In a consumer society, a person has everything he needs for life, but he cannot find the main thing - the meaning of this life, wrote the philosopher and founder of the Third Vienna School of Psychotherapy, Viktor Frankl, back in the middle of the 20th century. According to him, such an “existential vacuum” provokes depression and violence in society, and in order to find an answer to the question of the meaning of existence, a new formulation of the problem is needed - a kind of Copernican revolution. “Theories and Practices” publishes a chapter from the collection of his articles “Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: Articles and Lectures,” which was published by the Alpina Non-Fiction publishing house.
In the twenties of our century, Oswald Spengler wrote a book that later became a bestseller. It was called "The Decline of Europe." His prophecy was not fulfilled, but another one, which he gave already in the thirties, was fully realized. According to this forecast of his, even before the end of our century, intellectuals will cease to be carried away by science and technology as they are today, and will devote themselves to thinking about. So, this prophecy is now becoming reality, but in a rather negative sense. Even on an international scale, doubts about the meaningfulness of being-in-the-world are growing. An empirical study recently conducted in the United States found that 80% of college students suffer from a significant sense of loss of meaning. Moreover, according to other data, more than half a million teenagers in the United States attempt suicide every year. But what is suicide if not a negative answer to the question about the meaning of life?
How should all this be explained? The most concise formulation is this: industrial society strives to satisfy human needs, and consumer society, in addition, tries to create new needs, which it can then satisfy. However, one need - and perhaps the most human of all human needs - remains unsatisfied: the need to see meaning in life - or, more precisely, in any life situation we encounter - and to realize it whenever possible . Today, people, in general, have enough to live for, but they cannot find something worth living for. And without “why” life becomes insipid and seems meaningless. The so-called. Moreover, this situation can be traced not only in the West, but also in the East. I just returned from Moscow, where I visited for the first time several years ago, back under Brezhnev - so I can compare the situation there not only with the Western one, but also with the one that existed earlier. For more than 70 years, the USSR supported Marx’s thesis “Religion is the opium of the people.” But in the meantime, Marxism itself in this country turned into a religion. However, with the decline of the compulsory Marxist ideology, there was no longer any point in instilling obedience to it, but on the contrary, I would say - obedience training should be replaced education of conscience. But it takes time to cultivate conscience, and in this interim period an additional vacuum is created in the East, an even deeper sense of loss of meaning. After all, conscience, if you like, is an “organ of meaning” grafted onto the human soul, the function of which is to embody in each specific situation the semantic possibility contained in this situation, “warming” in it. Today, doctors are already aware of such a pathology as vacate growth; in this case, one organ atrophies, and in this organ - say, in the heart - muscle cells die, and the resulting space is filled with adipose tissue. In mass psychology, cases of similar vacant growth into an existential vacuum are also observed, and as a result of such growth, the “pathology of the spirit of the times” develops.
* “They ruin themselves - kill each other - and expand” (English).“Today people, in general, have enough to live for, but they cannot find something worth living for.”
Once, while in the USA, I was looking for authentic information for an upcoming report and therefore asked a taxi driver what he thought about the younger generation. The taxi driver briefly and succinctly described his experience on this matter, saying: “They kill themselves - they kill each other - and they take dope”*. With this short phrase, he really characterized those excesses that set the tone for the mood prevailing among modern youth: “depression - aggression - addiction.” In fact, this means: “suicidal tendencies - aggressiveness - drug addiction.” Regarding suicide, I know a little about this topic. For ten years I collaborated with the “Psychological Consultation for the Weary of Life”, founded by Wilhelm Berner, and for four years I also directed the women’s ward in the largest Austrian psychiatric hospital for patients with severe depression who were admitted to our institution after attempting suicide. By my calculations, I must have dealt with at least 12,000 cases during this period. Moreover, in each individual case, I had to answer the question whether the patient could be finally discharged or whether she continued to be at risk. Each time such a decision had to be made in a matter of minutes. The patient sat in front of me, and meanwhile I leafed through her medical history, and then asked: “You know that you ended up here because you tried to commit suicide?” “Yes,” she answered. “Are you still thinking about taking your own life?” - "No no". Then I take the initiative and ask: “ Why No?" At the same moment, the following happens: another patient looks away, fidgets in her chair embarrassedly, and only after a pause answers: “Doctor, you can safely discharge me.” Such a woman clearly remains among the potential suicides. Apparently, there is nothing that could keep the patient from attempting suicide again, nothing that would indicate against a possible relapse. Other interlocutors immediately responded to my question, pointing out that they had to take care of their family, or that they had to cope with other responsibilities or tasks, or that I myself had ensured that they were able to emerge from a depressive state as healthy people. So, I discharged one of the patients with a light heart; he knew what it was like to commit suicide on the principle of “why not,” he knew how to overcome such “why.” As Nietzsche once put it, “Whoever has For what live, will be able to withstand almost anything How».
When I was transferred from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to Auschwitz in 1944, my chances of survival - according to the latest modern research - were only 1:29. I had to feel it somehow. Wasn’t the most obvious way out in this case to “throw yourself on the wire,” that is, to commit the most common concentration camp suicide? After all, an electric current was passed through the barbed wire fence surrounding the camp. Then I thought: “Who in the whole world can guarantee that I really I won’t get out of there alive?” Perhaps no one. But while I can, I have a responsibility to live exactly as if survival I'm guaranteed. I bear this responsibility to those who may be awaiting my return and for whom I am obliged to make every effort to meet their expectations. Only later did it become clear (I only found out about this after returning to Vienna) that my entire family had died and there was no one left to wait for me. My father died in Theresienstadt, my brother in Auschwitz, my first wife in Bergen-Belsen, and my mother was strangled in the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
However, then I realized that if not someone, then at least something It was waiting for me here. In Auschwitz, I practically prepared the manuscript of my first book (“The Doctor and the Soul”) for printing, after which I hoped that at least this “child of my spirit” would survive me. This was the very “why” for which it was worth surviving! After returning, it was time to restore the manuscript. I threw myself into work. The text became my doctoral dissertation.
“As for self-knowledge, it is necessary to beware of its hypertrophy, so that it does not degenerate into an exercise in hyperreflection”
These personal memories demonstrate what I understand by self-transcendence: the fundamental anthropological phenomenon that human existence always extends beyond its own limits into something that it is not itself; on something - or on someone; to a meaning that seems worthy of fulfillment, or to a person to whom you are devoted in your love; after all, only in serving a cause or in love for another person do we become human and fully realize ourselves. So, self-realization cannot be achieved directly, but only in a roundabout way. First there must be a reason, as a consequence of which such self-realization occurs. In short, self-realization cannot be achieved, it must follow. However, if it is a consequence of the realization of meaning, then one can also understand that at a time when a significant part of the human population is not able to find any meaning in their lives, the “detour” is no longer laid, but a shorter route is sought. Such people are reminiscent of boomerangs: despite the widespread myth that a boomerang always returns to the hunter after being thrown, in fact this only happens if the boomerang misses the target, that is, does not knock down the prey. The situation is similar with self-realization: people are especially concerned about it, who, having experienced frustration in the search for meaning, return to themselves, withdraw into themselves, “reflect” on themselves, but in this case they not only force self-observation, but also intensely pursue self-realization, and since it is precisely this kind of forced intention that is markedly counterproductive, these people inevitably fail sooner or later.
As for self-realization, I would also like to express my attitude towards so-called self-knowledge in the interpretation in which it is a mandatory component of psychotherapeutic education. Indeed, education is not the only prerequisite required for psychotherapeutic practice. In addition to education, this requires, firstly, personal talent, which should be immediately brought to work, and, secondly, personal experience, which must first be acquired. As for self-knowledge, it is necessary to guard against its hypertrophy, so that it does not degenerate into an exercise in hyper-reflexivity. But even without taking this into account, self-knowledge has limits, even a priori limits. In this case, “I” is directly compared with myself, I would say uncritically. The actively promoted “looking at one’s own sensory states” (Heidegger) does not help here either. After all, Goethe was right when he said: “How can one know oneself? Not by contemplation, but only by activity. Try to do your duty and you will find out what is in you. What is your duty? Demand of the day."
Here it would be appropriate to issue a warning (especially regarding group psychotherapy) about the need to think about one phrase of Schiller, who once said: “When the soul speaks like this, then ah, the soul no longer speaks.” In addition, during the sessions, participants willingly open their souls to each other. If, on the contrary, one or another participant behaves shyly, he must be prepared that other participants will subject him to a kind of painful inquisition.
We come to the second aspect of the pathology of the spirit of the times -. As difficult as it is to treat such addiction, it is equally important to ensure its prevention, which, by the way, is relatively easy. We must only proceed from the fact that, in principle, drug addiction arises for two reasons: because of curiosity and the so-called “group pressure”. When in 1938 my boss, the director of the university psychiatric hospital, Otto Poetzl, instructed me to study the newly obtained amphetamine (at one time the drug was called “Benzedrine”, then “Pervitin”) for its effectiveness in the treatment of mental illness, I was very it’s hard to resist temptation so as not to take at least one pill himself; I was probably instinctively aware of the danger of becoming addicted to the drug, although at that time such addiction was still practically unknown. In any case, it is clear why young people cannot resist curiosity and try how exactly this or that chemical substance will affect them. As for group pressure, it is easy to imagine how a schoolboy will behave if he watches his classmates rush to the smoking room during recess (the Austrian Ministry of Education recently installed such rooms in all schools); of course, he will not “lag behind” them, but will want to testify that he himself has “matured” and deserves a place in the company of smokers. He's proud of it! Moreover, no one drew his attention to how proud he could have been if he had not succumbed to the example of smokers, but had found the strength to resist such temptation. Probably, it was precisely this “highest” pride that they decided to play on in the USA, when student newspapers published the following social advertising for an entire page: a student looks searchingly at the reader and mockingly (in English) asks: “Are you savvy enough to talk about the “existential vacuum" by Viktor Frankl, but at the same time you don’t have the strength to just quit smoking? This rather non-trivial call for “higher” pride really did not go unnoticed.
“When everything is meaningless, there are no counterarguments against violence”
In 1961, there was such a case at Harvard University. Professor Gordon Allport, president-elect of the American Psychological Association, asked me: “Mr. Frankl, we have a young professor named Timothy Leary. The question is whether we should fire him because he is promoting a hallucinogen, a substance called lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Would you fire him? I answered in the affirmative. “I agree with you, but the faculty majority did not support me, speaking out in the name of academic freedom of teaching.” This voting result provoked a real global drug avalanche! Once again I had to see how right I was when I drew the attention of my American friends to the following: “Freedom, including freedom of teaching, is not the whole story, but only a half-truth, one side of the coin. Its downside is responsibility; for freedom risks degenerating if it is not controlled by responsibility.” Therefore, I would strongly wish you to complement the Statue of Liberty that stands on the East Coast of your country, and for this purpose, erect a “Statue of Responsibility” on the West Coast.
Finally, regarding the third aspect of the pathology of the zeitgeist, I would like to turn to a situation that occurred very recently in Essen. There was an outbreak of violence there, and the perpetrators were young people. To the question Why they committed crimes, they simply asked: “And why not? An already familiar case: there was simply nothing stopping them from such actions. When everything is meaningless, there are no counterarguments against violence.
In the former GDR there is a city where there is a special “crisis phone”. Until the “reunion”, it was often used mainly by people who had pressing questions related to sex. At the same time, the questions mainly concerned - I quote verbatim - “depression - violence - alcoholism.” As you can see, this triad practically coincides with the three aspects discussed above: “depression - aggression - addiction”. It is also noteworthy that the authors in question believe that the tripartite clinical picture they observe ultimately underlies the so-called lack of life guidelines. But what is the absence of life guidelines if not the absence of a worthy idea of a person, the absence of an anthropology in which there would be a place for the human dimension, the very one in which phenomena specific to humans are found. Moreover, this dimension - to quote the title of my favorite book from Freud's legacy - is located “beyond the pleasure principle.”
Once we have defined the self-transcendence of human existence as a fundamental anthropological phenomenon, the deficit of this phenomenon within the framework of the psychoanalytic concept of man is perhaps most clearly visible precisely where Freud sets out his sexual theory. Like any attraction, the sexual instinct is aimed at a specific “goal” and “object of desire.” The goal is release, and the object of desire is the partner who satisfies it. However, to achieve this goal, masturbation would be quite enough, and if we were talking about nothing more than an object, any object, then one could be satisfied with a prostitute. However, all this does not affect the human plane; after all, according to the second version of Kant's categorical imperative, a person cannot be used as an ordinary means to an end. But even in those cases when the partner is comprehended in all his humanity, promiscuity is blooming in full bloom; after all, only after someone additionally realizes uniqueness And uniqueness partner, this serves as a guarantee of exclusivity and longevity of the relationship, that is, love and fidelity, since this originality and uniqueness (“thisness” according to Duns Scotus) is understandable only to those who love their partner.
It is noteworthy that - if you believe the results of recent empirical research - most of today's youth understand sex precisely as one of the options for expressing love. However, along with the “otherworldly part of the pleasure principle,” there is also a “this-worldly” part of this principle, regulating the behavior of a person for whom sex does not serve to express love, but to satisfy lust. Pleasure turns into an end in itself, and it is precisely this distortion of its original status, if not to say “perversion,” that leads to fiasco. After all, the more important pleasure is for someone, the stronger it is from him escapes. More general formulation: the harder you're chasing for happiness, the more you drive it away. Moreover, it is from this moment that in most cases the etiology of potency and orgasm disorders stems. Lust cannot be made a goal, it must remain a means. Pleasure as such arises automatically if there is something for it cause, in other words, pleasure also cannot be achieved, it can only be achieved. Pleasure is also “obtained,” so to speak, in a roundabout way, and any attempt to shortcut this path leads to a dead end.
But a neurotic does not gravitate towards the “examination of one’s own sensory states” already discussed above, that is, to forced introspection, but is prone to excessive retrospection. Alfred Adler loved to amuse us with one of his jokes. One night in the dormitory of a tourist camp, a woman begins to whine: “God, I’m so thirsty...” Finally, someone gets up and brings her a glass of water from the kitchen. Finally, everyone falls asleep again, but after a while the woman begins to whine again: “Lord, how am I wanted drink..." The neurotic also constantly returns to the past, remembers his childhood, his upbringing, talks about the "complex of evil parents" (Elizabeth Lucas), shifts the blame for his neurosis onto others. In fact, longitudinal empirical studies conducted independently at the University of Columbia and the University of California have confirmed that adverse experiences acquired in early childhood do not have the same life-changing impact on later life that was previously attributed to them. I recall the thesis of a graduate student at the University of San Francisco: from this work it follows that a tragic childhood should in no case cause serious harm later; rather, in spite of it, one manages to build a completely “happy”, “successful” and “meaningful” life. The author relies on extensive material from the biographies of former concentration camp prisoners, and she knows what she is writing about: as a child she had to spend some time in Auschwitz. In addition, she abstracts completely independent research results taken from two different authors.
Isn't the motivational theory of the so-called three Viennese schools of psychotherapy evident in the empirical evidence cited? Doesn't "happiness" point to the pleasure principle, "success" to the will to power, and "meaningfulness" to the will to meaning?
