What is better is truth compassion reasoning. Composition on the topic: What is better truth or compassion? in the play At the Bottom, Gorky

Just for every firefighter under the cut))) Under the sea, two pages of printed text, as for me - delusional nonsense, according to the teacher of literature - a good essay))

Which is better: truth or compassion? What is more needed?
(Composition based on the play by M. Gorky "At the Bottom")

Showing the life of the inhabitants of the rooming house - people who have sunk to the very bottom of life, M. Gorky throughout the play tries to find the answer to the question: what is better, what people need more: truth or compassion?
According to the author himself, compassion and pity give rise to "comforting lies" and carry only harm. And Gorky expresses his thoughts through Sateen's monologue: "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters. ... Truth is the god of a free man!" And Luka, as the antagonist character of Sateen, was introduced into the play precisely in order to show all the futility, senselessness of compassion, because in the end, after the old man left, everything became not only not better, but even worse! But, despite the author's intention, it is impossible to say unequivocally who is right - Satin or Luke, and what would be better for a person - a cruel truth or a comforting lie.
When the reader first meets the inhabitants of the rooming house, he sees degraded, desperate people thrown to the sidelines of life. No one cares about anyone, even the neighbors are only busy with their own problems. However, these people also have their own dreams, desires, someone, like the Baron, has memories of a past life - and it is impossible to understand whether they are true or invented, like Nastya's "true love". And Luka, appearing for the first time in this dark and inhospitable place, finds a kind word for almost everyone. So, he tells the Actor about the hospital, Anna - that she will be fine in the next world, in words he believes Nastya's stories. And as if a sunbeam penetrates the rooming house - people are inspired by hope, they believe - or, like Vaska Pepel, want to believe - Luka, because his words coincide with their own dreams. Luka is crafty - he is not like Bubnov, who believes that "bring the whole truth as it is", Luka tells people exactly what they want to hear, even if it goes against the true state of affairs. Compassion is not alien to him, and he is ready to pity the people gathered in the rooming house. In his life, he saw a lot, and came to the conclusion that "you can't always cure the soul with the truth." A vivid example of this can be the story told by Luke about a man who believed in a righteous land: he lived, worked and endured hardships and hardships, because he believed that there is such a land! But, having learned the truth, he lost all meaning of life: "... went home - and strangled himself! .." The truth did not bring anything good to this man, only deprived him of the hope that he lived. And so is Luke - he supports the inhabitants of the rooming house, encourages them and gives hope, even if it is false. And under its influence, it would seem that completely desperate people begin to dream, even make plans. They are changing for the better, they draw strength from the appeared hope to fight for their dream. Vaska Pepel is ready to leave for Siberia and start life there from scratch, he says words that a completely degraded thief would not say: "We must live like this ... so that I can respect myself." The actor goes to work, saves money for a hospital and even remembers his stage name. It would seem that everything is going well, because now people have hope, there is a goal in life - and this raises them above their previous position.
But what - as soon as Luka disappears, as the haze of bright hopes dissipates, the heroes are faced with the cruel truth of life, in which, however, Satin plays an important role with his sarcastic, contemptuous and incriminating remarks. And, having lost their hope, the heroes return to their former state, only now it is even more difficult for them to overcome adversity on their life path, their spiritual strength is already running out, and for someone, like an Actor, this manifests itself to an extreme degree, like the man in the story of the righteous land. And this, too, is Luke's fault. As Kleshch rightly put it: “he beckoned them somewhere ... but he didn’t say the way ...” Again, faced with the cruel truth, the heroes are disappointed in life. And the stronger their disappointment, the stronger was the hope for the best. And here again we can turn to the story of the righteous land. After all, the inhabitants of the rooming house do not understand it at all in the way that Luka wants to present it: "I could not stand the deception," says Natasha. Who and why told this man that a righteous land exists? Why give him false hope, if in the end the disappointment in life turned out to be so great that suicide turned out to be the best way out for the hero? After all, in fact, this story practically does not differ from the events unfolding in the play. And Luke's compassion, his comforting lie, told not at all for selfish purposes, but to encourage - all this went only to the detriment of the heroes.
But at the same time, this tragic ending is also the fault of the characters themselves. After all, the words of the old man were not an absolute lie: Vaska Pepel could start his life from scratch in Siberia, and the Actor, even if he did not find a hospital, could rise from the bottom of life. Luke only gave them the initial impetus, I will give them hope and faith that the realization of their dreams is possible. Another thing is that, having lost external support and encouragement with the departure of Luke, they could not find in themselves that inner core that would allow them to continue to pursue their intended goal. Weak in spirit, they would need constant support from the outside - but there was only one person in the rooming house who was ready for this - Luka. But he left, and Satin remained, who is alien to such: "What good is it to you if I regret?" he asks Klesch. And oddly enough, it is Satin who best understands Luke and his motives: "The old man is not a charlatan!<…>I understand the old man... yes! He lied... but it was out of pity for you."
And after all, not everyone in the rooming house Luka gave advice or tried to encourage. Satin, Bubnov, Kleshch - Luka did not even approach them with consolations, because they do not need it. The tick clearly distinguishes between truth and lies, even if he himself doesn’t need the truth: “It’s true - what’s the truth here? And without it - there’s nothing to breathe ...” - he says. Bubnov does not dream, he is indifferent to others and is in favor of "blaming the whole truth as it is." Satin is a sharpie, a gambler - why does he need Luke's pity? After all, he himself does not accept pity, considering himself a "free man": "You must respect a person! Do not pity ... do not humiliate him with pity ... you must respect!" he says. Of course, the words about respect spoken by people like Satin do not sound particularly true, but here the author himself speaks the words of Satin, and this is the author's position.
So which is better, truth or compassion? Strong people do not need any compassion or pity - in case of failure, faced with the true state of things, they will be able to survive it and move on with renewed vigor, if, of course, they themselves need it. The situation is different with people like the Actor: on the one hand, compassion and "white lies" can keep them hopeful, can give them the strength to endure and move on; on the other hand, faced with the cruel truth, the loss of hope can finally deprive them of their strength and desire to fight on. Thus, each person must decide for himself what is best for him: truth or compassion. In the end, as the same Luke said: "What you believe is what you are."

