Matrenin Dvor is a problem at home. Moral issues of A.I.’s story

Composition

Dali once said: “If you are one of those who believes that contemporary art surpassed the art of Vermeer or Raphael, don’t pick up this book and remain in blissful idiocy” (“Ten instructions for someone who wants to become an artist”) - I think it’s difficult to dispute. Of course, the great Salvador spoke about painting, but this saying also applies to literature. Art (be it literature, painting or music) is a way of self-expression; it helps us look into the most hidden corners of the soul.
I don’t like many works of modern Russian literature due to the lack of any artistic or creative principles. Nowadays, a story, poem or novel is often the result of a violent fantasy, a sick imagination or a distorted perception of the world (those who have an idea of ​​​​the “Platonic” Second Coming will understand me and, I hope, will support me). Today's writers are trying to prove that their rejection of modern reality and lack of moral ideals There is an individual approach to creativity.

But if today the world is ruled by lawlessness and cowardice, this does not mean that faith is over. It will be reborn, because man one way or another returns to his roots, albeit slowly, but with a firm and confident step (restoration of temples, adoption of religion).
Reading the classics, I find a lot of interesting things for myself. After all, at the beginning life path a person does not always manage to meet someone who would best friend and an adviser, so one of the main teachers of each of us is a book. What can modern literature teach us? Admit that you learned about first love not from Solzhenitsyn, but from Turgenev or Pushkin (“First Love”, “Eugene Onegin”), about the revival of the human soul from Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”), but about the diversity and strangeness of humanity thinking - after all, from Gogol (“ Dead souls"). It should be noted that a classical work always carries a share of optimism. Even in Crime and Punishment, where we are talking about a terrible offense - murder - and the hero, it would seem, has no justification, Dostoevsky makes us understand that Raskolnikov is not at all lost to society. His conscience is not clear, but for him there are such concepts as honor, justice, dignity.
It seems to me that the classics give us hope for spiritual revival, and in modern literature this is not the case. Let's try, from the point of view of the above, to consider what constitutes the work of a modern Russian writer, in particular

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. To do this, I propose to analyze one of his stories - “ Matrenin Dvor”, which, in my opinion, poses the problem of loneliness, a person’s relationship with people around him, and the author’s attitude to life.
So, our hero comes to Russia, to the wonderful Russian outback with its eternal mysteries, extraordinary personalities and original characters. What awaits him? He doesn't know. No one expects him, no one remembers. What could he encounter on his way? He just wanted to “get lost” somewhere where radio, television and other achievements of modern civilization could not reach him. Well, luck smiled at him: the second time he managed to find a small village not far from the Torfoprodukt station and live there quietly, teaching the younger generation exact science. There were no problems with housing either. They found a “suitable house” for him, in which, according to him, “his lot was to settle.”

God, how he yearned for simple people who had not lost that spiritual simplicity that each of us is endowed with from birth. How much tenderness and delight an ordinary village woman selling milk, her appearance, her voice, her characteristic accent, evokes in his soul. And with what sympathy he treats the mistress of the house, Matryona. He respected and understood her as she was: big, merciless, soft, sloppy and yet somehow sweet and dear. The unfortunate woman lost all her children and her beloved, having “ruined” her youth, she was left alone. And of course, I couldn’t help but arouse pity. She is not rich, not even prosperous. She is as poor as a “church mouse”, sick, but cannot refuse help. And the author notes a very important quality in her - selflessness. It was not because of money that old Matryona dug potatoes for her neighbors and raised her niece Kirochka not for the sake of gratitude either, but simply loved children. She is a woman after all.
When the war began, poor Matryona did not suspect that it (the war) would divorce her from her “dear” man, and the heroine “goes” to marry her fiancé’s younger brother. But the husband soon leaves the village, goes to war and does not return. And now Matryona is left with nothing. The children died one after another before reaching the age of one year. And at the end of her life she was doomed to loneliness. Only a “bumpy cat”, a “dirty white crooked goat”, mice and cockroaches inhabited her “skewed hut”. Matryona took in her niece Kirochka, and this was her last consolation. But, apparently, Matryona is not destined to while away her days in peace. It was urgent to move the room to another village, otherwise Kirochka would miss good place. It would seem that our heroine should not interfere with the transportation of her own house (the last thing she has left), but should prevent it in every possible way. But no - she decides to help transport the logs. And if Matryona had not gone to the railway and had not pushed the cart over the rails, she would have been alive.
How did she end her life? Terrible. Stupid. Tragic, I don't see any justification for her death.

