Summary of the “Pit”
The anti-utopian novel “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov was written in 1930. The plot of the work is based on the idea of building a “general proletarian house”, which will be the beginning of the whole city of a “happy future.” Using the philosophical, surrealistic grotesque and rigid satire on the USSR of the times of collectivization and industrialization, Platonov reveals the burning problems of that period, showing the senselessness and cruelty of totalitarianism, the inability to come to a brighter future by radically destroying everything old.
The proposed reading of the summary of the “Pit” by chapters will help prepare for the test work on Russian literature, as well as get acquainted with the plot of the work.
Main characters
Voshchev – a worker of thirty years, fell on the pit after he was fired from a mechanical plant. I thought about the possibility of happiness, the search for truth and the meaning
Chiklin – an elderly worker, a senior in the team of excavators with tremendous physical strength, found and took the girl Nastya to her.
Zhachev – a master cripple without legs, who moved on a cart, differed in “class hatred” – did not tolerate the bourgeoisie.
Other characters
Nastya is a girl whom Chiklin found near the dying mother and took with him.
Prushevsky is an engineer, a producer of works, who came up with the idea of a common proletarian house.
Safronov is one of the masters in the pit, a trade union activist.
Kozlov – the weakest of the masters in the pit, became chairman of the Commander-in-Chief of the cooperative.
Pashkin is chairman of the trade union council, an official bureaucrat.
The bear is a hammer in the forge, a former “farmhand”.
An activist in the village.
Summary
“On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life, Voshchev was given a calculation from a small mechanical plant” because of the “growth of weakness
At midnight Voshchev woke the mower, who sent the man to go to sleep in the barracks, because this “area” “will soon disappear forever under the device.”
***
In the morning in the barracks Voshchev woke the craftsmen. The man explains to them that he was cut, but without knowledge of the truth he can not work. Comrade Safronov agrees to take Voshcheva to dig a pit.
Accompanied by the orchestra, the workers went to the vacant lot, where the engineer had already marked out everything for the construction of the pit. Voshchev gave a shovel. The diggers began to work hard, the weakest of all was Kozlov, who did the least of the work. Working with the rest, Voshchev decides to “somehow live” and die inseparably with people.
***
Engineer Prushevsky, the developer of the pit project, who will become the “only general proletarian house in place of the old city,” dreams that “in a year the entire local proletariat will leave the small-capital city and take for life a monumental new house.”
In the morning Comrade Pashkin, chairman of the trade union committee, comes to the diggers. Seeing the pit started, he noted that “the pace is quiet” and it is necessary to increase productivity: “Socialism will do without you, and without it you will live in vain and die.” Soon Pashkin sent new workers.
***
Kozlov decides to move to “public work”, so as not to work on the excavation. Safronov, as the most conscious of the workers, proposes to put the radio “for hearing the achievements and directives.” Zhachev answered him that “It’s better to bring an orphan girl by the pen than your radio.”
Chiklin comes to the tile factory. Entering the building, he finds a ladder “on which he once kissed the master’s daughter.” The man noticed a distant room without windows, where a dying woman lay on the ground. A girl was sitting next to her and carrying a lemon to her mother’s lips. The girl asked her mother: “Is she dying because she’s a bourgeois or from death?” Mother replied: “I was bored, I was lost.” A woman asks the girl not to tell anyone about her bourgeois origin.
Chiklin kisses a dying woman and “on the dry taste of her lips” understands that “she is the same” girl who kissed him when she was young. The man took the girl with him.
***
“Pashkin provided the dwellings of excavators with a radio control”, from which slogans-demands are constantly being distributed. Zhachev and Voshchev were “baselessly ashamed of long speeches on the radio.”
Chiklin leads the girl into the hut. Seeing the map of the USSR, she asked about the meridians: “What is this – fences from the bourgeoisie?”. Chiklin answered in the affirmative, “wishing to give her a revolutionary mind.” In the evening Safronov began to question the girl. She said that she did not want to give birth until Lenin came to power, because she was afraid that her mother would be a bourgeois.
After a time when the diggers found a hundred hidden coffins for peasants, two of them Chiklin gave the girl – in one she made her a bed, and the other left for toys.
***
“The royal place for the house of the future life was ready, now it was intended to put in the foundation pit a but.”