Let us dwell on the will to meaning and ask the question: is there any objective evidence for the existence of the will to meaning, similar to the evidence of the sense of loss of meaning that we spoke about at the beginning of this work - how people might suffer due to this condition, so common today , if deep down each of them did not experience need for meaning? I appeal to you: how could nature instill in a person the need for meaning, if in fact there was no meaning, more precisely, semantic possibilities that, so to speak, are just waiting for us to translate them into reality. In doing so, you may have noticed that I rely on the beautiful words of Franz Werfel: “Thirst is the proof of the existence of such a thing as water” (“Stolen Sky”). However, the question of what is the meaning of life, for all its ingenuity, leads us to another question: what is the wisest tactical move in this world? Of course, such a “move” cannot exist, since, as in chess, each move is determined by the game situation and - not least - by the personality of the chess player. Approximately the same situation arises with meaning: in order not to enter into scholastic “disputes about universals,” I would like to say that meaning is not a universal, but in each individual case it is unique, which determines its “rigorous character” obligation semantic appeal, due to the uniqueness of each specific situation and the uniqueness of the person who finds himself in it. However, no matter how unique a case may seem, there is no situation that does not have a potential meaning, even if it is only to testify to the human ability to transform the tragic triad of suffering - guilt - death into personal triumph. It is in this respect that the meaningfulness of human existence-in-the-world is even unconditional.
Ladies and gentlemen, just as unbearable is suffering against the backdrop of the seeming meaninglessness of life, so relevant is the question of meaning today. However, to answer it, a kind of Copernican revolution is required, namely, a new formulation of the problem; After all, in the end, you and I are the ones being questioned; we must answer the questions that life poses to us. But once we answer this question, we will do it Once and for all! We will keep this answer in our past. Nothing can be reversed and “cancel” this or that event. Everything that remains in the past is not lost irretrievably, but, on the contrary, is securely preserved. I will add: as a rule, we see, so to speak, only the compressed arable land of the past, but we do not notice entire barns with the past, into which the entire harvest has long since been carried away: the creations we have created, the deeds we have accomplished, the love we have experienced and - not least - suffering that we endured with dignity and courage.
4. CONDITIONS OF HAPPINESS
LITERATURE
1. WHAT PHILOSOPHERS HAVE BEEN ARGUING ABOUT FOR TWO MILLENNIUMS
Barba non fasit philosophum.
A beard does not make you a philosopher.
Latin aphorism
Theoretical awareness of the problem of the meaning of life occurs at different levels and through different social disciplines. This problem is raised in sociology, psychology, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy. By the end of the twentieth century. In the social sciences, many directions have emerged, from different points of view, analyzing issues of essence, the meaning of being, the problem of death and immortality. By the way, the problem of death and immortality is considered the very first problems, which in ancient times served as the basis for the birth of such a science as philosophy.
It is traditionally accepted to consider the problem of life and meaning to be the prerogative of ethics, which indeed made, perhaps, the greatest contribution to its development. According to the majority of authors - ethicists and philosophers, the concept of “meaning of life” does not express what is essential, but what should be, therefore, it is initially internally “morally” loaded. From here it is completely legitimate to conclude that it is impossible to provide a theoretical answer to the question of the meaning of life, since this is a vital and practical question.
General and social psychology considers meaning as the basis of personality, the central, organizing link of the life world. Meaningfulness and individuality of existence make it possible to link consciousness and activity, consciousness and being into a certain integrity. In psychology, special attention is paid to the problem of finitude, mortality and its awareness as a stimulus for the real expression of personality.
Since the mid-70s. In the theoretical understanding of the problem of the meaning of life, a qualitative change occurred: along with the deepening of the anthropological approach focused on the individual, theories of socio-historical and cultural creativity of man as his life-meaning realization began to develop. The realization of man in culture, its inconsistency and ambiguity, and the creative orientation of the individual have become the subject of proper philosophical reflection. In combination with in-depth historical and philosophical research, traditional ethical research has also risen to new heights.
Life and death, love and egocentrism, ethics and amoralism, meaningfulness and absurdity, nihilism and self-sacrifice - these polar, and in their polarity, deeply connected “absolutes” of human existence have become the subject of analysis in the works of many outstanding philosophers.
Thus, the state of research about man and his place in the modern world indicates increased research attention to the problems of meaning in life, the widest range of possible approaches and solutions within various directions. On the other hand, life itself, the real state of society in conditions of social and spiritual changes, evoke reflections on the role, purpose and meaning of life of an individual in ambiguous situations requiring decisiveness and choice.
It is precisely at a time of “upheavals” in social consciousness that, in my opinion, it becomes necessary to pay attention to a person, to his soul, to resolving the questions he asks himself and the world: how to live; why live; what to do; what is life; and the most important question - what is the meaning of life?
You will probably notice that these questions have been asked by philosophy for as long as there has been, and there are as many answers as there have been and will be people on earth. Nevertheless, at different times people came to their awareness in different ways. I set myself a task when writing this course work: to try to understand how and why these questions arise with such urgency, how and why they are answered one way or another - now, before our eyes, in our shaky world, the familiar appearance which is everyday life,
2. RAILWAY. LOSS OF MEANING AND LIFE AFFORDATION IN ORDINARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Good God, really?
I will follow him too
Into life from life past the goal
Past the meaning of Existence.
Arseny Tarkovsky
“Pushkin epigraphs”
Reflecting on the problem of the meaning of life, one cannot ignore that initial sphere in which it, as a problem, may not be recognized, but in which it matures precisely as a problem.
The need to turn to it is determined, first of all, by the vital-practical nature of the meaning of life. In our conditions, this appeal is also important due to the prevailing social circumstances, which modern publicists speak very accurately and sharply about: “In our country, most people are concerned mainly with providing for basic biological needs: how to get meat, butter, sugar; how to get shoes, clothes; how to get a roof over your head even in old age; how to feed, clothe, educate, cure the heirs... And so far they, the primary needs, and not good and evil, are the heroes of the main battle - the human heart.” From all of the above it is clear that in journalism and fiction there is a conversation about everyday life, the “material” embodiment of everyday life. But the concept of everyday life is not identical to everyday life. The feeling of some loss of meaning in life in difficult conditions cannot be reduced to a focus on everyday problems. The fact is that everyday life itself, as the direct, empirical existence of a person in the world, turns out to be the world itself, the life world of the individual, organizing his activity and consciousness into something integral. Our social philosophy, as strange as it may seem, also did not ignore the sphere of ordinary consciousness and everyday life, although it did not proceed from the critical pathos of modern journalism, but from “epistemological” problems.
In the mid-70s. Researchers of social consciousness have recorded in their theoretical research the so-called extra-scientific social knowledge, which correlates with practical-spiritual activities, with everyday human life.
The content of “extra-scientific” knowledge was understood differently by different philosophers. But what is important for us is that real life “forced” theorists to pay attention to the existence in the consciousness of society, on the one hand, of everyday practical consciousness, established in everyday life - this consciousness functioned quite independently of the vulgarized ideology that was proclaimed by official social science and political structures, and on the other hand, an aesthetic comprehension of existence, also, apparently, “self-sufficient.”
Within the framework of this area of research, priority is given to the analysis of the phenomenon of direct interest to us, the so-called ordinary consciousness.
It is known that consciousness as awareness of being necessarily accompanies any human activity. It arises in the process of this activity, and above all - material activity “the production of ideas, ideas, consciousness is initially directly woven into material activity and into the material communication of people... The formation of ideas, thinking, spiritual communication of people are here still a direct product of the material attitude of people,” – wrote K. Marx and F. Engels in “German Ideology”.
Existing as a “reflex” of real practical activity and people’s lives, everyday consciousness is “embodied” in the very flow of life, in current speech statements, moral norms, aesthetic values, but does not have a written expression in the form of texts or material products of activity.
Because of this, the study of ordinary consciousness occurs, as a rule, on the basis of its rationalization in art, religion, philosophy, science, morality, law, that is, through the creation of typologies of ordinary consciousness and their models. The immediate reality of the “ordinary” comprehension of reality is practical action and actual linguistic and speech activity in their abstractly universal characteristics, difficult to imagine visually and empirically. That is why the theoretical study of ordinary consciousness is sometimes possible only as a simultaneous reconstruction and even construction of everyday ideas and judgments.
The problem of ordinary consciousness does not arise by chance in social philosophy. It is impossible to imagine that the sharp increase in the number of scientific research works on this topic in Russian philosophy is due to our specific social and everyday difficulties. The fact is that in the modern world, the sphere of everyday life, due to the development of technology, is extremely standardized, unified and includes huge masses of people in its functioning. In Western sociology, a whole direction of research has emerged, the so-called sociology of everyday life. Its discoverer, A. Schutz, identifies two main features of everyday life - the first, stability, stability, normal, ordinary course of life, and the second, the typological certainty of everyday life. The most important achievement of Western so-called understanding sociology in relation to everyday consciousness and everyday life is the understanding of internal integrity and specific organization of “everyday thinking.”
To understand what we are talking about, we will have to focus our attention on one remarkable phenomenon of modern literature, the so-called new prose. These are stories, short stories, plays and “monologues” that “explore”—it’s hard to find another word—the logic and absurdity of everyday life. As a result of precisely this kind of research, the reader is forced by the logic - or absurdity - of the story to pose the question of the meaning of life in its original form. This rose masterfully copes with the almost insoluble problem for a theorist of constructing and objectifying everyday consciousness. Direct “interweaving” into everyday life allows a person to recreate in his “ordinary” knowledge the internal features of social life that are hidden from agents of specialized spiritual production, both due to ideological considerations and due to the “pressure” of the theoretical picture of the world, which may obscure the real picture. Everyday life itself, into which ordinary consciousness is directly included, is the result of complex, multi-stage mediation, changes caused by culture, and since the past social experience acquired by a person may not correspond to the changed conditions, it becomes possible to change the ideas rooted in ordinary consciousness “with durability” prejudice." That is why it is quite possible to critically perceive judgments of one’s immediate experience that previously seemed unshakable. Ordinary consciousness is as changeable and diverse as everyday life is diverse and changeable, and as limited as that fragment of everyday life that becomes the “field” of human activity is limited. At the same time, ordinary consciousness represents a certain value-organized integrity, which in a certain sense is elusive.
In conditions of alienated life activity, work itself, whatever it may be, is capable of generating in a person a feeling of support in life, and careful conscientious performance of work can replace unrealized life-meaning needs. Let us recall, for example, Gogol’s Akaki Akakievich, who selflessly devoted himself to the calligraphic writing of letters in one of the most meaningless bureaucratic offices - but it is precisely in this skill that Bashmachkin feels himself an indispensable specialist, which gives him self-respect. Is it easy to recognize such a life as meaningless and absurd? Apparently, everyday life is capable of generating meaning not only in the illusory, although in order to get rid of the illusory, it is still necessary to experience everyday life and realize its narrowness and insufficiency.
However, the productive capacity of human consciousness is so high, and the desire to find the meaning of life is as unshakable as the desire and right to live, that a person certainly tries to find a way out of the situation. Separating himself from everyday life and even destroying it, a person, however, is not always able to take a further step precisely towards the truth and often finds himself in a false situation of choice between embodied fiction and the illusion of meaning, i.e. When meanings are either fictitious and accepted as real and when they are simply illusory.
3. BETWEEN THE REALITY OF FICTION AND THE ILLUSION OF MEANING IS A WAYOUT POSSIBLE?
The time has come to be understood by people,
At the same time, remembering those who are deaf.
L.Aragon
From the above we can conclude that ordinary, earthly life sooner or later brings a person to the need to realize his existence or solve for himself the problem of the meaning of life. At the same time, a person rises to an awareness of the insufficiency of everyday existence or to an understanding of the absurdity of existence, reduced only to everyday life.
So, having realized the insufficiency of everyday life, a person can take a step towards society, towards “civil existence”. This step is even more difficult than finding meaning in everyday life. Although modern philosophical literature and journalism offer many different models of civil renewal in various areas of life, an ordinary person, brought up by years of doublethink, either does not fully trust them, or withdraws from actively experiencing the pressing problems of civil life. The point, apparently, is that social memory has firmly fixed social situations when numerous attempts at civil behavior created the false dilemma presented in the title of this section.
Let's turn to Eastern philosophy, in particular to the teachings of Lao Tzu and Confucius. The fact is that the teachings of these philosophers also raise the question of reality or fiction. In particular, there is a discussion about whether it is possible to “invent” a new meaning for oneself or whether the meaning should appear by itself during some life experiences. It seems to me that these theses are not without meaning, since life does not always “give” us the meaning that we want. And at the same time, we always manage to choose the desired meaning, but we cannot find the path along which we need to get to it. There is even an aphorism: “The greatest happiness in the world is the meaning of life found in joy.”
The need for a personal, semantic justification of existence in conditions of “inauthentic” reality inevitably gives rise to the illusion of meaning. As can be judged by the state of public consciousness, these days these illusions turn out to be unusually strong and are permanently fixed in social memory.
This illusory “creation of meaning”, pseudo-creativity has embraced all ideological institutions: it is enough to recall how another slogan claiming to be deep, “dialectic” was picked up and how it was masterfully “played out” by far from malicious figures of science and art, grew, strengthened and, although with no real force possessed, consciousness did not reject.
Conformism, not at all in the absence of critical ability and common sense, which resulted in “conversations in the kitchen,” flourished and took deep roots in scientific and theoretical consciousness, in ideology, and art.
Our social science, which seems to have a formal-logical unity and inconsistency, can hardly claim to be a theory that has “personal meaning” - it does not deal with the problem of the meaning of life.
During its formation and introduction into the consciousness of society, such “social science” was least of all conceived as “science”, “cognition” and was, rather, a digestible set of ideological ideas.
What this complex represents can be judged not only from school and university textbooks, but also from the entire mass of scientific research works, no matter what topic appears in the title. Moreover, there are quite good attempts to present the stable features of social scientific thinking as a “system of categories”; Moreover, the painstaking and scrupulous washing of the mass of private developments through this “sieve” for the purpose of further rational laying of the temple from pure gold is considered by their authors as a fundamental theoretical work, the only one claiming to be authentic “connection with practice”.
In one of these works it is shown that there is a certain system of categories of social science, which would mean little without its developed scientific apparatus, while the system and apparatus are represented as the “inhalation” and “exhalation” of social science: “The system of categories and the categorical apparatus of the materialistic understanding of society are in relation to presuppositional reflection, mutual conditioning. Figuratively speaking, they form successive phases of the “breath” of historical materialism.” The term “apparatus” is a discovery of scientists, without which it would be impossible to explain the existence of historical materialism.
