“Life is a difficult and difficult craft, and you need to make an effort to learn.” What would you like to learn?


It is difficult not to agree with this finished thought of the great Frenchman Balzac, but in each craft there are its basics, without the comprehension of which something more serious will simply not open.

After reading Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black,” I had the impression that Julien Sorel was trying to master the craft of life, starting not from the basics, but from the middle of something. He set a goal in life and began to move towards it. This indicates his determination, and this is certainly good. But Julien did not come to the idea that before “going” to the goal, you need to “learn to walk.”

Does the life of J. Sorel correspond to the statement of V. Hugo: “The great art of living is to play a lot and risk a little”? It seems that life for Julien was a game from which he emerged victorious, and he “needed to properly understand his own soul…” Always suspicious, suspiciously related

to everything, J. Sorel hides his true feelings and intentions from others. This is how one more feature of his nature develops – hypocrisy. He begins to speak the generally accepted language of lies. “It was,” wrote Stendhal, “a deeply unhappy man who is at war with the whole society.” He won, he achieved the position he was striving for, because he was brave and clever, but he did not have enough money to choose a career. And if we trace his life from hobby to Napoleon to the appearance in the living room of La Mole,

But the image of Julien Sorel does not cause much respect. Why? Perhaps, because he is a person with constantly wounded pride, who despises a higher society, but nevertheless wants to achieve recognition of the people of this society. In Julien there was no self-respect, and self-esteem and pride could not replace him. And yet: he lacked patience, and without him you can not learn anything. Therefore, after the attempt on Madame de Renal Julien, thrown from the height of the almost achieved “brilliant position”, falls into the prison casemate. It is here that

he realizes that “everyone for himself in this world” is aware of the tragedy of his own existence. He now knows that in society “one hypocrisy and quackery, even the most virtuous, even the greatest…”

On the example of the life of Julien Sorel imagine what a “difficult thing life”, and life should be studied for a long time, and maybe all his life.

We learn the lessons of life from various sources: fiction, from the experience of our daily life. And it’s good if you can say about yourself the words of the poet E. Yevtushenko: “I am a man – this is my noble title…” Each of us carries in his heart a secret thought – to become a person, to find his place in life, to do more good than evil so that people are close to you reliably. Do not be mean, work for the good of your Motherland and its people, who today live uneasy and difficult.

Stendhal’s novel “Red and Black” inspired many thoughts, and the main one is that life is a complex and difficult craft.


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“Life is a difficult and difficult craft, and you need to make an effort to learn.” What would you like to learn?