At the bottom: Anna's characteristics. M
The play “At the Lower Depths” was conceived by Gorky as one of four plays in a cycle showing the life and worldview of people from different walks of life. This is one of the two purposes of creating a work. The deep meaning that the author put into it is an attempt to answer the main questions of human existence: what a person is and whether he will retain his personality, having sunk “to the bottom” of moral and social existence.
History of the play
The first evidence of work on the play dates back to 1900, when Gorky, in a conversation with Stanislavsky, mentioned his desire to write scenes from the life of a flophouse. Some sketches appeared at the end of 1901. In a letter to the publisher K. P. Pyatnitsky, to whom the author dedicated the work, Gorky wrote that in the planned play all the characters, the idea, the motives for the actions were clear to him, and “it will be scary.” The final version of the work was ready on July 25, 1902, published in Munich and went on sale at the end of the year.
Things were not so rosy with the production of the play on stages Russian theaters- it is practically prohibited. An exception was made only for the Moscow Art Theater; other theaters had to obtain special permission for the production.
The title of the play changed at least four times during the work, and the genre was never determined by the author - the publication read “At the Bottom of Life: Scenes.” The shortened and familiar name to everyone today first appeared on the theater poster during the first production at the Moscow Art Theater.
The first performers were star cast Moscow Art academic theater: K. Stanislavsky played the role of Satin, V. Kachalov played Barona, I. Moskvin played Luke, O. Knipper played Nastya, M. Andreeva played Natasha.
The main plot of the work
The plot of the play is tied to the relationships of the characters and the atmosphere of general hatred that reigns in the shelter. This is the outer outline of the work. A parallel action explores the depth of a person’s fall “to the bottom,” the measure of insignificance of a socially and spiritually degraded individual.
The action of the play begins and ends storyline the relationship between two characters: the thief Vaska Pepel and the wife of the owner of the rooming house Vasilisa. Ash loves her little sister Natasha. Vasilisa is jealous and constantly beats her sister. She also has another interest in her lover - she wants to free herself from her husband and pushes Ash to murder. During the course of the play, Ash actually kills Kostylev in a quarrel. In the last act of the play, the guests of the shelter say that Vaska will have to go to hard labor, but Vasilisa will still “get out.” Thus, the action loops around the destinies of the two heroes, but is far from limited to them.
The time period of the play is several weeks of early spring. The time of year is an important component of the play. One of the first titles given by the author to the work is “Without the Sun.” Indeed, there is spring all around, a sea of sunshine, but in the shelter and in the souls of its inhabitants there is darkness. The ray of sunshine for the overnight shelters was Luka, a tramp whom Natasha brings in one day. Luke brings hope for a happy outcome to the hearts of people who have fallen and lost faith in the best. However, at the end of the play, Luka disappears from the shelter. The characters who trusted him lose faith in the best. The play ends with the suicide of one of them - the Actor.
Play Analysis
The play describes the life of a Moscow flophouse. The main characters, accordingly, were its inhabitants and the owners of the establishment. Also in it appear people related to the life of the establishment: a policeman, who is also the uncle of the hostess of the rooming house, a dumpling seller, loaders.
Satin and Luka
Schuler, the former convict Satin and the tramp, wanderer Luke are carriers of two opposing ideas: the need for compassion for a person, a saving lie out of love for him, and the need to know the truth, as proof of a person’s greatness, as a sign of trust in his strength of spirit. In order to prove the falsity of the first worldview and the truth of the second, the author built the action of the play.
Other characters
All the other characters form the background for this battle of ideas. In addition, they are designed to show and measure the depth of the fall to which a person is capable of falling. The drunkard Actor and the terminally ill Anna, people who have completely lost faith in their own strength, fall under the power of wonderful fairy tale, to which Luke takes them. They are the most dependent on it. With his departure, they physically cannot live and die. The rest of the inhabitants of the shelter perceive Luka's appearance and departure as the play of a spring sunbeam - he appeared and disappeared.