Which is better, truth or compassion? Reflections on the pages of the play "At the bottom" What is truth? Truth (in my understanding) is the absolute truth, that is, the truth that is the same for all cases and for all people. I don't think this can be true. Even the fact, it would seem, is an obvious unambiguous event, different people perceive differently. So, for example, the news of death can be understood as news of another, new life.

Often the truth cannot be absolute, the same for everyone, because the words are ambiguous, because the meaning of the same word is understood differently. Therefore, I would not talk about truth - an unattainable concept - but about the truth, which is designed for the "average" person. The juxtaposition of truth and compassion lends the word "truth" a certain harshness. The truth is the harsh and cruel truth. Souls are wounded by the truth and therefore need compassion. It cannot be said that the heroes of the play "At the Bottom" are a more or less homogeneous mass of people - impersonal, spineless. Each of the characters feels, dreams, hopes or remembers. More precisely, they carry something precious and secret inside themselves, but since the world in which they live is heartless and cruel, they are forced to hide all their dreams as far as possible. Although the dream, which would be at least some proof in the harsh real life, could help weak people - Nastya, Anna, Actor.

They - these weak people - are overwhelmed by the hopelessness of real life. And in order to live, only to live, they need a saving and wise lie about the "righteous land". As long as people believe and strive for the best, they will find the strength and desire to live. Even the most pathetic of them, even those who have lost their name, can be cured by pity and compassion and even partly resurrected. If only the people around knew about it! Maybe then, out of self-deception, even a weak person would build for himself a better, acceptable life for him? But those around them do not think about it, they expose the dream, and the person ...

“went home and hung himself!” Is it worth blaming the old man for lying, who is the only one of the inhabitants of the rooming house who thinks not about himself, not about money, not about drinking, but about people? He tries to caress (“To caress a person is never harmful”), he inspires hope with calmness and pity. It was he, in the end, who changed all the people, all the inhabitants of the rooming house ... Yes, the Actor hanged himself. But not only Luke is guilty of this, but also those who did not regret, but cut to the heart with the truth. There is some stereotype about the truth. It is often assumed that the truth is always good.

Of course, it is valuable if you always live the truth, reality, but then dreams are impossible, and after them - a different vision of the world, poetry in the broadest sense of the word. It is a special view of life that gives birth to the beautiful, serves as the basis of art, which in the end also becomes a part of life. How do stronger people perceive compassion? Here is Bubnov, for example. Bubnov, in my opinion, is the toughest and most cynical of all the inhabitants of the rooming house. Bubnov "mumbles" all the time, stating naked, heavy truths: "no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased", he does not need a conscience, he is "not rich" ... Vasilisa Bubnov, without hesitation, calmly calls Vasilisa Bubnov a fierce woman, but in inserts in the middle of the conversation that the threads are rotten. Usually no one specifically talks to Bubnov, but from time to time he inserts his remarks into a variety of dialogues.

And the same Bubnov, Luka's main opponent, dull and cynical, in the final treats everyone with vodka, growls, shouts, offers to "take the soul"! And only the drunken, generous and talkative Bubnov, according to Alyoshka, "looks like a man." It can be seen that Luka also touched Bubnov with kindness, showed him that life is not in the despondency of everyday melancholy, but in something more cheerful, encouraging - in dreams. And Bubnov dreams! The appearance of Luka rallied the "strong" inhabitants of the rooming house (Satin, Klesch, Bubnov in the first place), there was even a solid general conversation. Luka is a man who sympathized, pitied and loved, managed to influence everyone. Even the Actor remembered his favorite poems and his name. Human feelings and dreams, his inner world is dearest and most valuable, because a dream does not limit, a dream develops.

The truth does not give hope, the truth does not believe in God, and without faith in God, without hope, there is no future.

"Bitter truth" and "sweet lies" always stand side by side, and each person decides for himself what to choose. No matter how much time passes, and the problem of truth and lies remains unresolved, this topic is eternal in literature, so various authors often turn to it.

M. Gorky in the play "At the Bottom" raises the problem of truth and lies. In the work, two heroes are opposed - Satin and Luka. The first one believes that it is always necessary to tell the truth, because "truth is the god of a free person," people who lie are "weaklings" for Satin. Luke argues that it is necessary to sympathize with people, and compassion, in his understanding, is often a lie - a lie for the good. It seems to me that both heroes were right about something, each person needed his own approach. Klesch and the Actor, for example, needed the “bitter truth”, they needed such an impetus that would provoke changes, could “stir them up”, it was the truth that would initiate their struggle and, perhaps, they would get out of this “pit”. Someone needed a soothing, "sweet lie" like Anna.

Anna, after the words of Luke, was not afraid of death and "with a light heart" went "to another world." For another hero of the play, the Actor, the lie turned out to be fatal. He wholeheartedly believed in the best, in his recovery from addiction, but soon even the illusory hope for something good collapsed, and with it the life of the Actor collapsed. In desperation, he decided to commit suicide. In fact, Luka was not to blame for the death of the Actor, and the deterioration in the situation of the inhabitants of the rooming house. He wholeheartedly tried to help these people, Luke really worried and sympathized, he thought that with his mercy and pity he could “reach out” to people and their souls. Luke wanted to give them hope and faith so that they would start acting, striving for something. His goodness was based on deceit, but for Luke this was not a lie, because, in his opinion, what is human is true. Only Satin was able to understand the “philosophy” of Luke, saying: “Man is the truth!”

Thus, "saving lies" do happen, but rather rarely. In most cases, the “bitter truth” is better than any deception, because one cannot live forever in illusions. A person who is aware of the criticality of the situation, who knows the true state of affairs, begins to fight, and often it is the “bitter truth” that helps him avoid many problems.

Option 2

Probably, those people who read the work and even thought about it were divided into two types. Some shared the side of truth, while others, on the contrary, were for compassion. But it’s definitely impossible to find out which is better in my opinion. Everything will directly depend on the situation or on the consequences of the choice.

