, who expressed timid hope for recovery, the old man - grinning! - objects: “For what? For flour again? Life is torture. Death - “she calms everything down... she is affectionate for us”, “like a mother to small children” Ibid..
In most religions, the cave and darkness symbolize the world in embryo, chaos. The caves were considered the entrance to “another kingdom” - “the other world.” From this point of view, the “cave-like basement” becomes a metaphor for the borderline existence of its inhabitants between life and death. In folklore, cellar/basement is synonymous with grave. The underworld is often depicted in icon painting as a cave with heavy stone vaults. There is no real light in the Kostylevo flophouse - even on a spring morning, at the beginning of the play, only a dim ray “from the square window on the right side” penetrates here.
In folklore, the stone symbolizes death, it is a hieroglyph of death, a sign of abolition, cancellation, etc. Note that hell and tartarus designate an unchanging, very deep place - the underworld. In the underworld all activity ceases completely; there is only suffering; there reigns the most severe of heart ailments - despair; there are cries and groans that do not give any consolation to the soul torn by them; there are insoluble bonds and fetters; There is impenetrable darkness and cold.
The “infernal” symbolism of the scene seems to extend to the selection of characters from the point of view of their social, religious and professional affiliation. The famous theologian of the 19th century I. Brianchaninov wrote: “... Mohammedans and other persons belonging to false religions constitute... the property of hell and are deprived of all hope of salvation, being deprived of Christ, the only means of salvation. Those Orthodox Christians who acquired spiritual passions and through them entered into communion with Satan, breaking off communion with God, are also deprived of the hope of salvation. Passions are sinful habits of the soul, which from a long time and frequent exercise in sin have turned into natural qualities. These are: gluttony, drunkenness, voluptuousness, an absent-minded life associated with forgetfulness of God, memory malice, cruelty, love of money, stinginess, despondency, laziness, hypocrisy, deceit, theft, vanity, pride, etc.” One of the authoritative fathers of the early Christian church, Tertullian, places in the “hellish abyss”, among other sinners, “a host of kings” (cf. Vaska, Vasilisa), “tragic actors loudly mourning their own fate,” and St. Patrick - pagan gods Iapetus (titan, father of Prometheus; participant in the so-called Titanomachy - the battle of the titans with the Olympian gods, for which he was thrown into Tartarus by Zeus) and Saturn, who “are not consoled by the brilliance of the sun or the coolness of the winds.”
The author of “At the Bottom” indicates the presence of only two doors - to Vaska Ash’s room and to the kitchen. But there is no entrance door connecting the “upper world” with the basement. The space thus appears to be extremely closed, hopeless - it’s not for nothing that in the favorite song of cap-maker Bubnov it is sung: “Guard as you wish - I won’t run away anyway...”.
The following detail is of particular importance in the commented remark: “... Kleshch is sitting, trying on the keys to the old locks. At his feet are two large bunches of different keys, mounted on wire rings, a damaged samovar made of tin, a hammer, and filings.” Wed. I will sign to knock keys - to a quarrel and a phraseological unit to go, like a key, to the bottom. Based on the text of the Apocalypse, where the Savior says about Himself: “I have the key of hell and death,” a widespread idea arose that, leaving hell, Christ tightly locked sinners and demons there, and took the key with him. In conspiracies, the castle is correlated with the earth (stone), and the key with the sky. Sometimes the key and the lock are replaced by the image of a stone wall to the sky (cf. the scene in Act III; in Old Russian, stone/wall are the same thing).
Let us note, by the way, that in some dialects bunks were called stretchers for the dead. As already mentioned, the word nochlezhka is not noted in V.I. Dahl’s dictionary, but the dictionary entry night is very extensive. In addition to the direct meaning (darkness), it contains a figurative meaning: “north” (opposite day, noon - south). Did the writer consciously connect the element of cold that reigns outside the habitat of the “former people” with the name of their final refuge? I think so. An indirect indication of this is one of the versions of the title of the play - “Without the Sun”. V.I. Dal also notes the metaphorical meaning of the word night - “ignorance, ignorance of truths and goodness, spiritual darkness” (cf. the reasoning of the night shelters about shame, honor, conscience). The light comes from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side. The light into the Kostylevo doss house falls not just from somewhere above, but precisely from the right, that is, the doss house itself is located on the left - from the “hellish” side. Let us pay attention to the direction of the light rays: “from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side.” The projection produces a cross - a symbol of crossing out, suffering and at the same time - hope for resurrection (it is not for nothing that the cross is formed by rays of light). In the left corner there is a large Russian stove, in the left, stone wall there is a door to the kitchen... Between the stove and the door against the wall there is a wide bed covered with a dirty chintz canopy. - The stove - the most mythologized and symbolically significant household item - is one of the sacred centers of the house. The nature of the symbolic understanding of the stove is largely predetermined by the fact that maintaining a home fire and cooking were specifically female activities. Inconspicuous, sometimes deliberately hidden from men, a woman’s daily activities take place as if in the presence of her ancestors and under their protection.
