Analysis of “Pit” by Platonov. Essay “The theme of a “beautiful future” in the story A

“In the evenings Voshchev lay with with open eyes and longed for the future when everything would become generally known and placed in a stingy feeling of happiness.”

A. Platonov. "Pit"

A. Platonov’s story “The Pit” was written in the “year of the great turning point”, when it was completely ruined and herded into collective farms Russian peasantry. And the author spoke here about all the absurdities and criminal excesses of collectivization, which still resonate painfully to this day. Platonov defended the honor of Russian literature: after all, at that time works were published that

They sang collectivization. Platonov was the only one who was not afraid to go to the end, to the point of logical absurdity, showing where Russia, the USSR, and the path of building a “new life” were leading.

Let's see how the plot of the story develops. Reduced “due to the growth of weakness in him and thoughtfulness amid the general pace of work,” Voshchev is nailed to the construction of a foundation pit for “the only common proletarian house,” where future people will achieve final happiness. There is no end in sight to this digging - the pit is ever expanding to accommodate all the city workers. And what about the village workers, who, due to the burden of existence, stocked up on coffins just in case? In the countryside, the analogue of universal happiness should be collective farms, where the poor and repentant middle peasants can enter. Platonov shows how, before joining a collective farm, people ask each other for forgiveness. After all, there is nothing further to be ashamed of. You can take away goods and bread from your neighbors, and the neighbors themselves - the kulaks - put everyone on a strong raft and send them down the river, perhaps to certain death: “The kulaks looked from the raft in one direction - at Zhachev; people wanted to forever notice their homeland and the last, happy person on it.” Who is this happy man? A legless invalid, embittered and cruel, no longer able to dream or build, but still capable of destroying. And the middle peasants and the poor first cry for a long time before the offensive happy life, and then just as wildly and terribly having fun. Black fat flies hover over the village - peasants are slaughtering livestock so as not to take it to the collective farm. And then those who are stronger are driven to build the same foundation pit: “The collective farm followed him and continuously dug the ground; all the poor and middle-aged men worked with such diligence, as if they wanted to escape forever in the abyss of the pit.”

This is how scary the foundation of a new life is laid. Platonov writes about hunger, poverty and human deaths with the meager bitterness of an eyewitness: this is how the surviving children from those burned over the years spoke about torture and executions Patriotic War villages Platonov’s children are the starting point, the moral measure of everything: “...This weak body, abandoned without kinship among people, will someday feel the warming flow of the meaning of life, and its mind will see a time similar to the first primordial day.” This is what the sad philosopher Voshchev thinks about the orphan Nastya, warmed by the builders. This girl is a wayward animal, already speaking in terrible slogans, but reaching out to goodness and human warmth with all the strength of her unspoiled heart. Her death, the children’s bones that lay at the bottom of the pit, are the last proof that no bright future will be built: “Voshchev stood in bewilderment over this quiet child, he no longer knew where communism would be in the world now if he not first in a child's feeling and in a convinced impression? Why does he now need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement?

Platonov's heroes talk a lot about future happiness, but have a poor idea of ​​it: the material life around them is too meager and sad. People build an incomprehensible house that no one needs. They are led by engineer Prushevsky, who designed the house in order social order. Engineer - fragment past life, who is trying to find a new meaning of existence among the workers. It seems to him that they know what they live and work for. But that's not true. Neither the wretched opportunist Kozlov, nor the scolding Safonov, nor the rudely strong and in his own way fair Chickman know this and do not really think about it: the main thing is to work, and the party will think, issuing directives through an activist who fulfills and exceeds them with bad zeal.

Only Voshchev thinks about life. His thoughts are the search for that harmony in nature and human relationships, which is unlikely to be realized in the house of universal happiness. Moreover, the pit, having absorbed the ravine and nearby fields, is growing deeper and wider, turning not into the foundation of the future, but into a terrible hole, into a mass grave that deceived people dig for themselves. Each of them individually has character, is drawn to goodness, and is capable of pity. But all together they are a herd going to the slaughter, while trampling those who get in their way. And for some reason it seems that the palace in which the carefully selected proletarians will be settled will ominously resemble a semi-camp.

Andrei Platonov does not just feel sorry for his heroes. Even in the most unpleasant of them, such as the rural activist or the well-fed bureaucrat Pashkin, he knows how to see the sprouts of humanity and thought. The writer believes that if something goes into the future, if something sheds light into it, then these are precisely those grains of pain and shame, those attempts to think about what is happening that form human soul. It is impossible to build a bright future by destroying the connection with the past - centuries-old village culture, traditions of life and work.