Nastya, who sells her body “on the boulevard,” believes that there is bright love, and it was in her life. Kleshch, the husband of the dying Anna, believes that he will rise from the bottom and begin to earn a living by working again. The thread that connects him with his working past remains a toolbox. At the end of the play, he is forced to sell them in order to bury his wife. Natasha hopes that Vasilisa will change and stop torturing her. After another beating, after leaving the hospital, she will no longer appear in the shelter. Vaska Pepel strives to stay with Natalya, but cannot get out of the networks of the powerful Vasilisa. The latter, in turn, expects that the death of her husband will untie her hands and give her the long-awaited freedom. The Baron lives on from his aristocratic past. The gambler Bubnov, the destroyer of “illusions,” the ideologist of misanthropy, believes that “all people are superfluous.”
The work was created in conditions when, after economic crisis In the 90s of the 19th century, factories shut down in Russia, the population rapidly became poor, many found themselves on the bottom rung of the social ladder, in the basement. Each of the characters in the play experienced a fall to the bottom, social and moral, in the past. Now they live in the memory of this, but they cannot rise “to the light”: they don’t know how, they don’t have the strength, they are ashamed of their insignificance.
Main characters
Luke became a light for some. Gorky gave Luka a “speaking” name. It refers both to the image of St. Luke and to the concept of “cunning.” It is obvious that the author seeks to show the inconsistency of Luke’s ideas about the beneficial value of Faith for man. Gorky practically reduces Luka's compassionate humanism to the concept of betrayal - according to the plot of the play, the tramp leaves the shelter just when those who trusted him need his support.
Satin is a figure designed to voice the author’s worldview. As Gorky wrote, Satin is not quite a suitable character for this, but there is simply no other character with equally powerful charisma in the play. Satin is the ideological antipode of Luke: he does not believe in anything, he sees the ruthless essence of life and the situation in which he and the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter find themselves. Does Satin believe in Man and his power over the power of circumstances and mistakes made? The passionate monologue that he delivers, arguing in absentia with the departed Luka, leaves a strong but contradictory impression.
There is also a bearer of the “third” truth in the work - Bubnov. This hero, like Satin, “stands for the truth,” only it is somehow very scary for him. He is a misanthrope, but, in essence, a murderer. Only they die not from the knife in his hands, but from the hatred that he has for everyone.
The drama of the play increases from act to act. The connecting outline is Luke's comforting conversations with those suffering from his compassion and Satin's rare remarks, indicating that he listens attentively to the speeches of the tramp. The climax of the play is Satin’s monologue, delivered after Luke’s departure and flight. Phrases from it are often quoted because they have the appearance of aphorisms; “Everything in a person is everything for a person!”, “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters... Truth is the god of a free person!”, “Man - this sounds proud!”
Conclusion
The bitter result of the play is the triumph of the freedom of fallen man to perish, disappear, leave without leaving behind a trace or memories. The inhabitants of the shelter are free from society, moral standards, family and livelihood. By and large, they are free from life.
The play “At the Lower Depths” has been around for more than a century and continues to be one of the most strong works Russian classics. The play makes you think about the place of faith and love in a person’s life, about the nature of truth and lies, about a person’s ability to resist moral and social decline.
Anna is one of the female characters in the work, allowing a more subtle sense of the inferiority of the world of the residents of the rooming house.
The writer presents the image of Anna as a terminally ill woman of thirty years old, infected with consumption, realizing that she will soon die and humbly accepting this fact.
Anna lives in a shelter with her husband Kleshch, who lost his job. The woman feels terribly tired from the hard and poor life, which Anna is disgusted with her intolerance, where she is forced to economize, tremble over a piece of bread, dress in rags.
Anna personifies in the play the image of pure and bashful suffering, unclouded by vicious desires and frantic passions. The young woman feels like an ancient old woman and realizes that she is useless to the world around her.