This problem was considered by Gorky in his work "At the bottom". Everything happens in one shack, in which there are not even conditions for existence, and never have been, but people still lived here. Many people live here only because they have nowhere else to live, and here at least they will not die alone. And among them there is one guy named Luke, who is trying to change the life of each of the heroes. He tells them that when they die, they will find themselves in a wonderful place where they will have all the conditions for living and there they will definitely find their happiness. The guy understands that he is deceiving everyone who is here, but he does not have and will not have another way to cheer them up and help them. And he is sure that the lie helps them calmly complete their existence here and move to another world. Anna was dying in agony and pain, and he assured her that she would receive medical assistance there and she would never get sick again. One man used to be a great actor, but the vodka ruined him and he was fired from his job. After that, he began to drink, and now death has come for him. And Luka assured him that there was a special hospital there, in which they would definitely help him and he would never drink again and they would take him back to work.

And this is better than the truth, which sometimes does not please a person at all, but rather scares even more. He even gives people hope and they leave happy. In addition, he himself believed in this world, where everyone goes and lives well and happily there, but one day he found out that this world simply does not exist and then committed suicide.

Many agree with this main character, sometimes a person needs to be told what he wants to hear and it doesn’t have to be, really.

Not every person will be able to determine when another person tells him the truth, and when he is deceiving. Of course, in some situations this can be understood, but there are situations when it is not clear to the last whether a person deceived you or not. Sometimes fiction and truth are very close to each other, and it can be very difficult or almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. In this case, a person must learn to weigh the truth and lies, and then it will become clear where the fiction is, and where he is telling the truth.

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“Which is better truth or compassion?

Plan

1) Introduction. The famous play by Gorky.

2) The inhabitants of the rooming house.

3) Comforter Luke.

4) Satin and his famous monologue. Revealing Luke.

5) The third disputing party is Bubnov.

6) So what is better - truth or compassion?

a) Bubnov - Luka.

c) compassion

7) Conclusion.

The play by M. Gorky “At the bottom”.

In the nine hundred years, a severe economic crisis erupted in Russia.

After each crop failure, masses of ruined peasants roamed the country in search of work. And factories and plants were closed. Thousands of workers and peasants found themselves homeless and without means of subsistence. Under the influence of the most severe economic oppression, a huge number of tramps appear who sink to the “bottom” of life.

Taking advantage of the hopeless situation of impoverished people, enterprising owners of dark slums found a way to benefit from their stinking basements, turning them into rooming houses where the unemployed, beggars, vagrants, thieves and other “former people” found shelter.

Written in 1902, the play depicted the lives of these people. Gorky's play is an innovative literary work. Gorky himself wrote about his play “It was the result of my almost twenty years of observation of the world of “former people”, among which I include not only wanderers, inhabitants of rooming houses and, in general, “lumpen proletarians”, but also some of the intellectuals, “demagnetized”, disappointed, insulted and humiliated by failures in life. I felt and understood very early that these people are incurable.

But the play not only completed the theme of tramps, but also resolved the new revolutionary demands that were put before the masses during the period of intense class struggle between the pre-revolutionary era.

The topic of bosyatstvo at that time worried not only Gorky. Heroes, for example, Dostoevsky, too, "have nowhere else to go." This topic was also touched upon by: Gogol, Gilyarovsky. The heroes of Dostoevsky and Gorky have many similarities: this is the same world of drunkards, thieves, prostitutes and pimps. Only he is shown even more terribly and realistically by Gorky. This is the second dramatic work by Gorky the playwright after The Petty Bourgeois (1900-1901). At first, the author wanted to name the play “The Bottom”, “At the Bottom of Life”, “The Nochlezhka”, “Without the Sun”. In Gorky's play, the audience saw for the first time the unfamiliar world of outcasts. Such a harsh, merciless truth about the life of the social lower classes, about their hopeless fate, the world dramaturgy has not yet known. Gorky in this play showed terrifying pictures of Russian reality, the vices of the capitalist system, the inhuman conditions of bourgeois Russia, the "lead abominations of life." The writer in this play opposed the self-proclaimed "prophets" who arrogate to themselves the right to decide what share of the truth should be told to the "crowd" and what should not. The play sounds like an appeal to the people themselves to seek truth and justice. “We get only the amount of truth that we can achieve,” - this is how the wonderful German writer Bertolt Brecht developed Gorky's idea. This play, like "The Petty Bourgeois" caused fears in the authorities. The authorities feared demonstrations in honor of Gorky. It was allowed to be staged only because they considered it boring and were sure that the performance would fail, where instead of a “beautiful life” there were dirt, darkness and poor, embittered people on the stage.

Censorship crippled the play for a long time. She especially objected to the role of the bailiff. The troubles, however, were crowned with partial success: a telegram came from St. Petersburg, from the censorship: “The bailiff can be released without words.” But the audience was already clear about the role of the authorities in the existence of the bottom.

Plehve, Minister of the Interior, objected to the production. “If there was a sufficient reason, I would not have thought for a minute to exile Gorky to Siberia,” he said and ordered that the production of the play should no longer be allowed.

"At the bottom" was an unprecedented success. The advanced reader and viewer correctly understood the revolutionary meaning of the play: the system that turns people into residents of Kostylev's rooming house must be destroyed. The auditorium, according to Kachalov, accepted the play violently and enthusiastically as a play - a petrel, which foreshadowed the coming storms and called for storms.

The success of the performance is largely due to the magnificent production of the Moscow Art Theater directed by K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, as well as the wonderful performance of the artists - I. M. Moskvin (Luka), V. I. Kachalov (Baron), K. S. Stanislavsky (Satin), V. V. Luzhsky (Bubnov) and others. In the season of 1902 - 1903, the performances "Petty Bourgeois" and "At the Bottom" accounted for more than half of all the performances of the Moscow Art Theater.

The play was created over eighty years ago. And all these years it has not ceased to cause controversy. This can be explained by the many problems posed by the author, problems that at different stages of historical development acquire new relevance. This is due to the complexity and inconsistency of the author's position. The fact that the complex, philosophically ambiguous ideas of the writer were artificially simplified, turned into slogans adopted by the official propaganda of recent years, influenced the fate of the work, its perception. Words: “Man… that sounds proud!” often became poster inscriptions, almost as common as “Glory to the CPSU! ”, and the children memorized Sateen’s monologue by heart, however, they corrected it beforehand, throwing out some of the hero’s remarks (“Let's drink for a man, Baron!”). Today, I want to re-read the play “At the Bottom”, having an unbiased look at its characters, carefully thinking about their words and peering at their actions.