The common proletarian house is not just erected in an empty place, no, in a place where everything living and feeling is uprooted and falls into a hole. Therefore, A. Platonov’s story ends with the sad scene of the funeral of the girl Nastya - the funeral of our future.

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Completed in the early 1930s, it chronicles the peak of collectivization. The work was not published during the writer's lifetime. It was first published in the Soviet Union only in 1987.

Brief history of creation

Often the period from December 1929 to April 1930 is indicated as the time of writing “The Pit”. The dates were put down by Platonov himself on the title page of the second typewritten edition of the work in place of the cut out original version. Modern researchers of the writer’s work do not believe that the story was created exactly during the indicated period. However, Platonov did not choose the above-mentioned time period by chance. This period is the peak of collectivization, which is discussed in “The Pit.”

Name

Platonov’s story received its name by analogy with popular industrial novels of the 1920s and 30s - “Whetstones” by Panferov, “Cement” by Gladkov, “Sawmill” by Karavaeva, and so on. Most of these names had a metaphorical meaning. In particular, for Gladkov, cement is not only a building material produced at the plant, but also the working class, which is destined to hold together the “working masses” and act as the foundation of a new life. Platonov follows the literary template of the time. The pit is where much of the action takes place, as well as the pit and the grave. As a result, in Plato’s story, an ordinary construction project, of which there were many during the first Soviet five-year plan, turns into a symbol of a historical dead end. Digging a foundation pit in a work is the first stage in the construction of a common house for the proletarians. In the end, the pit was never completely dug.

Subjects

The most important theme of the work is the theme of the search for truth, the meaning of life. Voshchev is mainly occupied with this. Life without meaning and without truth is not sweet to him. Trying to find answers to eternal questions, he loses himself in his work so that it would not be so painful to exist. Not only Voshchev, but also other characters in the story are looking for the meaning of life. For example, a bear working at a forge. Voshchev takes him as a witness that there is no truth, and then notes: “He can only work, but when he rests and thinks, he will begin to get bored.” At the end of the work, it is not possible to discover either the truth or the meaning of life. Nastya is dying, the foundation pit has not been dug.

Other important topic The story is about death. She is constantly mentioned in the work, directly or indirectly. The pit looks like a grave. Nastya is given two coffins - it is assumed that the girl will sleep in one and store toys in the other. The author calls Voshchev “living in absentia.” It is said about the workers sleeping in the barracks that they “were as thin as the dead.” For the engineer Prushevsky, the whole world is a “dead body.” There are many more examples that can be given. By the way, the theme of death and overcoming it is perhaps the most important in all of Platonov’s works. As Anatoly Ryasov notes, in Plato’s works the terrible experience of death is at the same time the experience of immortality.

"Pit" is considered one of the the most complex works not only in Russian, but also in world literature. Everyone who carefully reads the story will understand it in their own way, and with repeated readings they will constantly discover new facets.

Characters

In “The Pit,” Platonov presents the reader with a model of Soviet society against the backdrop of the events of 1929 and 1930. For example, Safronov acts as a spokesman for the official ideology. People like him were considered the ideological support of power. Kozlov is a typical opportunist who decided to leave the pit for social work. The chairman of the district bureau of trade unions, Pashkin, is a bureaucrat functionary who receives a handsome salary.

As for the girl Nastya, she symbolizes the new Soviet Russia. Her mother is the deceased potbelly stove Yulia - Historical Russia. According to Platonov, the new Russia, which is trying to abandon its own past, is unable to exist without the old Russia. That is why Nastya dies in the finale, yearning for her mother.

The main character of the story is Voshchev, a man trying to find the truth and find the meaning of life. Without this, nothing in this world pleases him. Voshchev has a strange hobby - collecting all sorts of rags “for socialist revenge.” In the finale, he will also gather the villagers and lead them to build a foundation pit. Voshchev’s activities are closely connected with the real attitude of the Soviet government towards the delivery of scrap, which was supposed to help raise money for industrialization and create a raw material base for industry. In “The Pit”, the village people whom Voshchev brought to the construction site are, in fact, the same scrap, consumable material. Nothing good awaits him.

Composition

The story consists of two parts. The first is urban. The story centers on digging a pit. The second is rural. Here the main attention is paid to the creation of a collective farm and dispossession. This composition does not arise by chance. It correlates with Stalin’s speech “On issues of agrarian policy in the USSR,” delivered at the end of December 1929 at a conference of Marxist agrarians. It paid special attention to the issue of “eliminating the opposition between city and countryside.” In the finale, the action returns to the pit - the composition loops.

Language features

“The Pit,” like other Platonic works, is distinguished by a special language. One of its key features is individual author’s combinations. They serve as means of artistic representation, and also help to reflect the author’s philosophy and draw readers’ attention to problems that concern the author.