In addition, the oven is an indispensable attribute of hell, often its metaphor. Here is one of the characteristic descriptions: “The entrance looked like an alley, very long and narrow, or like an oven, very low, dark and cramped” (Teresa of Avila about the vision of hell... ca. 1560).
In “At the Bottom” the stove is one of the most important symbolic elements of the decoration. This is where the Actor lives, which emphasizes the “borderliness” and illusory nature of his life. Luka ends up on the stove, preventing the possible murder of Kostylev by Ash. Having settled down near the stove, Satin and Baron cheat the honest Asan. Kostylev compares Bubnov to a brownie “staring” from under the stove.
So that I would give myself to a man fortress... - In complete dependence; fortress - a record, document, certificate issued by a court for the right of ownership. Kvashnya’s words should not be taken as a metaphor: until 1917, a wife, compared to her husband, was indeed practically deprived of rights. Wed. Anna's fate; see also the story of M. Gorky “The Orlov Spouses”. Despite the militant nature of Kvashnya’s story about an eight-year family hard labor, her fate is organically intertwined with the sad series of unsettled dramatic destinies of not only Anna, Nastya, Satin’s off-stage sister, but also Vasilisa, who sold herself to the “old whore” Kostylev. All these “illustrative” examples and those reproduced in the memoirs of Satin, Bubnov, Baron show that there is no family in the old world, and this indicates the dysfunction of the social structure. Thus, at first glance, the everyday problem in M. Gorky’s drama grows to acute social, and even national proportions (“the weak family nature of Great Russianism” was also noted by M. Gorky’s predecessors - F. Dostoevsky, K. Leontiev, A. Chekhov and others).
Snatching the book from Nastya, she reads the title “Fatal Love.” - “Fatal Love” - novel German writer Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845-1909). The Russian translation was published in the New Journal of Foreign Literature (St. Petersburg, 1901). It seems, however, that if a book with such a pretentious and sweet title did not exist, it would have to be invented.
Homework for the lesson
2. Collect material for each inhabitant of the shelter.
3. Think about how you can group the characters.
4. What is the nature of the conflict in the play?
Purpose of the lesson: to show Gorky’s innovation; identify the components of genre and conflict in a play.
The main question I wanted to pose is what is better, truth or compassion. What is more necessary? Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This is not a subjective question, but a general philosophical one.
Maksim Gorky
History of the play
For more than 80 years, performances based on the play “At the Lower Depths” have not left the national stage. It has also visited the largest theaters in the world, and interest in it does not wane!
In 1901, Gorky said about the concept of his play: “It will be scary.” The author changed the title several times: “Without the Sun”, “Nochlezhka”, “The Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”. The title “At the Lower Depths” first appeared on art theater posters. What is highlighted is not the location of the action - “the shelter”, not the nature of the conditions - “without the sun”, “the bottom”, not even the social position - “at the bottom of life”. The phrase “At the Bottom” has a much broader meaning than all of the above. What's going on at the bottom? “At the bottom” – what, just life? Maybe even souls?
The ambiguity of Gorky's play led to its various theatrical productions.
The most striking was the first stage adaptation of the drama (1902) by the Art Theater by the famous directors K.S. Stanislavsky, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko with the direct participation of A.M. Gorky.
In 1903, the play was awarded the honorary Griboyedov Prize.
Features of the composition
Question
Where does the play take place?
Answer
In a cave-like basement in which people are forced to lead an antediluvian existence. Separate strokes of the description introduce the symbolism of hell here: the shelter is located below ground level, people are deprived of the sun here, the light falls “from top to bottom”, the characters feel like “dead people”, “sinners”, “thrown into a pit, “killed” by society and in these vaults buried.
Question
How is the scene depicted in the play?