Residents of the night shelter provide minimal assistance and express sympathy for the dying woman; only her husband remains indifferent to Anna’s torment, constantly insulting, humiliating her, and sometimes even raising his fists at her.
Anna is patient with her husband’s irritations and calmly tries to continue to take care of him, because she is ready to do a lot for the sake of Tick. However, Kleshch, selfish and indifferent to his wife’s illness, refuses Anna even to let some fresh air into her open door, afraid that he himself would catch a cold.
A downtrodden and hunted woman considers death the only way out of a hopeless hellish life and is only afraid that in another dimension she will also be doomed to torment, although she dreams of getting at least a little blissful rest from her sorrowful existence.
The author reveals the image of the heroine, portraying her as an unnecessary thing in this world. Throughout the play, Anna's character does not receive any movement; she is moved around the stage, forgotten in the kitchen, carried, taken out. Even after dying, they are in no hurry to send the woman to the graveyard; after a while she is carried out like a prop.
In the last minutes of her life, the wanderer Luke brings comfort to Anna, telling the woman that in the next world she will receive both pleasure and long-awaited rest, so Anna dies, thinking only about her unrealizable dreams.
Narrating the difficult and unfair fate of a young woman, the author vividly illustrates a period in the life of Russia when disadvantaged people forced to sink to the social bottom lead a miserable existence, while remaining capable of wise reflection, the desire to think and dream about a wonderful future.
Essay Anna in the play At the Lower Depths
Anna is one of minor characters masterpiece of Russian classics, Maxim Gorky’s play “At the Depths”. Her image is the most tragic in the work.
She is 30 years old, she is married to a simple mechanic, Andrei Kleshch. The woman is seriously ill with consumption and pulmonary tuberculosis. She feels death is approaching quickly and is very weak due to her illness. Anna eats practically nothing, mostly lies in bed all the time, since she does not have enough strength for anything else, and she suffers from constant bouts of suffocating cough.
The husband treats her coldly and indifferently, with obvious irritability and reproaches, sometimes the woman even has to endure beatings from him. The tick refuses to even open the door at his wife’s request, arguing that he is afraid of getting sick like she did. Despite this, Anna continues to care for him, gives her husband all the best and humbly endures his cruelty. The author embodies in her character all women with a difficult fate and unhappy marriages. It would seem that she is still so young, but Anna no longer has any vitality, illness, lack of money and moral exhaustion have crippled her; she has long come to terms with the established state of affairs and believes that it is too late to try to change anything.
The couple are very poor, they live in a shelter for the poor, which is owned by the Kostylev couple. All her life the woman is undernourished, wears old clothes that look more like rags, and denies herself all kinds of material benefits. All the guests sincerely sympathize and feel sorry for Anna, except for her own husband. He does not show any care or human understanding towards her. Constant cruelty on his part only worsened her already deplorable condition, both moral and physical.
The wanderer Luke is trying to alleviate Anna's painful fate. He resorts to deception in order to somehow console and calm the unhappy woman. She promises that much awaits her in heaven better life and peace of mind that she will be richly rewarded for her hardships and suffering on earth.
Soon the disease conquers and Anna’s strength leaves, she dies without ever knowing family well-being and simple human happiness.
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Anna is one of the characters in M. Gorky's play “At the Lower Depths”. Her heroine, thirty years old, is mortally ill with consumption and understands that she will soon die. She lives with her husband Andrei Kleshch, an unemployed mechanic. Anna is tired of life in poverty, a life in which she has to save on everything and wear rags.
She embodies immaculate suffering, untainted by sinful passions and aspirations. An old woman no one needs - this is exactly how Anna feels, despite her young age. She subtly feels how flawed the world of the inhabitants of the rooming house is, who, despite this, sincerely sympathize and try in every possible way to help the girl, unlike her indifferent and irritable husband. He only insults, humiliates and beats her. Anna is very humble about her illness and her husband’s similar attitude. She continues to surround him with care. For the sake of this indifferent egoist, she is ready to do anything, she will even give him the last piece of bread, but he, fearing that he will catch a cold, even denies her a breath of fresh air. His behavior only aggravates the weakened Anna’s condition.
