Landowners who live well in Rus' conclusion. The image of landowners in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov - essay

Essays on literature: Images of landowners in the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'” The plot basis of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the search for a happy person in Rus'. N.A. Nekrasov aims to cover as widely as possible all aspects of the life of the Russian village in the period immediately after the abolition of serfdom. And therefore, the poet cannot do without describing the life of Russian landowners, especially since who, if not them, in the opinion of the peasant walkers, should live “happily, at ease in Rus'.”

Stories about landowners are present throughout the poem. The men and the master are irreconcilable, eternal enemies. “Praise the grass in the haystack, and the master in the coffin,” says the poet. As long as gentlemen exist, there is no and cannot be happiness for the peasant - this is the conclusion to which N. A. Nekrasov leads the reader of the poem with iron consistency. Nekrasov looks at the landowners through the eyes of the peasants, without any idealization or sympathy, drawing their images. The landowner Shalashnikov is shown as a cruel tyrant-oppressor, who conquered his own peasants with “military force.” The “greedy, stingy” Mr. Polivanov is cruel, incapable of experiencing a feeling of gratitude and accustomed to doing only as he pleases.

In the chapters “The Landowner” and “The Last One,” N. A. Nekrasov generally shifts his gaze from people’s Rus' to landowner’s Rus' and introduces the reader to a discussion of the most pressing moments in the social development of Russia. The meeting of the men with Gavrila Afanasyevich Obolt-Obolduev, the hero of the chapter “The Landowner,” begins with misunderstanding and irritation of the landowner. It is these feelings that determine the entire tone of the conversation. Despite the fantastic nature of the situation when the landowner confesses to the peasants, N.A.

In conditions of complete impunity, the rules of behavior of landowners, their habits and views took shape: The law is my desire! The fist is my police! A spark-sprinkling blow, a teeth-crushing blow, a cheekbone blow! But the landowner immediately stops short, trying to explain that severity, in his opinion, came only from love. And he recalls, perhaps, even scenes dear to the peasant’s heart: a common prayer with the peasants during the all-night service, the gratitude of the peasants for the lord’s mercy. All this is gone. “Now Rus' is not the same!

" - Obolt-Obolduev says bitterly, talking about the desolation of estates, drunkenness, thoughtless cutting down of gardens. And the peasants do not interrupt the landowner, as at the beginning of the conversation, because they know that all this is true. The abolition of serfdom hit the master with one end , others like a peasant..." The landowner sobs with self-pity, and the men understand that the end of serfdom was a real grief for him. The chapter "The Landowner" leads the reader to an understanding of the reasons why serf Rus' could not be happy. N.

A. Nekrasov leaves no illusions, seeing that a peaceful solution to the eternal problem of landowners and peasants is impossible. Obolt-Obolduev is a typical image of a serf owner, accustomed to living according to special standards and who considered the labor of peasants a reliable source of his abundance and well-being. But in the chapter “The Last One,” N. A. Nekrasov shows that the habit of ruling is as common to landowners as it is to peasants - the habit of submitting. Prince Utyatin is a gentleman who “has been weird and foolish all his life.” He remained a cruel despot-serf owner even after 1861.

The whole appearance of the landowner can be considered a symbol of dying serfdom: A nose with a beak, like a hawk, A gray mustache, long And - different eyes: One healthy one glows, And the left one is cloudy, cloudy, Like a tin penny! The news of the royal decree leads to the fact that Utyatin had a stroke: It is known that it was not self-interest, But arrogance that cut him off, He lost a speck. And the peasants play out an absurd comedy, helping the landowner maintain the conviction that serfdom has returned. The “Last One” becomes the personification of the master’s arbitrariness and the desire to violate the human dignity of the serfs. Completely unaware of his peasants, the “Last One” gives ridiculous orders: he orders “the widow Terentyeva to marry Gavrila Zhokhov, to rebuild the hut, so that they can live in it, be fruitful and manage the tax!” The men greet this order with laughter, since “that widow is nearly seventy, and the groom is six years old!” “The Last One” appoints a deaf-mute fool as a watchman, and orders the shepherds to quiet the herd so that the cows do not wake up the master with their mooing. Not only are the orders of the “Last One” absurd, he himself is even more absurd and strange, stubbornly refusing to come to terms with the abolition of serfdom. The chapter “Last One” clarifies the meaning of the chapter “Landowner”.

From pictures of the past, N. A. Nekrasov moves on to the post-reform years and convincingly proves: old Rus' is changing its appearance, but the serf owners remained the same. Fortunately, their slaves are gradually beginning to change, although there is still a lot of obedience in the Russian peasant.

