The image of the wall live and remember. The protagonist of the book "Live and Remember" - Andrey Guskov

Landscaping and planning 24.09.2019
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The story "Live and Remember" was written in 1974. In 2008, the work was filmed by director Alexander Proshkin. The main roles in the film were played by Daria Moroz and Mikhail Evlanov.

The main character of the story is a young woman named Nastya. The orphan was brought up in her aunt's house, not knowing either love or even just good treatment. WITH early years Nastya was forced to work hard so as not to be a freeloader in someone else's house. When Andrey Guskov offered the girl to marry him, she accepted his proposal without hesitation. Nastya never loved her husband, but she was sure that in marriage she would find happiness, which she did not have in her childhood. For several years of living together in the Guskov family, no children appeared. Andrei blamed his wife for this. Nastya constantly felt guilty.

The head of the family leaves for the front. A young wife receives letters from her husband. But one day a policeman and the chairman of the village council came to her. Andrei went missing, he is suspected of desertion. When the ax disappeared from the bath, the young wife immediately realized that her husband had returned home. After some time, the meeting of the spouses still took place. She seemed to Nastya an obsession, a nightmare.

The superstitious woman was sure that the man she met in the bath was not her husband, but a werewolf. Nastya for a long time doubted the reality of everything that happened at night, believing that she had only dreamed of it all. Subsequently, Andrei explained to his wife that he was not a murderer and not a traitor. He didn't commit any crime. The reason for his desertion was too early discharge from the hospital. Guskov had to go back to the front, despite the fact that his treatment had not yet been completed.

Andrei understands that his actions will be regarded by the authorities as one of the worst crimes, but does not want to correct the situation in any way. Nastya carefully hides the illegal return of her husband from her fellow villagers. The young woman still does not love her husband. A sense of duty makes her lie. The long-awaited pregnancy becomes an unexpected joy for the Guskovs. For the sake of her husband and unborn child, Nastya is ready to endure even greater hardships.

Desperate situation
Pregnancy brought not only joy. The absence of a husband and the presence of a child can mean only one thing: Nastya cheated on Andrei. If this is not so, then Guskov has returned, which, in turn, indicates his desertion. Nastya agrees to be considered unfaithful wife if it helps save her husband.

A young woman faces the hatred and contempt of those around her. Upon learning that the daughter-in-law is pregnant, the mother-in-law immediately kicks her out of the house. Desperation leads Nastya to suicide. A young woman rushes to the Angara.

Nastya Guskova

Having not received love and affection in childhood, the main character dreams of her own family, where she would be the mistress. Nastya has no time to wait for true love. She wants to leave her aunt's house as soon as possible and accepts a marriage proposal from an unloved man.

The main character trait of the main character is a feeling for a long time. Nastya knows that she must be married, must have children, must be a faithful and devoted wife to her husband. This is her destiny, and she does not see her life differently. When Andrei is in trouble, Nastya makes every effort to help him. The young woman still does not love her husband. But Andrei is her only close person whom she does not want to lose.

The dream of real happiness seems to Nastya especially close after she finds out about her pregnancy. Now she will have a full-fledged family, and she will no longer consider herself a defective woman. But at some point, the main character realizes that this time happiness will pass by. The long-awaited child was conceived at the wrong time. He will bring sorrow instead of joy.

A sense of duty makes Nastya suffer severely. She fulfilled her duty to her husband, but betrayed her homeland. Seeing how funerals are brought to other families, Nastya reproaches herself for the fact that another woman has become a widow instead of her. Her husband is alive only because other people's husbands died. Nastya it seems unfair.

Caught in a hopeless situation, the main character sees the only solution to her problem. However, the author does not want Nastya to be considered a suicide. Trying to justify his heroine, he says that the young woman is just very tired. She sought rest, not death.

Andrey Guskov

Unlike his wife, Andrei is not burdened with a sense of duty. It can be called an irresponsible person. Andrew lives for himself and for himself. He recognizes only his own truth. In the absence of children, the main character, first of all, blames his wife. He considers himself neither a deserter nor a traitor. Andrei ran away from the hospital because they wanted to send him to the front ahead of time. He was just saving his life and was not going to betray anyone. Besides, he's only a peasant, not a warrior. Andrei was not born to kill other people.

Guskov selfishly accepts all the sacrifices of his wife, without even thinking about what suffering he condemns her to with his actions. Having shifted all his problems to the weak, fragile Nastya, Andrey does what he sees fit. The suffering of his wife means nothing to him. She is a woman, her destiny is to endure. Despite the fact that his wife's pregnancy only aggravated the situation, Andrei does not feel any remorse and does not blame himself for having conceived a child in such difficult circumstances. He finally got what he wanted for so long.

main idea

The desire to follow duty may not always be justified. The desire to constantly give away free of charge is no less destructive than the constant desire to unrequitedly accept the sacrifice. Violating the energy balance, both the giver and the taker remain the losers.

Analysis of the work

The life of ordinary Russian people was presented in his story by Valentin Rasputin. "Live and remember" ( summary of this work is hardly able to convey the whole palette of feelings experienced by the characters) - not unique story. Women and men like Nastya and Andrey during the years of the Great Patriotic War there were a lot.

