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Do righteous people need the work today?

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. Even some twenty years ago his name was forbidden to pronounce, and today we admire his deeply philosophical works, in which he reveals the skill in depicting characters, the ability to observe people and understand them. And this is especially clearly revealed in the story “Matrenin yard”.

What is interesting about this story? It seems to be the usual post-war life of a Russian village. But Solzhenitsyn finds that zest, which after will be repeated in V. Ovechkin, E. Dorosh, F. Abramova: the relationship of power and man, the moral and spiritual life of the people, the struggle for survival in the Darwinian notion. In the center of the story of Alexander Isaevich – the fate of a village woman who worked all her life on a collective farm, not for money, but for wands. Let’s follow the life of this wonderful woman.

The story begins with the fact that the narrator, in whose name the narrative is conducted, Ignatich,

returns to Russia from the dusty, hot steppes of Kazakhstan and settles in the house of Matryona Vasilyevna. The question arises: who is Matryona Vasilyevna? It is lonely, lost her husband at the front, burying six children a woman; but “… how she became very sick – and she was released from the collective farm”. Scant decoration and the only decoration of her house were pots and tubs with ficuses, a dim mirror and two bright posters. But in measured, picturesque sketches, the image gradually appears to the reader not just a lonely and disadvantaged woman, but a rare person with an immensely kind soul. Despite adversity, Matryona has not lost the ability to respond to someone else’s need. No plowing in the countryside did not do without it.

Together with other women, she harnessed into a plow and dragged her on herself. No relative, close or far, could Matryona refuse to help, leaving her urgent business. Nothing, in fact, not having, this woman knows how to give. However, what is the price for its good? For a single goat, Matryona can not gather hay: “… do not skew at the

canvas,” “there is no mowing in the forest,” “… they do not order me on the collective farm.” And how infinitely long and stubbornly this woman has overcome the distant path to the village council, about the pension. But even more acute was the problem with fuel: “Peat was not given to the inhabitants, but only they were taken to the authorities and whoever was in charge”. So poor poor village women had to gather for several people for courage and wear peat in secret in bags. And this terrible reality frightens the reader, alarms: “

In the second part of the story, we learn about the heroine’s youth. Already in her youth, the fate abruptly treated Matryona: she did not wait for her beloved, Thaddeus, who had disappeared in the war without a trace, and the death of Faddey’s mother, the marriage of his younger brother, seemed to prejudge her fate, and from I decided to enter the house where she had already settled for good her soul. As if seeking an excuse, Matryona says: “Their mother died… They did not have enough hands.” But the brutal life returns Thaddeus, who uttered something that would echo in the heart of the heroine all his life: “… if it were not my brother, I would have killed both of you.”

This was the only love of Matryona Vasilyevna. But there was one more day when everyone showed their attitude to this righteous woman, in my opinion.

The return of Thaddeus reminded Matryona of the beautiful past. How many years her heart warmed once and not extinguished feeling flashed! And Thaddeus? Nothing wavered in him at the sight of the dead Matryona. Immediately after the funeral, he cared only about the division of her property and calmed down only when he moved the shed and the fence to his house on the sled. And the sister-in-law asks her about it: “… and was unclean, and behind the factory she did not chase, and did not care… and stupid, helped someone else for free…”. And in my opinion, this is not stupidity, but a good deed. Unless many of us could help other people’s people “for free”? And she could, since Matryona “is not similar to the others”, “uncommon”, “special.” But most accurately expressed himself the writer himself: “All of us lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous person, without whom,