There is not yet that movement of popular power that the poet dreams of, but the peasants no longer expect new troubles, the people are awakening, and the poet hopes: Rus' will not budge, Rus' is as if killed! And a hidden spark ignited in her... “The Legend of Two Great Sinners” sums up N. A. Nekrasov’s thoughts about sin and happiness. In accordance with the people's ideas about good and evil, the murder of the cruel master Glukhovsky, who, boasting, lectures the robber: You have to live, old man, in my opinion: How many slaves I destroy, I torture, I torture, I hang, And if only I could see how I sleep! -becomes a way to cleanse your soul from sins.

This is a call addressed to the people, a call for deliverance from tyrants.

Images of landowners in the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'"

In his great poem, Nekrasov looks at landowners through the eyes of peasants. This is how, for example, Obolt-Obolduev is depicted (his last name alone is worth it!):

Some round gentleman,

Mustachioed, pot-bellied,

With a cigar in his mouth...

The diminutive and endearing forms traditional in folk poetry here enhance the ironic sound of the story and emphasize the insignificance of the “round” person.

Peasant speech often mocks bars.

We corvées have grown up

Under the snout of the landowner, -

the peasants say, and one word “snout” is enough to make their attitude towards their master clear.

The ideal of happiness, which is embodied in Obolt-Obolduev’s story, speaks of his spiritual misery:

I smoked God's heaven,

Wore the royal livery,

Wasted the people's treasury

And I thought about living like this forever...

With undisguised triumph, Nekrasov depicts the collapse of the ideal of landowner happiness in the chapter “The Last One.” Its very name has deep meaning. We are talking not only about Prince Utyatin, but also about the last landowner-serf, and his death symbolizes the death of the serf system. No wonder it causes such joy among the peasants. In his portrayal of the Last One, Nekrasov achieves exceptional sharpness of satirical denunciation. This is a slave owner who has lost his mind, and there is nothing human even in his external appearance:

The nose is beaked like a hawk.

Mustache is gray and long

And - different eyes:

One healthy one glows,

And the left one is cloudy, cloudy,

Like a tin penny!

But the Last One is not only funny - he is also scary. This is a cruel serf-torturer. Corporal violence has become a habit for him; the sounds of beatings coming from the stables give him pleasure.

The images of other enemies of the people are also drawn with evil sarcasm: governors, police officers - “unjust judges”, merchants, contractors.

Priests are also among the people's enemies. Even the kind-hearted and sympathetic priest is forced to exploit them. He himself complains:

Live with only peasants,

Collect worldly hryvnias...

Nekrasov also creates a different image of the priest - a ruthless extortionist who does not sympathize with the people at all. This is Pop Ivan. He is indifferent to the grief of the peasant woman: even when the corpse of her son Demushka is opened, he jokes. And after drinking with the police officers, he scolds the peasants:

Our people are all hungry and drunk.

For the wedding, for confession

They owe it for years.

The poem convincingly proves: old Rus' is changing its appearance, but the serf owners remain the same. Fortunately, their slaves are gradually beginning to change. The people are awakening, and the poet hopes:

Rus' does not move,

Rus' is like dead!

And she caught fire

N.A. Nekrasov wrote a wonderful poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” Its writing began in 1863, two years after the abolition of serfdom in Russia. It is this event that is at the center of the poem. The main question of the work can be understood from the title - this is the problem of happiness. As planned, Nekrasov showed in the poem all social strata: from the peasant to the tsar. I will focus on the middle class - the landowners.

Their life is represented in the poem by four characters: G.A. Obolt-Obolduev, Utyatin (the last one), Shalashnikov and H.H. Vogel.

As the work progresses, the first person we meet is Gavrila Afanasyevich Obolt-Obolduev. To the question of wanderers, “Is the life of a landowner sweet?” he gives a very detailed answer. First, he explains how the life of a landowner differs from that of a peasant - the family tree: “The more ancient the noble tree, the more eminent, the more honorable the nobleman.” Then Gavrila Afanasyevich begins to remember his former life: “We lived like in Christ’s bosom, and we knew honor.” He also talks about his patrimony, the richness of its nature. Obolt-Obolduev recalls that previously noble houses were huge estates (“Houses with greenhouses, Chinese gazebos, and English parks…”), in which there were “a whole regiment” of servants. Holidays in the old days were famous for their pomp and vastness. The following is a description of baiting the animal. This was such a large event that it could not be compared with any other in size. According to the landowner, the hunt could be equated to a military campaign: “Each landowner has a hundred hounds at his disposal, each has a dozen greyhounds on horseback, each with cooks and a convoy of provisions.”

