"Wild Landowner" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.

Appearing simultaneously with “The Tale of How...”, the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” (1869) reflected the post-reform situation of temporarily obliged peasants. Its beginning resembles the introductory part of “The Tale...”. In the magazine version, the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” also had a subtitle: “Written from the words of the landowner Svet-lookov.” The fairy-tale beginning in it, just as in the “Tale,” is replaced by a statement about the “stupidity” of the landowner (compare with the “frivolity” of the generals). If the generals read the Moskovskie Vedomosti, then the landowner read the newspaper Vest. In a comic form, with the help of hyperbole, the real relationship between the landowner and peasants in post-reform Russia is depicted. The liberation of the peasants looks only like a fiction, the landowner “reduced... them so that there is nowhere to stick their nose.” But this is not enough for him, he calls on the Almighty to deliver him from the peasants. The landowner gets what he wants, but not because God fulfills his request, but because He heard the prayer of the men and freed them from the landowner.

The landowner soon becomes tired of loneliness. Using the fairy tale technique of triple repetition, Shchedrin depicts the meetings of the fairy tale hero with the actor Sadovsky (the intersection of real and fantastic time), four generals and a police captain. The landowner tells all of them about the metamorphoses that are happening to him, and everyone calls him stupid. Shchedrin ironically describes the landowner's thoughts about whether his “inflexibility” is, in fact, “stupidity and madness.” But the hero is not destined to receive an answer to this question; the process of his degradation is already irreversible.

At first he helplessly scares the mouse, then he grows hair from head to toe, begins to walk on all fours, loses the ability to speak clearly, and makes friends with the bear. Using exaggeration, intertwining real facts and fantastic situations, Shchedrin creates a grotesque image. The life of the landowner, his behavior is implausible, while his social function (serf owner, former owner of the peasants) is quite real. The grotesque in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” helps convey the inhumanity and unnaturalness of what is happening. And if the men, “resettled” in their place of residence, painlessly return to their usual way of life, then the landowner now “yearns for his former life in the forests.” Shchedrin reminds the reader that his hero is “alive to this day.” Consequently, the system of relationships between the landowner and the people, which was the object of Shchedrin’s satirical depiction, was alive.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in his fairy tales remarkably revealed the basic properties of the fairy tale as a folk genre and, skillfully using metaphors, hyperboles, and the sharpness of the grotesque, showed the fairy tale as a satirical genre.

In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the author depicted the real life of a landowner. There is a beginning here in which you may not notice anything satirical or grotesque - the landowner is afraid that the peasant will “take all his goods.” Perhaps this is confirmation that the main idea of ​​the fairy tale is taken from reality. Saltykov-Shchedrin simply turns reality into a fairy tale by adding grotesque turns of phrase, satirical hyperbole, and fantastic episodes to reality. With sharp satire, he shows that the landowner cannot live without the peasants, although he shows this by describing the life of the landowner without the peasants.

The tale also talks about the landowner's activities. He played grand solitaire, dreamed about his future deeds and how he would grow a fertile garden without a man, what kind of cars he would order from England, how he would become a minister...

But all these were just dreams. In fact, he couldn’t do anything without the man, he just went wild.

Saltykov-Shchedrin also uses fairy-tale elements: three times the actor Sadovsky, the generals, and the police captain come to the landowner. The fantastic episode of the disappearance of the men and the friendship of the landowner with the bear are shown in a similar way. The author gives the bear the ability to speak.

Fairy tales have firmly taken a place in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The satirist used the genre beloved by the people in order to attract more readers to the problems he raised. In such an original and at the same time understandable way, the author was able to say more about Russian society of the late 19th century than historians of this period did.

Saltykov-Shchedrin, by his own admission, creates fairy tales for adults that correspond in mental development to a child. The author wants to open the eyes of such people. In fact, such tales are accessible to anyone, even those not accustomed to reading. Thus, they are very dangerous to those whom Saltykov-Shchedrin ridicules in them.

The main problem raised in Shchedrin's tales is the relationship between masters and slaves. The author attacks tsarist Russia with satire. In fairy tales, the reader encounters images of those who are used to commanding and those who are in command of these commands.

The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” ridicules the entire social system of Russia at that time, built on exploitation and complete oppression of the common people. Preserving the style of Russian folk tales, Shchedrin, through allegory, spoke about the real events of that period: a landowner, a hereditary nobleman, lives on one estate; he is stupid and lazy, his existence comes down to preserving the beauty of his body, and the serfs do the rest for him. The landowner does not tolerate the spirit that comes from his slaves, and getting rid of this hateful smell was the only dream of the landowner. When one day this stench disappears along with all the peasants, the unlucky landowner who has not known life gradually turns into an animal and, finally going wild, runs away into the forest.