It is necessary to draw your attention to the fact that in the practical life situation of comprehending life, ready-made recipes do not work. That is, you first need to pass everything through yourself, through your inner world, and only then make some decisions. When comprehending the purpose and essence of a person, one has to leave the entire experience of fiction as unsuitable. Of course, you will not agree with me that it is better to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own, but on the other hand, times change, and this means that everything written in fiction cannot be used as something standard in solving vital problems. It is also necessary to consider that you are not the main character of a story or novel where everything ends well. You are just a resident of this long-suffering planet Earth. You are just a walker who is trying to find a way out of the labyrinth of life. Of course, it is not always possible to make the right decision, and often we find ourselves in difficult situations from which, at first glance, there is no way out at all. But this is not so, there is always a way out, we just haven’t learned how to find it yet. How can you find a way out of a difficult situation? Often the exit is located in the same place as the entrance. Yes, this is a small play on words, which is inherent in philosophy as a whole, but, nevertheless, as life experience shows, this saying is correct. All of the above was taken from textbooks on philosophy and psychology, so it is very difficult to understand, and even more difficult to comprehend everything that is discussed there. But I will try to translate all this into a simple, understandable “Great and Mighty” for everyone. So, we can highlight the main idea: there is no template or any system for choosing the meaning of life. We must do everything ourselves. Moreover, we need the deepest analysis of our lives. In order to choose the right meaning for yourself in life, you need to imagine your future life. For many of you it will seem that the meaning is plans for the future. This is absolutely false. The meaning of life is something to which one must strive throughout life, but it is similar to a goal: you say. Yes, of course there is something similar between meaning and purpose. Nevertheless: a goal is a specific task, this is the peak towards which we focus in our life. Meaning is what we focus on in our everyday life. The meaning may change every day, but the goal does not. We can lose meaning in any situation, but we can lose the goal, unless it is a real goal, only when we achieve it. Then we will have to set a new one and achieve it with new strength. But finding new meaning is much more difficult than finding a new goal. This is one of the most fundamental differences between the meaning of life and life purpose. So, we have come to the solution to the age-old problem, the problem of the meaning of life and the problem of purpose in life. Gray everyday life, the troubles of life that we have to experience, everything depresses a person, even the strongest enthusiast. But if a person has correctly chosen the meaning of life, then this person will never lose his presence of mind. When I was going through a heap of literature, looking for something suitable for this course work, I came across an interesting test in a book by the Czech author Toman, it can be said to be a game for choosing, albeit theoretical, the meaning of life. But for this we need to put all our pressing problems aside and spend five minutes in complete detachment from this world. This process is somewhat similar to meditation. Then we need to choose, as honestly as possible, those of our qualities that you consider to be disadvantages, and those that you consider to be advantages. Then ask your loved ones to do the same. They will choose the qualities that they consider to be your strengths and so on. The annotation says: “if your shortcomings predominate, you either have not yet found a worthy meaning, or you will change it. If your virtues prevail, your life goal should be harmoniously combined with your meaning in life. If this is not the case, you should reconsider your outlook on life. And finally, if your shortcomings are equal to your advantages, you are on the right path, and in the future you will only develop for the better. That is, you have very good willpower and no one will be able to turn you off the right path.”
Below I give an approximate table of human qualities.
| Loves company | Loves loneliness |
| Loves people | Doesn't like people |
| Collectivist | Lacks a sense of collectivism |
| Makes friends easily | It's hard to make acquaintances |
| Everyone loves him | Universal love is missing |
| Interested in people | Has little interest in people |
| Silent | Talkative |
| Pleasant in dealing with people | You should try to be nicer |
| Knows how to behave well in society | Need to acquire better manners |
| Polite | Could have been more polite |
| Delicate | Could have been more delicate |
| Nice | Unpleasant |
| Kind | |
| Witty | |
| Interesting | Not interesting |
| Not funny |
|
| Has a sense of humor | Missing the feeling of pestilence |
| Tactful | Could have been more tactful |
| Doesn't like arguing | Has a tendency to argue |
| Uncompromising | Looking for compromises |
| Compliant | |
| Lacks sensitivity |
|
| Frank | Closed |
| Sincere | Insincere |
| Attentive | Inattentive |
| Non-offensive | Easily offended |
| Easy to adapt | Difficult to adapt |
| Restrained | Unrestrained |
| Reacts calmly to criticism | Doesn't like criticism |
| Dresses well | Could care more about clothes |
| Takes care of his appearance | Could care more about appearance |
| Kind-hearted | Good-heartedness is lacking |
| Always objective | Often not objective |
| Fair | Unfair |
| Tends to submit | Likes to command |
| good-natured | Malicious |
| Confiding | Distrustful |
| Decisive | Indecisive |
| Broad nature | Petty |
| Patient | Impatient |
| Altruist | |
| Optimist | Pessimist |
| Underestimates himself | Overestimates himself |
| Modest | Could have been more modest |
| Never brags | Boastful |
| Believes in himself | Too self-confident |
| Confident | Not confident in your abilities |
| Sociable | Shy |
| Doesn't waste words | Throws words to the wind |
| Calm | Restless |
| Strong personality | Weak personality |
| Democrat |
|
| Balanced | Not always balanced |
| Principal | Unprincipled |
| Indifferent to fame | Popular |
| Weak-willed |
|
| Purposeful | |
| Demanding | Not demanding |
| Without complexes | Suffering from complexes |
| Diligent | Not diligent |
| Has no pride |
|
| Loyal | Intolerant |
The purpose of the test is not to give us some meaning in life, but only to know ourselves better, to open all the hidden corners of our soul. This should help you when choosing a position in life and when choosing the meaning of life. It is necessary to remember: “The meaning chosen correctly helps to live, but the meaning chosen incorrectly makes life a burden” - Confucius.
This chapter raised the question of meaning-making. However, to answer the question: “How to find meaning, through choice, or will the meaning be determined by itself?” I never could. Most likely, everyone must choose their own path of development. There is simply no such universal book that could give answers to all questions; even philosophy, the oldest of sciences, cannot give an accurate, and most importantly, acceptable answer for everyone. When choosing meaning, you need to remember the main thing: the meaning of life must be “resistant” to external influences. And most importantly: the main goal of life is to achieve complete harmony in all relationships. And harmony is happiness, which will be discussed further.
4. CONDITIONS OF HAPPINESS
What is happiness? Child of crazy speech?
One minute on the way
Where with the kiss of a greedy meeting
Has an inaudible forgiveness merged?
Or is it in the spring rain?
In the return of the day? In the closure of the wedges?
In goods that we do not value
For the ugliness of their clothes?
I. Annensky
It is difficult to find a person who would not dream of becoming happy. After all, the problem of happiness is one of the “eternal” problems that have worried humanity for thousands of years. As F. Engels wrote. “The desire for happiness is innate to man. Therefore it must be the basis of all morality.” His comrade K. Marx writes: “Experience exalts as the happiest the one who brought happiness to the greatest number of people.”
Some believe that happiness is the result of luck in life, a gift of “lucky fate.” This opinion, by the way, has an ancient history. The Romans also depicted the goddess of happiness Fortuna with a blindfold. And Russian proverbs and sayings point to the “innateness” of happiness: “don’t be born beautiful, but be born happy” and even “happiness for fools.” The belief in a lucky chance that will bring you happiness is still alive. But at the same time, there are many people who are convinced that happiness is solely the result of their own activity. It is no coincidence that there is a saying “Faber est suse qoisque fortunes”, which translated into Russian means: “everyone is the architect of his own happiness.”
There are also many for whom the basis of happiness is prestige, fame, and material wealth. In a word, in order to become happy, you must first answer the question: what exactly is happiness? It would seem that the question is simple, but you won’t find the answer so quickly. Of course, how many people - so many opinions. Everyone will interpret happiness as they understand it themselves. But for everyone, in the end, happiness will be presented as some kind of benefit, be it material, spiritual, or some other.
So what is happiness? After all, before considering ways to achieve happiness, it is necessary to precisely define the concept that will be discussed in this section.
Humanity, or better to say its greatest minds, has given many definitions of happiness, which, by the way, do not always coincide. However, I will not occupy your attention with a detailed listing of them, much less an analysis.
According to V. Dahl’s definition: happiness is in general “everything desired, everything that calms and brings a person, according to his beliefs, tastes and habits.” It must be said that these three points were also noted by I. Kant, who defined happiness as the satisfaction of all our inclinations in terms of their breadth, strength and duration.
It would seem that the legitimacy of the above definitions is beyond doubt. But only at first glance. After all, if you take this point of view, it is difficult to explain the quite common situation when people who are completely satisfied with life, nevertheless, do not consider themselves happy.
Obviously, another criterion of happiness is needed. It is important to take into account here that happiness is the highest manifestation of the realization of the meaning of an individual’s life. Satisfaction expresses only the individual side of the meaning of life, that is, the completeness of satisfaction of the individual’s needs. An indicator of the realization of the social side of the meaning of life is the degree to which a person achieves socially significant goals. At an ordinary level, this is expressed in his awareness of the futility of his life.
There are often cases when a person understands that he is not living in vain, but still does not experience satisfaction with life. He cannot be called truly happy either. True happiness involves a harmonious fusion of personal and social, emotional and rational. On the one hand, happiness means a person’s feeling of satisfaction with his individual life, on the other, an understanding of its social results.
Let's take a closer look at life satisfaction as the internal basis of happiness.
Naturally, throughout his entire life, a person cannot be satisfied with it. Some periods are inevitable when he may feel deeply unhappy. However, they are also necessary in order to more acutely feel the joy of life. In addition, by rejoicing and enjoying certain aspects of our life, we can transfer these feelings throughout our life and feel satisfied with it.
In the process of studying the degree of student satisfaction with various aspects of life, three corresponding types were identified.
The first type – completely satisfied with life – 8.7% of respondents. The main thing that determines their satisfaction with life is the opportunity to realize their plans, desires, the opportunity to spend leisure time and good material and living conditions.
The second type – partially satisfied – 34.1% of respondents. Their feeling of happiness is based on satisfaction with the opportunities for meaningful leisure and the implementation of their plans and desires, as well as good relationships with others. True, many of them are concerned about poor material and living conditions.
The third type – dissatisfied with life – 60.2% of respondents. Their components of happiness are the same as those of those who are partially satisfied with life, but they are much less satisfied with these aspects of life. In addition, their perception of the world is significantly affected by frequent dissatisfaction with their health and relationships with others, as well as family relationships.
Our research allowed us to answer the question to what extent certain aspects of life influence the feeling of happiness. In first place in terms of the degree of influence on the feeling of happiness is only the state of health, which most strongly affects a person’s satisfaction with life in general, and thereby the state of happiness. On the second - family relationships and material and living conditions. On the third level are relationships with people around you and opportunities for leisure activities. And finally, the ability to realize one’s plans and desires, located at the fourth level, has a weaker influence on a person’s sense of happiness.
In general, today there is a rather sharp contradiction between the process of raising people’s needs, on the one hand, and the limits of their implementation, dictated by the current level of development of the productive forces and the existing social structure of society, on the other. This makes it much more difficult to achieve life satisfaction on a mass scale.
Thus, life satisfaction, as an important aspect of human happiness, largely depends on various social factors, which sometimes have the opposite effect. However, what has been said does not at all detract from the importance of the person’s own activity in achieving happiness.
Figuratively speaking, happiness can be compared to a house that everyone builds for themselves, in accordance with their tastes, habits, and inclinations. The walls of this house are not monolithic, but are made up of unique “bricks” - various pleasant experiences. Such experiences can be of varying degrees of intensity - from weak mood swings, some vague languor of feelings to all-consuming ecstasy. It is clear that the stronger these experiences, the happier a person feels. Although our life is not a continuous chain of ecstasies or even just a good mood, but their alternation with negative emotions. But even if they do not occur often, such experiences - primarily of the maximum degree of intensity - give us a feeling of the sharpness and fullness of life, its meaningfulness, the joy of being.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to describe such experiences in words, although each of us has experienced them many times in life. Remember the pleasant elation or even shock from contemplating an amazing landscape or work of art, or the loss of the boundaries of your personality during an intimate conversation, the insight of truth after painful reflection on the solution to some task or problem. Finally, the birth of all-consuming passionate love... It seems that many are familiar with these or similar experiences that make us rejoice like children.
The specificity of such experiences largely depends on which of the human needs underlies them. In modern scientific literature, there are dozens of definitions of the concept of “need,” sometimes very different from each other. It seems that we do not need to understand here the variety of existing approaches, their advantages and disadvantages. In the most general form, a need can be defined as a human condition that is determined between the present and the necessary and encourages action to eliminate this contradiction. Any need presupposes a need for an object. Moreover, it does not have to be any physical object. The subject of the need can be spiritual formations and certain attitudes towards reality, such as sympathy, love for people around, the desire to provide them with help and support, which are the subject of the so-called altruistic need.
This is about the need. But how to realize this need for something? There is a wonderful proverb: “come and take it.” But if what needs to be “taken” is not available, what then, because you cannot violate already established moral traditions for your own satisfaction.
In this case, you need to either figure out how you could do without this item, or... take it. At the same time, we must remember, to paraphrase the famous proverb: “only in love all ways are good.”
So, we have come to the conclusion that finding happiness is nothing more than one of the goals of life. And perhaps the main one. The only trouble is that the definition of this word is different for each of us. One can of course define several things that make up the concept of happiness. First of all, this is a successful career, and as a result, finding your place in this life. Next, a good family, and as a result - internal harmony. And of course we all dream of children. After all, these are the flowers of life, the most beautiful thing that a person will leave behind.
People discuss the problem of the meaning of life at the ordinary level of consciousness. Some see it as having a family, children, giving them an education, a good profession, and bringing them “into the people.” Others, in particular veterans of the Great Patriotic War, say with great pride that, having gone through “fire and water,” they remained alive and contributed to the victory over fascism. And in this they see their happiness, they find the meaning of their life. And some of the young people say that they want to become millionaires and see the meaning of life in acquiring wealth.
So, philosophers and thinkers put various contents into the meaning of human life: some deny it, believing that there is no meaning in life (“all is vanity of vanities”); others, although they recognize it, put everything negative and negative into it (“suffering”, for example); still others recognize the meaning of life, implying something “positive” - “happiness”, “morality”, etc.
In my opinion, those who deny the meaning of life make a mistake. We also cannot agree with those who put a pessimistic meaning into it. Otherwise, a one-sided, metaphysical solution to the problem arises, the difficulties of life are absolutized, and a person’s complete dependence on the surrounding world (nature, society, other people) is proven. Such an interpretation of the meaning of life prevents the strengthening of the strength of the human spirit in the fight against real difficulties and contradictions. At the same time, in any theory there is a considerable amount of truth.
The modern era, with its global problems, is characterized by a heightened attitude of people to the search for the meaning of life. Thus, nature brings a lot of suffering and hardship to humans: earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, fires, etc. And the structure of human society is far from not only the ideal, but even from the normal state. Constant wars, crises, unemployment, famine, revolutions, interethnic conflicts - these are social elements that lead not only to suffering, but also to death.
The end of the twentieth century not only did not smooth out, but even further aggravated the difficulties and contradictions experienced by people. I believe that the burden of world wars is behind us, but so-called local, interethnic wars have arisen and, as a result, millions of victims.
My position is that pessimistic theories about the meaning of life ultimately do not reflect the entire content of people's real and possible lives. These theories cannot be considered completely true. It is well known that people’s lives also have a second side – a positive one. You can cite many facts that indicate: in general, life is really good and interesting - in it you can be happy and experience a lot of joys. Marriage for love, the birth of a child, love, successful completion of a university, scientific discoveries, defense of dissertations, etc. bring a lot of happiness to a person. That is, I give preference to theories that recognize the meaning of human life. Not recognizing the meaning of life is the same as underestimating a person and his life.
Recognizing the meaning of life, it cannot be reduced to one property, although it is very important: “to be moral”, “to be a person”, “to be happy”, “to be rich”, etc. In my deep conviction, such a complex concept as “the meaning of life” should be considered in connection with the following phenomena: the essence of man (biosocial nature and awareness of life), his goals and ideals, the content of his life. Apparently, the meaning of human life is multi-layered. It includes morality, the fight against difficulties - natural, social, human, obtaining happiness and pleasure from the very fact of human existence. It requires a person to contribute to the preservation and improvement of the surrounding nature, the development of a just society, to bring good to other people, to constantly develop and improve in physical, mental, moral and aesthetic relations, to act in accordance with the objective laws of the world. Only signs of the meaning of life are listed here; its definition is a matter for future research.
After reading this project, most likely, instead of finding the answer to your questions, you will receive many new ones. If so, then I can say that I achieved my goal. For you have food for thought, that is, you have something to think about. Well, if after reading this project you disagree with me on something, CONGRATULATIONS. Because it is with one’s own opinion that the path to the formation of an extraordinary personality begins. All that remains is to add: “I think, and therefore I exist.”