After describing all kinds of celebrations, Gavrila Afanasyevich starts talking about peasants. As if even before the abolition of serfdom, he did not enslave the peasants, but “attracted hearts more with affection,” he gave a number of examples confirming this.

But everything they told him has recently ceased to exist (“And everything passed, and everything passed”). Now there are few representatives left from the large landowner class, and they do not live as before: the peasants have completely lost their way, the lands are neglected, forests are cut down, estates are transferred. And the reason for everything that happened, according to Obolt-Obolduev, was the reform of 1861.

This is how the first representative of the “noble class” describes the life of a landowner. Next, another landowner meets - Prince Utyatin. He, like all those who follow him, is shown as an oppressor, tormentor, money-grubber. His life is easy, since he does not have to work: dependent peasants do all the work. It was through their efforts that he acquired “exorbitant wealth.” But all this was before 1861. After the reform, both his life and the life of the peasants had to change, just like Obolt-Obolduev’s. But that was not the case: Utyatin did not recognize the new order and continued to lead an idle life until his death.

In the third part of the poem, two more landowners are introduced. But their lives took place a century before the reform. First it tells about the landowner Shalashnikov. This character was more greedy than power-hungry. If the quitrent was paid on time, he left the village alone, and any punishment could be immediately canceled for a bribe.

Another contemporary of Shalashnikov, Christian Christianovich Vogel, was more cunning and far-sighted. At first he lived modestly and did not burden the peasants with taxes. But after the implementation of his plan, the peasants “began to hard labor.” The German got rich, became wealthy, and built a factory. He also acquired his wealth from the labor of peasants.

Having analyzed the lives of four landowners, I concluded that they lived the same way both before 1861 and after. The reform did not make big changes either in the lives of peasants or in the lives of landowners. The latter continued to lead an idle lifestyle, not caring at all about the peasants.

Definitely negative heroes. Nekrasov describes various perverted relationships between landowners and serfs. The young lady who whipped men for swear words seems kind and affectionate in comparison with the landowner Polivanov. He bought a village with bribes, in it he “played freely, indulged in drinking, drank bitterly,” was greedy and stingy. The faithful servant Yakov took care of the master, even when his legs were paralyzed. But the master chose Yakov’s only nephew to become a soldier, flattered by his bride.

Separate chapters are devoted to two landowners.

Gavrila Afanasyevich Obolt-Obolduev.

Portrait

To describe the landowner, Nekrasov uses diminutive suffixes and speaks of him with disdain: a round gentleman, mustachioed and pot-bellied, ruddy. He has a cigar in his mouth, and he’s carrying a C grade. In general, the image of the landowner is sweet and not at all menacing. He is not young (sixty years old), “portanous, stocky,” with a long gray mustache and dashing manners. The contrast between the tall men and the squat gentleman should make the reader smile.

Character

The landowner was frightened by the seven peasants and pulled out a pistol, as plump as himself. The fact that the landowner is afraid of the peasants is typical for the time this chapter of the poem was written (1865), because the liberated peasants gladly took revenge on the landowners whenever possible.

The landowner boasts of his “noble” origins, described with sarcasm. He says that Obolt Obolduev is a Tatar who entertained the queen with a bear two and a half centuries ago. Another of his maternal ancestors, about three hundred years ago, tried to set fire to Moscow and rob the treasury, for which he was executed.

Lifestyle

Obolt-Obolduev cannot imagine his life without comfort. Even while talking with the men, he asks the servant for a glass of sherry, a pillow and a carpet.

The landowner nostalgically recalls the old days (before the abolition of serfdom), when all nature, peasants, fields and forests worshiped the master and belonged to him. Noble houses competed with churches in beauty. The life of a landowner was a continuous holiday. The landowner kept many servants. In the fall he was engaged in hound hunting - a traditional Russian pastime. During the hunt, the landowner’s chest breathed freely and easily, “the spirit was transferred to the ancient Russian customs.”

Obolt-Obolduev describes the order of landowner life as the absolute power of the landowner over the serfs: “There is no contradiction in anyone, I will have mercy on whomever I want, and I will execute whomever I want.” A landowner can beat serfs indiscriminately (word hit repeated three times, there are three metaphorical epithets for it: spark-sprinkling, tooth-breaking, zygomatic-rot). At the same time, the landowner claims that he punished lovingly, that he took care of the peasants, and set tables for them in the landowner’s house on holidays.