This funny and fantastic plot of the fairy tale hides the true situation in the country. The landowners transferred all problems from managing the estate to washing dishes and undressing before bed to their peasants. They themselves led an idle existence, had absolutely no knowledge of life, and any problem they faced one on one could destroy them.
Hence the name of the fairy tale. “Wild” in this case means “far from life”, not adapted to it. And this understanding of savagery in fairy tales grows with the development of the plot.

The reader learns that the landowner hates the peasants and sees nothing wrong with using physical force against their misdeeds. And the apogee of savagery is the gradual transformation of the landowner into an animal: he is all overgrown with hair, his nails have grown and become like claws, he stopped blowing his nose and began to walk on all fours and talk. The physiological need for food forces him to hunt hares.

Despite his terrible appearance, the landowner, who found himself in new conditions, lost all his severity. His savagery is pitiful. After all, in fact, he is helpless like a small child.

Thanks to the gradation of human savagery shown in the fairy tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin was able to show the reader the complete degradation of man, the withering away of all his human qualities, hinting from time to time that the image of this landowner is a collective image of the owners of most Russian estates of that time.

Saltykov was a moralist. Having shown the horror of the fall of man, he hoped that he would be understood, and soon there would be a restoration of human morality, a rise in spirituality, and a time of harmony would come in the lives of all segments of the population.

Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire on the landed nobility occupies a significant place in Russian literature of the nineteenth century. Vivid images and bold decisions allowed the writer to wittily but mercilessly brand the reactionary nobility, which had exhausted its usefulness for Russia and had become its ballast. His fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is a classic of Russian satire and one of the most famous creations of Saltykov-Shchedrin on the theme of the peasant question in Russia, in which he revealed the relationship between two classes: the landed nobility and the peasantry. The many-wise Litrekon offers you an analysis of the work.

The history of writing the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” boasts interesting facts about the work:

1. Like many other works, “The Wild Landowner” was inspired by the writer’s short-term exile to the Vyatka region, where he could observe the life of people in the Russian province in its entirety.
2. The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” was written in 1869 as a response to disappointment in the peasant reform of the year sixty-five, which did not solve the land issue. In this situation, Saltykov-Shchedrin returned to those images that, it would seem, had already disappeared from everyday life, but in fact existed on the territory of Russia for a long time.
3. The author managed to publish his work in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski thanks to the media editor Nikolai Nekrasov. He also held oppositional views on the fate of Russia. To publish daring literary works, he bribed censors with hunting trips and sumptuous dinners. At the cost of a bribe, he managed to publish the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner.”

Direction and genre

The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” was created within the framework of the direction. Despite some fantastic assumptions, the writer set as his goal a naturalistic depiction of the surrounding reality. The images he created are quite realistic, although somewhat exaggerated. The reader can believe that the characters described in this tale could actually exist.

The genre of “The Wild Landowner” can be defined as a satirical fairy tale. The plot is based on a fantastic assumption, designed to disguise and soften the harsh ridicule of the nobility, characteristic of all satirical works. The fairy-tale atmosphere is emphasized by phrases characteristic of folklore, such as “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state” and “once upon a time.”

Table: Features of a fairy tale in the work “The Wild Landowner”

Composition

1. Plot: acquaintance with the landowner and his hostility towards the peasants;
2. Climax: disappearance of peasants;
3. Development of action: degradation of a nobleman;
4. Denouement: the return of the master to the fold of civilization and the return of slaves.

The point: what is the fairy tale about?

The plot tells us about a certain rich landowner who suffered from irrational hatred of the peasants and prayed to God that all commoners would disappear from his domain.

Having decided to eliminate the peasants on his own, the landowner began to drive his peasants out of the world through numerous fines and oppression. When they prayed to God for deliverance, he heeded their grief and took all the peasants from the landowner’s possessions.

The hero's initial joy was somewhat shaken by the cold reaction of those around him, who called him a fool. There was no one left to manage the house, clean the estate, or even wash the master himself. However, he did not want to admit his mistake, considering his struggle with the common people a manifestation of firmness and fortitude and dreaming of purchasing steam engines from England to replace the men.

After some time, the landowner's possessions fall into decay and desolation, and the main character himself finally loses his human appearance. He grows hair, begins to walk on all fours, eats raw meat, becomes friends with a bear, and even loses the ability to speak human language.