LITERATURE
1 Bulatov M. A. Critical essays on Kant’s philosophy. K., 1975.
2 Petrovsky A.V. Popular conversations about psychology. M., “Pedagogy”, 1976.
3 Petrovsky A.V. General psychology M., “Enlightenment”, 1988
4 Practical philosophy M., “Knowledge” 1995
5 Tolstykh V.I. Socrates and us. M., Politizdat. 1986
6 Practical philosophy M., “Knowledge” 1995
7 Nemirovsky V. G. The meaning of life: problems and searches. K., Politizdat. 1990
8 Nazarov O. N. About the meaning of life, its loss and creation. M., “Knowledge”. 1990
9 Bulatov M. A. Critical essays on Kant’s philosophy. K., 1975
10 Aptitudes and abilities. Ed. V. N. Myasishcheva. Publishing house of Leningrad State University, 1989.
11 Teplov B. M. Problems of individual differences. M., Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1989.
12 Petrovsky A.V. General psychology M., “Enlightenment”, 1988
13 Rean A. A. Psychology and pedagogy S.-P. "Peter", 2000
14 Nemirovsky V. G. The meaning of life: problems and searches. K., Politizdat. 1990
15 Nazarov O. N. About the meaning of life, its loss and creation. M., “Knowledge”. 1990
16 Teplov B. M. Problems of individual differences. M., Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1989.
17 Petrovsky A.V. General psychology M., “Enlightenment”, 1988
18 Rean A. A. Psychology and pedagogy S.-P. "Peter", 2000
19 Nemirovsky V. G. The meaning of life: problems and searches. K., Politizdat. 1990
20 Nazarov O. N. About the meaning of life, its loss and creation. M., “Knowledge”. 1990
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- True and false patriotism is one of the central problems of the novel. Tolstoy’s favorite heroes do not speak high words about love for their homeland, they commit actions in its name. Natasha Rostova persuades her mother to give carts to the wounded at Borodino; Prince Bolkonsky was mortally wounded on the Borodino field. True patriotism, according to Tolstoy, lies in ordinary Russian people, soldiers who, in a moment of mortal danger, give their lives for their Motherland.
- In the novel L.N. In Tolstoy's War and Peace, some heroes consider themselves patriots and shout loudly about love for the fatherland. Others give their lives in the name of common victory. These are simple Russian men in soldiers' overcoats, soldiers from Tushin's battery, who fought without cover. True patriots do not think about their own benefits. They feel the need to simply defend the land from enemy invasion. They have in their souls a genuine, holy feeling of love for their homeland.
N.S. Leskov "The Enchanted Wanderer"
According to N.S.’s definition, a Russian person belongs. Leskova, “racial”, patriotic, consciousness. All the actions of the hero of the story “The Enchanted Wanderer,” Ivan Flyagin, are imbued with it. While being captured by the Tatars, he does not forget for a minute that he is Russian, and with all his soul strives to return to his homeland. Taking pity on the unfortunate old people, Ivan voluntarily joins the recruits. The hero's soul is inexhaustible, indestructible. He comes out of all life's trials with honor.
V.P. Astafiev
In one of his journalistic articles, writer V.P. Astafiev spoke about how he vacationed in a southern sanatorium. Plants collected from all over the world grew in the seaside park. But suddenly he saw three birch trees that miraculously took root in a foreign land. The author looked at these trees and remembered his village street. Love for your small homeland is a manifestation of true patriotism.
The legend of Pandora's box.
A woman discovered a strange box in her husband's house. She knew that this item was fraught with terrible danger, but her curiosity was so strong that she could not stand it and opened the lid. All sorts of troubles flew out of the box and scattered around the world. This myth sounds a warning to all of humanity: rash actions on the path of knowledge can lead to a disastrous ending.
M. Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog"
In M. Bulgakov's story, Professor Preobrazhensky turns a dog into a man. Scientists are driven by a thirst for knowledge, a desire to change nature. But sometimes progress turns into terrible consequences: a two-legged creature with a “dog’s heart” is not yet a person, because there is no soul in it, no love, honor, nobility.
N. Tolstoy. "War and Peace".
The problem is revealed through the example of the images of Kutuzov, Napoleon, Alexander I. A person who is aware of his responsibility to his homeland, people, and who knows how to understand them at the right moment is truly great. Such is Kutuzov, such are the ordinary people in the novel who carry out their duty without lofty phrases.
A. Kuprin. "Wonderful doctor."
A man, exhausted by poverty, is ready to commit suicide in despair, but the famous doctor Pirogov, who happens to be nearby, speaks to him. He helps the unfortunate man, and from that moment the life of the hero and his family changes in the most happy way. This story eloquently shows that the actions of one person can affect the destinies of other people.
And S. Turgenev. "Fathers and Sons".
A classic work that shows the problem of misunderstanding between the older and younger generations. Evgeny Bazarov feels like a stranger to both the elder Kirsanov and his parents. And, although by his own admission he loves them, his attitude brings them grief.
L. N. Tolstoy. Trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”,
"Youth".
Striving to understand the world, to become an adult, Nikolenka Irtenev gradually gets to know the world, understands that much in it is imperfect, faces misunderstandings from her elders, and sometimes offends them (chapters “Classes”, “Natalya Savishna”)
K. G. Paustovsky “Telegram”.
The girl Nastya, living in Leningrad, receives a telegram that her mother is sick, but matters that seem important to her do not allow her to go to her mother. When she, realizing the magnitude of the possible loss, comes to the village, it turns out to be too late: her mother is no longer there...
V. G. Rasputin “French Lessons”.
The teacher Lydia Mikhailovna from the story by V. G. Rasputin taught the hero not only French lessons, but also lessons of kindness, empathy, and compassion. She showed the hero how important it is to be able to share someone else’s pain with a person, how important it is to understand another.
An example from history.
The teacher of the great Emperor Alexander II was the famous poet V. Zhukovsky. It was he who instilled in the future ruler a sense of justice, a desire to benefit his people, and a desire to carry out the reforms necessary for the state.
V. P. Astafiev. "A horse with a pink mane."
Difficult pre-war years of the Siberian village. The formation of the hero's personality under the influence of the kindness of his grandparents.
V. G. Rasputin “French Lessons”
- The formation of the personality of the main character during the difficult war years was influenced by the teacher. Her spiritual generosity is limitless. She instilled in him moral fortitude and self-esteem.
L.N. Tolstoy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”
In the autobiographical trilogy, the main character, Nikolenka Irtenyev, comprehends the world of adults and tries to analyze her own and others’ actions.
Fazil Iskander “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules”
An intelligent and competent teacher has a huge influence on the formation of a child's character.
And A. Goncharov “Oblomov”
The atmosphere of laziness, unwillingness to learn, to think disfigures the soul of little Ilya. In adulthood, these shortcomings prevented him from finding the meaning of life.
The lack of a goal in life and the habit of working have formed a “superfluous person,” a “reluctant egoist.”
The lack of a goal in life and the habit of working have formed a “superfluous person,” a “reluctant egoist.” Pechorin admits that he brings misfortune to everyone. Wrong upbringing disfigures the human personality.
A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit"
Education and learning are fundamental aspects of human life. Chatsky, the main character of the comedy A.S., expressed his attitude towards them in monologues. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit". He criticized nobles who recruited “teachers of the regiment” for their children, but as a result of literacy, no one “knew or studied.” Chatsky himself had a mind “hungry for knowledge,” and therefore turned out to be unnecessary in the society of Moscow nobles. These are the flaws of improper upbringing.
B. Vasiliev “My horses are flying”
Dr. Jansen died saving children who had fallen into a sewer pit. The man, who was revered as a saint during his lifetime, was buried by the entire city.
Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
Margarita's self-sacrifice for her beloved.
V.P. Astafiev "Lyudochka"
In the episode with the dying man, when everyone left him, only Lyudochka felt sorry for him. And after his death, everyone only pretended that they felt sorry for him, everyone except Lyudochka. A verdict on a society in which people are deprived of human warmth.
M. Sholokhov “The Fate of Man”
The story tells about the tragic fate of a soldier who lost all his relatives during the war. One day he met an orphan boy and decided to call himself his father. This act suggests that love and the desire to do good give a person strength to live, strength to resist fate.
V. Hugo "Les Miserables"
The writer in the novel tells the story of a thief. After spending the night in the bishop's house, in the morning this thief stole silverware from him. But an hour later the police detained the criminal and took him to a house where he was given lodging for the night. The priest said that this man did not steal anything, that he took all the things with the owner’s permission. The thief, amazed by what he heard, in one minute experienced a true rebirth, and after that he became an honest man.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince"
There is an example of fair power: “But he was very kind, and therefore gave only reasonable orders. “If I order my general to turn into a sea gull,” he used to say, “and if the general does not carry out the order, it will not be his fault, but mine.” .
A. I. Kuprin. "Garnet bracelet"
The author claims that nothing is permanent, everything is temporary, everything passes and goes away. Only music and love affirm true values on earth.
Fonvizin "Nedorosl"
They say that many noble children, having recognized themselves in the image of the slacker Mitrofanushka, experienced a true rebirth: they began to study diligently, read a lot and grew up as worthy sons of their homeland.
L. N. Tolstoy. "War and Peace"
- What is the greatness of a person? It is where goodness, simplicity and justice are. This is exactly how L.N. created it. Tolstoy's image of Kutuzov in the novel "War and Peace". The writer calls him a truly great man. Tolstoy takes his favorite heroes away from “Napoleonic” principles and puts them on the path of rapprochement with the people. “Greatness is not where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth,” the writer asserted. This famous phrase has a modern ring to it.
- One of the central problems of the novel is the role of personality in history. This problem is revealed in the images of Kutuzov and Napoleon. The writer believes that there is no greatness where there is no goodness and simplicity. According to Tolstoy, a person whose interests coincide with the interests of the people can influence the course of history. Kutuzov understood the moods and desires of the masses, therefore he was great. Napoleon thinks only about his greatness, therefore he is doomed to defeat.
I. Turgenev. "Notes of a Hunter"
People, having read bright, vivid stories about peasants, realized that it was immoral to own people like cattle. A broad movement for the abolition of serfdom began in the country.
Sholokhov “The Fate of Man”
After the war, many Soviet soldiers who were captured by the enemy were condemned as traitors to their homeland. M. Sholokhov's story “The Fate of a Man,” which shows the bitter fate of a soldier, forced society to take a different look at the tragic fate of prisoners of war. A law was passed on their rehabilitation.
A.S. Pushkin
Speaking about the role of the individual in history, we can recall the poetry of the great A. Pushkin. He influenced more than one generation with his gift. He saw and heard things that an ordinary person did not notice and did not understand. The poet spoke about the problems of spirituality in art and its high purpose in the poems “Prophet”, “Poet”, “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands”. Reading these works, you understand: talent is not only a gift, but also a heavy burden, a great responsibility. The poet himself was an example of civic behavior for subsequent generations.
V.M. Shukshin "Weird"
“Crank” is an absent-minded person who may seem ill-mannered. And what prompts him to do strange things are positive, selfish motives. The weirdo reflects on problems that concern humanity at all times: what is the meaning of life? What is good and evil? Who is “right, who is smarter” in this life? And with all his actions he proves that he is right, and not those who think
I. A. Goncharov "Oblomov"
This is the image of a person who only wanted. He wanted to change his life, he wanted to rebuild the life of the estate, he wanted to raise children... But he did not have the strength to make these desires come true, so his dreams remained dreams.
M. Gorky in the play “At the Lower Depths”.
Showed the drama of “former people” who have lost the strength to fight for themselves. They hope for something good, understand that they need to live better, but do nothing to change their fate. It is no coincidence that the play begins in a rooming house and ends there.
From the history
- Ancient historians say that one day a stranger came to the Roman emperor and brought him a gift of metal as shiny as silver, but extremely soft. The master said that he extracts this metal from clay soil. The emperor, fearing that the new metal would devalue his treasures, ordered the inventor’s head to be cut off.
- Archimedes, knowing that people were suffering from drought and hunger, proposed new methods of irrigating land. Thanks to his discovery, productivity increased sharply, people stopped being afraid of hunger.
- The outstanding scientist Fleming discovered penicillin. This drug has saved the lives of millions of people who previously died from blood poisoning.
- One English engineer in the mid-19th century proposed an improved cartridge. But officials from the military department arrogantly told him: “We are already strong, only the weak need to improve weapons.”
- The famous scientist Jenner, who defeated smallpox with the help of vaccinations, was inspired by the words of an ordinary peasant woman. The doctor told her that she had smallpox. To this the woman calmly replied: “It can’t be, because I already had cowpox.” The doctor did not consider these words to be the result of dark ignorance, but began to make observations, which led to a brilliant discovery.
- The early Middle Ages are usually called the “dark ages.” The raids of barbarians and the destruction of ancient civilization led to a deep decline in culture. It was difficult to find a literate person not only among common people, but also among people of the upper class. For example, the founder of the French state, Charlemagne, did not know how to write. However, the thirst for knowledge is inherently human. The same Charlemagne, during his campaigns, always carried with him wax tablets for writing, on which, under the guidance of teachers, he carefully wrote letters.
- For thousands of years, ripe apples fell from the trees, but no one attached any significance to this common phenomenon. The great Newton had to be born in order to look at a familiar fact with new, more penetrating eyes and discover the universal law of motion.
- It is impossible to calculate how many disasters their ignorance has brought to people. In the Middle Ages, every misfortune: the illness of a child, the death of livestock, rain, drought, crop failure, the loss of something - everything was explained by the machinations of evil spirits. A brutal witch hunt began and fires started burning. Instead of curing diseases, improving agriculture, and helping each other, people spent enormous energy on a meaningless fight against the mythical “servants of Satan,” not realizing that with their blind fanaticism, their dark ignorance they were serving the Devil.
- It is difficult to overestimate the role of a mentor in the development of a person. An interesting legend is about the meeting of Socrates with Xenophon, the future historian. Once, having talked with an unfamiliar young man, Socrates asked him where to go for flour and butter. Young Xenophon answered smartly: “To the market.” Socrates asked: “What about wisdom and virtue?” The young man was surprised. “Follow me, I’ll show you!” - Socrates promised. And the long-term path to the truth connected the famous teacher and his student with strong friendship.
- The desire to learn new things lives in each of us, and sometimes this feeling takes over a person so much that it forces him to change his life path. Today, few people know that Joule, who discovered the law of conservation of energy, was a cook. The brilliant Faraday began his career as a peddler in a shop. And Coulomb worked as an engineer on fortifications and devoted only his free time to physics. For these people, the search for something new has become the meaning of life.
- New ideas make their way through a difficult struggle with old views and established opinions. Thus, one of the professors, lecturing students on physics, called Einstein’s theory of relativity “an annoying scientific misunderstanding” -
- At one time, Joule used a voltaic battery to start an electric motor he had assembled from it. But the battery charge soon ran out, and a new one was very expensive. Joule decided that the horse would never be replaced by the electric motor, since feeding a horse was much cheaper than changing the zinc in a battery. Today, when electricity is used everywhere, the opinion of an outstanding scientist seems naive to us. This example shows that it is very difficult to predict the future, it is difficult to survey the opportunities that will open up for a person.
- In the mid-17th century, Captain de Clieu carried a coffee cutting in a pot of soil from Paris to the island of Martinique. The voyage was very difficult: the ship survived a fierce battle with pirates, a terrible storm almost broke it against the rocks. On the ship, the masts were not broken, the rigging was broken. Fresh water supplies gradually began to dry up. It was given out in strictly measured portions. The captain, barely able to stand on his feet from thirst, gave the last drops of precious moisture to the green sprout... Several years passed, and coffee trees covered the island of Martinique.