The landowner considers the abolition of serfdom to be similar to breaking the great chain connecting masters and peasants: “Now we don’t beat the peasant, but at the same time we don’t have mercy on him like a father.” The landowners' estates were dismantled brick by brick, the forests were cut down, the men were committing robbery. The economy also fell into disrepair: “The fields are unfinished, the crops are unsown, there is no trace of order!” The landowner does not want to work on the land, and what his purpose is, he no longer understands: “I smoked God’s heaven, wore the royal livery, littered the people’s treasury and thought of living like this forever...”

Last One

This is what the peasants called their last landowner, Prince Utyatin, under whom serfdom was abolished. This landowner did not believe in the abolition of serfdom and became so angry that he had a stroke.

Fearing that the old man would be deprived of his inheritance, his relatives told him that they had ordered the peasants to turn back to the landowners, and they themselves asked the peasants to play this role.

Portrait

The last one is an old man, thin as hares in winter, white, a beaked nose like a hawk, long gray mustache. He, seriously ill, combines the helplessness of a weak hare and the ambition of a hawk.

Character traits

The last tyrant, “fools in the old way”, because of his whims, both his family and the peasants suffer. For example, I had to sweep away a ready-made stack of dry hay just because the old man thought it was wet.

The landowner Prince Utyatin is arrogant and believes that the nobles have betrayed their age-old rights. His white cap is a sign of landowner power.

Utyatin never valued the lives of his serfs: he bathed them in an ice hole and forced them to play the violin on horseback.

In old age, the landowner began to demand even greater nonsense: he ordered a six-year-old to be married to a seventy-year-old, to quiet the cows so that they would not moo, to appoint a deaf-mute fool as a watchman instead of a dog.

Unlike Obolduev, Utyatin does not learn about his changed status and dies “as he lived, as a landowner.”

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Poem by N.A. Nekrasov can rightfully be considered an epic of Russian life in the middle of the last century. The author called the poem “his favorite brainchild,” and he collected material for it, as he himself put it, “word by word for twenty years.” Nekrasov unusually acutely raises the main issue of that time - the life of feudal Russia and the consequences of breaking the foundations of serfdom, the fate of the ordinary Russian people and the historical role of landowners.

For the first time, the image of the landowner appears in the fifth chapter, which is called “The Landowner.” This is how the peasants saw him:

The landowner was rosy-cheeked,

Stately, planted,

Sixty years old;

Long gray mustache

Well done...

The landowner's name is Gavrilo Afanasyevich Obolt-Obolduev. When asked by the peasants whether he is happy, the master laughs sincerely and for a long time, and then with regret recalls the past years, full of prosperity, fun, idle life and complete self-government:

Time flew by like a falcon,

The landowner's chest was breathing

Free and easy.

During the time of the boyars,

In ancient Russian order

The spirit was transferred!

There is no contradiction in anyone,

I will have mercy on whomever I want,

Whoever I want, I’ll execute.

The law is my desire!

The fist is my police!

But “it’s all gone! everything is over!...", reform of 1861. abolished serfdom, but it clearly showed that it was not completed. Little has changed in the life of the peasants, but the landowners began to live somewhat differently after the abolition of serfdom:

Disassembled brick by brick

A beautiful manor house,

And neatly folded

Bricks in the columns!

The extensive garden of the landowner

Under the peasant's ax

All laid down, the man admires,

How much firewood came out!

However, even the changes that have occurred in life cannot force Obolt-Obolduev to work and respect the work of others:

Noble classes

We don't learn how to work.

We have a bad official

And he won’t wash the floors,

The stove will not light...

The landowner is not going to learn anything and hopes, as before, to live off the labor of the peasants. Probably for the rest of his life he will remember the old days and yearn for his unlimited power, for idle idleness.

The landowner Utyatin, who “has been weird and foolish all his life,” is a match for him. “But suddenly a thunderstorm struck,” serfdom was abolished in Rus', and the landowner “suffered a blow from grief.” To get the inheritance, his children, in agreement with the peasants, put on a real performance in front of Utyatin. The landowner is told that he was not left “without a fiefdom,” but in Rus' there is still serfdom:

New orders, not current ones

He can't bear it.

Take care of your father!

Be silent, bow down

Don't tell the sick man...

So the sick and stupid landowner lives in ignorance:

Sees a plowman in the field

And for his own lane

Barks: and lazy people

And we are couch potatoes!

Yes, the Last One doesn’t know

That it’s been a long time since she’s a lord,

And our streak...

Every day, his former serfs play “gum” in front of Utyatin, listening, for a reward, to the lord’s ridiculous “orders on the estate” and laugh heartily at the landowner who has lost his mind.

Such gentlemen have no future, and N.A. Nekrasov’s accusatory satire clearly shows that renewal of the social system is impossible while such nobles and princes are in power.