It's good when a book you read leaves a mark on your soul. And if it is bright, we suddenly think about what meaning this work has for us, what it has given us. The famous words of Satin, spoken at the dawn of the twentieth century, determined the creative line of the writer. He loved people, so his imagination, permeated with a wonderful dream of a great vocation of man, gave rise to such amazing images as Danko. But he also spoke with a passionate, ardent protest against everything that belittled a person.

The play is a formidable indictment of the system, which gives rise to bunkhouses, in which the best human qualities perish - intelligence (Satin), talent (Actor), will (Tick).

And before Gorky, “humiliated and insulted”, people of the bottom, tramps appeared on the stage. Playwrights and actors aroused the viewer's pity for them, philanthropic calls to help fallen people. Gorky stated something else in the play: pity humiliates a person, one must not pity people, but help them, change the very order of life that gives rise to the bottom.

But in the play we have before us not only a picture of the life of destitute, unfortunate people. “At the bottom” is not so much a domestic, as a philosophical play, a play-reflection. The characters reflect on life, the truth, the author reflects, forcing the reader and viewer to reflect. In the center of the play is not only human destinies, but a clash of ideas, a dispute about a person, about the meaning of life. The core of this dispute is the problem of truth and lies, the perception of life as it really is, with all its hopelessness and truth for the characters - people of the “bottom”, or life with illusions, in whatever diverse and bizarre forms they may represent.

What a person needs: “Lie is the religion of slaves and masters… Truth is the god of a free man!” is the main theme of the play. Gorky himself pointed out what the main problem of the play was: “The main question that I wanted to pose is what is it - which is better, truth or compassion? What is more needed? Is it necessary to bring compassion to the point of using a lie, like Luke?” This phrase of Gorky was placed in the title of my essay. Behind this phrase of the author is a deep philosophical thought. More precisely, the question is: what is better - truth or compassion, truth or lies for salvation. Perhaps this question is as complex as life itself. Many generations struggled to resolve it. Nevertheless, we will try to find an answer to the question posed.

The action of the play “At the Bottom” takes place in a gloomy, semi-dark basement, similar to a cave, with a vaulted, low ceiling that presses on people with its stone weight, where it is dark, there is no space and it is difficult to breathe. The situation in this basement is also wretched: instead of chairs, there are dirty stumps of wood, a rough-hewn table, and bunks along the walls. The gloomy life of the Kostylevo rooming house is depicted by Gorky as the embodiment of social evil. The heroes of the play live in poverty, filth and poverty. In a damp basement huddle people thrown out of life due to the conditions prevailing in society. And in this oppressive, gloomy and unpromising environment, thieves, cheaters, beggars, hungry, crippled, humiliated and insulted, thrown out of life gathered. The heroes are different in their habits, life behavior, past fate, but they are equally hungry, exhausted and useless: the former aristocrat Baron, the drunken Actor, the former intellectual Satin, the artisan locksmith Kleshch, the fallen woman Nastya, the thief Vaska. They have nothing, everything is taken away, lost, erased and trampled into the mud. People of the most diverse character and social status gathered here. Each of them is endowed with its own individual features. Worker Mite, living in the hope of a return to honest work. Ashes, longing for the right life. An actor absorbed in memories of his former glory, Nastya, passionately yearning for real, great love. All of them deserve a better fate. The more tragic their situation now. The people living in this basement are tragic victims of an ugly and cruel order in which a person ceases to be a person and is doomed to drag out a miserable existence. Gorky does not give a detailed account of the biographies of the heroes of the play, but the many features that he reproduces perfectly reveal the author's intention. In a few words, the tragedy of Anna's life fate is drawn. “I don't remember when I was full,” she says. “I was shaking over every piece of bread ... I was trembling all my life ... I was tormented ... as if I couldn’t eat anything else ... I went all my life in rags ... my whole unhappy life ...” The worker Klesh speaks of the hopelessness of his lot: “There is no work ... there is no strength ... That's the truth ! No shelter, no shelter! You need to breathe… That's the truth!” A motley gallery of characters are victims of the capitalist order even here, at the very bottom of life, completely exhausted and destitute, they serve as an object of exploitation, even here the owners, petty-bourgeois owners, did not stop at any crime and are trying to squeeze a few pennies out of them. All the actors are sharply divided into two main groups: the bums-bedroomers and the owners of the rooming house, petty proprietors, petty bourgeois. The figure of the owner of the rooming house Kostylev, one of the "masters of life", causes disgust. Hypocritical and cowardly, he seeks to cover up his predatory desires with unctuous religious speeches. Just as disgusting is his wife Vasilisa with her immorality. She has the same greed, cruelty as an owner-philistine, making her way to her well-being at any cost. It has its own inexorable wolf laws.

“Which is better truth or compassion?

Plan

1) Introduction. The famous play by Gorky.

2) The inhabitants of the rooming house.

3) Comforter Luke.

4) Satin and his famous monologue. Revealing Luke.

5) The third disputing party is Bubnov.

6) So what is better - truth or compassion?

a) Bubnov - Luka.

c) compassion

7) Conclusion.

The play by M. Gorky “At the bottom”.

In the nine hundred years, a severe economic crisis erupted in Russia.

The play is a formidable indictment of the system, which gives rise to bunkhouses, in which the best human qualities perish - intelligence (Satin), talent (Actor), will (Tick).

The petty-bourgeois hosts, who have lost everything human, are opposed to the bums-beds. The composition of the shelters is motley: they came to the “bottom” in different ways, each lived his own life, they are different in character, in convictions, and in the strength of their desire to escape from the basement. But whatever they may be, they stand in their moral qualities immeasurably higher than the owners of the rooming house.