Anna is so downtrodden and persecuted that death is the only way out of this hell for her, only one thing scares her - to be doomed to torment in another world too. She understood that nothing could be changed and simply resigned herself. She dreams of only one thing - at least there to find long-awaited peace and take a break from the hardships of earthly existence.
Anna's only consolation before her death is the wanderer Luke, who convinces her that in another world she can finally rest. Luke promises that a reward awaits her for all her torment. Her pipe dreams are the only thing she thinks about as she dies.
The author characterizes the image of the heroine as a thing that no one needs in the world. For the duration of the entire play, her character is immobilized, she is moved around the stage, can easily be forgotten in the kitchen, or moved if necessary. Even after death, they are in no hurry to bury her and only after some time they carry her out as if she were just a prop.
The image of Anna is tragic and embodies the fate of all women who were unable to find happiness in marriage, all women offended by fate and morally exhausted. Having told how unfair fate is towards a young girl, the author talks about a period in the life of Russian society when people deprived of everything, sinking to the social bottom, lead a miserable life, but at the same time do not stop dreaming of a bright future.
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There are five female characters in the play. Anna is the wife of Kleshch, who humbly dies in the second act, the compassionate and economical Kvashnya, the young Vasilisa is the wife of the owner of the shelter and the mistress of Vaska Pepla, the young and downtrodden Natasha and Nastya, designated in the author’s remark by the bashful word “maiden”.
In the semantic context of the work, female images are represented by two pairs of opposite characters: Kvashnya - Nastya and Vasilisa - Natasha. Outside of these pairs is Anna, who personifies pure suffering in the play. Her image is not clouded by passions
And desires. She dies patiently and obediently. He dies not so much from a mortal disease, but from the consciousness of his uselessness to the world. She is one of those “naked people” for whom the truth of existence is intolerable. “I’m sick,” she admits to Luka. The only aspect of death that worries her: “What’s it like there – is it also torment?” Downtrodden, unsuitable for anything in this world, it resembles a thing. She doesn't move around the stage - she gets moved. They take him out, leave him in the kitchen, and forget about him. Just like a thing, it is treated after death. “We have to drag it out!” “We’ll pull it out...” She passed away - as if a prop had been taken away. “That means I’ve stopped coughing.”
Not so with the others. In the first pair, Kvashnya represents the semantic dominant. She almost always does housework. He lives from his labors. Makes dumplings and sells them. What these dumplings are made of and who eats them, only God knows. She lived married, and now for her it’s a no-brainer: “I did it once, it’s memorable for the rest of my life...” And when her husband “died,” she “sat alone” all day out of happiness and joy. She is always alone in the play. Conversations and events touch the edge, as if the inhabitants of the shelter are afraid of her. Even Medvedev, the personification of law and power, her roommate, talks to Kvashnya with respect - there is too much incurious reason, common sense and hidden aggression in her.