In this work, as in others (“Procession”), Solzhenitsyn expresses his attitude towards people. He doesn’t like the people and tries to depersonalize them, turning them into a *gray mass.” It seems to him that the people around him are “nothing.” They are not able to understand goodness, they don’t care who is next to them. But the author is another matter. He immediately recognizes a “righteous man” in Matryona, but in fact he himself comes to this conclusion too late.
We must pay tribute to the author of the story: in revealing the image of the heroine, he tries to emphasize her kindness and boundless love for people.
What can I say about this work? I’m not happy - one, I don’t like it - two, because I can’t understand author's position: Why did Solzhenitsyn embodied so much evil and dirt in his “creation”? (Remember the depressing environment at home and the attitude of people towards each other.)
Naturally, the writer’s work is inextricably linked with his biography. Many years spent in captivity influenced Solzhenitsyn, but not everyone, even the more unfortunate ones, pour out all their grievances and anger in stories and novels. In my opinion, creative work should express only the best that is in a person in order to show: “This is the good that is in me, feel it and understand!”
Art (literature in particular) should bring bright feelings into the human soul. The reader should empathize with the characters, feel the pain of insults, disappointments and even cry (which, by the way, happened to me), but it’s not good if you have an unpleasant aftertaste in your soul after reading. This is probably some other art that I personally don’t understand.

Why then write at all? It's better to draw in the apocalypse style. All the same, the emotions in these two activities (writing about bad things and drawing) are the same, and more people will be able to admire the result (if the author wanted this). After all, earlier masters created their works precisely so that people would be horrified by the scenes of general death they saw. And when placing such creations right on the streets (meaning churches), people associated with religion also foresaw that those who could not read would also know about the terrible punishment.

But what cannot be taken away from Solzhenitsyn is that he writes about life based on personal experience, writes specifically about himself, about what he experienced and saw. The author shows us life as it is (in his understanding). Although, when reading his works, one gets the impression that this man never saw anything other than the bad, the ignorant and the unfair. But that's not the main point. Solzhenitsyn's goal is to reveal to us all the “charm” of existence, using a description of a wretched home, evil neighbors and ungrateful relatives.
Solzhenitsyn talks about injustice, as well as weakness of character, excessive kindness and what this can lead to. He puts his thoughts and his attitude towards society into the author’s mouth. The author (the hero of the story) experienced everything that Solzhenitsyn himself had to endure.
Describing the village, Matryona, the harsh reality, at the same time he gives his assessment, expressing his own opinion. How much bitterness and sarcasm can be heard in the description of the station: on the “gray wooden barracks there was a stern inscription: “Only board the train from the station!” Scrawled on the boards with a nail was: “And without tickets.” And at the ticket office... there was a knife scrawl: “No tickets.” Introducing us to Chairman Gorshkov, the author does not forget to mention how he (Gorshkov) received the Hero of Socialist Labor.

And how much “warmth”, “sensitivity”, “sincereness” is felt in the description of Matryona’s modest home and its inhabitants: “Sometimes the cat and cockroaches ate, but this made her feel unwell. The only thing that the cockroaches respected was the line of the partition that separated the mouth from... the clean hut... the kitchen was swarming at night... - the entire floor, the bench, and even the wall were almost completely brown and were moving... »
Note that Gogol’s description of a hotel in the city of N., where cockroaches are also found, does not evoke a feeling of disgust. However, the author cannot do without something “like that.”
Not without hidden pleasure, he writes about his “modesty and tact” when he describes the hostess’s cooking: all these cockroach legs in monotonous food, in his words, “not entirely tasty.” “I obediently ate everything that was cooked for me, patiently putting it aside if I came across something unusual... I didn’t have the courage to reproach Matryona...”