Here there are "kings" and subject, exploiters and exploited, masters and workers. The laws of society pursue a person from birth to death, from royal palaces to a stinking rooming house. Only in the latter, everything is much more naked, and the relationship is wilder. And this is the accusation of the system and society! Life here for a normal person is worse than hard labor. It pushes people to crime, callousness, inhumanity. The fate of all these people and the very existence of the “bottom” proves the illegitimacy of the capitalist system and serves as an exposure and a formidable accusation of the bourgeois world.

During the action, swearing is heard from the stage, fights take place, the characters talk about their misfortunes and the misfortunes of other people - the most terrible aspects of life are shown in the play. But, despite this, the atmosphere of the play, the mood that it causes in the audience, and with which they leave the theater, are optimistic. The spectator and the person sees among these dregs of society disfigured people, but with a sense of their own dignity, capable of living a different life.

Gorky, with all his determination, reveals in the play the impotence of the tramps, their unsuitability for the cause of the reorganization of Russia. Everyone from the rooming house lives in hopes, but he cannot do anything, change his deplorable situation due to a tragic combination of circumstances.

“They are organically incapable of rebellion for the sake of freedom of labor,” Gorky later said about the heroes of the play. Moreover, the participation in the uprising of people like the inhabitants of a rooming house would be a discrediting of the very idea of socialist labor, and not an anarchist revelry of desperate and disillusioned people.

In the play “At the bottom”, with great force and unsurpassed artistic skill, those terrible conditions of life are shown that push it to the “bottom”, into the “pit”. And then the person ceases to be a person. Is it really the people who live in Kostylev's disgusting rooming house? They have lost everything human, they have lost even the appearance of a man, they have turned into miserable, useless creatures.

Of course, in many ways they themselves are to blame for what happened to them: they did not have the firmness or ability to fight fate, the desire to work, to overcome difficulties. But social conditions are also to blame. This is the era of the rapid enrichment of some and the impoverishment of others, the era when the remnants of centuries-old foundations collapsed. In every ruined fate, we see a fusion of social and personal problems.

From the very beginning of the play, much sounds like Gorky's argument with himself, with his former idealization of tramps. In Kostylev's rooming house, freedom turns out to be illusory: having sunk to the "bottom", people have not left life, it overtakes them. And the former Gorky desire - to consider in tramps, lumpen, people cut off from normal human life, first of all good - also recedes into the background. These people are cruel to each other, life has made them so. And this cruelty is manifested, first of all, in the persistence with which they destroy the illusions of other people, for example, Nastya, the dying Anna, Klesh with his hope to get out of the rooming house, start a new life, the Baron, whose entire property is memories of the former greatness of the family and to whom Nastya throws a retort in bitterness: “You’re lying, it didn’t happen!”.

The inhabitants of the "bottom" are thrown out of life due to the conditions prevailing in society.

Man is left to himself. If he stumbles, gets out of the rut, he is threatened with the “bottom”, inevitable moral, and often physical death.

But these are people who knew another life. And therefore, Natasha is full of passionate dreams, Nastya thinks about bright feelings, the sick and degraded Actor believes in her dream. All they have left in life is faith. “We don't have a name! Even dogs have nicknames, but we don’t!” - the Actor exclaims bitterly. And in this exclamation there is an intolerable resentment of a man thrown overboard by life. Everything was taken away from them, from these forgotten people, but they could not take away faith in the best. Gorky himself possessed this quality in abundance, he endowed it with his heroes.

A character, a new guest, Luke, comes to the rooming house from nowhere. Along with it, a new motive appears in the play: the possibility of consolation or exposure. With his appearance, the dispute about a person, about truth and lies in his life, intensifies. But this dispute begins long before Luke's appearance and continues after his departure. Already at the very beginning of the play, Kvashnya flatters herself with the illusion that she is a free woman, and Nastya - with dreams of a great feeling, borrowing it from the book Fatal Love. And from the very beginning, the fatal truth breaks into this world of illusions. It is no coincidence that Kvashnya throws his remark, turning to Tick: “You do not tolerate the truth!”. In the midst of bitter people, Luke appears. It is on this character of the play that causes the most fierce controversy, it is her dramatic nerve. After the appearance of Luka, three centers are identified in the subsequent dispute about a person: Luka himself, Satin and Bubnov - the three main characters of the play. Luke acts as a comforter.

The deceiver Luke is human in his own way, but his humanism is passive-compassionate. Imbued with deep humanism, the play negatively answers the question - is it necessary to bring compassion to people to a comforting deception.

The elderly wanderer resembles a member of a religious sect. The character's name is associated with an evangelist; Luke says: “Christ felt sorry for everyone and ordered us so” - however, to a direct question whether there is a God, he answers: “If you believe - there is, if you don’t believe - no ... What you believe is what it is ...” Luke takes care of the dying Anna , takes pity on her, consoles her with the fact that in the next world, in paradise, there will be no torment and it is not worth clinging to “earthly” life. The actor talks about the supposedly existing free hospital for alcoholics. Luka believes in the power of dreams: “A person can do anything… If only he wants to…” – and tries to instill a dream in the soul of every person. He advises the thief Vaska Pepl to leave for Siberia and start life anew. When Vasilisa, the host's wife, persuades Vaska to "free her from her husband," Luka, wanting to help Pep, hides on the stove and eavesdrops on the conversation, and then prevents Pep and Kostylev from starting a fight. The prostitute Nastya, whose bookish fantasies everyone laughs at, Luka consoles: “If you believe, you had true love ... then it was.” He instills illusions in the inhabitants of the rooming house, and his life experience is such that he subtly feels people, knows what is most important to each of them. And he unmistakably presses the main lever of the human personality. The roommates are drawn to him, warmed by the rays of kindness and sympathy. The Stranger managed to plant and kindle a spark of hope and dreams in everyone's heart. Luke treats them this way because, in his opinion, any individual is worthy of respect as a person. So, "No flea is bad." According to Luke, every person needs to be supported in trouble, even if through “white lies”. But Luke’s words cannot be called a lie with complete certainty: maybe after Anna’s death what he promised her awaits, or maybe “there will be one room there, sort of like a village bath, smoky, and spiders in all corners, and that’s it.” all eternity”; the existence of the hospital for the Actor is at least plausible, and Ashes' future life is not known to anyone; maybe she'll turn out well. Luke, therefore, does not lie, but turns the possible into the real. He gives everyone the optimism that everyone lacked so much - hope for a favorable future. Reinforcing his words about the benefits of pity with an example, Luke tells how he himself once took pity on the robbers, by which he saved them, because otherwise they would have killed him and themselves would have died in hard labor. Luke also tells a parable about the "righteous land" - about a poor man who believed in the existence of such a land, but, disappointed that the scientist did not have one on the map, hanged himself. With this, Luke wants to confirm once again how saving lies are sometimes for people and how unnecessary and dangerous truth can be for them. When Ash calls Natasha to leave with him, Luka advises her to remind Ash more often that he is a "good person". To Kostylev’s words that a person does not need any truth at all, Luke responds with a paraphrase of the Gospel parable: “there is land that is inconvenient for sowing ... and there is fertile land ... no matter what you sow, it will give birth.”

