The fracturing power of money
Gold is the spiritual essence
Total current society.
O. de Balzac. Gobsek
How many examples in the history of mankind, when people overestimated the power of money, became their slaves, losing all the best that they had before: moral principles, families, friends. People themselves have turned capital, wealth into a monster, a monster, mercilessly swallowing human souls, feelings, destinies.
With the corrupting power of money, we also come across the example of many heroes from the novel Honore de Balzac’s Father Gorio.
The fate of Gorio himself, betrayed by his beloved daughters, is terrible. The former worker-vermichelchik, who managed with his skill, thrift, enterprise, hard work to put together a decent capital in his youth, Gorio endlessly loved his wife, after the death of whom he transferred this feeling to his daughters. The happiness of these girls was the only goal in my father’s life, however, in my opinion, he misunderstood the
Father Gorio gave his daughters everything that he had, everything he valued once: money, love, soul, all his life. And he died a beggar, alone, sick, among strangers. Two poor students bury him for the last pennies, and the daughters who sucked life out of the old man not only did not give him a penny for the medicine and funeral, but they did not even show up to take his father on his last journey: “Daughters squeezed a lemon and threw the cake on the street “. Of course, they were very busy when Father Gorio was dying – they were preparing for the ball. And after the ball, one of them dealt with her husband deceived by her, and the other, having caught a cold, was afraid to get sick even more.
With the destructive power of wealth, capital, Eugene Rastignac also faced, growing up in an impoverished aristocratic family, to which he was affectionately, with all his heart. A native of a young man brought up in the provinces “had to doom himself to severe privations” to enable him to live and study in Paris. Great expectations were placed on Eugene, on whose success the happiness and well-being of the whole family depended.
Realizing and appreciating the dedication of relatives, Rastignac believes that diligence, ability, perseverance will help him to make a career, achieve material prosperity, save the family from further impoverishment.
However, life in Paris quickly dispelled his hopes for the opportunity to get rich by honest work. Eugene realizes that without ties, initial capital, deception and hypocrisy, one can not succeed in this cruel world. While he is young, he is often naive and simple-minded, honest before himself, capable of sincere manifestations of sympathy and mercy, and this advantageously differs from most of the representatives of the higher world, where he was introduced by a noble relative. But will his virtues last long enough to forget about his own family in pursuit of success and prosperity, if, amazed and indignant at the calculated cruelty of the “light,” he challenges him at the end of the novel, declares war, and does not return to study and work.
It seems to me that fighting against injustice and lack of spirituality by the same methods, a person can not emerge victorious from the battle, but only lose the moral values that he possessed before.
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