Kozlov became chairman of the Commander-in-Chief of the cooperative, now he “became very fond of the proletarian mass”. Pashkin informs the craftsmen that it is necessary “to start a class struggle against the stumps of capitalism in the countryside.” Workers send Safronov and Kozlov to the village to organize collective farm life, where they are killed. Upon learning of the incident, Voshchev and Chiklin come to the village. Watchman at night the corpses of his comrades in the hall of the village Soviet, Chiklin falls asleep between them. In the morning, a peasant came to the hall of the village council to wash the corpses. Chiklin takes him for the murder of his comrades and beats him to death.
Chiklin was brought a note from the girl with the words: “Eliminate the kulak as a class.” Long live Lenin, Kozlov and Safronov. “Greetings to the poor collective farm, but no fists.”
***
The people gathered at the Organizational Court. Chiklin and Voshchev of logs built a raft “for the liquidation of classes”, to send on it the “kulak sector” along the river to the sea. In the village there is a crying, people grieve, they slaughter cattle and overeat before vomiting, just not to give their farm to the collective farm. The activist reads to the people a list of who will go to the collective farm, and who will go to the raft.
***
In the morning, Nastya is brought to the village. In order to find all the kulaks, Chiklin takes the bear, the “most oppressed farm laborer”, who “worked as a gift for the propertied courts, and now works as a hammer on the collective farm forge.” The bear knew which way to go, since he remembered who he had served. Discovered kulaks are driven to the raft and sent along the river.
***
On the organizational backyard, “the music calling forwards” began to play. ” Welcoming the arrival of collective farm life, people began happily stomping to the music. The people, without ceasing, danced to the night, and Zhachev had to overturn people on the ground so that they would rest.
Voshchev “gathered around the village all the poor, rejected objects” – “not fully comprehending,” he accumulated “material remains of lost people” who lived without the truth and now, presenting things to the inventory, he “through the organization of the eternal meaning of people” sought “vengeance for those who quietly lie in the depths of the earth. ” The activist, putting rubbish in the income list, gave it to Nastya as toys for painting.
***
In the morning the people went to the smithy where the bear worked. Upon learning of the creation of the collective farm, the hammer began to work with even greater enthusiasm. Chiklin helps him and in the labor impulse they do not notice that they only spoil the iron.
***
“Members of the kolkhoz burned all the coal in the smithy, spent all the available iron on useful products, repaired every dead implements.” After the march, Nastia fell seriously ill at the Organizational Court.
A directive arrived, stating that the activist was the enemy of the party and was removed from the leadership. In frustration, he picks up Nastya’s jacket, for which Chiklin beats him with his fist and he dies.
Elisha, Nastya, Chiklin and Zhachev returned to the excavation. Arriving at the place, they saw “that the whole pit was covered with snow, and in the barrack it was empty and dark.” By morning Nastya is dying. Soon Voshchev arrived with the whole collective farm. Seeing the dead girl, the man would be at a loss and “no longer knew where now there will be communism in the world, if it is not at first in a childlike feeling and in a convinced impression.”
Learning that the men want to join the proletariat, Chiklin decided that it is necessary to dig even more pit. “The collective farm followed him and did not cease to dig the ground, all poor and middle peasants work and with such zeal of life as if they wanted to be saved forever in the pit of the pit.” Zhachev refused to help. Having said that now he does not believe in anything and wants to kill Comrade Pashkin, he crawled into the city.
Chiklin dug a deep grave for Nasty, “so that the child will never be disturbed by the noise of life from the surface of the earth,” and prepared a special granite slab. When the man carried her to bury, “the hammer, sensing the movement, woke up, and Chiklin gave him to touch Nastia in parting.”
Conclusion
In the novel “Pit” Andrei Platonov reveals the conflict between the individual and the historical reality. The author skillfully portrays spiritual anxiety and the constant search for heroes of truth in new circumstances – when the old has already been destroyed, and the new has not yet been created. The death of Nastya is the debunking of the bright hopes of all those who dug the foundation pit – the child, as a symbol of the future, has died, and hence there is no one to build it.
A brief retelling of the “Pit” Platonov describes only the key moments of the work, so for a better understanding of the story, we recommend reading it in its entirety.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)