Summary “At the bottom” Gorky


The play traces two story lines, each of which develops independently.

The first line is connected with the life and relationships of the inhabitants of the lodging house, the owner of which is Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev. He is 54 years old and he has a wife Vasilisa Karpovna, who turned 26 years old. Inhabitants of the lodging house are people, some of whom no longer have any social status, others try their best to remain in the “real people” level, working tirelessly. These include, for example, Andrei Mitrich Mite, who turned 40 years old. He works as a mechanic, trying to earn as much as possible to buy medicine for his sick wife Anne (she is 30 years old).

After Anna dies at the end of the play, the Tick finally drops, stopping to work. In addition, Satin (about 40 years old) lives in the doss house, he was 40 years old, and he really served as an actor in provincial theaters. Vaska Pepel (28 years old) is a thief in whom Vasilisa is in love, who persuades

him to kill her husband. And although Vaska still encounters a fight with Kostylev, and accidentally kills him, he does not like Vasilisa – he feels strong feelings for her sister Natalia (20 years old), whom Vasilisa beats out of jealousy. Also in the doss house lives the Baron, a former nobleman who completely squandered his fortune and sank to the very bottom of life, Bubnov, Alyoshka, Tatar and Krivoy Zub.

The second story line is connected with the appearance in the doss house of a pilgrim named Luke. This is such a wandering philosopher who believes that the main thing in life is not truth, but those words that will be able to instill hope into a person. Therefore, he tells Anna about the happiness that awaits her in the afterlife, tells Akter about the clinic where alcoholism is treated, and Vaska Peple and Natasha advises to run away from home and build their happiness away from people who know them. But as soon as the events in the play culminate, Luke disappears, which leads to the suicide of the Actor, who lost that direction in life that could lead him to some happy outcome, and which was personified

by Luke. Even before the flight of Luke in the play faced two philosophies – the philosophy of a man who pities all people, and the philosophy of a man striving to see the truth of life (Satin).

He, for example, is trying to get from Mite the answer to the question, why he works. It turns out that people need to work not to create something, but to live, as Ticks say, if people quit working, they “starve to death”. Luka assures that a person must live, no matter what, as he can not know what awaits him in the future. The clash of these two philosophies leads to Satin’s monologue about Man, where he says that “Man – this sounds proudly.” The whole meaning of what surrounds a person, the entire universe is directed precisely at the fact that a person could feel himself a full member of this world “Everything in man, everything for man,” says Satin in his monologue.


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Summary “At the bottom” Gorky