In my opinion, the author likes to describe someone’s grievances and failures (this story is meant): “... Matryona had a lot of grievances...” Again, grievances. If you write not about your own people, then about strangers. And pity. The narrator presses for pity. He is trying to touch a nerve (since he personally couldn’t touch me with anything else). But pity pity is discord...
“No Matryona. A loved one was killed. And on the last day I reproached her for wearing a padded jacket.” The author wants to show us how sensitive and compassionate he is. However, inside he is a hard and dry person. I barely had the strength to read description of the dead Matryona, her mutilated body. Written without emotion, just a statement of fact. This is hard to understand. But what else can be born in a person’s head under the “gnashing of mice”, “rustling of cockroaches” and under the impression of seeing a dead woman? This is comforting.
But the most “fun” thing is the end. A person who does not know life will have the thought: “Don’t trust.” The sad picture that we see after the death of the heroine proves this to us. Yes, I agree: the relatives were only thinking about what they could take away from the house. It got to the point that the house itself was taken away. The narrator does not believe in the sincerity of Kira's tears. And the neighbor is of the opinion that Matryona was stupid, and her husband did not love her. In a word, there is emptiness and injustice all around. The author probably believes that everything is bad and that in the end misfortune will befall us. And the people around us are soulless, and they don’t see the beauty in others, and they don’t believe in goodness, and in general, except for him, no one saw kindness, modesty and selflessness in Matryona. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours.”

The writer simply imposes his pessimistic views on the world on us and tries to prove something. He is a skeptic and will never be able to create something beautiful simply because of his life-warped beliefs. However, this is just my opinion.

Other works on this work

Here are the most current problems, related to compassion, which are touched upon in texts from the Unified State Exam variants in the Russian language. You will find arguments relevant to these issues under the headings located in the table of contents. You can also download a spreadsheet with all these examples.

1. The work clearly demonstrates an example of mercy towards animals Yuri Yakovlev “He killed my dog”. The boy Sasha (nicknamed Tabor), in a conversation with the school principal, talks about a dog abandoned by its previous owners, which he picked up. In the dialogue, it turns out that Sasha was the only one who cared about the life of a stray animal. However, no one treated the dog harsher than the boy's father. He – that’s what Sasha calls his father – killed the dog while he was not at home. For a compassionate child, this cruel and unfair act became a psychological blow, the wound from which will never heal. However, we can think about how great the power of his sympathy is, if even such relationships in the family did not eradicate in him the ability to lend a helping hand.
2. Gerasim, the hero, showed true mercy to the animal. He saved a small dog stuck in the river mud. With great trepidation, the hero nurses the small defenseless creature, and thanks to Gerasim Mumu, he turns into a “good dog.” The deaf-mute janitor fell in love with the animal he had saved, and Mumu responded in kind: she ran after him everywhere, caressed him and woke him up in the morning. Mumu's death left an indelible mark on the hero's soul. He experienced this event so painfully that he could never love anyone again.

Active and Passive Compassion

1. The authors of many works included in the world and domestic classics, endow their heroes with values ​​that correspond to the ability to compassion. Leo Tolstoy in the novel "War and Peace" endows his beloved heroine, Natasha Rostova, not only with compassion, but also with kindness and a desire to help those in need. In this regard, the scene in which Natasha asks her father to sacrifice their family’s property in order to take the wounded out of besieged Moscow on carts is indicative. While the city governor was throwing pathetic speeches, the young noblewoman helped her fellow citizens not in word, but in deed. (Here's more)
2. Sonya Marmeladova in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment" It is out of a sense of compassion that he sacrifices his own honor and suffers for the poor children of Katerina Ivanovna. The young girl is endowed with the gift of empathy for the pain and need of others. She helps not only her family, her drunken father, but also the main character of the work, Rodion Raskolnikov, showing him the path to repentance and redemption. Thus, the heroes of Russian literature, endowed with the capacity for sympathy and mercy, at the same time demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice themselves.