I. Bunin in the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.”
Showed the fate of a man who served false values. Wealth was his god, and this god he worshiped. But when the American millionaire died, it turned out that true happiness passed the man by: he died without ever knowing what life was.
Yesenin. "Black man".
The poem “Black Man” is the cry of Yesenin’s dying soul, it is a requiem for the life left behind. Yesenin, like no one else, was able to tell what life does to a person.
Mayakovsky. "Listen."
Internal conviction in the correctness of his moral ideals separated Mayakovsky from other poets, from the usual flow of life. This isolation gave rise to a spiritual protest against the philistine environment, where there were no high spiritual ideals. The poem is a cry from the poet’s soul.
Zamyatin "Cave".
The hero comes into conflict with himself, a split occurs in his soul. His spiritual values are dying. He violates the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.”
V. Astafiev “The Tsar is a Fish.”
- In V. Astafiev’s story “The Fish Tsar,” the main character, fisherman Utrobin, having caught a huge fish on a hook, is unable to cope with it. In order to avoid death, he is forced to release her. A meeting with a fish that symbolizes the moral principle in nature forces this poacher to reconsider his ideas about life. In moments of desperate struggle with the fish, he suddenly remembers his whole life, realizing how little he has done for other people. This meeting morally changes the hero.
- Nature is alive and spiritual, endowed with moral and punitive power, it is capable of not only defending itself, but also taking retribution. An illustration of punitive power is the fate of Gosha Gertsev, the hero of Astafiev’s story “The Tsar is a Fish.” This hero is not punished for his arrogant cynicism towards people and nature. Punishing power extends not only to individual heroes. An imbalance poses a threat to all of humanity if it does not come to its senses in its intentional or forced cruelty.
I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons."
- People forget that nature is their native and only home, which requires careful treatment, which is confirmed in the novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons.” The main character, Evgeny Bazarov, is known for his categorical position: “Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man is a worker in it.” This is exactly how the Author sees a “new” person in him: he is indifferent to the values accumulated by previous generations, lives in the present and uses everything he needs, without thinking about what consequences this may lead to.
- I. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” raises the current topic of the relationship between nature and man. Bazarov, rejecting any aesthetic pleasure in nature, perceives it as a workshop, and man as a worker. Arkady, Bazarov's friend, on the contrary, treats her with all the admiration inherent in a young soul. In the novel, each hero is tested by nature. For Arkady, communication with the outside world helps to heal mental wounds; for him this unity is natural and pleasant. Bazarov, on the contrary, does not seek contact with her - when Bazarov was feeling bad, he “went into the forest and broke branches.” She does not give him the desired peace of mind or peace of mind. Thus, Turgenev emphasizes the need for a fruitful and two-way dialogue with nature.
M. Bulgakov. "Dog's heart".
Professor Preobrazhensky transplants part of a human brain into the dog Sharik, turning a completely cute dog into the disgusting Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov. You cannot mindlessly interfere with nature!
A. Blok
The problem of a thoughtless, cruel person towards the natural world is reflected in many literary works. To fight it, we need to realize and see the harmony and beauty that reigns around us. The works of A. Blok will help with this. With what love he describes Russian nature in his poems! Immense distances, endless roads, deep rivers, blizzards and gray huts. This is Blok’s Russia in the poems “Rus” and “Autumn Day”. The poet's true, filial love for his native nature is transmitted to the reader. You come to the idea that nature is original, beautiful and needs our protection.
B. Vasiliev “Don’t shoot white swans”
- Now, when nuclear power plants are exploding, when oil is flowing through rivers and seas, and entire forests are disappearing, people must stop and think about the question: what will remain on our planet? In B. Vasiliev’s novel “Don’t Shoot White Swans” the author’s idea about human responsibility for nature is also heard. The main character of the novel, Yegor Polushkin, is concerned about the behavior of visiting “tourists” and the lake that has become empty at the hands of poachers. The novel is perceived as a call to everyone to take care of our land and each other.
- The main character Yegor Polushkin loves nature infinitely, always works conscientiously, lives peacefully, but always turns out to be guilty. The reason for this is that Yegor could not disturb the harmony of nature, he was afraid to invade the living world. But people did not understand him; they considered him unsuited to life. He said that man is not the king of nature, but her eldest son. In the end, he dies at the hands of those who do not understand the beauty of nature, who are accustomed only to conquering it. But my son is growing up. Who can replace his father, will respect and take care of his native land.
V. Astafiev “Belogrudka”
In the story "Belogrudka" the children destroyed the brood of a white-breasted marten, and she, mad with grief, takes revenge on the entire world around her, exterminating poultry in two neighboring villages until she herself dies from a gunshot
Ch. Aitmatov “The Scaffold”
Man, with his own hands, destroys the colorful and populous world of nature. The writer warns that the senseless extermination of animals is a threat to earthly prosperity. The position of the “king” in relation to animals is fraught with tragedy.
A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"
In the novel by A.S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” the main character could not find spiritual harmony, cope with the “Russian blues”, also because he was indifferent to nature. And the “sweet ideal” of the author, Tatyana, felt like a part of nature (“She loved to warn the sunrise on the balcony…”) and therefore showed herself to be a spiritually strong person in a difficult life situation.
A.T. Tvardovsky “Forest in Autumn”
Reading Tvardovsky’s poem “Forest in Autumn”, you are imbued with the pristine beauty of the surrounding world and nature. You hear the noise of bright yellow foliage, the crack of a broken branch. You see the light jump of a squirrel. I would like not just to admire, but to try to preserve all this beauty for as long as possible.
L. N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
Natasha Rostova, admiring the beauty of the night in Otradnoye, is ready to fly like a bird: she is inspired by what she sees. She enthusiastically tells Sonya about the wonderful night, about the feelings that overwhelm her soul. Andrei Bolkonsky also knows how to subtly sense the beauty of the surrounding nature. During a trip to Otradnoye, seeing an old oak tree, he compares himself with it, indulging in sad reflections that life has already ended for him. But the changes that subsequently occurred in the hero’s soul are associated with the beauty and grandeur of the mighty tree that blossomed under the rays of the sun.
V. I. Yurovskikh Vasily Ivanovich Yurovskikh
The writer Vasily Ivanovich Yurovskikh, in his stories, talks about the unique beauty and wealth of the Trans-Urals, about the natural connection of a village person with the natural world, which is why his story “Ivan’s Memory” is so touching. In this short work, Yurovskikh raises an important issue: the human impact on the environment. Ivan, the main character of the story, planted several willow bushes in a swamp that scared people and animals. Many years later. The nature around has changed: all sorts of birds began to settle in the bushes, a magpie began to build a nest every year and hatch magpies. No one wandered through the forest anymore, because the trail became a guide on how to find the right way. Near the bush you can hide from the heat, drink some water, and just relax. Ivan left a good memory of himself among people, and ennobled the surrounding nature.
M.Yu Lermontov “Hero of Our Time”
The close emotional connection between man and nature can be traced in Lermontov’s story “A Hero of Our Time.” The events in the life of the main character, Grigory Pechorin, are accompanied by changes in the state of nature in accordance with changes in his mood. Thus, considering the duel scene, the gradation of the states of the surrounding world and Pechorin’s feelings is obvious. If before the duel the sky seemed to him “fresh and blue” and the sun “brightly shining,” then after the duel, looking at Grushnitsky’s corpse, the heavenly body seemed “dim” to Grigory, and its rays “did not warm.” Nature is not only the experiences of the heroes, but is also one of the characters. The thunderstorm becomes the reason for a long meeting between Pechorin and Vera, and in one of the diary entries preceding the meeting with Princess Mary, Grigory notes that “the air of Kislovodsk is conducive to love.” With such an allegory, Lermontov not only more deeply and fully reflects the internal state of the heroes, but also denotes his own, the author’s presence by introducing nature as a character.
E. Zamyatina “We”
Turning to classical literature, I would like to cite as an example E. Zamyatin’s dystopian novel “We.” Refusing the natural beginning, the inhabitants of the United State become numbers, whose lives are determined by the framework of the Tablet of Hours. The beauty of native nature is replaced by perfectly proportional glass structures, and love is only possible with a pink card. The main character, D-503, is doomed to mathematically verified happiness, which is found, however, after the removal of fantasy. It seems to me that with such an allegory Zamyatin was trying to express the inextricability of the connection between nature and man.
S. Yesenin “Go away, my dear Rus'”
One of the central themes of the lyrics of the brightest poet of the 20th century S. Yesenin is the nature of his native land. In the poem “Go you, Rus', my dear,” the poet abandons paradise for the sake of his homeland, its flock is higher than eternal bliss, which, judging by other lyrics, he finds only on Russian soil. Thus, feelings of patriotism and love for nature are closely intertwined. The very awareness of their gradual weakening is the first step towards a natural, real peace that enriches the soul and body.
M. Prishvin “Ginseng”
This topic is brought to life by moral and ethical motives. Many writers and poets turned to her. In M. Prishvin’s story “Ginseng” the characters know how to remain silent and listen to silence. For the author, nature is life itself. Therefore, his rock cries, his stone has a heart. It is man who must do everything to ensure that nature exists and does not fall silent. Nowadays this is very important.
I.S. Turgenev "Notes of a Hunter"
I. S. Turgenev expressed his deep and tender love for nature in “Notes of a Hunter.” He did this with penetrating observation. The hero of the story “Kasyan” traveled halfway across the country from the Beautiful Mosque, happily learning and exploring new places. This man felt his inextricable connection with Mother Nature and dreamed that “every person” would live in contentment and justice. It wouldn't hurt us to learn from him.
M. Bulgakov. "Fatal Eggs"
Professor Persikov accidentally breeds giant reptiles instead of large chickens that threaten civilization. Thoughtless interference in the life of nature can lead to such consequences.
Ch. Aitmatov “The Scaffold”
Ch. Aitmatov in his novel “The Scaffold” showed that the destruction of the natural world leads to dangerous human deformation. And this happens everywhere. What is happening in the Moyunkum savannah is a global problem, not a local one.
The closed model of the world in the novel by E.I. Zamyatin "We".
1) The appearance and principles of the United State. 2) The narrator, number D - 503, and his spiritual illness. 3) “The resistance of human nature.” In dystopias, based on the same premises, the world is presented through the eyes of its inhabitant, an ordinary citizen, from the inside, in order to trace and show the feelings of a person undergoing the laws of an ideal state. The conflict between the individual and the totalitarian system becomes the driving force of any dystopia, allowing one to recognize dystopian features in the most diverse works at first glance... The society depicted in the novel has achieved material perfection and stopped in its development, plunging into a state of spiritual and social entropy.
A.P. Chekhov in the story "The Death of an Official"
B. Vasiliev “Not on the lists”
The works make us think about the questions that everyone strives to answer for themselves: what is behind a high moral choice - what are the forces of the human mind, soul, destiny, what helps a person resist, show amazing, amazing vitality, helps to live and die “like a human being”?
M. Sholokhov “The Fate of Man”
Despite the difficulties and trials that befell the protagonist Andrei Sokolov, he always remained true to himself and his homeland. Nothing broke his spiritual strength or eradicated his sense of duty.
A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter".
Pyotr Grinev is a man of honor, in any life situation he acts as his honor tells him. Even his ideological enemy, Pugachev, could appreciate the nobility of the hero. That is why he helped Grinev more than once.
L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
The Bolkonsky family is the personification of honor and nobility. Prince Andrei always put the laws of honor first and followed them, even if it required incredible effort, suffering, and pain.
Loss of spiritual values
B. Vasiliev "Wilderness"
The events of Boris Vasiliev’s story “Glukhoman” allow us to see how in today’s life the so-called “new Russians” strive to enrich themselves at any cost. Spiritual values have been lost because culture has disappeared from our lives. Society split, and the bank account became the measure of a person’s merit. Moral wilderness began to grow in the souls of people who had lost faith in goodness and justice.
A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
Shvabrin Alexey Ivanovich, hero of the story by A.S. Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" is a nobleman, but he is dishonest: having wooed Masha Mironova and received a refusal, he takes revenge by speaking ill of her; During a duel with Grinev, he stabs him in the back. The complete loss of ideas about honor also predetermines social betrayal: as soon as the Belogorsk fortress falls to Pugachev, Shvabrin goes over to the side of the rebels.
L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
Helen Kuragina deceives Pierre into marrying herself, then lies to him all the time, being his wife, disgraces him, makes him unhappy. The heroine uses lies to get rich and take a good position in society.
N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”.
Khlestakov deceives officials, posing as an auditor. Trying to impress, he makes up many stories about his life in St. Petersburg. Moreover, he lies so delightfully that he himself begins to believe his stories, he feels important and significant.
D.S. Likhachev in “Letters about the good and the beautiful”
D.S. Likhachev in “Letters about the Good and the Beautiful” tells how indignant he felt when he learned that on the Borodino field in 1932 the cast-iron monument on Bagration’s grave was blown up. At the same time, someone left a giant inscription on the wall of the monastery, built on the site of the death of another hero, Tuchkov: “It’s enough to preserve the remnants of the slave past!” At the end of the 60s, the Travel Palace was demolished in Leningrad, which even during the war our soldiers tried to preserve and not destroy. Likhachev believes that “the loss of any cultural monument is irreparable: they are always individual.”
L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
- In the Rostov family, everything was built on sincerity and kindness, respect for each other and understanding, therefore the children - Natasha, Nikolai, Petya - became truly good people. They are responsive to other people’s pain, able to understand the experiences and suffering others. Suffice it to recall the episode when Natasha gives the order to release the carts loaded with their family valuables in order to give them to the wounded soldiers.
- And in the Kuragin family, where career and money decided everything, both Helen and Anatole are immoral egoists. Both are looking for only benefits in life. They do not know what true love is and are ready to exchange their feelings for wealth.
A. S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
In the story “The Captain's Daughter,” his father’s instructions helped Pyotr Grinev, even in the most critical moments, to remain an honest person, true to himself and duty. Therefore, the hero evokes respect by his behavior.
N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls"
Following his father’s behest to “save a penny,” Chichikov devoted his entire life to hoarding, turning into a man without shame and conscience. Since his school years, he valued only money, so in his life he never had true friends, the family that the hero dreamed of.
L. Ulitskaya “Daughter of Bukhara”
Bukhara, the heroine of L. Ulitskaya’s story “Bukhara’s Daughter,” accomplished a maternal feat, devoting herself entirely to raising her daughter Mila, who had Down syndrome. Even being terminally ill, the mother thought through the entire future life of her daughter: she got a job, found her a new family, a husband, and only after that allowed herself to leave this life.
Zakrutkin V. A. “Mother of Man”
Maria, the heroine of Zakrutkin’s story “Mother of Man,” during the war, having lost her son and husband, took responsibility for her newly born child and for other people’s children, saved them, and became their Mother. And when the first Soviet soldiers entered the burnt farm, it seemed to Maria that she had given birth not only to her son, but to all the war-dispossessed children of the world. That's why she is the Mother of Man.
K.I. Chukovsky “Alive as Life”
K.I. Chukovsky in his book “Alive as Life” analyzes the state of the Russian language, our speech and comes to disappointing conclusions: we ourselves are distorting and mutilating our great and powerful language.
I.S. Turgenev
- Take care of our language, our beautiful Russian language, this treasure, this heritage passed on to us by our predecessors, among whom Pushkin again shines! Treat this powerful instrument with respect: in the hands of skilled people it is capable of performing miracles... Take care of the purity of the language as if it were a shrine!