The struggle for a dream gives a person strength. Luka helps a dream, perhaps not yet realized, to form into a whole in order to rise from the bottom, as he tried to help the Actor and Ash, or to narcotic soften the pain caused by reality to such characters as Nastya and Anna. He resorts to lies like a verbal drug, like a pain reliever.

During the ensuing fight, when Pepel kills Kostylev and nearly kills Vasilisa, Luka disappears in the confusion. In the last act, the roommates remember him, expressing a different attitude towards the “comforting lie”.

Not a single hero could escape from the bottom to the surface: the Actor hanged himself, Ashes - in prison, Anna dies, all the rest are exhausted, disfigured by life to the last degree, so Luke's action (useful? harmful?) was reduced only to anesthesia of someone else's pain.

The viewer saw that Luka sincerely loved people, wanted the best for them, but - alas - did not know the right paths to universal happiness. A sincere and disinterested lie is much more dangerous and harmful than a selfish and hypocritical lie.

After the departure of the wanderer Luke, the life of the overnight stays became even harder. People are so broken that they have nothing to look forward to. And the hope that Luke dropped only opened up their wounds. The wanderer beckoned, but did not show the way.

Like a nutshell, Tick's dreams of a better time are crushed, and as a result we see him fall extremely low: "He will never get out of here again." And the reader becomes uncomfortable with these.

The play claims: it is no longer possible to live like this!

The terrible fate of the inhabitants of the rooming house becomes especially obvious if we compare it with what a person is called to. Under the dark and gloomy vaults of the doss house, among the miserable and crippled, unfortunate and homeless vagrants, the words about man, about his vocation, about his strength and his beauty, sound like a solemn hymn: “Man is the truth! Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain! Person! It's great! That sounds proud!”

Proud words about what a person should be and what a person can be, even more sharply set off the picture of the real situation of a person that the writer paints. And this contrast takes on a special meaning... Sateen's fiery monologue about a man sounds somewhat unnatural in an atmosphere of impenetrable darkness, especially after Luke left, the Actor hanged himself, and Ashes was imprisoned. The writer himself felt this and explained this by the fact that the play should have a reasoner (expressor of the author's thoughts), but the characters portrayed by Gorky can hardly be called spokesmen for anyone's ideas in general. Therefore, he puts his thoughts of Gorky into the mouth of Satin, the most freedom-loving and fair character.

The author puts many of his thoughts into the mouth of Satin. Sometimes it is strange to hear such lofty words from a convict and a cheater. We understand that a remarkable nature, a strong, clear mind, perished in Satin. Proud words about a person have become winged, they make you believe that people deserve a better fate.

Satin expresses the general idea of a free person. He exposes the comforting lie of Elder Luke, who, seeing the torment of the destitute, unselfishly tries to help them, ease their suffering, and pacify them.

Satin opposes the harmfulness of lies and the philosophy of slavish obedience and long-suffering: “Those who are weak in soul ... and who live on other people's juices need a lie ... She supports some, others hide behind her ... Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.” Satin tells the actor that Luka "lied" about the free clinic. Klesh, Anna's husband, who sold all the tools to bury his wife, Satin advises “do nothing” and “just burden the earth”: “Think about it - you won’t work, I won’t ... hundreds more ... thousands ... everything! - understand? Everyone quits working!” Satin jokingly advises Pepl to kill Kostylev and marry Vasilisa. When the murder does occur, Satine calms Cinder down by volunteering to be a witness for the defense. Despite the ironic attitude towards Luka, after his disappearance, Satin says that he was not a charlatan: “A man is the truth! He understood it<…>He lied… but it was out of pity for you.” Although Satin declares that “lie is the religion of slaves and masters”, but, according to him, Luke acted on him, “like acid on an old dirty coin”; Satin delivers an abstract “revolutionary” monologue about man as the highest value. In this monologue of Satin, the demand for freedom and humane treatment of a person is heard in full voice: “We must respect a person! Do not pity, ... do not humiliate him with pity, ... you must respect!” He is convinced that one should not reconcile a person with reality, but force reality itself to serve a person, therefore he raises the banner of struggle for a Man with a capital letter!

The solution to the question of what needs to be done in order to change life and destroy the "bottom" is given in his speeches by Satin, whose image more fully sets off the harmfulness of Luke's comforting sermons. Comforters are hated by Gorky, and in the image of Luka, the writer exposed their failure. With great revealing force, Gorky attacked the bourgeois philosophy of consoling lies. Luke considers all people insignificant, miserable, weak, incapable of actively fighting for their rights and in need of condolence and consolation. Luka is a sower of illusions, comforting tales, which desperate weak people greedily clutched at. "I do not care! I respect crooks too, in my opinion, not a single flea is bad,” he says. Secretly, he is sure that the real situation of a person cannot be changed, therefore he approaches everyone with a comforting lie. And in this way Gorky finds in the face of Sateen an image that exposes Luke's compassion and at the same time expresses his opinion on the question posed by him. Gorky is unequivocally against useless lies and humiliating pity. In the words of Satin, Gorky stands for the high truth, the truth that inspires a person, opening up prospects for the struggle for happiness.