The author does not condemn his heroes, does not pass harsh sentences on them. Nastya refused to hand over her unloved husband to the authorities. She wanted to be happy no matter what. Don't blame Andrew. He was not born to kill and destroy. The mission of a simple peasant is creative work. Andrei does not consider himself a traitor because he always served his homeland in a different way: he cultivated the land, as his ancestors did. Main character I am sure that it was not he who betrayed his homeland, but the homeland betrayed him in some way. He fought for a long time, was wounded and hoped for a vacation during which he could be with his family and heal his wounds. But instead, Andrei will again have to go to the hated war.

The horrors of carnage awaken in man the instinct of self-preservation - one of the most ancient human instincts. The less chance of life a person has, the stronger his desire to stay alive.

Rasputin's story "Live and Remember": a summary

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The concepts of "tradition" and "innovation" are inextricably linked. In art, any innovation is possible only with a deep understanding of what has already been discovered, created by predecessors. Only strong roots allow the tree to grow and bear fruit. The work of Rasputin, as it were, grows out of the work of Dostoevsky and Gorky; our contemporary continues to reflect on the problems that tormented his great teachers. But in his works he seeks to understand how these eternal problems sound today. The story "Live and Remember" is consonant, first of all, with Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment".

Dostoevsky's passionate refutation of that in Raskolnikov that is inhuman and contrary to the human nature of the hero himself is carried out in Crime and Punishment not only through a dispute of "ideas", which corresponds to the socio-philosophical essence of the novel, but also in the clash of the hero's "ideas" with his in kind, when the latter "does not stand up." And it reflects the originality psychological basis novel.

The path of Rasputin's heroes to death is historically determined and logical, but there is already another literary tradition discovered by Gorky, who considered the world not only from the point of view of solving moral and philosophical problems, but, above all, from the point of view of the prospects for socio-historical development. And this not only does not remove, but very often includes the tragic beginning in the Soviet novel and story of the 20th century.

Guskov himself would like to shift the blame to fate, before which the will is powerless. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the word “fate” runs like a red thread through the whole story, to which Guskov clings so. The unwillingness to recognize the need for personal responsibility for one's actions is one of those touches to the portrait that open a wormhole in Guskov's soul and cause his desertion. The writer revealed to us the cause of Guskov's crime, showing this feature of his character. However, Rasputin raises a concrete historical fact to the rank of socio-philosophical generalizations, which brings him closer to such predecessors as Dostoevsky and Gorky. Rasputin could rely on the artistic experience of Dostoevsky. Showing the destruction of the personality of a person who betrayed the interests and ideals of the people, as an irreversible process, without a moral resurrection, Raskolnikov follows the path laid by Gorky.

Here we have come to the most powerful manifestation of the destruction of the personality of a person who has transgressed moral (social) and natural laws, to the destruction by him of nature, its main incentive - the continuation of life on earth.

First of all, this is the killing of a calf in front of a mother cow: the cow “screamed” when Guskov raised an ax over her child. The fall of the hero and the impossibility of a moral resurrection for him become obvious precisely after this highly artistic, amazing plot situation - the murder of a calf.

The idea of ​​the story is impossible to comprehend without the fate of Nastya, who also "transgressed", but in a completely different way. In criticism, the fact of Nastya's suicide has already been interpreted, firstly, as "the highest trial of the deserter Andrei Guskov" and, secondly, as "a trial of herself, her womanish, feminine, human weakness." Nastya has reason to consider herself guilty: she really opposed herself to people.

The story ends with the author’s message that they don’t talk about Guskov, “they don’t remember” - for him “the connection of times has broken up”, he has no future. The author narrates about Nastya as if she were alive (nowhere replacing the name with "body" or "deceased"). “And Nastya was washed ashore on the fourth day ... A farm laborer was sent for Nastya. He brought Nastya back on a boat ... And they betrayed Nastya to the ground among their own ... After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya for a simple wake and wept: it was a pity for Nastya.

With these words, which signify the “connection of times” restored for Nastya (the traditional ending for folklore about the hero’s memory through the ages), V. Rasputin’s work ends, which is a synthesis of a socio-philosophical and socio-psychological story, an original story that inherits best features Russian literature, traditions of Dostoevsky and Gorky.

Things are good. Everything is quiet. The myth of complete peace is destroyed as soon as my eyes involuntarily stop on the second shelf of my grandmother's rack. Undoubtedly, the red book, recently found among the old, read volumes of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, prevents me from falling asleep. The strange thing is that I'm not at all interested in where it came from. On the contrary, my tired mind is disturbed by a completely different question: why did Rasputin call the book “Live and Remember”? This title grabs my attention. “Live and remember” - some secret, vital meaning is hidden here. To whom and why were these words intended? Do not know. That's why I sit down near the window, pick up Rasputin's book and forget myself for long hours, leafing through the pages of this story.