Lack of compassion and its consequences

1. Essay by Daniil Granin “On Mercy” reveals this problem. The hero talks about how he fell near his home in the city center, and not a single person helped him. The author, relying only on himself, gets up and goes to the nearest entrance, and then home. The story that happened to the narrator prompts him to think about the reasons for the insensitivity of passersby, because not even a single person asked him what happened to him. Daniil Granin talks not only about his own case, but also about doctors, about stray dogs, about the poor. The author says that the feeling of compassion was strong in the war and post-war years, when the spirit of unity of the people was especially strong, but gradually disappeared.
2. In one from letters from D.S. Likhacheva For young readers, the author talks about compassion as a care that grows with us from childhood and is a force that unites people. Dmitry Sergeevich believes that a person’s concern, directed only at himself, makes him an egoist. The philologist also claims that compassion is inherent moral people who realize their unity with humanity and the world. The author says that humanity cannot be corrected, but it is possible to change oneself. Therefore D.S. Likhachev stands on the side of active good. (Here are some more suitable ones.

Self-sacrifice out of mercy

1. In the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” by the Russian writer A.I. Solzhenitsyn The image of Matryona embodies the concept of sacrifice and altruism. All her life Matryona lived for others: she helped neighbors, worked on a collective farm, and did hard work. The episode with the upper room reveals the highest degree of her readiness to sacrifice her own for the good of others. The heroine loved her home very much; the narrator said that for Matryona, giving up the house meant “the end of her life.” But for the sake of her pupil, Matryona sacrifices him and dies, helping to drag the logs. The meaning of her fate, according to the narrator, is very important: the whole village rests on people like her. And, undoubtedly, the self-sacrifice of the righteous woman is evidence of the feeling of compassion for people inherent in a woman to its highest degree.
2. Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnik, heroine novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", is one of the sacrificial heroes in this work. Dunya is ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of her loved ones. To save her older brother and mother from poverty, the girl first goes to work as a governess in Svidrigailov’s house, where she suffers insults and shame. Then he decides to “sell himself” - to marry Mr. Luzhin. However, Raskolnikov convinces his sister not to do this, because he is not ready to accept such a sacrifice.

The consequences of compassion and indifference

1. The ability to sympathize and active, active kindness makes a person happy. Gerasim from stories by I.S. Turgenev "Mumu" By saving a little dog, he not only does good, but also finds a true friend. The dog, in turn, also becomes attached to the janitor. Undoubtedly, the ending of this story is tragic. But the very situation of saving an animal, prompted sensitive heart Gerasima, clearly shows how a person can become happy by once showing mercy and giving his love to another.
2. In the story by D. V. Grigorovich “The Gutta-percha Boy” Of the entire circus troupe, only the clown Edwards sympathized with the little boy Petya. He taught the boy acrobatic tricks and gave him a dog. Petya was drawn to him, but the clown could not save him from his hard life under the leadership of the cruel acrobat Becker. Both Petya and Edwards are two deeply unhappy people. There is no talk in the work about helping the boy. Edward couldn't provide happy life child because he suffered from alcohol addiction. And yet, his soul is not devoid of sensitivity. At the end, when Petya dies, the clown becomes even more desperate and cannot control his addiction.
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Analysis of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” includes characteristics of its characters, summary, history of creation, disclosure main idea and the problems raised by the author of the work.

According to Solzhenitsyn, the story is based on real events, “completely autobiographical.”

At the center of the story is a picture of life in a Russian village in the 50s. 20th century, the problem of the village, discussions on the main human values, issues of goodness, justice and compassion, the problem of labor, the ability to help a neighbor who finds himself in a difficult situation. The righteous man possesses all these qualities, without whom “the village does not stand.”

The history of the creation of "Matryonin's Dvor"

Initially, the title of the story was: “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man.” The final version was proposed at an editorial discussion in 1962 by Alexander Tvardovsky. The writer noted that the meaning of the title should not be moralizing. In response, Solzhenitsyn good-naturedly concluded that he had no luck with names.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008)

Work on the story took place over several months, from July to December 1959. Solzhenitsyn wrote it in 1961.

In January 1962, during the first editorial discussion, Tvardovsky convinced the author, and at the same time himself, that the work was not worth publishing. And yet he asked to leave the manuscript with the editor. As a result, the story was published in 1963 in the New World.

It is noteworthy that the life and death of Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova are reflected in this work as truthfully as possible - exactly as it really happened. The real name of the village is Miltsevo, it is located in the Kuplovsky district of the Vladimir region.