Such a truth is revolutionary in nature, although Satin himself, who proclaims it, is not a revolutionary. His protest against the existing order, in essence, comes down to the preaching of doing nothing, his psychology is not the psychology of a worker, not the psychology of a fighter, he is poisoned by the poison of individualism, is in the grip of illusions about personal freedom at the bottom of life. Among the heroes of the play there are no former workers, former proletarians, that is, representatives of the only truly revolutionary class of the early twentieth century. Bubnov and Kleshch are petty artisans, petty bourgeois, not proletarians. Before us are people who have lost their class affiliation, thrown out of their ranks by society. Each of them is only for himself, a sense of social solidarity is alien to them.

Gorky does not idealize this image: like other tramps, Satin is incapable of either socially useful work or revolutionary action, he is infected with anarchist sentiments. He has a lot of vices instilled in him by the rooming house: he is a drunkard, a cheater, sometimes cruel and cynical, but nevertheless, his intelligence, relative education and breadth of nature distinguish him from other tramps.

The famous words spoken by him are the highest dreams of the pre-revolutionary period and have received a real embodiment only in our era. Such a statement was perceived as a revolutionary call, as a "signal for an uprising." Declaring his deep faith in the creative forces, mind and abilities of a free person, Gorky affirmed the lofty ideas of humanism. The whole play is imbued with faith in man with these words. Gorky understood that in the mouth of the drunken tramp Satin, the speech about a proud and free person sounded artificial, but it should have sounded in the play, expressing the innermost ideals of the author and noting this speech: “except for Satin ... there is no one to say, and better, brighter to say - he cannot ". Gorky made it clear what forces the future belongs to. Satin is ready to respect only strengths in a person and considers. In principle, Satin cannot be called a cruel person who needs a “strong personality” who controls the crowd. He wants to see people strong and free, and they can become so only after leaving the “bottom”. According to Satine, it is Luke's ideas that prevent this. In the words of Satin, “Truth is the god of a free man!” there is some internal contradiction. It turns out that a free person is not free from the truth, and, therefore, is deprived of a choice between the “god of a free person” and the “religion of slaves and masters”, that is, he becomes dependent on the truth.

Satin also owns the last line in the play; to Bubnov’s words that the Actor hanged himself, he replies: “Spoiled the song ... fool!” The point of view opposes both the comforting lies of Luka and the hopeless nihilism and skepticism of Bubnov, who tramples a person into the mud, deprives him of wings. Satin preaches faith in man, in his creative powers. But it should be noted, however, that it is not always necessary to identify Satin with Gorky. The writer gave Satin a lot of his thoughts, but the ideological content of the play is wider and deeper than the content of Satin's monologues.

Bubnov, the third disputing party, believes that any person does not deserve respect: “people all live ... like chips floating down the river ... building a house ... and the chips away ...” Bubnov is a champion of truth (“vali the whole truth as it is! Like Satina and Baron, Bubnov can be called a strong person. Much has been given to him, but he has already lost himself. Unlike Sateen, who understands that a strong person must fight for the truth, Bubnov lives without paying attention to any nonsense. Regarding Luka, Bubnov declares that people lie out of a desire to “paint their souls”, but one should not hesitate to tell the truth. Bubnov is characterized by wingless and somewhat cynical fatalism. He does not accept moral responsibility, stating that he has no conscience because he is "not rich."
The philosophical problems of the play rest on the opposition of the disputants. This dispute is a purely philosophical one, therefore it is not surprising that, as is often the case in philosophy, it is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to the question: who is right? - or even: who is more right in this dispute? After writing the play, the author insisted that Luke was a cunning man who skillfully took advantage of other people's misfortune. But it is difficult to convincingly confirm or refute this point of view, and the play "At the Bottom" remains a work that everyone can interpret in their own way.

The characters in the play unreasonably accuse Luka of lying. However, the essence of the advice that he gives to others is correct. He needs a lie only to persuade people to take the right step. Luke is not to blame for the tragedies that happen to the heroes of the play. Bubnov is not to blame for this either, but Luka is trying to help people, Bubnov is not. Luke shows compassion, and this is better than the truth, which comes down to stating facts and inaction, and compassion - to the desire to help, to giving people at least a meager opportunity to overcome circumstances. In addition, compassion is a value in itself, even if there is no way to help ...
Luca is often accused of telling the Actor that there is a hospital for alcoholics where you can stop drinking, but he did not show him the way, so the Actor hanged himself. But after all, the hospital is not the only thing that Luka spoke to the Actor about. He also convinced him that you need to hold on and fight, that whoever wants to will achieve his goal. The actor turned out to be weak, Luka is not to blame for this. He cannot constantly lead the Actor through life by the hand. And alcoholism for the Actor would still be a slow suicide.
If Bubnov, in the words of the characters in the play, “burdens the earth”, then Luka does not. Luke is more necessary to people ...

It is not Satin who really argues with Luka, but the author of the play himself. It is Gorky who shows that a saving lie did not save anyone, that it is impossible to live forever in the captivity of illusions, and the way out of them and insight are always tragic, and most importantly, that a person living in a world of comforting dreams, lulling deceit, reconciles with his miserable, hopeless real life. This leads him to the fact that he agrees to endure - this motive is heard in the play more than once, for example, in the words of Anna: "If there is no flour ... here you can endure ... you can!", Or in the parable of the righteous land - a man lived badly, but endured in the hope of finding another life someday. M. Gorky does not accept this reconciliation with life. The dispute between the writer and Luke is in many ways a dispute with himself. No wonder contemporaries recalled that in terms of his human qualities, M. Gorky was in many ways close to this wanderer-comforter. Not without reason, already in the post-revolutionary period, he wrote the screenplay "On the way to the bottom", where, under the influence of ideological dogmas, he exposed Luka, showed him as a kulak, a criminal and immoral person. But this scenario turned out to be a creative failure of M. Gorky, and the play "At the Bottom" continues to live today, causing numerous disputes and gaining new relevance.