K.G. Paustovsky
- You can do wonders with the Russian language. There is nothing in life and in our consciousness that could not be conveyed in Russian words... There are no sounds, colors, images and thoughts - complex and simple - for which there would not be an exact expression in our language.
A. P. Chekhov “Death of an Official”
The official Chervyakov in A.P. Chekhov’s story “The Death of an Official” is infected to an incredible degree by the spirit of veneration: having sneezed and splashed the bald head of General Bryzzhalov, who was sitting in front of him (and he did not pay attention to it), the hero was so frightened that that after repeated humiliated requests to forgive him, he died of fear.
A. P. Chekhov “Thick and Thin”
The hero of Chekhov's story "Fat and Thin", the official Porfiry, met a school friend at the Nikolaevskaya railway station and learned that he was a privy councilor, i.e. moved up significantly higher in his career. In an instant, the “subtle” one turns into a servile creature, ready to humiliate himself and fawn.
A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit"
Molchalin, the negative character of the comedy, is sure that one should please not only “all people without exception,” but even “the janitor’s dog, so that it is affectionate.” The need to tirelessly please also gave birth to his romance with Sophia, the daughter of his master and benefactor Famusov. Maxim Petrovich, the “character” of the historical anecdote that Famusov tells for the edification of Chatsky, in order to earn the favor of the empress, turned into a jester, amusing her with absurd falls.
I. S. Turgenev. "Mu Mu"
The fate of the mute serf Gerasim and Tatiana is decided by the lady. A person has no rights. What could be more terrible?
I. S. Turgenev. "Notes of a Hunter"
In the story “Biryuk,” the main character, a forester nicknamed Biryuk, lives a miserable life, despite conscientiously fulfilling his duties. The social structure of life is unfair.
N. A. Nekrasov “Railway”
The poem talks about who built the railroad. These are workers who were subjected to merciless exploitation. The structure of life, where arbitrariness reigns, is worthy of condemnation. In the Poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance”: peasants came from distant villages with a petition to the nobleman, but they were not accepted and driven away. The authorities do not take into account the position of the people.
L. N. Tolstoy “After the Ball”
The division of Russia into two parts, rich and poor, is shown. The social world is unfair to the weak.
N. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm”
There can be nothing holy or right in a world ruled by tyranny, wild and insane.
V.V. Mayakovsky
- In the play “The Bedbug,” Pierre Skripkin dreamed that his house would be “full.” Another hero, a former worker, states: “Whoever fought has the right to rest by a quiet river.” This position was alien to Mayakovsky. He dreamed of the spiritual growth of his contemporaries.
I. S. Turgenev “Notes of a Hunter”
Everyone’s personality is important for the development of the state, but talented people are not always able to develop their abilities for the benefit of society. For example, in “Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev there are people whose talents the country does not need. Yakov (“The Singers”) gets drunk in a tavern. Truth-seeker Mitya (“Odnodvorets Ovsyannikov”) stands up for the serfs. Forester Biryuk carries out his service responsibly, but lives in poverty. Such people turned out to be unnecessary. They even laugh at them. It's not fair.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
Despite the terrible details of camp life and the unjust structure of society, Solzhenitsyn's works are optimistic in spirit. The writer proved that even in the last degree of humiliation it is possible to preserve a person within oneself.
A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”
A person who is not accustomed to working does not find a worthy place in the life of society.
M. Yu. Lermontov “Hero of Our Time”
Pechorin says that he felt strength in his soul, but did not know what to apply it to. Society is such that there is no worthy place for an extraordinary person in it.
And A. Goncharov. "Oblomov"
Ilya Oblomov, a kind and talented person, was unable to overcome himself and reveal his best traits. The reason is the lack of high goals in the life of society.
A.M. Gorky
Many heroes of M. Gorky's stories talk about the meaning of life. The old gypsy Makar Chudra wondered why people worked. The heroes of the story “On the Salt” found themselves in the same dead end. There are wheelbarrows around them, salt dust that eats away their eyes. However, no one became embittered. Good feelings arise in the souls of even such oppressed people. The meaning of life, according to Gorky, is work. Everyone will start working conscientiously - you'll see, and together we will become richer and better. After all, “the wisdom of life is always deeper and more extensive than the wisdom of people.”
M. I. Weller “The Novel of Education”
The meaning of life is for those who themselves devote their activities for the sake of a cause that they consider necessary. The “Novel of Education” by M. I. Weller, one of the most published modern Russian writers, makes you think about this. Indeed, there have always been many purposeful people, and now they live among us.
L. N. Tolstoy. "War and Peace"
- The best heroes of the novel, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, saw the meaning of life in the desire for moral self-improvement. Each of them wanted “to be quite good, to bring good to people.”
- All of L.N. Tolstoy’s favorite heroes were engaged in an intense spiritual search. Reading the novel “War and Peace,” it is difficult not to sympathize with Prince Bolkonsky, a thinking, searching man. He read a lot and had an idea about everything. The hero found the meaning of his own life in the defense of the Fatherland. Not for the sake of an ambitious desire for glory, but because of love for the homeland.
- In search of the meaning of life, a person must choose his own direction. In L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” the fate of Andrei Bolkonsky is a complex path of moral losses and discoveries. The important thing is that, while walking along this thorny road, he retained true human dignity. It is no coincidence that M.I. Kutuzov will tell the hero: “Your road is the road of honor.” I also like extraordinary people who try to live not in vain.
I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons”
Even the failures and disappointments of an exceptionally talented person are significant for society. For example, in the novel “Fathers and Sons,” Yevgeny Bazarov, a fighter for democracy, called himself an unnecessary person for Russia. However, his views anticipate the emergence of people capable of greater deeds and noble deeds.
V. Bykov “Sotnikov”
The problem of moral choice: what is better - to save your life at the cost of betrayal (as the hero of the story Rybak does) or to die not as a hero (no one will know about Sotnikov’s heroic death), but to die with dignity. Sotnikov makes a difficult moral choice: he dies while maintaining his human appearance.
M. M. Prishvin “Pantry of the Sun”
During the Great Patriotic War, Mitrasha and Nastya were left without parents. But hard work helped young children not only survive, but also earn the respect of their fellow villagers.
A. P. Platonov “In a beautiful and furious world”
Machinist Maltsev is completely devoted to work, his favorite profession. During a thunderstorm, he became blind, but his friend’s devotion and love for his chosen profession performed a miracle: he, having boarded his favorite locomotive, regained his sight.
A. I. Solzhenitsyn “Matryonin’s Dvor”
The main character has been accustomed to working all her life, helping other people, and although she has not acquired any benefits, she remains a pure soul, a righteous woman.
Ch. Aitmatov Novel “Mother Field”
The leitmotif of the novel is the spiritual responsiveness of hardworking rural women. Aliman, no matter what happens, has been working since dawn on the farm, in the melon patch, in the greenhouse. She feeds the country, the people! And the writer does not see anything higher than this share, this honor.
A.P. Chekhov. The story "Ionych"
- Dmitry Ionych Startsev chose an excellent profession. He became a doctor. However, the lack of perseverance and perseverance turned the once good doctor into a simple man in the street, for whom the main thing in life was money-grubbing and his own well-being. So, it is not enough to choose the right future profession, you need to preserve yourself morally and morally in it.
- The time comes when each of us is faced with choosing a profession. The hero of the story, A.P., dreamed of honestly serving people. Chekhov “Ionych”, Dmitry Startsev. The profession he has chosen is the most humane. However, having settled in a city where the most educated people turned out to be small-minded and narrow-minded, Startsev did not find the strength to resist stagnation and inertia. The doctor turned into a simple man in the street, thinking little about his patients. So, the most valuable condition for not living a boring life is honest creative work, no matter what profession a person chooses.
N. Tolstoy. "War and Peace"
A person who is aware of his responsibility to his homeland and people, and who knows how to understand them at the right moment, is truly great. Such is Kutuzov, such are the ordinary people in the novel who carry out their duty without lofty phrases.
F. M. Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment"
Rodion Raskolnikov creates his theory: the world is divided into those “who have the right” and “trembling creatures.” According to his theory, a person is capable of creating history, like Mohammed and Napoleon. They commit atrocities in the name of “great goals.” Raskolnikov's theory fails. In fact, true freedom lies in subordinating one's aspirations to the interests of society, in the ability to make the right moral choice.
V. Bykov “Obelisk”
The problem of freedom can be seen especially clearly in V. Bykov’s story “Obelisk”. Teacher Frost had a choice to stay alive or die along with his students. He always taught them goodness and justice. He had to choose death, but he remained a morally free person.
A.M. Gorky "At the Bottom"
Is there a way in the world to break free from the vicious circle of life's worries and desires? M. Gorky tried to answer this question in his play “At the Lower Depths.” In addition, the writer posed another pressing question: can one who has humbled himself be considered a free person? Thus, the contradiction between the slave's truth and individual freedom is an eternal problem.
A. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm”
Opposition to evil and tyranny attracted special attention of Russian writers of the 19th century. The oppressive power of evil is shown in A. N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”. A young, gifted woman, Katerina, is a strong person. She found the strength to challenge tyranny. The conflict between the environment of the “dark kingdom” and the bright spiritual world, unfortunately, ended tragically.
A. I. Solzhenitsyn “Gulag Archipelago”
Pictures of abuse, cruel treatment of political prisoners.
A.A. Akhmatova's Poem "Requiem"
This work is about the repeated arrests of her husband and son; the poem was written under the influence of numerous meetings with mothers and relatives of prisoners in the Cross, a St. Petersburg prison.
N. Nekrasov “In the trenches of Stalingrad”
In Nekrasov’s story there is a terrible truth about the heroism of those people who in a totalitarian state were always considered “cogs” in the huge body of the state machine. The writer mercilessly condemned those who calmly sent people to their deaths, who shot people for a lost sapper shovel, who kept people in fear.
V. Soloukhin
The secret of comprehending beauty, according to the famous publicist V. Soloukhin, lies in admiring life and nature. The beauty scattered in the world will enrich us spiritually if we learn to contemplate it. The author is sure that you need to stop in front of her, “without thinking about time,” only then will she “invite you as an interlocutor.”
K. Paustovsky
The great Russian writer K. Paustovsky wrote that “you need to immerse yourself in nature, as if you plunged your face into a pile of rain-wet leaves and felt their luxurious coolness, their smell, their breath. Simply put, nature must be loved, and this love will find the right ways to express itself with the greatest strength.”
Yu. Gribov
The modern publicist and writer Yu. Gribov argued that “beauty lives in the heart of every person and it is very important to awaken it, not to let it die without waking up.”
V. Rasputin “Deadline”
Children who had come from the city gathered at the bedside of their dying mother. Before her death, the mother seems to go to the place of judgment. She sees that there is no previous mutual understanding between her and the children, the children are separated, they have forgotten about the moral lessons they received in childhood. Anna passes away from life, difficult and simple, with dignity, and her children still have time to live. The story ends tragically. Hurrying about some of their business, the children leave their mother to die alone. Unable to bear such a terrible blow, she dies that same night. Rasputin reproaches the children of the collective farmer for insincerity, moral coldness, forgetfulness and vanity.
K. G. Paustovsky “Telegram”
K. G. Paustovsky's story “Telegram” is not a banal story about a lonely old woman and an inattentive daughter. Paustovsky shows that Nastya is not soulless: she sympathizes with Timofeev, spends a lot of time organizing his exhibition. How could it happen that Nastya, who cares about others, shows inattention to her own mother? It turns out that it is one thing to be passionate about work, to do it with all your heart, to give it all your strength, physical and mental, and another thing to remember about your loved ones, about your mother - the most sacred being in the world, not limiting yourself only to money transfers and short notes. Nastya failed to achieve harmony between worries about those “distant” and love for the person closest to her. This is the tragedy of her situation, this is the reason for the feeling of irreparable guilt, the unbearable heaviness that visits her after the death of her mother and which will settle in her soul forever.
F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
The main character of the work, Rodion Raskolnikov, did many good deeds. He is a kind person by nature who takes other people’s pain hard and always helps people. So Raskolnikov saves children from the fire, gives his last money to the Marmeladovs, tries to protect a drunken girl from men pestering her, worries about his sister Dunya, tries to prevent her marriage with Luzhin in order to protect her from humiliation, loves and pities his mother, tries not to bother her with his problems. But Raskolnikov’s trouble is that he chose a completely inappropriate means to achieve such global goals. Unlike Raskolnikov, Sonya does truly beautiful things. She sacrifices herself for the sake of her loved ones because she loves them. Yes, Sonya is a harlot, but she did not have the opportunity to quickly earn money honestly, and her family was dying of hunger. This woman destroys herself, but her soul remains pure, because she believes in God and tries to do good to everyone, loving and compassionate in a Christian way.
Sonya's most beautiful act is saving Raskolnikov...
Sonya Marmeladova's whole life is self-sacrifice. With the power of her love, she elevates Raskolnikov to herself, helps him overcome his sin and resurrect. The actions of Sonya Marmeladova express all the beauty of human action.
L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
Pierre Bezukhov is one of the writer’s favorite heroes. Being at odds with his wife, feeling disgusted by the life in the world that they lead, worrying after his duel with Dolokhov, Pierre involuntarily asks eternal, but such important questions for him: “What is bad? What well? Why live, and what am I?” And when one of the smartest Masonic figures calls on him to change his life and purify himself by serving good, to benefit his neighbor, Pierre sincerely believed “in the possibility of the brotherhood of people united with the goal of supporting each other on the path of virtue.” And Pierre does everything to achieve this goal. what he considers necessary: donates money to the brotherhood, establishes schools, hospitals and shelters, tries to make the life of peasant women with small children easier. His actions are always in harmony with his conscience, and the feeling of rightness gives him confidence in life.
Pontius Pilate sent the innocent Yeshua to execution. For the rest of his life, the procurator was tormented by his conscience; he could not forgive himself for his cowardice. The hero received peace only when Yeshua himself forgave him and said that there was no execution.
F. M. Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment.”
Raskolnikov killed the old pawnbroker to prove to himself that he was a “superior” being. But after the crime, his conscience torments him, a persecution mania develops, and the hero distances himself from his loved ones. At the end of the novel, he repents of the murder and takes the path of spiritual healing.
M. Sholokhov’s “The Fate of Man”
M. Sholokhov has a wonderful story “The Fate of a Man.” It tells about the tragic fate of a soldier who, during the war,
lost all my relatives. One day he met an orphan boy and decided to call himself his father. This act shows that love and desire
doing good gives a person strength to live, strength to resist fate.
L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
The Kuragin family are greedy, selfish, vile people. In pursuit of money and power, they are capable of any immoral acts. So, for example, Helen tricks Pierre into marrying her and takes advantage of his wealth, bringing him a lot of suffering and humiliation.
N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls”.
Plyushkin subordinated his entire life to hoarding. And if at first this was dictated by frugality, then his desire to save crossed all boundaries, he saved on the essentials, lived, limiting himself in everything, and even broke off relations with his daughter, fearing that she would lay claim to his “riches.”
The role of flowers
I.A. Goncharov “Oblomov”.
Oblomov in love gave Olga Ilyinskaya a branch of lilac. Lilac became a symbol of the hero’s spiritual transformation: he became active, cheerful, and cheerful when he fell in love with Olga.
M. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”.
Thanks to the bright yellow flowers in Margarita’s hands, the Master saw her in the gray crowd. The heroes fell in love with each other at first sight and carried their feeling through many trials.
M. Gorky.
The writer recalled that he learned a lot from books. He did not have the opportunity to receive an education, so it was in books that he gained knowledge, an understanding of the world, and knowledge about the laws of literature.