Critics warmly greeted the author's work, praising it artistic value. The essence of Solzhenitsyn’s work was very accurately described by A. Tvardovsky: an uneducated, simple woman, an ordinary worker, an old peasant woman... how can such a person attract so much attention and curiosity?

Maybe because she inner world very rich and exalted, endowed with the best human qualities, and against his background everything worldly, material, empty fades. Solzhenitsyn was very grateful to Tvardovsky for these words. In a letter to him, the author noted the importance of his words for himself, and also pointed out the depth of his writer's vision, from which the main idea of ​​​​the work was not hidden - a story about a loving and suffering woman.

Genre and idea of ​​the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn

"Matrenin's Dvor" belongs to the short story genre. This is a narrative epic genre, the main features of which are the small volume and unity of the event.

Solzhenitsyn’s work tells about the unfairly cruel fate of the common man, about the life of villagers, about the Soviet order of the 50s of the last century, when after the death of Stalin, an orphan Russian people I didn’t understand how to live further.

The narration is told on behalf of Ignatyich, who throughout the entire plot, as it seems to us, acts only as an abstract observer.

Description and characteristics of the main characters

List characters The story is not numerous, it boils down to a few characters.

Matryona Grigorieva- an elderly woman, a peasant who worked all her life on a collective farm and who was released from heavy manual labor due to a serious illness.

She always tried to help people, even strangers. When the narrator comes to her to rent a house, the author notes the modesty and selflessness of this woman.

Matryona never intentionally looked for a tenant and did not seek to profit from this. All her property consisted of flowers, an old cat and a goat. Matryona's dedication knows no bounds. Even her marital union with the groom's brother is explained by her desire to help. Since their mother died, there was no one to do housework, then Matryona took on this burden.

The peasant woman had six children, but they all died at an early age. Therefore, the woman began raising Kira, youngest daughter Thaddeus. Matryona worked from early morning until late evening, but never showed her dissatisfaction to anyone, did not complain about fatigue, did not grumble about fate.

She was kind and sympathetic to everyone. She never complained and didn't want to be a burden to anyone. Matryona decided to give her room to the grown-up Kira, but to do this it was necessary to divide the house. During the move, Thaddeus's things got stuck on the railway, and the woman died under the wheels of the train. From that moment on, there was no longer a person capable of selfless help.

Meanwhile, Matryona's relatives thought only about profit, about how to divide the things left from her. The peasant woman was very different from the rest of the villagers. This was the same righteous man - the only one, irreplaceable and so invisible to the people around him.

Ignatyich is the prototype of the writer. At one time, the hero served exile, then he was acquitted. Since then, the man set out to find a quiet corner where he could spend the rest of his life in peace and serenity, working as a simple school teacher. Ignatyich found his refuge with Matryona.

The narrator is a private person who does not like excessive attention and long conversations. He prefers peace and quiet to all this. Meanwhile, he managed to find a common language with Matryona, but due to the fact that he did not understand people well, he was able to comprehend the meaning of the peasant woman’s life only after her death.

Thaddeus– Matryona’s former fiancé, Efim’s brother. In his youth, he was going to marry her, but he went into the army, and there was no news of him for three years. Then Matryona was given in marriage to Efim. Returning, Thaddeus almost hacked to death his brother and Matryona with an ax, but came to his senses in time.

The hero is distinguished by cruelty and intemperance. Without waiting for Matryona’s death, he began to demand part of the house from her for her daughter and her husband. Thus, it was Thaddeus who was to blame for the death of Matryona, who was hit by a train while helping her relatives take apart their house piece by piece. He was not at the funeral.

The story is divided into three parts. The first talks about the fate of Ignatyich, that he is a former prisoner and now works as a school teacher. Now he needs a quiet refuge, which the kind Matryona gladly provides him with.

The second part tells about the difficult events in the life of a peasant woman, about the youth of the main character and the fact that the war took her lover away from her and she had to throw in her lot with an unloved man, the brother of her fiancé.

In the third episode, Ignatyich learns about the death of a poor peasant woman and talks about the funeral and wake. Relatives squeeze out tears because circumstances require it. There is no sincerity in them, their thoughts are occupied only with how best to divide the property of the deceased.