In the end, the provincial authorities decide to stop this madness, find the missing men and return them to the landowner's possessions. The landowner himself was eventually captured and forcibly returned to the fold of civilization, but until the end of his days he never learned to speak again, greatly yearning for his old life in the forest.

The main characters and their characteristics

The system of images in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is described by the Many-Wise Litrecon in table format:

heroes of the fairy tale "wild landowner"	characteristic
landowner	an arrogant, but rude and simple-minded nobleman. an unimaginably stupid person, unable to even understand what his wealth rests on. despises the common people and wishes them only harm. a person who is not independent and not adapted to real life. incapable of any physical labor or economic activity. without care and service from her men, she quickly loses her human appearance. The life of an animal seems to him much preferable to the life of a person.
guys	the Orthodox Russian peasantry, providing a comfortable existence for the tyrant landowner. economic people who, in a matter of days, eliminated all the damage caused by the master to the household. at the same time, they are dependent and inert, they prefer to blindly obey their superiors, and instead of fighting injustice, turn to God for help.

Topics

The theme of the book “The Wild Landowner” does not seem archaic to us. All the main topics are still relevant:

1. People- simple Russian peasants in the work are presented as talented and economic people, but at the same time they are deprived of any willpower and self-respect, becoming mute slaves of a system that sees them only as living tools.
2. Motherland– Saltykov-Shchedrin sees enormous potential in Russia and the Russian people, which, however, is limited by landlord and state oppression, as well as the inertia of the peasantry, which silently endures all injustices.
3. Contrasting the nobility with the peasantry- in the person of the peasants the entire Russian peasantry is represented, which is endowed with skill and intelligence, but deprived of rights and will, and therefore is forced to carry the privileged noble minority, represented in the image of a stupid, insignificant and evil landowner.
4. Life and customs of Russia- in his fairy tale, the writer makes fun of the way of life and customs that reigned in Russia during his time. The huge and clumsy bureaucratic apparatus that allowed such an absurd situation to happen, social inequality and noble oppression - all this was a sad everyday occurrence for the Russian Empire even after the abolition of serfdom.
5. Folklore motives– in the text of the fairy tale there are often verbal expressions characteristic of folk art, such as “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state”, “once upon a time”, “he looked at the light and rejoiced”. All this is necessary in order to emphasize the deep nationality of this work.

Problems

The problematic of the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is a product of the state system in Russia of that period. Officials solved personal, not public problems, so the common people were left to themselves and their tormentors (if the section needs additions, write about it to the Many-Wise Litrekon):

1. Social inequality- in his fairy tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin perfectly depicted the gap between the peasant and noble classes, which consisted not only in material wealth, but also in worldview. The peasants had a “servile mentality” and were hostages of their long-suffering and ignorance. Their masters were just as stupid and even stupider, but bolder and more cunning.
2. Serfdom– the work reflects the entire absurdity of serfdom, considered by Saltykov-Shchedrin, as a terrible abomination in the history of the Russian people, not only causing enormous harm to the economy of the Russian Empire and breeding poverty, but also disfiguring human souls, making them faceless slaves of the system.
3. Ignorance of the ruling class- describing the thoughts of a stupid landowner, the writer thereby emphasizes the insignificance of the landowner nobility, its limitations and ignorance. Therefore, the situation seems even more unfair that it is people like the wild landowner who determine the fate of the Russian Empire and its people.

Meaning

The landowner's peasants personify the entire Russian peasantry, which is endowed with intelligence and talents, but is forced to eke out a slave existence due to its own inertia and inability to realize its interests and fight for them.

The main idea of ​​the author of the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is that the enslaving dependence of the peasants on the nobles harms both sides: if ordinary people turn into stupid slaves and spend their lives in the darkness of ignorance, then the aristocrats also degrade and become pests for their own country.

What does it teach?

Using the example of the landowner, Saltykov-Shchedrin condemns ignorance, rudeness and tyranny. The writer defends the idea of ​​equality, believing that it is not origin or rank that determines a person, but his own skills and real achievements. The moral of the tale brings us closer to the ideal of Peter's times, when a simple person could achieve success and high status through work and knowledge.

The writer praises the thriftiness and hard work of the common people. He is trying to convey to the reader the idea of ​​how important it is to respect oneself, to be aware of one’s interests, and not to blindly obey the state machine. A person who does not fight for his rights, but simply goes with the flow, will remain a powerless slave. This is the conclusion from the work “The Wild Landowner”.

Means of expression

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin built the entire tale on hyperbole and absurdity. So, the landowner became friends with the bear, grew bigger and began to live in the forest, like a wild animal. Of course, the writer exaggerated, and in reality this could not have happened, but the genre of the book gave him a lot of room for imagination.