A.S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”.
Tatyana Larina grew up reading romance novels. Books made her dreamy and romantic. She created for herself an ideal lover, the hero of her novel, whom she dreamed of meeting in real life.
If you are concerned about the problem of the meaning of life, or life seems completely devoid of any meaning to you, read this short post! It definitely won’t get worse for you, but it could very well be better!
What is the problem of the meaning of life?
How would you answer this question? Personally, I believe that the main problem of the meaning of a person’s life and all efforts to search for it stem only from the fact that a person is unhappy and dissatisfied.
Therefore, the main meaning of life for absolutely every person is to become happy!
Do not agree? Then think about this...
When you are happy, when you are overwhelmed with emotions of joy, when other people around you express their sincere love and admiration for you - do you think about the meaning of life?
100 to 1 that no!
And if the meaning of every person’s life is to be happy, then the main problem of the meaning of life will be how to achieve this.
Let's find out!
When do you feel truly happy? Probably when you get satisfaction from some of your business, which benefits not only you, but also others.
Let's look at the simplest example!
Let's say you know how to cook, and you prepared some amazingly delicious dish for dinner. In the evening, when all your family gathered at the table, you treated them to this dish, and everyone was delighted! Will you feel like a happy person at this moment? Yes!
Of course, the intensity of happiness depends on many factors, but the formula is simple:
“The more satisfaction you feel from something, the more people you are able to share your happiness with, the happier you will feel.”
Now let's return to the question: “What is the problem of finding the meaning of life?”
The answer, I think, is now obvious to you.
In both cases, depression or other mental disorders await us.
Remember the great Van Gogh...
He realized that his calling was to be an artist, but his paintings were not popular during his lifetime, and the exhibitions he held were not successful. Van Gogh¹ died practically in poverty, suffering from severe depression.
Terrible statistics!
A public opinion poll showed that 95% of people do not know what the meaning of their life is, and 30% are contemplating suicide, realizing that their life is meaningless!
And, indeed... How can a mere mortal find the meaning of life and achieve success when such great people as Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, JK Rowling, Hugh Laurie, Jim Carrey, Princess Diana, Gwyneth Paltrow and other famous personalities suffered from depression and loss of meaning in life?
But in fact, every person can forever solve the problem of the meaning of life if he follows one simple rule:
“Experience satisfaction from your activities and at the same time make other people happy!”
As the well-known wise saying says: “You need to live in such a way that it does not cause excruciating pain for the years spent aimlessly!”
Yes, most of you will now be openly indignant!!!
“How can I live a happy and fulfilled life if I have to work to earn money for a living. Now, if I had a fortune, then I would do/do what my soul desires.”
Do you think Jim Carrey or Princess Diana are poor people?
If you want to solve the problem of the meaning of life and really start living happily, you need to realize right now that your inner state does not depend on the amount of money, or on what you have or don’t have. Your internal state depends only on you, on your thoughts, feelings, sensations and the way you react to the outside world!
Any event in the external world, whatever it may be, is neutral. It only becomes positive or negative inside you!
Imagine that 2 people are sitting on the ocean...
One looks at the water and admires the grandeur of nature. Another, looking at the same picture, thinks to himself: “How senselessly this world is structured, why is there so much salt water in it, why is there everything in it!”
The same picture, but the reaction is completely different. And, you see, these people’s inner feelings are also completely different.
How to solve the problem of the meaning of life right now and forever?
It's actually simple.
Whatever you do, wherever you work, wherever you put your efforts, try to delve into the process and experience satisfaction from it. Even if you have a monotonous job and you move pieces of paper from place to place, give yourself over to this action completely, start moving the pieces of paper more evenly, more beautifully, more gracefully, as if in a minute you will have to teach this art to another person...
This will help you fulfill the first condition of our formula.
And to fulfill the second condition, think about how your work will benefit someone. After all, if there was no point in it, if no one needed it at all, you wouldn’t do it!
But that's not all!
You can significantly strengthen the 2nd part of the formula (and, consequently, your feeling of happiness) by doing something good, pleasant, and useful for someone every day. It can be anything. I will deliberately not give examples, because you will definitely come up with something of your own.
Just make it a rule!
Every day, at least for a moment, make someone happy. And every time you react to any situation, say to yourself:
“The situation is neutral, and only I now choose how to react to it, while I take full responsibility for my reaction, because it will affect my life!”
And for dessert...
If you are ready right now to take another step towards a truly happy life (you have already just taken one - you read the post to the end), then follow the link below right now!
For what? To get your personal diagnostics absolutely FREE and find out:
- what is your life purpose,
- what mission is entrusted to you
- what personal gift will give you access to great opportunities,
- what abilities do you have in your arsenal?
- Which field of activity/business suits you best!
Notes and feature articles for deeper understanding of the material
¹ Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-impressionist artist whose work had a timeless influence on 20th-century painting (
THE PROBLEM OF PERSISTENCE AND COURAGE OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY DURING MILITARY TESTS
1. In the novel L.N. Tostogo's "War and Peace" Andrei Bolkonsky convinces his friend Pierre Bezukhov that the battle is won by an army that wants to defeat the enemy at all costs, and not one that has a better disposition. On the Borodino field, every Russian soldier fought desperately and selflessly, knowing that behind him was the ancient capital, the heart of Russia, Moscow.
2. In the story by B.L. Vasilyeva “And the dawns here are quiet...” five young girls who opposed the German saboteurs died defending their homeland. Rita Osyanina, Zhenya Komelkova, Lisa Brichkina, Sonya Gurvich and Galya Chetvertak could have survived, but they were sure that they had to fight to the end. The anti-aircraft gunners showed courage and restraint and showed themselves to be true patriots.
THE PROBLEM OF TENDERNESS
1. An example of sacrificial love is Jane Eyre, the heroine of Charlotte Brontë's novel of the same name. Jen happily became the eyes and hands of the person most dear to her when he went blind.
2. In the novel L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" Marya Bolkonskaya patiently endures her father's severity. She treats the old prince with love, despite his difficult character. The princess does not even think about the fact that her father is often too demanding of her. Marya's love is sincere, pure, bright.
THE PROBLEM OF PRESERVING HONOR
1. In the novel by A.S. Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" for Pyotr Grinev the most important life principle was honor. Even facing the threat of the death penalty, Peter, who swore allegiance to the empress, refused to recognize Pugachev as sovereign. The hero understood that this decision could cost him his life, but a sense of duty prevailed over fear. Alexey Shvabrin, on the contrary, committed treason and lost his own dignity when he joined the camp of the impostor.
2. The problem of maintaining honor is raised in the story by N.V. Gogol "Taras Bulba". The two sons of the main character are completely different. Ostap is an honest and brave person. He never betrayed his comrades and died like a hero. Andriy is a romantic person. For the sake of love for a Polish woman, he betrays his homeland. His personal interests come first. Andriy dies at the hands of his father, who could not forgive the betrayal. Thus, you always need to remain honest first of all with yourself.
THE PROBLEM OF DEVOTED LOVE
1. In the novel by A.S. Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" Pyotr Grinev and Masha Mironova love each other. Peter defends the honor of his beloved in a duel with Shvabrin, who insulted the girl. In turn, Masha saves Grinev from exile when she “asks for mercy” from the Empress. Thus, the basis of the relationship between Masha and Peter is mutual assistance.
2. Selfless love is one of the themes of M.A.’s novel. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". A woman is able to accept the interests and aspirations of her lover as her own and helps him in everything. The master writes a novel - and this becomes the content of Margarita's life. She rewrites the finished chapters, trying to keep the master calm and happy. A woman sees her destiny in this.
THE PROBLEM OF REPENTANCE
1. In the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" shows the long path to repentance of Rodion Raskolnikov. Confident in the validity of his theory of “permitting blood according to conscience,” the main character despises himself for his own weakness and does not realize the gravity of the crime committed. However, faith in God and love for Sonya Marmeladova lead Raskolnikov to repentance.
THE PROBLEM OF SEARCHING FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD
1. In the story by I.A. Bunin "Mr. from San Francisco" American millionaire served the "golden calf". The main character believed that the meaning of life was to accumulate wealth. When the Master died, it turned out that true happiness passed him by.
2. In Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" Natasha Rostova sees the meaning of life in family, love for family and friends. After the wedding with Pierre Bezukhov, the main character abandons social life and devotes herself entirely to her family. Natasha Rostova found her purpose in this world and became truly happy.
THE PROBLEM OF LITERARY ILLITERACY AND LOW LEVEL OF EDUCATION AMONG YOUTH
1. In “Letters about the good and the beautiful” D.S. Likhachev claims that a book teaches a person better than any work. The famous scientist admires the ability of a book to educate a person and shape his inner world. Academician D.S. Likhachev comes to the conclusion that it is books that teach one to think and make a person intelligent.
2. Ray Bradbury in his novel Fahrenheit 451 shows what happened to humanity after all books were completely destroyed. It may seem that in such a society there are no social problems. The answer lies in the fact that it is simply unspiritual, since there is no literature that can force people to analyze, think, and make decisions.
THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
1. In the novel by I.A. Goncharova "Oblomov" Ilya Ilyich grew up in an atmosphere of constant care from parents and educators. As a child, the main character was an inquisitive and active child, but excessive care led to Oblomov’s apathy and weak-willedness in adulthood.
2. In the novel L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" the spirit of mutual understanding, loyalty, and love reigns in the Rostov family. Thanks to this, Natasha, Nikolai and Petya became worthy people, inherited kindness and nobility. Thus, the conditions created by the Rostovs contributed to the harmonious development of their children.
THE PROBLEM OF THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONALISM
1. In the story by B.L. Vasilyeva “My horses are flying...” Smolensk doctor Janson works tirelessly. The main character rushes to help the sick in any weather. Thanks to his responsiveness and professionalism, Dr. Janson managed to gain the love and respect of all residents of the city.
2.
THE PROBLEM OF A SOLDIER'S FATE IN WAR
1. The fate of the main characters of the story by B.L. was tragic. Vasiliev "And the dawns here are quiet...". Five young anti-aircraft gunners opposed the German saboteurs. The forces were not equal: all the girls died. Rita Osyanina, Zhenya Komelkova, Lisa Brichkina, Sonya Gurvich and Galya Chetvertak could have survived, but they were sure that they had to fight to the end. The girls became an example of perseverance and courage.
2. V. Bykov's story "Sotnikov" tells about two partisans who were captured by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War. The further fate of the soldiers developed differently. So Rybak betrayed his homeland and agreed to serve the Germans. Sotnikov refused to give up and chose death.
THE PROBLEM OF EGOISM OF A PERSON IN LOVE
1. In the story by N.V. Gogol's "Taras Bulba" Andriy, because of his love for a Pole, went over to the enemy's camp, betrayed his brother, father, and homeland. The young man, without hesitation, decided to take up arms against his yesterday’s comrades. For Andriy, personal interests come first. A young man dies at the hands of his father, who could not forgive the betrayal and selfishness of his youngest son.
2. It is unacceptable when love becomes an obsession, as in the case of the main character of P. Suskind's "Perfumer. The Story of a Murderer." Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is not capable of high feelings. All that is of interest to him is smells, creating a scent that inspires love in people. Grenouille is an example of an egoist who commits the most serious crimes to achieve his goal.
THE PROBLEM OF BETRAYAL
1. In the novel by V.A. Kaverin "Two Captains" Romashov repeatedly betrayed the people around him. At school, Romashka eavesdropped and reported to the head everything that was said about him. Later, Romashov went so far as to begin collecting information proving Nikolai Antonovich’s guilt in the death of Captain Tatarinov’s expedition. All of Chamomile’s actions are low, destroying not only his life but also the fates of other people.
2. The action of the hero of the story by V.G. entails even deeper consequences. Rasputin "Live and Remember" Andrei Guskov deserts and becomes a traitor. This irreparable mistake not only dooms him to loneliness and expulsion from society, but is also the reason for the suicide of his wife Nastya.
THE PROBLEM OF DECEITIVE APPEARANCE
1. In Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace", Helen Kuragina, despite her brilliant appearance and success in society, is not distinguished by a rich inner world. Her main priorities in life are money and fame. Thus, in the novel this beauty is the embodiment of evil and spiritual decline.
2. In Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris, Quasimodo is a hunchback who has overcome many difficulties throughout his life. The appearance of the main character is completely unattractive, but behind it lies a noble and beautiful soul, capable of sincere love.
THE PROBLEM OF BETRAYAL IN WAR
1. In the story by V.G. Rasputin "Live and Remember" Andrei Guskov deserts and becomes a traitor. At the beginning of the war, the main character fought honestly and courageously, went on reconnaissance missions, and never hid behind the backs of his comrades. However, after some time, Guskov began to think about why he should fight. At that moment, selfishness took over, and Andrei made an irreparable mistake, which doomed him to loneliness, expulsion from society and became the reason for the suicide of his wife Nastya. The hero was tormented by pangs of conscience, but he was no longer able to change anything.
2. In V. Bykov’s story “Sotnikov,” the partisan Rybak betrays his homeland and agrees to serve “great Germany.” His comrade Sotnikov, on the contrary, is an example of perseverance. Despite the unbearable pain he experienced during torture, the partisan refuses to tell the truth to the police. The fisherman realizes the baseness of his act, wants to run away, but understands that there is no turning back.
THE PROBLEM OF THE INFLUENCE OF LOVE FOR THE MOTHERLAND ON CREATIVITY
1. Yu.Ya. Yakovlev in the story “Woke by Nightingales” writes about a difficult boy Seluzhenka, whom those around him did not like. One night the main character heard the trill of a nightingale. The wonderful sounds amazed the child and awakened his interest in creativity. Seluzhenok enrolled in an art school, and since then the attitude of adults towards him has changed. The author convinces the reader that nature awakens the best qualities in the human soul and helps to reveal creative potential.
2. Love for his native land is the main motive of the work of the painter A.G. Venetsianova. He painted a number of paintings dedicated to the life of ordinary peasants. “The Reapers”, “Zakharka”, “Sleeping Shepherd” - these are my favorite paintings by the artist. The life of ordinary people and the beauty of Russia’s nature prompted A.G. Venetsianov to create paintings that have attracted the attention of viewers with their freshness and sincerity for more than two centuries.
THE PROBLEM OF THE INFLUENCE OF CHILDHOOD MEMORIES ON HUMAN LIFE
1. In the novel by I.A. Goncharov's "Oblomov" the main character considers childhood the happiest time. Ilya Ilyich grew up in an atmosphere of constant care from his parents and educators. Excessive care became the reason for Oblomov’s apathy in adulthood. It seemed that love for Olga Ilyinskaya was supposed to awaken Ilya Ilyich. However, his lifestyle remained unchanged, because the way of life of his native Oblomovka forever left its mark on the fate of the protagonist. Thus, childhood memories influenced the life path of Ilya Ilyich.
2. In the poem “My Way” by S.A. Yesenin admitted that his childhood played an important role in his work. Once upon a time, at the age of nine, a boy inspired by the nature of his native village wrote his first work. Thus, childhood predetermined S.A.’s life path. Yesenina.
THE PROBLEM OF CHOOSING A PATH IN LIFE
1. The main theme of the novel by I.A. Goncharov's "Oblomov" - the fate of a man who failed to choose the right path in life. The writer especially emphasizes that apathy and inability to work turned Ilya Ilyich into an idle person. The lack of willpower and any interests did not allow the main character to become happy and realize his potential.
2.
