Moral issues of M. Gorky's play “At the Depths. Dream and reality: arguments from the play “At the Lower Depths” by M. Gorky Arguments at the Gorky Lower Depths

17.02.2021

Moral issues of M. Gorky's play “At the Depths”

Morality is an eternal life value. A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov spoke about it in their works. M. Gorky also did not ignore moral issues in the socio-philosophical play “At the Lower Depths”. As soon as it appeared, this play was immediately staged at the Moscow Art Theater and translated into many European languages. Performances based on Gorky's play are still popular in different countries.

The playwright’s focus in the play “At the Bottom” was the consciousness, attitude, and inner world of people thrown to the bottom of life as a result of deep social processes. The reader is presented with the images of tramps, poor inhabitants of the shelter in their entirety. The poverty and overcrowding in which they live gives rise to constant quarrels, fights, and infighting between them. And everyone tries to hit the other harder, to say a more offensive word, to touch a nerve. The night shelters have no pity for each other, they do not show living human sympathy. People “at the bottom” lose their human appearance, forget shame and conscience. They violate moral standards and violate moral laws.

The prostitute Nastya, who dreams of great and pure love, is tormented by her neighbors in the rooming house with ridicule. “Hey, you fatal love! Wake up!” - they shout to her. Nastya has no relatives or friends. She is alone in the whole world. Not going out means for her to die of hunger. To stop believing in romantic love means to lose the meaning of life. It is not sympathy for the trampled girl’s fate and honor that sounds in the words of the night shelters, but evil, cruel irony. Sitting in their “cave”, in their “prison”, they hardened their hearts, lost the ability to sympathize and support each other.

The night shelters are deaf and to the grief of dying Anna, the great “patient” and unfortunate woman, who saw nothing but beatings and insults in her life. They reproach her husband Kleshch: “Your wife has withered away from your villainy,” and immediately throw at Anna, exhausted by suffering: “Noise is no hindrance to death!” The tick actually bullied Anna all her life, and even now he is indifferent to her misfortune. The embittered Tick is waiting for his wife to die, hoping to finally get out of the shelter and start a new happy life without Anna the burden.

Kvashnya also looked forward to the death of her husband with great impatience. “When my dear hubby died... I sat there all day with joy: I sat and still couldn’t believe my happiness,” she admits. Her husband beat her for eight years, and she hardened her soul towards him and began to hate the person closest to him, in fact. “You can’t beat anyone in vain... they beat you for the sake of order,” comments the stupid servant of the law Medvedev, who fully tolerates “reasonable” violence.

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

Vaska Pepel, Vasilisa's lover, is a thief. And he is not a first-generation thief, although it is Vasilisa who accuses Ash of inciting theft. He steals other people's property, and Kostyleva happily buys it from Vaska.

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

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

The night shelters have lost their own names, now they call each other by nicknames that have stuck forever, and the former artist Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky does not even have that. The presence of nicknames also reveals in the characters indifference and indifference to each other’s fate and personality. The appearance of Luka stirred up life in the shelter. He is a smart, subtle psychologist. Outwardly, the former country caretaker does not influence the lives of the night shelters in any way, but in their minds hard work begins. The wanderer who came from out of nowhere immediately finds himself in the center of their attention. In each of the heroes who have lost themselves, Luke necessarily sees the bright sides of the personality. The crafty old man finds the key and a simple approach to each of the shelters. They, in turn, unexpectedly discover in themselves the ability to talk about a new and better life. An actor, for example, talks about creativity and thinks about returning to the stage.

Luka, unlike the Kostylevs and even the homeless shelters themselves, refuses to see the tramps as swindlers. “I respect swindlers too, in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: they’re all black, they all jump,” he says calmly. The old man is guided by the belief that a person is naturally good, and negative social circumstances prevent him from remaining that way, making him bad and imperfect. Luke is unselfish; with his preaching he strives to reach the hearts of the night shelters, to awaken the best, hidden sides of their personality. He sincerely wishes them well and happiness, suggests ways out of the crisis, and gives them faith in achieving a new, better life.