Another important artistic device is the antithesis: the peasants are hardworking, kind and modest, but the landowner is lazy, angry and arrogant, although he has absolutely nothing to be proud of.

artistic means in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner”

Criticism

Contemporaries greeted The Wild Landowner as warmly as other works by Saltykov-Shchedrin that were published in the same period. Already during his lifetime, the writer stood on the same level as such a classic as Turgenev.

Nowadays, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire allows us to understand how the Russian intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century thought and lived.

The tale “The Wild Landowner” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, like his other satirical works, is intended for an adult audience. It was first published in the progressive literary magazine Otechestvennye zapiski in 1869, when it was headed by editor-publisher Nikolai Nekrasov, a friend and like-minded person of the writer.

Fairytale plot

The small work took up several pages of the magazine. The tale tells of a stupid landowner who pestered the peasants living on his land because of their "slave smell". The peasants disappear, and he remains the only occupant on his estate. The inability to take care of oneself and run a household leads first to impoverishment, and later to savagery and complete loss of sanity.

A madman hunts hares, which he eats alive, and talks to a bear. The situation reaches the provincial authorities, who order the peasants to be returned, the wild ones to be caught and left under the supervision of the servant.

Literary devices and images used

The work was typical of the author, who used satire and metaphorical devices to convey his ideas to the general public. The cheerful style, lively dialogues written in everyday colloquial language, cynical humor attracted readers with the ease of presentation. The allegorical images were thought-provoking and were extremely understandable both for serious subscribers of the magazine and for young cadets and young ladies.

Despite the fairy-tale narrative, Saltykov-Shchedrin directly mentions several times the real newspaper “Vest”, with whose editorial policy he did not agree. The author makes it the main reason for the protagonist's insanity. Using a satirical technique helps to ridicule a competitor and at the same time convey to the reader the inconsistency of ideas that can lead to absurdity.

The mention of the Moscow theater actor Mikhail Sadovsky, who was at the peak of his popularity at that time, is designed to attract the attention of an idle audience. Sadovsky's remarks in interrogative form indicate the absurdity of the actions of a madman and set the reader's judgments in the direction intended by the author.

Saltykov-Shchedrin uses his writing talent to present his political position and personal attitude to what is happening in an accessible form. The allegories and metaphors used in the text were perfectly understandable to his contemporaries. The reader from our time needs clarification.

Allegories and political background

The abolition of serfdom in 1861 caused violent cataclysms in the economic state of Russia. The reform was timely, but had a lot of controversial issues for all classes. Peasant uprisings caused civil and political aggravation.

The wild landowner, whom both the author and the characters constantly call stupid, is a collective image of a radical nobleman. The mental breakdown of centuries-old traditions was difficult for landowners. The recognition of the “man” as a free person with whom it was necessary to build new economic relations was happening with difficulty.

According to the plot, the temporarily obliged, as the serfs began to be called after the reform, were carried away by God in an unknown direction. This is a direct hint at the implementation of the rights that the reform has given them. The retrograde nobleman rejoices in the absence "a man's smell", but demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the consequences. It is difficult for him to come to terms with the loss of free labor, but he is ready to starve, just not to have relations with former serfs.

The landowner constantly reinforces his delusional ideas by reading the newspaper Vest. The publication existed and was distributed at the expense of part of the nobility, dissatisfied with the ongoing reform. The materials published in it supported the destruction of the serfdom system, but did not recognize the peasants’ ability to administrative organization and self-government.

Propaganda blamed the peasant class for the ruin of landowners and economic decline. In the finale, when the madman is forcibly brought back into human form, the police officer takes the newspaper from him. The author’s prophecy came true; a year after the publication of “The Wild Landowner,” the owner of “Vesti” went bankrupt and circulation ceased.

Saltykov describes the economic consequences that can occur without the labor of those temporarily obliged, without allegories: “not a piece of meat or a pound of bread in the market”, “robberies, robbery and murders have spread in the district”. The nobleman himself lost “its body is loose, white, crumbly”, became impoverished, became wild and finally lost his mind.

The police captain is responsible for straightening out the situation. A representative of the civil service voices the author’s main idea that “the treasury cannot exist without taxes and duties, and even more so without wine and salt regalia”. He shifts the blame for disruption of order and ruin from the peasants to “the stupid landowner who is the instigator of all the troubles”.

The tale of the “Wild Landowner” is a typical example of a political feuilleton, timely and vividly reflecting what was happening in the 60s of the 19th century.