Answer
In the author's remarks. In the first act it is a “cave-like basement”, “heavy, stone vaults, sooty, with crumbling plaster.” It is important that the writer gives instructions on how the scene is illuminated: “from the viewer and from top to bottom,” the light reaches the shelters from the basement window, as if looking for people among the basement inhabitants. Thin partitions screen off Ash's room. Everywhere along the walls there are bunks. Apart from Kvashnya, Baron and Nastya, who live in the kitchen, no one has their own corner. Everything is on display in front of each other, a secluded place is only on the stove and behind the chintz canopy separating the dying Anna’s bed from the others (by this she is already, as it were, separated from life). There is dirt everywhere: “dirty chintz canopy”, unpainted and dirty tables, benches, stools, tattered cardboards, pieces of oilcloth, rags.
Question
List the characters in the play with their brief characteristics. What groups can all the characters be divided into?
Answer
All the inhabitants of the shelter can be conditionally united into four groups, depending on the place they occupy in the clash of different positions, in the philosophical conflict of the play.
The first group includes Actor, Nastya, Ash, Natasha. These characters are predisposed to meeting the wanderer Luke. Each of them lives with some kind of dream or hope. So the Actor hopes to recover from alcoholism and return to the stage, where he had the theatrical name Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky. Now, however, there is no name left, but his thoughts are directed towards artistic glory. Nastya dreams of a French student whom she supposedly loves passionately. Ash dreams of a free and free life, “so that you can... respect yourself.” Natasha vaguely hopes for a happy fate when Vasily will be her strong support. Each of these characters is not too firm in their aspirations and is internally divided.
Luke, which we will talk about in detail in the next lesson, is designed to reveal the essence of everyone.
Baron and Bubnov are the third group. The first of them constantly lives in the past, remembering hundreds of serfs, carriages with coats of arms, coffee with cream in bed in the morning. Completely devastated, he no longer expects anything, dreams of nothing. The second - Bubnov - also sometimes turns to past years, when he suffered from life, but mostly lives in the present and recognizes only what he sees and touches. Bubnov is an indifferent cynic. For him, only facts are clear; they are a “stubborn thing.” The truth of Baron and Bubnov is a hard, wingless truth, far from the real truth.
Satin occupies the fourth position in the play. For all its originality, it is also distinguished by its inconsistency. Firstly, the words spoken by this hero are in sharp contrast to his essence. After all, a swindler by occupation, a prisoner and a murderer in the past speaks about the truth. Secondly, in a number of cases Satin turns out to be close to Luke. He agrees with the wanderer that “people live for the best,” that truth is connected with the idea of a person, that one should not interfere with him and humiliate him (“Do not offend a person!”)
The images should be arranged along the “ladder” of ranks and positions, since we have before us a social cross-section of life in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century: Baron, Kostylev, Bubnov, Satin, Actor; Ashes, Nastya.
Question
What is the conflict of the drama?
Answer
The conflict in this drama is social. Each of the night shelters experienced their own social conflict in the past, as a result of which they found themselves in a humiliating position. Life has deprived the people gathered in this hell. She deprived Kleshch of the right to work, Nastya to have a family, Actor to have a profession, Baron to have her former comfort, Anna was doomed to starvation, Ash to theft, Bubnov to endless drinking, Nastya to prostitution.
A sharp conflict situation, playing out in front of the audience, is the most important feature of drama as a type of literature.
Question
How is social conflict related to dramaturgical conflict?
Answer
The social conflict is taken off stage, pushed into the past, it does not become the basis of the dramatic conflict. We are only observing the result of off-stage conflicts.
Question
What kind of conflicts, other than social ones, are highlighted in the play?
Answer
The play contains a traditional love conflict. It is determined by the relationships between Vaska Pepla, Vasilisa, the wife of the owner of the shelter, Kostylev and Natasha, Vasilisa’s sister. The exposition of this conflict is a conversation between the night shelters, from which it is clear that Kostylev is looking for his wife Vasilisa in the rooming house, who is cheating on him with Vaska Pepl. The beginning of this conflict is the appearance of Natasha in the shelter, for whose sake Ashes leaves Vasilisa. As the love conflict develops, it becomes clear that the relationship with Natasha revives Ash, he wants to leave with her and start a new life. The culmination of the conflict is taken off stage: at the end of the third act, we learn from Kvashnya’s words that they boiled the girl’s legs with boiling water” - Vasilisa knocked over the samovar and scalded Natasha’s legs. The murder of Kostylev by Vaska Ash turns out to be the tragic outcome of a love conflict. Natasha stops believing Ash: “They are at the same time! Damn you! You both…"
Question
What is unique about the love conflict in the play?