Its main character, Andrei Guskov, before the war was a nice, hard-working guy, an obedient son, and a reliable husband. He was sent to the front in the forty-first year. “I didn’t climb across others, but I didn’t hide behind other people’s backs,” the author says about him. Andrey was not one of the timid - he fought for three years regularly.

In fact, he didn't want to die. And there was also a great desire to see relatives, to meet with his beloved wife Nastena. And it turned out that after a serious wound in the chest, he ends up in a Novosibirsk hospital, from which it is "within a stone's throw" to the house. But the commission does not even give him a short vacation - he immediately sends him to the front. It was then that the soldier makes a rash decision - he tries to "rush" without the permission of his superiors to go home without permission.

Only when he got bogged down in slow military trains did Andrei realize that the case did not smell like a guardhouse for AWOL, but a tribunal for desertion. If the train had been faster, it would have returned on time. And after all, he didn’t shake for “the skin,” but he wanted to see his relatives - maybe for the last time. What turned out his act, which became the choice of a lifetime? And in general, did he have the right to fulfill such, even the most modest, desire - to see his wife? No. And Andrei forgot that you cannot arrange happiness for yourself separately from common destiny people. All the same heavy mental burden fell on Nasteka.

The author notes: "... in the custom of a Russian woman, arrange her life only once and endure everything that falls out in it." And she endures. When a fugitive is announced, she even assumes the guilt of her husband. “Without guilt, but guilty,” says Rasputin. Nastena "took" the cross of Andrei, who still vaguely understands what his decision to return home will turn into. But for this offense he will be maliciously punished by fate. And soon the terrible consequences of apostasy begin to be traced, especially for the person himself. There is an inevitable disintegration, loss of personality. And the punishment of man is in himself. Andrei learned to howl like a wolf from a beast wandering near the hut and thought with malicious vindictiveness: “It will come in handy good people frighten". He adapted to steal fish from other people's holes - and not out of extreme need, but out of a desire to annoy those who, unlike him, live openly, without hiding, without fear. Then he comes to a strange village and kills a calf, never realizing that he did it not only for the sake of meat, but also for the sake of some whim of his own, which settled in it firmly and powerfully.

Thus, ties with what is dear and sacred to everyone are broken: with people, with nature, with respect for other people's work and property. Andrei did not pass the test for humanity, his soul disintegrates, and Nastena turns into a driven creature. Shame, lingering and stinging, withers her conscientious nature. A double life, step by step, selects the simplest and most necessary joys. There is no longer cordiality, simplicity and trust in communicating with her friends, she can now neither speak, nor cry, nor sing along with people. Out of habit, they take her for their own, and she is already a stranger to them, an outsider. There is no joy from love, from motherhood, which she was waiting for, from Victory. It has nothing to do with the great Victory Day. The very last person has, but she doesn’t.” The child also turned into a tragedy. What fate awaits him? How to explain to people its appearance? And not get rid of it? It turns out that Nastya also had stolen love, stolen motherhood, stolen life.

“It is sweet to live, it is terrible to live, it is a shame to live,” Rasputin notes. Tired despair drags Nastena into a swift whirlpool.

And on one of the nights, when she failed to swim across to Andrey, because the fellow villagers, alerted by her pregnancy, began to look after her, she, having heard a chase not far away, tired, tormented, rushes into the water, not saving Andrey, but putting an end to her share. Pure before the world and people Nastena, leaving in the waters of the Angara. With her ability to sacrifice; - by taking upon herself, innocent, the guilt of her husband, she embodies true values. Even the terrible civilized world did not break her, did not embitter her at all. But Andrei did not stand the test of life. His moral principles are crumbling. And now there is no justification for his flight, which he saw in the unborn child. He thought that the born life would replace the ruined one, save him from the painful pricks of conscience for a uselessly burned existence. The death of his wife and unborn child, those who were dear to Andrei, as he explained, justified his desertion, the author of the hero punishes: “Live and remember. !"

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“Andrey Guskov understood: fate turned him

into a dead end, from which there is no way out.

V. Rasputin. "Live and Remember"

One of best books V. Astafiev called the story “Live and Remember” by V. Rasputin about the war, noting its amazing deep tragedy. Published in 1974 in the journal Nash Sovremennik, it was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1977 and very soon received European recognition.

What explains such interest in this story? First of all, because it is about important events human existence.

War... How much has been written about it. Our literature says so much about those who were in the war, who experienced it in "their own skin", that it would seem difficult for a person who has touched this war only on the edge of his fate to say something new, interesting. But this non-involvement of the author in the war turned out to be not a flaw in the story, but an advantage for the writer over those who were there, because Rasputin managed to rise above the “material”. Among the books about the war that “showed” the tragedy of time, about the fate of a person during the war, “Live and Remember” stands out for the depth of the problem, the national character, the philosophical comprehension of the price and meaning of an act that puts a person out of life, out of good human memory.

“Live and remember”... Thinking about the title of the story, you can easily correlate its meaning with the fate of Andrei Guskov, prepared by him. But what about Nastya? Can she be blamed for keeping silent about her husband's terrible secret, keeping it until the last minute and taking it with her forever? The fate of a woman who was preparing to become a mother and was ruined by her husband is tragic.