After the old man disappears, he is reproached for giving false hope, promising a lot and beautifully, but what he promised did not come true. But the whole point is not that Luke did not bring the night shelters out of the bottom of life, but in the weakness and spinelessness of the heroes, in their inability, inability and unwillingness to overcome life’s circumstances. The main accusation is not against Luke, but against the weak-willedness of the heroes.

A big moral problem is, undoubtedly, the attitude of society towards such people who inhabited Kostylev’s shelter, indifference to their fates, losses, to their personality.

In the play “At the Lower Depths,” Gorky appears as a humanist writer who raised the most pressing moral problems to the highest notes.

Theme of love and hate

In his work “At the Lower Depths,” M. Gorky examines various topics, but I would like to say a few words on the topic of love and hate. Is there a place for such a holy feeling as love in a flophouse? The theme of hatred is presented through Kostylev and his wife, Vasilisa. Their family life was unsuccessful. The marriage was concluded not out of love, but out of convenience.

This situation was standard for the realities of that time. The husband reproaches the heroine for her poverty, insults her, and beats her. Vasilisa is cheating on her husband, Kostylev knows about her lover, but does not take serious action, treats this condescendingly, because she believes that this is a fleeting intrigue and Vasilisa will soon leave Ash. But it turns out the other way around: Ash is tired of the heroine and prefers Natasha to her. Vasilisa tries to persuade her lover to kill her husband, promising to pay for the crime. We can conclude that there is no place for pure feeling at the bottom of life. Base vices live here, the inhabitants of the shelter are not able to experience a feeling of compassion, love for their neighbor.

Updated: 2017-10-26

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M. Gorky's play “At the Depths” touches on a whole range of social problems of the beginning of the last century. The topics raised by the author remain relevant today. The plot centers on a dispute about a person, a contrast between worldviews, and the problem of truth and lies.

The heroes of the work are inhabitants of a city shelter who find themselves left behind in life for various reasons. The characters are mostly people broken by circumstances who have lost their moral guidelines.

At the same time, every inhabitant of the “bottom” lives a dream that has nothing

common with reality.

With the help of psychologisms, the author reveals the characters’ characters and their dreams of a decent life. For example, young Nastya dreams of pure love, but the existing realities do not correspond to the girl’s dream. The book “Fatal Love” is an important detail in Nastya’s image; it is designed to support her dreams.

An interesting fact is that not all characters have first names or surnames; some are represented only by nicknames. I think that by this Gorky shows the degree of doom of the heroes. Each of them in the past experienced their own personal social conflict, as a result of which they found themselves in a miserable situation. For example, the drunken Actor once upon a time shone on stage, the audience knew him as Sverchkov-Zadunaisky. We learn about this only from the hero’s own memories; now he only has a nickname, reminiscent of his former life. His dream is to go to a hospital, and then to go on stage again. But, alas, his dreams are also not destined to come true, since reality is much harsher than dreams.

Any inhabitant of the shelter wishes for a better life, but at the same time does absolutely nothing to correct the situation. It is much easier to listen to the empty words of the wanderer Luke, instilling hope for the realization of fantasies. Its reassuring truth is contained in one phrase: “What you believe is what you believe.” But a formula of hope that is not backed up by action is disastrous for most of the inhabitants of the shelter. For example, when the Actor learned about the absence of a free hospital for alcoholics, he hanged himself in a vacant lot. Luke's parable about the righteous land gave him false hope and he repeated the fate of the mythological hero...

Thus, the author shows that even the brightest innermost dreams, if inactive, are forever doomed to remain so, since the cruel reality is much stronger... People find themselves at the bottom not only because of circumstances, but also because of their own weakness. Unfortunately, even a century later, Gorky’s play is still relevant.