Literary direction and genre

In 1920, while still a novice author, Platonov filled out a questionnaire for the First All-Russian Congress of Proletarian Writers. Among others, there was the following question: “What literary trends do you belong or sympathize?” Platonov replied: “None, I have my own.” He maintained this position throughout his entire career.

According to Platonov’s own definition, the genre of “The Pit” is a story. In addition, various researchers have found elements of other genres in the work. Among them are dystopia, industrial novel and even mystery.

The work of A. Platonov does not lend itself to unambiguous assessments at all; it is difficult to equate it with something already known in literature. Platonov is a special and “original” writer. Only towards the end of the twentieth century, after Platonov’s repeated return to the reader and the persistent study of his work by literary scholars, especially intensive since the mid-1980s, did it become possible to understand the scale of the genius of this writer and thinker, to realize his unique contribution to the literature of the twentieth century. Platonov is a world-class writer. In the preface to the academic edition of the story “The Pit,” researcher V. Vyugin writes: “The unique ability to see and reveal to other people the eternal paradox of life really puts Platonov on a par with such writers as Kafka, Proust, Joyce...”

Platonov’s story “The Pit” was written in 1930. Before us emerges a dramatic picture of total changes in the state. New power thinks about how to design a life similar to an ideal scheme. They need a bare place from which everything can begin again, where there is no resistance from the environment and human nature.

Compositionally, the story consists of four short stories in which the characters think about how to find a way to better life. The way they live now bears little resemblance to life. The writer talks about the ever-growing anxiety about “waning humanity.”

In his works, Platonov tries to unravel the mystery of man. According to Dostoevsky, this is the only thing worthy of devoting one’s life to it. Platonov’s heroes talk about “proletarian substance,” which is living people themselves. For Platonov, ideas exist separately from man; his heroes strive to build an ideal society from themselves.

Platonov is one of the few authors who quickly understood the anti-human essence of the revolution. He observed every day how good turns into evil, that individual people, in order to strengthen their power, destroy masses of innocent people who, in their opinion, interfere with the general happiness of the proletariat. The writer shows the complete indifference of the authorities to a living person.

The main character of the story, Voshchev, was fired from a mechanical plant because he began to think about working hours. He gets a job digging a pit, but even here he continues to think about “the exact structure of the world,” “about the plan for a common life,” about the truth, without which “it is a shame to live.” Voshchev wants to know “where to strive.” At a construction site and on the collective farm named after the General Line, the hero meets people who seem to understand the meaning of life. Their words cause distrust in the hero. He notes that “their faces were gloomy and thin, and instead of the peace of life they had exhaustion.” In the village, Voshchev watches how the kulaks are expelled, and then they organize a holiday that looks more like a wake.

The author depicts a world where there is only a person and emptiness around him. Abstract political cliches and phrases kill the psyche of the heroes, who even before did not have a clear understanding of reality and the meaning of life. Platonov’s “hidden people” are accustomed to understanding the structure of the world only intuitively. For them, the work of the mind is expressed in the ability to be surprised by the laws of nature.

In the story "The Pit" the author shows the insane, useless work of hundreds of people trying to build new house happy life for everyone. First you need to dig a pit, then lay the foundation. They work in incredibly difficult conditions, and work conscientiously, firmly believing in the ideas of the party. The lack of equipment and exhausting manual labor make the work ineffective, and deadlines are extended. Slogans and cheerful songs blaring from the loudspeaker are divorced from real life. The people building the House for All are not provided with food, housing, or normal working conditions. Material from the site

Platonov’s heroes are romantics, they think in slogans and are free from manifestations of selfishness, they are unpretentious, they easily endure the inconveniences of everyday life without noticing them, they are not involved in politics. They view the accomplished revolution as a settled political issue. All enemies are destroyed. People who shed blood for the revolution in the fields civil war, they now want to build a bright life for themselves and their children. They are transformers of the world, their goal is to subjugate the forces of nature to man, to turn dreams into reality. But it turns out that it is impossible to influence nature with slogans and appeals. Construction is hardly moving forward, workers are working in vain due to the lack of true goals. The dug pit is filled with water overnight, its edges crumble, and you have to start all over again. Platonov's desperate heroes wish that if the little sick girl survives, they will be able to complete the construction.

The writer leaves no hope. The girl is dying. Platonov concludes that revolutionary ideas, isolated from life, cannot serve as the foundation for building a happy and just society. The experience of the heroes of the work testifies to how the creative role of labor can be distorted and human life can be turned into absurdity.

The talented and honest Russian writer Platonov reminds us that the path of a person under any social and political system is always difficult, full of gains and losses. The writer stands up for the living soul of man, which can be destroyed by the soulless machine of power.

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