Let's try to answer these questions.

The Siberian village of Atamanovka, described in the story, was far from the battlefields, but the echo of the war reached here too. Events develop in the last months of the war. An ax and part of the tobacco were lost in the Guskovs' bathhouse. Nastena's first reaction was surprise: “Why are you killing yourself over some kind of piece of iron,” she mentally reproached her father-in-law. But on the same night, a terrible guess came to her, and a few days later she received confirmation: her husband was a deserter. After the hospital, he deserted, afraid of death. And this is not a momentary weakness. Returning to his native place, Andrei behaves like a coward and an egoist. He is afraid to surrender to the authorities, although this could make life easier for his loved ones. What explains Guskov's behavior?

Andrei Guskov is a crippled soul, a victim of his character, his attitude to life, his " bad memory", of his terrible experience, which the war" pushed "into the consciousness. He is especially haunted by memories of the last battle: “a short and terrible battle of iron with iron, where people seem to be of no use, ... a gunner looking into his open belly.” And this memory pushes Guskov not back to the war, but to the house, to the shelter. But Andrey Guskov pays the highest price for this evil memory: it will never continue in anyone; no one will remember him. From that moment on, it doesn't matter what happens to that person. In addition to savagery, decay and complete oblivion, nothing can expect him.

Now let's open the last page of the story: "Leaning her knees on the board, she (Nastena) tilted it lower and lower ... and carefully rolled into the water." So tragically died the main character, a wonderful and bright woman Nastya Guskova. The heroine dies in the middle of the Angara - symbolic image the end of her throwing between two banks, two "truths" that destroy her. material from the site

So why does Nastya still die, although according to all our feelings, likes and dislikes, her husband should die? Selflessness is the main property of the soul of Nastya Guskova. From the very beginning, she dreamed of giving more than receiving - that's why she is a woman. And she could not betray her husband, although she suffers from the position in which he put her: “is it a shame to live when another in your place could live better? How can you look people in the eyes after that, ”Nastena reproaches herself.

People did not condemn Nastya. They buried her “among their own, only slightly from the edge, near the rickety hedge. After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadia's for a wake and wept: it was a pity for Nastya.

This short episode answers the question of whether Nastya Guskova remained in the memory of her fellow villagers. From myself I can add one thing: it is a pity that they will remember her as the wife of a deserter.

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V.G. Rasputin "Live and Remember"

The events described in the story take place in the winter of forty-five, in the last war year, on the banks of the Angara in the village of Atamanovka. The name, it would seem, is loud, and in the recent past even more frightening - Razboinikovo. “... Once upon a time, in the old days, the local peasants did not disdain one quiet and profitable trade: they checked the goldsmiths coming from Lena.” But the inhabitants of the village had long been quiet and harmless and did not hunt for robbery. Against the backdrop of this virgin and wild nature, the main event of the story takes place - the betrayal of Andrei Guskov.

questions raised in the story.

Who is to blame for the moral fall of man? What is a person's path to betrayal? What is the measure of a person's responsibility for his own destiny and the destiny of the Motherland?

The war, as an exceptional circumstance, placed all people, including Guskov, before a "choice" that everyone had to make.

The path to betrayal

War is a severe test for the people. But if in strong people she brought up steadfastness, inflexibility, heroism, then in the hearts of the weak cowardice, cruelty, selfishness, disbelief, despair germinated and began to bear their bitter fruits.

In the image of Andrey Guskov, the hero of the story “Live and Remember”, the soul of a weak person is revealed to us, crippled by the harsh events of the war, as a result of which he became a deserter. How did this man, who honestly defended his homeland from enemies for several years and even earned the respect of his comrades in arms, decide on an act despised by everyone, always and everywhere, regardless of age and nationality?

V. Rasputin shows the way to the betrayal of the hero. Of all those leaving for the front, Guskov experienced this the hardest: “Andrey looked at the village in silence and resentment, for some reason he was ready not to war, but to blame the village for being forced to leave it”. But despite the fact that it is hard for him to leave home, he says goodbye to his family quickly, dryly: “What has to be cut off, must be cut off immediately ...”

Andrei Guskov at first did not intend to desert, he honestly went to the front and was a good fighter and comrade, earning the respect of his friends. But the horrors of the war, the wound sharpened the egoism of this man, who put himself above his comrades, deciding that it was he who needed to survive, be saved, come back alive at all costs.

Knowing that the war was already coming to an end, he tried to survive at any cost. His wish came true, but not quite: he was injured and was sent to the hospital. He thought that a severe wound would free him from further service. Lying in the ward, he already imagined how he would return home, and he was so sure of this that he did not even call his relatives to the hospital to see him. The news that he was again sent to the front struck like a lightning bolt. All his dreams and plans were destroyed in an instant.