Problems and arguments of the work

Matryona is a person who does not demand rewards for her good deeds; she is ready to sacrifice herself for the good of another person. They don’t notice her, don’t appreciate her, and don’t try to understand her. Matryona's whole life is full of suffering, starting from her youth, when she had to unite her fate with an unloved person, experiencing the pain of loss, ending with maturity and old age with their frequent illnesses and hard manual labor.

The meaning of the heroine’s life is in hard work, in which she forgets about all the sorrows and problems. Her joy is caring for others, helping, compassion and love for people. This is the main theme of the story.

The problem of the work comes down to issues of morality. The fact is that in the village material values ​​are placed above spiritual ones, they prevail over humanity.

The complexity of Matryona's character and the sublimity of her soul are inaccessible to the understanding of the greedy people surrounding the heroine. They are driven by the thirst for accumulation and profit, which obscures their vision and does not allow them to see the kindness, sincerity and dedication of the peasant woman.

Matryona serves as an example that the difficulties and hardships of life strengthen strong in spirit man, they are unable to break him. After the death of the main character, everything that she built begins to collapse: the house is taken away into pieces, the remains of the pitiful property are divided, the yard is left to the mercy of fate. No one sees what a terrible loss has occurred, what a wonderful person has left this world.

The author shows the frailty of material things, teaches not to judge people by money and regalia. The true meaning lies in moral character. It remains in our memory even after the death of the person from whom this amazing light of sincerity, love and mercy emanated.

In December 1961, A.I. Solzhenitsyn presented the second story (for review) to the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine Tvardovsky. It was called “A village does not stand without a righteous man,” but almost immediately it was renamed “Matrenin’s Dvor.” The problem was not only the content of the work, but also the title, which contained a “religious term.” The story was published only a year later - in the January 1963 issue of the most widely read literary magazine in the USSR.

Plot plot

That time is usually called the thaw. There were certain reasons for this: many millions of recent prisoners of Stalin’s camps and exiles left places with severe frosty or desert climates and went to the European part of the Union - not to large cities (they were not allowed there), but to villages and towns in the middle zone. Here, among the softly rustling forests, near the flowing quiet rivers, everything seemed sweet and cozy to the long-suffering people. Nevertheless, life even in these parts was not easy. Getting a job turned out to be difficult, although it was easier than just recently, when a former prisoner wouldn’t even be trusted with a car. These circumstances did not bother the narrator, on whose behalf the story is told. He felt an urgent need for quite simple things, namely: get a job as a mathematics teacher in a rural school, find a place to live. These were his “primary tasks and problems raised.” He was brought to Matrenin's yard by a casual acquaintance who traded in railway station milk. There were no other options; only an elderly woman had a free seat. Her name was Matryona. This is how they met.

Pension

So, it was 1956, a lot was changing in the country, but life on the collective farm remained miserable. Many aspects of peasant life in the post-Stalin era were illuminated, as if in passing, by Alexander Isaevich in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” His landlady's problem to the modern reader may seem trivial, but in the first Khrushchev years it stood before many villagers of the vast country. The collective farm pension - a beggarly one, eighty rubles (8 rubles new, post-reform) - even that was not due to a woman who had worked honestly all her life. She went through the authorities, collected some information about the income of her late husband, faced with constant dull callousness and unfriendly bureaucratic indifference, and, in the end, achieved her goal. She was given a pension, and taking into account the additional payment for housing the teacher (Ignatyich, on whose behalf the story is told), her income acquired, by rural standards, colossal proportions - as much as one hundred and eighty rubles (after 1961, 18 rubles) - “there is no need to die "

And also a peat machine...

Peat

Yes, this type of fuel is often used for heating in areas with swampy climates. It seems that there should be enough of it for everyone, but in the harsh Soviet reality of the fifties there was a shortage of everything that people needed. This situation largely persisted throughout the Soviet era. In Vysokoye Polye they did not bake bread, they did not sell food, all this had to be carried in bags from the regional center. But, in addition to supplying the population with food, A.I. Solzhenitsyn talks about another important aspect of peasant life in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” The management of the collective farm completely transferred the heating problem to the village residents, and they solved it independently and as best they could: they stole peat. Ignatyich naively believed that a truckload of fuel was a lot of fuel, that it would last for the whole winter, but in reality three times more was required. All the women of the village carried the peat on themselves - with the risk of being caught, hiding the stolen goods from the chairman, who, of course, took care of the warmth in his house.