Answer
A love conflict becomes a facet of a social conflict. He shows that inhuman conditions cripple a person, and even love does not save a person, but leads to tragedy: death, injury, murder, hard labor. As a result, Vasilisa alone achieves all her goals: she takes revenge on her former lover Ash and her rival sister Natasha, gets rid of her unloved and disgusted husband and becomes the sole mistress of the shelter. There is nothing human left in Vasilisa, and this shows the monstrosity of the social conditions that disfigured both the inhabitants of the shelter and its owners. The night shelters are not directly involved in this conflict, they are only third-party spectators.
Question
What does this shelter remind you of?
Answer
Nochlezhka is a kind of model of how cruel world, from which its inhabitants were thrown out. Here, too, there are “masters”, the police, the same alienation, hostility, and the same vices are manifested.
Teacher's final words
Gorky depicts the consciousness of people at the “bottom”. The plot unfolds not so much in external action - in everyday life, but in the dialogues of the characters. It is the conversations of the night shelters that determine the development of the dramatic conflict. The action is transferred to a non-event series. This is typical for the genre of philosophical drama.
So, the genre of the play can be defined as a socio-philosophical drama.
Homework
Prepare for a debate lesson about Luke. To do this: note (or write down) his statements about people, about truth, about faith. Determine your attitude towards statements about Luke by Baron and Satin (Act IV).
Identify the compositional elements of the play. Why did Chekhov consider the last act unnecessary?
Literature
D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the twentieth century. 11th grade program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001
E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the 20th century / St. Petersburg: Parity, 2002
N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments on Russian literature of the twentieth century. Grade 11. I half of the year. M.: VAKO, 2005
The play “At the Bottom” was written by M. Gorky in 1902. A year before writing the play, Gorky said this about the idea of a new play: “It will be scary.” The same emphasis is emphasized in its changing titles: “Without the Sun”, “Nochlezhka”, “Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”. The title “At the Bottom” first appeared on posters Art Theater. The author did not highlight the location of the action - “the flophouse”, not the nature of the living conditions - “without the sun”, “the bottom”, not even the social position - “at the bottom of life”. The final title combines all these concepts and leaves room for reflection: at the “bottom” of what? Is it only life, and maybe even the soul? Thus, the play “At the Bottom” contains, as it were, two parallel actions. The first is social and everyday, the second is philosophical.
The theme of the bottom is not new for Russian literature: Gogol, Dostoevsky, Gilyarovsky addressed it. Gorky himself wrote about his play: “It was the result of my almost twenty years of observations of the world of “former” people, among whom I saw not only wanderers, inhabitants of the night shelters and “lumpen-proletarians” in general, but also some of the intellectuals, “demagnetized ", disappointed, insulted and humiliated by failures in life."
Already in the exposition of the play, even at the very beginning of this exposition, the author convinces the viewer and reader that before him is the bottom of life, a world where a person’s hope for human life must fade away. The first action takes place in Kostylev’s rooming house. The curtain rises and one is immediately struck by the depressing atmosphere of beggarly life: “A basement like a cave. The ceiling is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. The light is from the viewer and, from top to bottom, from the square window on the right side... In the middle of the shelter there is a large table, two benches, a stool, everything is painted, dirty...” In such terrible, inhuman conditions, the most different people thrown out of normal human life due to various circumstances. This is the worker Kleshch, and the thief Ash, and the former Actor, and the dumpling seller Kvashnya, and the girl Nastya, and the cap-maker Bubnov, and Satin - all “former people”. Each of them has their own dramatic story, but they all have the same common fate: the present of the boarding house guests is terrible, they have no future. For most sleepovers, the best is in the past. This is what Bubnov says about his past: “I was a furrier... I had my own establishment... My hands were so yellow - from paint: I tinted the furs - so, brother, my hands were yellow - up to the elbows! I thought that I wouldn’t wash it until I die... so I’ll die with yellow hands... And now here they are, my hands... just dirty... yes! The actor loves to remember his past, how he played a gravedigger in Hamlet, and loves to talk about art: “I say talent, that’s what a hero needs. And talent is faith in oneself, in one’s strength...” Locksmith Kleshch says about himself: “I am a working man... I’m ashamed to look at them... I’ve been working since an early age...” A few words convey the picture life destiny Anna: “I don’t remember when I was full... I was shaking over every piece of bread... I was trembling all my life... I was tormented, so as not to eat anything else... All my life I walked around in rags... all my unhappy life..." She is only 30 years old, and she is terminally ill, dying of tuberculosis.,
Night shelters view their situation differently. Some of them have resigned themselves to their fate, because they understand that nothing can be changed. For example, Actor. He says: “Yesterday, in the hospital, the doctor told me: your body, he says, is completely poisoned with alcohol...” Others, for example Kleshch, firmly believe that with honest work he will rise from the “bottom” and become a man: “ ...Do you think I won't break out of here? I’ll get out... I’ll rip off the skin, and I’ll get out...”