Her opposite, Nastya, is not protected and accessible. She's not busy, she's not doing anything. She is a "maiden". She hardly reacts to the realities of the world around her. Her mind is not burdened with reflection. She is as self-sufficient as Kvashnya. Gorky implanted in her a strange world not invented by him “ women's novels", a meager and meaningless dream beautiful life. She is literate and therefore reads. “There, in the kitchen, a girl is sitting, reading a book and crying,” Luka is surprised. This is Nastya. She weeps over a fiction that miraculously seems to her own life. She resembles a little girl who dreamed of a toy. Having woken up, she fiddles with her parents and demands this toy for herself. At a tender age, children do not separate dreams from reality. This happens later, in the process of growing up. Nastya not only doesn’t grow up, she doesn’t wake up. In reality she dreams of these confectionery, sinless dreams: “And his left-hander is huge, and loaded with ten bullets... My unforgettable friend... Raoul...” The Baron rolls over her: “Nastya! But... after all, last time there was Gaston! Nastya behaves like a child. Having poked her nose into reality, she becomes capricious, gets excited, throws a cup on the floor, threatens the inhabitants: “I’ll get drunk today... So I’ll get drunk.” Getting drunk means escaping reality again. Forget yourself. Judging by the indirect hints, the Baron is a gigolo with her, but she is not aware of this either. The rays of reality only glare on the surface of her consciousness, without penetrating inside. One day Nastya opens up, and it becomes clear that her life is fueled by the energy of hatred. Running away, she shouts to everyone: “Wolves! May you breathe out! Wolves! She says this line at the end of the fourth act, and, therefore, there is hope of waking up. Vasilisa represents the authoritative beginning of the play. She is the Pallas Athena of the flophouse, her evil genius. She alone acts - all the others exist. The criminal and melodramatic intrigues of the plot are connected with her image. For Vasilisa there are no internal prohibitions. She, like everyone else in the shelter, is a “naked person”, “everything is allowed” to her. And Vasilisa takes advantage of this while the others are just talking. The author gave her a cruel and merciless character. The concept of “impossible” lies beyond her moral consciousness. And she thinks consistently: “To enjoy is to kill to enjoy.” Her antipode Natasha is the purest and brightest image of the play. Out of jealousy for Vaska Ash, Vasilisa constantly beats and tortures Natasha; her husband, old Kostylev, helps her. The pack instinct kicks in. Natasha alone of everyone believes and still hopes, she waits not for haberdashery, but true love, looking for her. But, unfortunately, the geography of its search takes place on the part of the bottom where Spanish galleons loaded with gold do not rest. The dim light coming “from above, from the viewer” allows one to see only the faces of the permanent inhabitants. Natasha doesn't trust anyone. Neither Luke nor Ash. It’s just that she, like Marmeladov, “has nowhere to go.” When Kostylev is killed, she shouts: “Take me too... put me in prison!” It’s clear to Natasha that it wasn’t Ash who killed. Everyone has wine. Everyone was killed. This is her truth. Hers, not Satina. Not really proud strong man, but the truth is humiliated and insulted.
The female characters in Gorky's play “At the Depths” carry a serious semantic load. Thanks to their presence, the damaged world of the inhabitants of the shelter becomes closer and clearer. They are like guarantors of its reliability. It is through their voices that the author openly speaks about compassion and the unbearable boredom of life. They have their own book predecessors; many literary projections from the previous artistic tradition converged on them. The author does not hide this. Another thing is more important: it is they who evoke the most sincere feelings of hatred or compassion among readers and spectators of the play.
Anna is a character in the play “At the Lower Depths,” a woman with consumption who lives her life last days, wife of the hard worker Kleshch. She is tired of a life in which she trembles over every piece of bread and walks around in rags. At the same time, Anna constantly endures her husband’s cruel treatment. Anyone can sympathize with the poor thing, but not her husband. He only insults and humiliates her, and sometimes beats her. She only causes him indifference and irritation.
It seems that the image of Anna shows all the women who endure rude attitudes in family life. It even becomes scary that she so calmly endures eternal humiliation. At the same time, she continues to take care of her husband and is ready to give him everything. So, in one episode she says that Kvashnya left her dumplings so that he would take and eat them. He grumbles at her all the time and does not perceive her requests in any way. When she, breathless, asks to open the door, he refuses, fearing that he himself will catch a cold. It is not surprising that there is only one way out of such a life - death. And she is only thirty years old. Before her death, Luka somehow consoles her. He says that in the next world she will be able to take a break from her joyless existence. After all, these torments are compensated by bliss in heaven. Soon she dies.