The author Valentin Rasputin does not try to justify the desertion of Andrei, but seeks to explain from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved a vacation, wanted to see his wife, but the vacation due to him after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal committed by Andrei Guskov creeps into his soul gradually. At first, he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: "Not today - so tomorrow, not tomorrow - so the day after tomorrow, when the turn turns up." Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the scouts Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he embark on the path of betrayal? At first, Andrei just wants to see his family, with Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in the winter you would not turn around even in three days. Andrei recalled the demonstration execution, when a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village was shot in his presence. Guskov understands that they will not pat him on the head for an AWOL. Thus, unaccounted for circumstances made Guskov's path much longer than he expected, and he decided that this was fate, there was no turning back. In moments of spiritual turmoil, despair and fear of death, Andrei makes a fatal decision for himself - to desert, which turned his life and soul upside down, made him a different person.

Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, for some time, he settled with the mute woman Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally ended up in his native places. However, the hero did not feel joy at the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed a betrayal, Guskov embarked on the bestial path. After some time, the life that he so cherished at the front became not sweet to him. Having committed treason to his homeland, Andrei cannot respect himself. mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax for a minute turn him into a hunted beast.

Forced to hide in the forest from people, Guskov gradually loses all the human, good beginning that was in him. Only anger and indefatigable egoism remain in his heart by the end of the story, he is only worried about his own fate.

Andrei Guskov deserts consciously, for the sake of his life, and Nastya, his wife, forces him to hide, thereby dooming her to live in a lie: “That's what I'll tell you right away, Nastya. No dog must know that I am here. Tell someone I'll kill you. Kill - I have nothing to lose. I have a firm hand on this, it won’t break, ”- with these words he meets his wife after a long separation. And Nastya had no choice but to simply obey him. She was at one with him until her death, although sometimes she was visited by thoughts that it was he who was to blame for her suffering, but not only for her, but also for the suffering of her unborn child, conceived not at all in love, but in a rude impulse, animal passion. This unborn child suffered along with his mother. Andrei did not realize that this child was doomed to live his whole life in disgrace. For Guskov, it was important to fulfill his masculine duty, to leave an heir, and how this child would live on, he was of little concern. The author shows how, having betrayed himself and his people, Guskov inevitably betrays the closest and most understanding person - his wife Nastya, who is ready to share the guilt and shame of her husband, and his unborn child, whom he cruelly dooms to a tragic death.

Nastya understood that both the life of her child and herself were doomed to further shame and suffering. Shielding and protecting her husband, she commits suicide. She decides to rush into the Angara, thereby killing herself and her unborn baby. In all this, of course, Andrey Guskov is to blame. This moment is the punishment that higher power can punish a person who has transgressed all moral laws. Andrei is doomed to a painful life. Nastena's words: "Live and remember," will knock on his inflamed brain until the end of his days.

Why did Guskov become a traitor? The hero himself would like to shift the blame to "rock", before which the "will" is powerless.

It is no coincidence that the word “fate” runs like a red thread through the whole story, to which Guskov clings so. He's not ready. He does not want to be responsible for his actions, for his crime he tries with all his might to hide behind “fate”, “fate”. “This is all war, all of it,” he again began to justify himself and conjure. “Andrey Guskov understood: fate had turned him into a dead end, from which there was no way out. And the fact that there was no way back for him freed Andrei from unnecessary thoughts. The unwillingness to recognize the need for personal responsibility for one's actions is the reason for the appearance of a wormhole in Guskov's soul, which determines his crime (desertion).

War on the pages of the story

The story does not describe battles, deaths on the battlefield, the exploits of Russian soldiers, front-line life. Only life in the rear. And yet - this is precisely the story of the war.

Rasputin explores the deforming influence on a person of a force whose name is war. Without the war, apparently, Guskov would not have succumbed only to the instilled fear of death and would not have reached such a fall. Perhaps, since childhood, the egoism and resentment that have settled in him would have found a way out in some other forms, but not in such an ugly one. If there hadn't been a war, the fate of Nastya's friend, Nadya, who remained at twenty-seven with three children in her arms, would have been different: a funeral came to her husband. Don't be a war... But it was, it was on, people died on it. And he, Guskov, decided that it was possible to live according to other laws than the whole people. And this incommensurable opposition doomed him not only to loneliness among people, but also to an indispensable reciprocal rejection.

The result of the war for the family of Andrei Guskov was three broken lives. But, unfortunately, there were many such families, many of them collapsed.

Telling us about the tragedy of Nastya and Andrei Guskov, Rasputin shows us war as a force that deforms a person’s personality, capable of destroying hopes, extinguishing self-confidence, undermining unstable characters and even breaking the strong. After all, Nastena, unlike Andrei, is an innocent victim, who suffered as a result of the inability to choose between her people and the person with whom she once connected her life. Nastena never cheated on anyone, always remaining true to the moral principles that were laid down in her since childhood, and therefore her death seems even more terrible and tragic.

Rasputin highlights the inhumane nature of war, which brings suffering and misfortune to people, without understanding who is right, who is to blame, who is weak, who is strong.

War and love

Their love and war are two driving forces, which determined the bitter fate of Nastena and the shameful fate of Andrei. Although the characters were initially different - the human Nastya and the cruel Andrey. She is kindness and spiritual nobility itself, he is blatant callousness and selfishness. At first, the war even brought them closer, but no trials endured together can overcome moral incompatibility. After all, love, like any other relationship, is broken by betrayal.