Personal life

Matryona owned a spacious house, once good, but due to time and the absence of men's hands, it had fallen into disrepair. The history of this real estate goes back to pre-revolutionary times. The owner was married, lived here for a long time, gave birth to six children, none of whom survived. Matryona raised her niece as her own daughter, taking her from the large family of her husband's brother. There was also a backstory: as a bride, she was going to marry Thaddeus, her current “divir,” but it didn’t work out. He disappeared in Germanskaya without a trace, but she didn’t wait and married his brother. Thaddeus showed up later and was very angry, but Matryona was left with Yefim.

Real estate rights became the cause of a conflict that arose between relatives who were already deciding how they would divide Matrenin’s yard. The problems and arguments raised by the future heirs became the cause of many contradictions and mystically led to the death of the woman.

Life and loneliness

The village is a special world, governed by its own unwritten laws. Many consider Matryona stupid. She does not run the household in the same way as almost everyone else does. The landlady's material problems in the work "Matrenin's Dvor" are illustrated by the absence of a cow and a pig, which the villagers usually cannot do without. She is criticized for this, although, it would seem, who cares how a lonely elderly woman lives? She herself quite clearly explains the reason for such negligence. She gets milk from a goat, which has much less trouble feeding her (she is not at all happy about the prospect of feeding a shepherd, and her health leaves much to be desired). Among the living creatures she has are mice, a lame cat and cockroaches, of which there are many - that’s the whole “Matrenin’s yard”. The problem of senile loneliness has been, is and will be.

Righteousness

Now we should remember the original version of the title of the story. What does a righteous man have to do with it, and why is this Orthodox concept applicable to the most ordinary peasant woman, living in poverty, loneliness and little different from many millions of women like her in total? Soviet Union? How is it different from others? It’s not for nothing that Alexander Isaevich wanted to call his work that? What problems does he raise in the story “Matryonin’s Dvor”?

The fact is that Matryona has an important human quality. She never refuses to help others, without making any distinction between “good” and “bad.” The chairman’s wife, an important lady, came and with aplomb demanded (not asked) to go to work, “to help the collective farm.” She doesn’t even say hello, she just tells you what you need to take with you. The sick elderly woman seems to want to refuse, but immediately asks what time to come. As for the neighbors, there is no need to ask Matryona - she is always ready to harness herself, not even considering it a service on her part and refusing any material reward, although it would in no way harm her. Ignatyich never heard her say a word of condemnation of anyone’s actions; his mistress never gossips.

Death of Matryona

The notorious " housing issue"really spoils our generally good people. And the characters in the work also suffer from this problem. In Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor,” the old man Thaddeus became an exponent of fussy greed and excessive thriftiness. He can't wait to receive part of the bequeathed inheritance, and right now. There are problems with the scaffolding: the old woman doesn’t need the extension, he wants to dismantle it and move it to his place. In itself it does not express anything bad, but it is important to note here that Thaddeus knows that Matryona will not be able to refuse. The problems raised in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” exist in society regardless of the level of income. Stinginess and haste ultimately lead to a tragic accident. An overloaded coupling of a sleigh with building materials breaks off at a crossing; the drivers do not notice it and collide with a tractor. People are dying, including Matryona, who, as always, decided to help.

Funeral and commemoration

Subtle psychologism, irony and even gloomy humor are present in the scene of farewell to the main character story "Matrenin's Dvor". Problems and arguments encrypted in funeral lamentations and laments different characters, are deciphered by explaining their true background. The reader involuntarily becomes offended that such sophisticated and intriguing streams of information rush over the roughly hewn coffin of Matryona, a kind and simple-minded woman during her life. There are, however, people who loved the deceased; they cry sincerely. Thaddeus, meanwhile, is busy: he urgently needs to remove the property before it is lost, and he “resolves this issue” by rushing to the wake, which, as often happens, ends with an almost cheerful feast. All this primarily exposes moral problems.

In the story “Matrenin’s Dvor,” as in other works of A. I. Solzhenitsyn, the writer’s annoyance at the vain and selfish and faith in a good, righteous beginning merge together.