The image of Luke has long been evaluated in literary criticism unambiguously negatively. Luka was accused of lying out of selfish motives, that he was indifferent to the people whom he was deceiving, and finally, that at the time of the crime he disappeared from the rooming house. But the main accusation that was brought against Luka concerned his position, his attitude towards a person. He preaches pity, mercy, which in previous years were considered something superfluous, even suspicious, a kind of manifestation of conciliation, a retreat from the position of fighting the class enemy (and they saw an infinite number of enemies around them), mercy was declared "intelligent softness", which is unacceptable in clash of two worlds. Another thing was not accepted in Luke's position - that he does not call people to struggle, to revolutionary actions, to a radical change in life. All this in ancient times was considered harmful and alien to the man of the new society, "a fighter for a bright society." Today, the image of Luka is read in many ways differently, and the reason for this can simply be an attentive, unbiased acquaintance with Gorky's play.

What is truth? Truth (in my understanding) is the absolute truth, that is, the truth that is the same for all cases and for all people. I don't think this can be true. Even the fact, it would seem, is an obvious unambiguous event, different people perceive differently. So, for example, the news of death can be understood as news of another, new life. Often the truth cannot be absolute, the same for everyone, because the words are ambiguous, because the meaning of the same word is understood differently. Therefore, I would not talk about truth - an unattainable concept - but about the truth, which is designed for the "average" person.
The juxtaposition of truth and compassion lends the word "truth" a certain harshness. The truth is the harsh and cruel truth. Souls are wounded by the truth and therefore need compassion.
It cannot be said that the heroes of the play "At the Bottom" are a more or less homogeneous mass of people - impersonal, spineless. Each of the characters feels, dreams, hopes or remembers. More precisely, they carry something precious and secret inside themselves, but since the world in which they live is heartless and cruel, they are forced to hide all their dreams as far as possible. Although the dream, which would be at least some proof in the harsh real life, could help weak people - Nastya, Anna, Actor. They - these weak people - are overwhelmed by the hopelessness of real life. And in order to live, only to live, they need a saving and wise lie about the “righteous land”. As long as people believe and strive for the best, they will find the strength and desire to live. Even the most pathetic of them, even those who have lost their name, can be cured by pity and compassion and even partly resurrected. If only the people around knew about it! Maybe then, out of self-deception, even a weak person would build for himself a better, acceptable life for him? But those around them do not think about it, they expose the dream, and the person ... “went home - and strangled himself! ..”
Is it worth it to blame the old man for lying, who is the only one of the inhabitants of the rooming house who thinks not about himself, not about money, not about drinking, but about people? He tries to caress (“To caress a person is never harmful”), he inspires hope with calmness and pity. It was he, in the end, who changed all the people, all the inhabitants of the rooming house ... Yes, the Actor hanged himself. But not only Luke is guilty of this, but also those who did not regret, but cut to the heart with the truth.
There is some stereotype about the truth. It is often assumed that the truth is always good. Of course, it is valuable if you always live the truth, reality, but then dreams are impossible, and after them - a different vision of the world, poetry in the broadest sense of the word. It is a special view of life that gives birth to beauty, serves as the basis of art, which, in the end, also becomes a part of life.
How do stronger people perceive compassion? Here is Bubnov, for example. Bubnov, in my opinion, is the toughest and most cynical of all the inhabitants of the rooming house. Bubnov “mumbles” all the time, stating naked, heavy truths: “no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased”, he does not need a conscience, he is “not rich” ... Vasilisa Bubnov, without hesitation, calmly calls Vasilisa Bubnov a fierce woman, but in inserts in the middle of the conversation that the threads are rotten. Usually no one specifically talks to Bubnov, but from time to time he inserts his remarks into a variety of dialogues. And the same Bubnov, Luka's main opponent, dull and cynical, in the final treats everyone with vodka, growls, shouts, offers to “take the soul away”! And only the drunken, generous and talkative Bubnov, according to Alyoshka, "looks like a man." It can be seen that Luka also touched Bubnov with kindness, showed him that life is not in the despondency of everyday melancholy, but in something more cheerful, encouraging - in dreams. And Bubnov dreams!
The appearance of Luka rallied the “strong” inhabitants of the rooming house (Satin, Klesch, Bubnov in the first place), even a whole general conversation arose. Luka is a man who sympathized, pitied and loved, managed to influence everyone. Even the Actor remembered his favorite poems and his name.
Human feelings and dreams, his inner world is dearest and most valuable, because a dream does not limit, a dream develops. The truth does not give hope, the truth does not believe in God, and without faith in God, without hope, there is no future.

In the play, M. Gorky seeks to show that compassion and consolation are the worst enemy for the individual. That pity humiliates a person. It is clear from the play that Luke's compassion ultimately came to nothing. Gorky's position is clear - compassion for people, brought to a comforting deception, negatively affects society. Gorky exposes the failure of the image

Luke. But it all depends on the person himself. Luke gives them a chance, and to take advantage of it, to accept everything said not as a consolation, but as an incentive to fight for the best - this is the business of every person. After all, if there were no compassion in the world, the whole earth would be filled with hardened and embittered people. After all, after all, the appearance of Luke rallied the inhabitants of the rooming house. The failure of the image of Luke lies in the people around him. They are completely broken by the harsh life, and what they have left is only unrealizable dreams. But you can’t blame them for inaction either, since they don’t have the means to make their dreams come true. Which is better truth or compassion is a difficult question. It turns out that theoretically the truth is better. But sometimes the bitter truth breaks a person. Nevertheless, compassion makes people kinder and for some it is an outlet in a cruel world. Still, it is impossible to answer the question unambiguously.

The play “At the Bottom” is imbued with a hot and passionate call to love a person, to make sure that this name

really sounded proud. The play had a huge political resonance, called for the reorganization of society,

throwing people "to the bottom". There is not and cannot be happiness as long as a person is not free, as long as injustice reigns at every step. Man is worthy of happiness and freedom because he is a Man!

Now, in an era when we are again talking about humanism and mercy, when we call for "mercy for the fallen", Gorky's play takes on a different meaning. This is not only a historical document, not just an outstanding

the creation of the human mind, it is also a work that will again and again turn the eyes of people to the eternal

problems of kindness, mercy, social justice.

Used Books .

1 “Maxim Gorky. Biography of the writer. I. M. Nefedov 1979

2 “All the heroes of the works of Russian literature” Dictionary-reference book A. N. Arkhangelsky and others. 1997.