Andrey's feeling for Nastya is rather consumer. He always wants to get something from her - whether it be objects material world(axe, bread, gun) or feelings. It is much more interesting to understand if Nasten loved Andrey? She rushed into marriage, "like into water", in other words, she did not hesitate for a long time. Nastena's love for her husband was built partly on a feeling of gratitude, because he took her, a lonely orphan, to his house, did not let anyone offend. True, her husband's kindness was only enough for a year, and then he even beat her half to death, but Nastena, following the old rule: they agreed - you have to live, patiently carried her cross, getting used to her husband, to family, to a new place.

In part, her attachment to Andrey can be explained by a sense of guilt because they did not have children. Nastena did not think that Andrei could be at fault here. So later, for some reason, she blamed herself for her husband's crime. But in essence, Nastena cannot love anyone other than her husband, because one of the sacred family commandments for her is marital fidelity. Like all women, Nastena was waiting for her husband, eager for him, worried and afraid for him. He also thought about her. If Andrei had been a different person, he would most likely have returned from the army, and they would have lived a normal family life again. Everything went wrong: Andrew returned ahead of time. He returned as a deserter. Traitor. A traitor to the Motherland. In those days, this stigma was indelible. Nastena does not turn away from her husband. She finds the strength in herself to understand him. Such behavior is the only possible form of existence for her. She helps Andrei, because it is natural for her to feel sorry, give and sympathize. She no longer remembers the bad things that overshadowed their pre-war family life. She knows only one thing - her husband is in big trouble, he must be pitied and saved. And she saves as best she can. Fate brought them together again and, as a huge ordeal, sent them a child.

The child should be sent as a reward, as the greatest happiness. How once Nastena dreamed of him! Now the child - the fruit of the love of his parents - is a burden, a sin, although he was conceived in a legal marriage. And again Andrei thinks only of himself: "We don't care about him." He says "we", but really "spit" only to him. Nastena cannot be as indifferent to this event. For Andrei, the main thing is that a child is born, the race continues. He does not think at this moment about Nastya, who will have to endure shame and humiliation. Such is the extent of his love for his wife. Of course, it cannot be denied that Guskov is attached to Nastya. Sometimes even he has moments of tenderness and enlightenment, when he thinks with horror about what he is doing, into what abyss he is pushing his wife.

Their love was not the kind that is written about in novels. This is the usual relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife. The war revealed both Nastya's devotion to her husband and Guskov's consumerist attitude towards his wife. The war also destroyed this family, like the family of Nadya Berezkina and thousands of other families. Although someone still managed to maintain their relationship, like Lisa and Maxim Voloshin, And Lisa could walk with her head held high. And the Guskovs, even if they had saved their family, would never have been able to raise their eyes in shame, because in love and in war one must be honest. Andrew couldn't be honest. This determined the difficult fate of Nastena. So peculiarly Rasputin solves the theme of love and war.

The meaning of the name. The title of the story is connected with the statement of V. Astafiev: “Live and remember, man, in trouble, in the turmoil, in the most difficult days and trials: your place is with your people; any apostasy, caused by your weakness, or foolishness, turns into even greater grief for your Motherland and people, and therefore for you.

Andrey Guskov is least of all worried about the fact that he betrayed his land, his Motherland, abandoned his comrades in arms in a difficult moment, depriving, according to Rasputin, his life of the highest meaning. Hence the moral degradation of Guskov, his savagery. Having left no offspring and betraying everything dear that he had, he is doomed to oblivion and loneliness, no one will remember him kind word because cowardice combined with cruelty has always been condemned. A completely different Nastena appears before us, who did not want to leave her husband in trouble, voluntarily shared the blame with him, assumed responsibility for someone else's betrayal. Helping Andrei, she does not justify either him or herself before the human court, because she believes that betrayal has no forgiveness. Nastya's heart is torn to pieces: on the one hand, she considers herself not entitled to leave the person with whom she once connected her life in difficult times. On the other hand, she suffers endlessly, deceiving people, keeping her terrible secret and therefore suddenly feeling lonely, cut off from the people.

In a heavy conversation on this topic, an important symbolically image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, by right hand Hangars. And now two: people and me. It is impossible to reduce them: it is necessary that the Angara dry up", - says Andrey Nastene.

During the conversation, it turns out that once the heroes had the same dream: Nastena, in a girl's form, comes to Andrei, who lies near the birches and calls him, telling that she was tormented with the children.

The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful insolubility of the situation that Nastena found herself in.

The heroine finds the strength to sacrifice her happiness, peace, her life for the sake of her husband. But realizing that by doing so she breaks all ties between herself and the people, Nastena cannot survive this and tragically dies.

And yet, the highest justice triumphs at the end of the story, because people understood and did not condemn Nastena's actions. Guskov, on the other hand, does not cause anything but contempt and disgust, since "a person who has stepped onto the path of betrayal at least once, goes along it to the end."