The gloomy atmosphere of the shelter, the hopelessness of the situation, the extreme degree of poverty - all this leaves an imprint on the inhabitants of the shelter, on their attitude towards each other. If we turn to the dialogues of Act 1, we will see an atmosphere of hostility, spiritual callousness, and mutual hostility. All this creates a tense atmosphere in the shelter, and disputes arise in it every minute. The reasons for these disputes at first glance are completely random, but each is evidence of disunity and lack of mutual understanding of the heroes. So, Kvashnya continues the useless argument she started behind the scenes with Kleshch: she defends her right to “freedom.” (“For me, a free woman, to be my own mistress, but to fit into someone’s passport, so that I would give myself to a man in a fortress - no! Even if he were an American prince, I wouldn’t think of marrying him.”) Kleshch himself constantly fences himself off from his long-term and terminally ill wife Anna. From time to time he throws rude and callous words at Anna: “I’m whining”, “It’s okay, maybe you’ll get up - it happens”, “Wait a minute... my wife will die.” The Baron habitually mocks his partner Nastya, who is devouring another tabloid novel about "fatal love". His actions towards her: “... snatching the book from Nastya, reads the title... laughs... hitting Nastya on the head with the book... takes the book away from Nastya” testify to the Baron’s desire to humiliate Nastya in the eyes of others. Satin growls, not scaring anyone, having slept through his usual intoxication. The actor tediously repeats the same phrase that his body is poisoned by alcohol. The night shelters constantly bicker among themselves. The use of abusive language is the norm in their communication with each other: “Be silent, old dog!” (Mite), “Uh, unclean spirit...” (Kvashnya), “Scoundrels” (Satin), “Old devil!.. Go to hell!” (Ashes), etc. Anna can’t stand it and asks: “The day has begun! For God’s sake... don’t shout... don’t swear!”
In the first act, the owner of the flophouse, Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev, appears. He comes to check if Ash is hiding his young wife Vasilisa. From the first remarks, the hypocritical and deceitful character of this character emerges. He says to Kleshch: “How much space do you take up from me per month... And I’ll throw half a buck at you, I’ll buy oil for the lamp... and my sacrifice will burn in front of the holy icon...” Talking about kindness, he reminds the Actor about duty: “Kindness is above all blessings. And your debt to me is indeed a debt! So, you must compensate me for it...” Kostylev buys up the stolen goods (he bought a watch from Ash), but does not give all the money to Ash.
By individualizing the speech of the heroes, Gorky creates colorful figures of the inhabitants of the “bottom”. Bubnov came from the lower social classes, so his attraction to proverbs and sayings is understandable. For example, “Whoever is drunk and smart has two lands in him.” Satin loves word game, uses foreign words in his speech: “Organon... sicambre, macrobiotnka, traiscendental...”, sometimes without understanding their meaning. The speech of the hypocrite and money-grubber Kostylev is full of “pious” words: “good”, “good”, “sin”.
The first act of the play is extremely important for understanding the entire play. The intensity of the action is manifested in human clashes. The desire of the heroes to escape from the shackles of the “bottom”, the emergence of hope, the growing feeling in each of the inhabitants of the “bottom” of the impossibility of living as they lived until now - all this prepares the appearance of the wanderer Luke, who managed to strengthen this illusory faith.
In his play “At the Lower Depths,” M. Gorky opened up to the viewer a new, hitherto unknown world on the Russian stage - the lower classes of society.
It was evidence of the dysfunction of the modern social system. The play raised doubts about the right of this system to exist and called for protest and struggle against the system that made the existence of such a “bottom” possible. This was the source of the success of this play, about which contemporaries said that no epithets - colossal, grandiose - could measure the true scale of this success.