From the book by M. Mirsky “Healing with a scalpel. Academician N.N. Burdenko” I learned that the outstanding doctor first studied at a theological seminary, but soon realized that he wanted to devote himself to medicine. Having entered the university, N.N. Burdenko became interested in anatomy, which soon helped him become a famous surgeon.
3. D.S. Likhachev in “Letters about the Good and the Beautiful” states that “you need to live your life with dignity so that you are not ashamed to remember.” With these words, the academician emphasizes that fate is unpredictable, but it is important to remain a generous, honest and caring person.
THE PROBLEM OF DOG LOYALTY
1. In the story by G.N. Troepolsky's "White Bim Black Ear" tells the tragic fate of the Scottish setter. Bim the dog is desperately trying to find his owner, who had a heart attack. On its way, the dog encounters difficulties. Unfortunately, the owner finds the pet after the dog is killed. Bima can confidently be called a true friend, devoted to his owner until the end of his days.
2. In Eric Knight's novel Lassie, the Carraclough family is forced to give up their collie to other people due to financial difficulties. Lassie yearns for her former owners, and this feeling only intensifies when the new owner takes her far from her home. The collie escapes and overcomes many obstacles. Despite all the difficulties, the dog is reunited with its former owners.
THE PROBLEM OF MASTERY IN ART
1. In the story by V.G. Korolenko "The Blind Musician" Pyotr Popelsky had to overcome many difficulties to find his place in life. Despite his blindness, Petrus became a pianist who, through his playing, helped people become purer in heart and kinder in soul.
2. In the story by A.I. Kuprin "Taper" boy Yuri Agazarov is a self-taught musician. The writer emphasizes that the young pianist is amazingly talented and hardworking. The boy's talent does not go unnoticed. His playing amazed the famous pianist Anton Rubinstein. So Yuri became known throughout Russia as one of the most talented composers.
THE PROBLEM OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE EXPERIENCE FOR WRITERS
1. In Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, the main character is interested in poetry. Yuri Zhivago is a witness of the revolution and civil war. These events are reflected in his poems. Thus, life itself inspires the poet to create beautiful works.
2. The theme of a writer's vocation is raised in Jack London's novel Martin Eden. The main character is a sailor who has been doing hard physical labor for many years. Martin Eden visited different countries and saw the life of ordinary people. All this became the main theme of his work. Thus, life experience allowed a simple sailor to become a famous writer.
THE PROBLEM OF THE INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON THE MIND OF A PERSON
1. In the story by A.I. Kuprin "Garnet Bracelet" Vera Sheina experiences spiritual cleansing to the sounds of a Beethoven sonata. Listening to classical music, the heroine calms down after the trials she has experienced. The magical sounds of the sonata helped Vera find inner balance and find the meaning of her future life.
2. In the novel by I.A. Goncharova "Oblomov" Ilya Ilyich falls in love with Olga Ilyinskaya when he listens to her singing. The sounds of the aria "Casta Diva" awaken in his soul feelings that he has never experienced. I.A. Goncharov emphasizes that it has been a long time since Oblomov felt “such vigor, such strength that seemed to rise from the bottom of his soul, ready for a feat.”
THE PROBLEM OF MOTHER'S LOVE
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In the story by A.S. Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" describes the scene of Pyotr Grinev's farewell to his mother. Avdotya Vasilyevna was depressed when she learned that her son needed to leave for work for a long time. Saying goodbye to Peter, the woman could not hold back her tears, because nothing could be harder for her than parting with her son. Avdotya Vasilievna's love is sincere and immense.
THE PROBLEM OF THE IMPACT OF WORKS OF ART ABOUT WAR ON PEOPLE
1. In Lev Kassil’s story “The Great Confrontation,” Sima Krupitsyna listened to news reports from the front every morning on the radio. One day a girl heard the song "Holy War". Sima was so excited by the words of this anthem for the defense of the Fatherland that she decided to go to the front. So the work of art inspired the main character to perform a feat.
THE PROBLEM OF Pseudoscience
1. In the novel by V.D. Dudintsev "White Clothes" Professor Ryadno is deeply convinced of the correctness of the biological doctrine approved by the party. For the sake of personal gain, the academician is launching a fight against genetic scientists. He vehemently defends pseudoscientific views and resorts to the most dishonorable acts in order to achieve fame. The fanaticism of an academician leads to the death of talented scientists and the cessation of important research.
2. G.N. Troepolsky in the story “Candidate of Sciences” speaks out against those who defend false views and ideas. The writer is convinced that such scientists hinder the development of science, and, consequently, of society as a whole. In the story by G.N. Troepolsky focuses on the need to combat false scientists.
THE PROBLEM OF LATE REPENTANCE
1. In the story by A.S. Pushkin's "Station Warden" Samson Vyrin was left alone after his daughter ran away with Captain Minsky. The old man did not lose hope of finding Dunya, but all attempts remained unsuccessful. The caretaker died from melancholy and hopelessness. Only a few years later Dunya came to her father’s grave. The girl felt guilty for the death of the caretaker, but repentance came too late.
2. In the story by K.G. Paustovsky's "Telegram" Nastya left her mother and went to St. Petersburg to build a career. Katerina Petrovna had a presentiment of her imminent death and more than once asked her daughter to visit her. However, Nastya remained indifferent to the fate of her mother and did not have time to come to her funeral. The girl repented only at Katerina Petrovna’s grave. So K.G. Paustovsky argues that you need to be attentive to your loved ones.
THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL MEMORY
1. V.G. Rasputin, in his essay “The Eternal Field,” writes about his impressions of a trip to the site of the Battle of Kulikovo. The writer notes that more than six hundred years have passed and during this time much has changed. However, the memory of this battle still lives thanks to the obelisks erected in honor of the ancestors who defended Rus'.
2. In the story by B.L. Vasilyeva “And the dawns here are quiet...” five girls fell fighting for their homeland. Many years later, their combat comrade Fedot Vaskov and Rita Osyanina’s son Albert returned to the site of the death of the anti-aircraft gunners to install a gravestone and perpetuate their feat.
THE PROBLEM OF THE LIFE COURSE OF A GIFTED PERSON
1. In the story by B.L. Vasiliev “My horses are flying...” Smolensk doctor Janson is an example of selflessness combined with high professionalism. The most talented doctor rushed to help the sick every day, in any weather, without demanding anything in return. For these qualities, the doctor earned the love and respect of all residents of the city.
2. In the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri" tells the life story of two composers. Salieri writes music in order to become famous, and Mozart selflessly serves art. Because of envy, Salieri poisoned the genius. Despite Mozart's death, his works live on and excite people's hearts.
THE PROBLEM OF THE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES OF WAR
1. A. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” depicts the life of a Russian village after the war, which led not only to economic decline, but also to a loss of morality. The villagers lost part of their economy and became callous and heartless. Thus, the war leads to irreparable consequences.
2. In the story by M.A. Sholokhov’s “The Fate of a Man” shows the life path of soldier Andrei Sokolov. His house was destroyed by the enemy, and his family died during the bombing. So M.A. Sholokhov emphasizes that war deprives people of the most valuable thing they have.
THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTION OF THE HUMAN INNER WORLD
1. In the novel by I.S. Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" Evgeny Bazarov is distinguished by his intelligence, hard work, and determination, but at the same time, the student is often harsh and rude. Bazarov condemns people who give in to feelings, but is convinced of the incorrectness of his views when he falls in love with Odintsova. So I.S. Turgenev showed that people are characterized by inconsistency.
2. In the novel by I.A. Goncharova “Oblomov” Ilya Ilyich has both negative and positive character traits. On the one hand, the main character is apathetic and dependent. Oblomov is not interested in real life; it makes him bored and tired. On the other hand, Ilya Ilyich is distinguished by his sincerity, sincerity, and ability to understand the problems of another person. This is the ambiguity of Oblomov’s character.
THE PROBLEM OF TREATING PEOPLE FAIRLY
1. In the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" Porfiry Petrovich is investigating the murder of an old pawnbroker. The investigator is a keen expert on human psychology. He understands the motives for Rodion Raskolnikov’s crime and partly sympathizes with him. Porfiry Petrovich gives the young man a chance to confess. This will subsequently serve as a mitigating circumstance in Raskolnikov’s case.
2. A.P. Chekhov, in his story “Chameleon,” introduces us to the story of a dispute that broke out over a dog bite. Police warden Ochumelov is trying to decide whether she deserves punishment. Ochumelov’s verdict depends only on whether the dog belongs to the general or not. The warden is not looking for justice. His main goal is to curry favor with the general.
THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF HUMAN AND NATURE
1. In the story by V.P. Astafieva “Tsar Fish” Ignatyich was engaged in poaching for many years. One day, a fisherman caught a giant sturgeon on his hook. Ignatyich understood that he alone could not cope with the fish, but greed did not allow him to call his brother and the mechanic for help. Soon the fisherman himself found himself overboard, entangled in his nets and hooks. Ignatyich understood that he could die. V.P. Astafiev writes: “The king of the river and the king of all nature are in one trap.” So the author emphasizes the inextricable connection between man and nature.
2. In the story by A.I. Kuprin "Olesya" the main character lives in harmony with nature. The girl feels like an integral part of the world around her and knows how to see its beauty. A.I. Kuprin especially emphasizes that love for nature helped Olesya keep her soul unspoiled, sincere and beautiful.
THE PROBLEM OF THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN HUMAN LIFE
1. In the novel by I.A. Goncharov "Oblomov" music plays an important role. Ilya Ilyich falls in love with Olga Ilyinskaya when he listens to her singing. The sounds of the aria “Casta Diva” awaken feelings in his heart that he has never experienced. I.A. Goncharov especially emphasizes that for a long time Oblomov did not feel “such vigor, such strength, which seemed to all rise from the bottom of the soul, ready for a feat.” Thus, music can awaken sincere and strong feelings in a person.
2. In the novel M.A. Sholokhov's "Quiet Don" songs accompany the Cossacks throughout their lives. They sing on military campaigns, in the fields, and at weddings. Cossacks put their whole soul into singing. The songs reveal their prowess, their love for the Don and the steppes.
THE PROBLEM OF REPLACEMENT OF BOOKS BY TELEVISION
1. R. Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 depicts a society that relies on mass culture. In this world, people who can think critically are outlawed, and books that make you think about life are destroyed. Literature was replaced by television, which became the main entertainment for people. They are unspiritual, their thoughts are subject to standards. R. Bradbury convinces readers that the destruction of books inevitably leads to the degradation of society.
2. In the book “Letters about the Good and the Beautiful” D.S. Likhachev thinks about the question: why is television replacing literature. The academician believes that this happens because TV distracts people from worries and forces them to watch some program without rushing. D.S. Likhachev sees this as a threat to people, because TV “dictates how to watch and what to watch” and makes people weak-willed. According to the philologist, only a book can make a person spiritually rich and educated.
THE PROBLEM OF THE RUSSIAN VILLAGE
1. A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryonin’s Dvor” depicts the life of a Russian village after the war. People not only became poorer, but also became callous and soulless. Only Matryona retained a feeling of pity for others and always came to the aid of those in need. The tragic death of the main character is the beginning of the death of the moral foundations of the Russian village.
2. In the story by V.G. Rasputin's "Farewell to Matera" depicts the fate of the inhabitants of the island, which is about to be flooded. It’s hard for old people to say goodbye to their native land, where they spent their whole lives, where their ancestors are buried. The ending of the story is tragic. Along with the village, its customs and traditions are disappearing, which over the centuries have been passed down from generation to generation and formed the unique character of the inhabitants of Matera.
THE PROBLEM OF ATTITUDE TO POETS AND THEIR CREATIVITY
1. A.S. Pushkin in his poem “The Poet and the Crowd” calls the “stupid rabble” that part of Russian society that did not understand the purpose and meaning of creativity. According to the crowd, the poems are in the interests of society. However, A.S. Pushkin believes that a poet will cease to be a creator if he submits to the will of the crowd. Thus, the poet’s main goal is not national recognition, but the desire to make the world more beautiful.
2. V.V. Mayakovsky in the poem “At the top of his voice” sees the poet’s purpose in serving the people. Poetry is an ideological weapon that can inspire people and motivate them to great achievements. Thus, V.V. Mayakovsky believes that personal creative freedom should be given up for the sake of a common great goal.
THE PROBLEM OF TEACHER'S INFLUENCE ON STUDENTS
1. In the story by V.G. Rasputin "French Lessons" class teacher Lidia Mikhailovna is a symbol of human responsiveness. The teacher helped a village boy who studied far from home and lived from hand to mouth. Lydia Mikhailovna had to go against generally accepted rules in order to help out the student. While additionally studying with the boy, the teacher taught him not only French lessons, but also lessons of kindness and empathy.
2. In Antoine de Saint-Exupery's fairy tale “The Little Prince,” the old Fox became a teacher for the main character, talking about love, friendship, responsibility, and fidelity. He revealed to the prince the main secret of the universe: “you can’t see the main thing with your eyes - only your heart is vigilant.” So the Fox taught the boy an important life lesson.
THE PROBLEM OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS ORPHANS
1. In the story by M.A. Sholokhov's "The Fate of a Man" Andrei Sokolov lost his family during the war, but this did not make the main character heartless. The main character gave all his remaining love to the homeless boy Vanyushka, replacing his father. So M.A. Sholokhov convinces the reader that, despite life’s difficulties, one must not lose the ability to sympathize with orphans.
2. The story “The Republic of ShKID” by G. Belykh and L. Panteleev depicts the life of students at a social and labor education school for street children and juvenile delinquents. It should be noted that not all students were able to become decent people, but the majority managed to find themselves and followed the right path. The authors of the story argue that the state should pay attention to orphans and create special institutions for them in order to eradicate crime.
THE PROBLEM OF WOMEN'S ROLE IN WWII
1. In the story by B.L. Vasiliev “And the dawns here are quiet...” five young female anti-aircraft gunners died fighting for their Motherland. The main characters were not afraid to speak out against the German saboteurs. B.L. Vasiliev masterfully portrays the contrast between femininity and the brutality of war. The writer convinces the reader that women, just like men, are capable of military feats and heroic deeds.
2. In the story by V.A. Zakrutkin’s “Mother of Man” shows the fate of a woman during the war. The main character Maria lost her entire family: her husband and child. Despite the fact that the woman was left completely alone, her heart did not harden. Maria took care of seven Leningrad orphans and replaced their mother. Tale by V.A. Zakrutkina became a hymn to a Russian woman who experienced many hardships and troubles during the war, but retained kindness, sympathy, and a desire to help other people.
THE PROBLEM OF CHANGES IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
1. A. Knyshev in the article “O great and mighty new Russian language!” writes with irony about lovers of borrowing. According to A. Knyshev, the speech of politicians and journalists often becomes ridiculous when it is overloaded with foreign words. The TV presenter is sure that the excessive use of borrowings is polluting the Russian language.
2. V. Astafiev in the story “Lyudochka” connects changes in language with the decline in the level of human culture. The speech of Artyomka-soap, Strekach and their friends is clogged with criminal jargon, which reflects the dysfunction of society, its degradation.
THE PROBLEM OF CHOOSING A PROFESSION
1. V.V. Mayakovsky in the poem “Who to be? raises the problem of choosing a profession. The lyrical hero thinks about how to find the right path in life and occupation. V.V. Mayakovsky comes to the conclusion that all professions are good and equally necessary for people.
2. In the story “Darwin” by E. Grishkovets, the main character, after graduating from school, chooses a business that he wants to do for the rest of his life. He realizes the “uselessness of what is happening” and refuses to study at the cultural institute when he watches a play performed by students. The young man has a firm belief that a profession should be useful and bring pleasure.