Andrey Guskov pays the highest price: there will be no continuation of it; no one will ever understand him the way Nastena does. From this moment on, it doesn’t matter how he, having heard the noise on the river and prepared to hide, will live on: his days are numbered, and he will spend them like before, like an animal. Maybe, being already caught, he will even howl like a wolf in despair. Guskov must die, and Nastena dies. This means that the deserter dies twice, and now forever.

... In all of Atamanovka there was not a single person who would simply feel sorry for Nastena. Only before his death, Nastena hears the cry of Maxim Vologzhin: “Nastena, don’t you dare!” Maxim - one of the first front-line soldiers who knew what death is, understands that life is the greatest value. After Nastena's body was found, she was buried not in the cemetery of the drowned, because "the women did not give it", but buried among their own, but from the edge.

The story ends with the author's message, from which it is clear that they do not talk about Guskov, do not "remember" - for him "the connection of times has broken up", he has no future. The author speaks of the drowned Nastya as if she were alive (nowhere replacing her name with the word "deceased"): “After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya’s for a simple wake and wept: it was a pity for Nasten”. With these words, which signify the “connection of times” restored for Nastena (the traditional ending for folklore is about the hero’s memory through the ages), V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember” ends.

The title of the book is "Live and Remember". These words tell us that everything that is written on the pages of the book should become a lesson in the life of every person. Live and remember that in life there is betrayal, meanness, human fall, the test of love with this blow. Live and remember that you cannot go against conscience and that in moments of difficult trials you must be with the people. The call “Live and remember” is addressed to all of us: a person is responsible for his actions!

Rasputin is a writer of the post-war generation, his childhood fell on the war, but the war became one of those exceptional trials that leave a mark forever. In the story "Live and Remember" Rasputin presented the story of a deserter and his wife.

The image of Nastya is the moral center of the story, a pure and beautiful female character, placed in an insoluble, truly tragic position. Psychologically innovative was the type of Andrei Guskov, a carefully studied break in his soul. Andrei's memories of how he went to the front are important. In them is the beginning of Guskov's spiritual corruption, which led to a terrible end. Unkind feelings possess him: "anger, loneliness, resentment, the same cold, gloomy and haunting fear." And on the village, leaving it, Andrei looked "silently and resentfully, for some reason he was no longer ready to war, but to blame the village for being forced to leave it." His reaction takes a seemingly absurd turn: “An involuntary resentment at everything that remained in place, from which he was torn off and for which he had to fight ...” He was “offended” even by Angara, which flowed so “calmly and indifferently to him."

Andrei is sweetly painfully focused on his suffering "I". Everyone “rides noisily, in a horde, surrendering with might and main to bitter fun, knowing full well that these are the last free and safe days. Andrey kept to himself…” Fear is the second of the prevailing feelings, fear for one's life. But of the three experiences that tormented him - fear, anger and resentment - the last one turned out to be the most pernicious. At the front, he overcame his fear, whether you like it or not, he fought like everyone else, it was impossible there otherwise, it worked " reasonable selfishness otherwise you will destroy yourself and others. But when, at the end of the war, with a severe wound, he ended up in the hospital and was already completely convinced that he would either be allowed to go home at all, or at least on leave, but this did not happen, and he was sent to the front, these feelings rose in him again with uncontrollable force. . Again, resentment at circumstances, at everything and everyone, anger is already a consequence of resentment, its fierce form.

In the course of the story, the factors that shaped the character of Andrei are revealed. Only towards the middle of the story, when Andrey, stealthily, goes out early in the morning to his native village, we learn some important details about his parents. It turns out that the touchy, malicious inclination of his nature also comes from his mother, from the complexities of the people's fate during the years of split and struggle. Andrey's mother, who brought with her to Atamanovka from near Bratsk a special clattering, hissing reprimand, was laughed at all her life, "she was angry and could not hide her anger, and therefore shunned people, tried to remain alone." The same tendency to loneliness, to alienation from people - and her son. Besides, in civil war they exterminated her entire family: father, mother, three brothers, and the youngest of them, who served with Kolchak, was hiding from revolutionary justice in their underground. It is not for nothing that Rasputin settles the Guskov family in the village of Atamanovka, formerly Razboinikovo, whose inhabitants in the old days became famous for robbing “gold dealers coming from Lena”.

Andrei and Nastena are two primordially opposite types of attitude to life. If Andrei has accounts for the world, people, fate, then Nastena has love, a willingness to do good and give herself (“... moreover, from the very beginning, Nasten dreamed of giving more than receiving”). The circumstances of her life were harder than those of Andrey: the family from the Upper Angara that died out of hunger, the orphan childhood of a beggar, deprivation, humiliation, but they not only did not harden her character, but, on the contrary, she came out of all these ordeals even more spiritually, more gratifying for people. Andrey is inclined to relieve himself of responsibility, to put everything on fate, the power of circumstances independent of him: “Fate ... you won’t escape ... it was she who removed me from the war and sent me here.” At the same time, one of his main motives for a certain choice and action is a painful dissatisfaction with his lot, the desire to snatch a better piece for himself. In Nastya, the absence of any envy, the wise acceptance of one’s share, one’s happiness, that only prepared part that must be honestly and worthily demolished, are especially distinguished: so many things would not have fallen on her at once.

Andrei directly expresses his conviction that on earth "even the weak, even the strong have one hope - you yourself, no one else." Andrei understands the value of just life, his own and his family, he is concerned about the safety of the family. When hope appeared, and then the certainty that he could finally have a child, that he would biologically grow further, this joyfully shakes the depths of his being, this in his eyes can justify all the terrible things that he doomed himself to. His only shrine is his own house, he is more difficult than others to break away from him, and to him he is drawn to oblivion of danger, honor and duty: at least once again to see, and with him - his parents, his wife.

The tragedies of Nastena and Andrei are different. Andrei has already made his fatal choice: in the war, in a position where a person does not belong to himself, to his personal desires and impulses, he took and decided to live of his own free will. By this, he irreparably separated from the world of people, became lonely, "naked", just a man in the face of an inevitable end. A man driven into a dead end and living for some time in his space - this is the situation of the hero of the story. Nastena, throughout the story, is in a state of impossibility of a final choice, she is in a conflict tearing her apart. Andrey himself accurately determined their complete incompatibility: “You had only one side: people. And now two: people and me. It is impossible to reduce them: it is necessary that the Angara dry up. So, on the one hand, Nastena has her village, a small community, behind which stands a large Motherland, the world of people, their values, the concept of good and evil, which she shares with her whole being; on the other hand, her husband, with whom, according to the same folk ideas rooted in her, she constitutes an inseparable physical and moral unit. And the husband took it and fell out of the general correct life, became a criminal and an outcast, and even at the highest measure of guilt. But to separate from the one who trusted her loved one at the moment of trials, even if his sin is unbearably great, she cannot. Moreover, she also feels her share of guilt in the criminal turn of her husband's life. She believed and was afraid that she lived wrongly, for herself, thought about herself and waited for him only for herself. Her conscience is sensitive and intelligent. Nastya has access to some special, almost “telepathic” opportunities to communicate with a loved one, therefore, her understanding of the mutual interweaving of destinies and her responsibility are especially deep. She tells Andrey how she used to talk to him every night before going to bed and didn't get up in the morning before introducing him. And he will not just imagine, but with some kind of clairvoyant ability he will jump over the distances separating them and, as it were, see him with his own eyes.

Nastena has the ability to see in people, first of all, their good side, thereby strengthening the rudiments of goodness in herself and those around her. In heartfelt conversations with Andrei, plunging into memories of the past, she extracts from there good, gratifying, loving: moments of tenderness, mutual understanding, protection by her husband. She doesn't even want to remember that he once raised his hand to her. The ray of such an attitude - and it is the only one - not only highlights the best in Andrey, but allows him to warm up and splash out. It is then that a conscience awakens in him, a sense of guilt intensifies, he truly feels like a criminal. In the continuous internal struggle in Andrey of two people, two opposite forces - repentance, self-condemnation and anger, the perverted voluptuousness of the final fall - only under the influence of Nastena begins to intensify and for some time prevail better side. Chapters 10-11 - the culmination in the mutual disclosure of the spiritual depths of Andrei and Nastya. It’s not for nothing that the pinnacle of Guskov’s flour: “Lord, what have I done ?!”

Nastena can no longer rush about, “neither decide in favor of the personal, nor endure his guilt before others ...” This is the moral purity and feat of Nastena. When she passes away, she takes with her her husband's last hope for the "memory of blood" that will last in the child. This is the only punishment available to her soul, soft, loving, not tolerating violence against another, punishment to Andrei, punishment carried out subconsciously, but immutably, as if on behalf of everyone. And the story ends with a conciliatory note: the village did not reject Nastya from itself, left pity and memory in its circle.

Two stages can be traced in the history of Andrei: the first - while he was still associated with Nastena. While it was winter, contact was made on the ice through the Angara, and Guskov himself could observe the village, his home, even quietly visited the bathhouse. And when the rivers began to free themselves from ice and the boat crossing had not yet been established, Andrey was completely cut off from the only human soul that “gave him to breathe”. While there was a normal, peaceful life or at the front, he was somehow involved in business, human communication and attitude, through Nasten, Andrei at least to a small extent remained involved in the world of people. And here he was completely alone, face to face with himself, nature, the end, death. Like a hunted animal, Andrei is drawn to all sorts of secluded places, he maniacally picks mouse holes, small holes that are useless for shelter. Guskov becomes more and more wild, his consciousness begins to unravel like a rotten fabric, strange lapses in memory begin.

Actually, Rasputin does not give the very end to Andrei, it no longer matters, we only learn that, having heard a noise on the river (the moment of Nastena's suicide), he hastily runs to one of the distant shelters he found. In later editions, Rasputin even films this episode.

The protest against the war runs throughout the story. Andrey Guskov is a crippled soul, a victim of his character, his attitude to life, his choice, which ruined his wife, his child, and himself. But he is also a victim, a miserable victim of war. A disastrous dead end, which Andrei doomed himself to, a terrible negative experience, designed to teach and warn.

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