Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. Such cruel tests fell on his lot, which a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and the fratricidal civil war, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, the Cossack liberty and the fate of the people merged into one. The strong disposition inherited from his father, adherence to principles and rebelliousness haunt him from his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, despising public morality and his father's prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person, standing up for justice. The author shows his industriousness in the scenes of hunting, fishing, haymaking. Throughout the novel, in severe battles, now on one side, then on the other side of the warring parties, he is looking for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, of its glorious victories, in Voronezh, the Cossacks hear from a local old man a phrase thrown after them with pity: “You are my dear ... beef!” The elderly man knew that there was nothing worse than war, it was not an adventure where you could become a hero, it was dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Grigory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The cornet Lyakhovsky was the first to fall off his horse. Prokhor galloped at him... With a chisel, like a diamond on glass, he cut out the memory of Gregory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhorov's horse with bared teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind... More fell. The Cossacks fell and the horses."
In parallel, the author shows the events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under the palms - do not wait for those dear to your heart! No matter how many tears flow from swollen and discolored eyes, do not wash away the longing! No matter how many times you shout on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the east wind of their cries will not carry them to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!
The war appears to the writer and his heroes as a series of hardships and deaths that change all foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to seek the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees all the same as the Whites, cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why a fratricidal war is being waged. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? After all, life on a farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of the war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people, to starve and die - to them, and not to commanders.
There are also characters in the story who think differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else's game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder unrecognizably changed him. The hero has lost his foothold, his kind, just soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He is not alone in thinking about the terrible reverse side of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It is easier to kill a person for someone else, which hand he has broken in this matter, than to crush a louse. A man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Gregory - Aksinya, is perceived as a sentence to all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all the living, it is not for nothing that Grigory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees a black sky above him and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t regret the child either.”
Realizing that the war kills the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among the thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is already almost an old man. in his immortal work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like the steppe scorched by fires, the life of Grigory became black ...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.

>Compositions based on the work Quiet Flows the Don

The path of searching Grigory Melikhov

The epic novel by M. A. Sholokhov “Quiet Don” (1928-1940) is a work about the life of the Don Cossacks during the civil war. The protagonist of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, is a worthy son of his father, a loving and just person, a seeker of truth. The personal development of Gregory against the backdrop of changing, often hostile events in the world is the main problem of the novel. The author skillfully depicts the stages of formation and development of the character of the hero, his exploits and disappointments, and most importantly, the search for a life path.

The image of Grigory Melekhov is complex and contradictory. He combined family, social, historical and love lines. It cannot be considered separately from other characters. He is in close unity with his parents, his family and other Cossacks. The "millstones" of the war did not spare Gregory. They went through his soul, crippling it and leaving bloody footprints. On the battlefields, he matured, received many awards, supported the Cossack honor, but at what cost. The kind and humane Gregory hardened, his character was tempered, and he became different. If after the first murder he could not sleep at night, tormented by his conscience, then over time he learned to ruthlessly kill the enemy and even developed the technique of a fatal blow. However, until the last chapter, he remained a loving, open and fair person.

In search of the truth, Gregory rushed from one camp to another, from the “reds” to the “whites”. As a result, he became a renegade. He even envied those who firmly believed in one truth and fought for only one idea. The hero experienced moral hesitation not only at the front, but also at home. On the one hand, a devoted and loving Natalya was waiting for him, and on the other hand, he loved Aksinya all his life - the wife of Stepan Astakhov. This ambiguous position in various social spheres indicates that Gregory is a doubting nature. He always lived "between two fires." The author himself sympathizes with his hero - a man who lived in troubled times, when all moral guidelines were shifted.

Having never understood what the “truth” was and why this senseless war was needed, having lost almost all relatives and friends, at the end of the novel, Gregory returned to his native land. The only person who made him related to the earth and this vast world was his son Mishatka. According to the author, this could be the life of a Cossack: the son returned to his mother, that is, the Cossack land. Perhaps this was the "truth" that Gregory had been looking for so long.

At the very beginning of the novel, it becomes clear that Grigory loves Aksinya Astakhova, the married neighbor of the Melekhovs. The hero rebels against his family, who condemn him, a married man, for his relationship with Aksinya. He does not obey the will of his father and leaves his native farm with Aksinya, not wanting to live a double life with his disliked wife Natalya, who then attempts suicide by cutting her neck with a scythe. Grigory and Aksinya become employees of the landowner Listnitsky.

In 1914 - the first battle of Gregory and the first man he killed. Gregory is having a hard time. In the war, he receives not only the St. George Cross, but also experience. The events of this period make him think about the life structure of the world.

It would seem that revolutions are made for people like Grigory Melekhov. He joined the Red Army, but he had no greater disappointment in his life than the reality of the red camp, where violence, cruelty and lack of rights reign.

Grigory leaves the Red Army and becomes a member of the Cossack rebellion as a Cossack officer. But here, too, there is cruelty and injustice.

He again finds himself with the Reds - in Budyonny's cavalry - and is again disappointed. In his wanderings from one political camp to another, Gregory strives to find the truth that is closer to his soul and his people.

Ironically, he ends up in Fomin's gang. Gregory thinks that bandits are free people. But even here he feels like an outsider. Melekhov leaves the gang to pick up Aksinya and run away with her to the Kuban. But the death of Aksinya from a random bullet in the steppe deprives Grigory of his last hope for a peaceful life. It is at this moment that he sees in front of him a black sky and "a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun." The writer depicts the sun - a symbol of life - in black, emphasizing the troubles of the world. Having nailed to the deserters, Melekhov lived with them for almost a year, but longing again drove him to his native home.

At the end of the novel, Natalya and her parents die, and Aksinya dies. Only a son and a younger sister, who married a red, remained. Gregory stands at the gate of his native house and holds his son in his arms. The finale is left open: will his simple dream ever come true to live as his ancestors lived: “to plow the land, to take care of it”?

female characters in the novel.

Women, in whose lives the war breaks in, takes away their husbands, sons, destroys the house and hopes for personal happiness, take on their shoulders an unbearable burden of work in the field and at home, but do not bend, but courageously bear this burden. In the novel, two main types of Russian women are given: the mother, the keeper of the hearth (Ilyinichna and Natalya) and the beautiful sinner, frantically looking for her happiness (Aksinya and Daria). Two women - Aksinya and Natalya - accompany the main character, they selflessly love him, but are opposite in everything.

Love is a necessary need for Aksinya's existence. Aksinya's fury in love is emphasized by the description of her "shamelessly greedy, puffy lips" and "perverse eyes". The heroine's background is terrible: at the age of 16, she was raped by a drunken father and married to Stepan Astakhov, a neighbor of the Melekhovs. Aksinya endured the humiliation and beatings of her husband. She had no children, no relatives. It is understandable her desire "to love the bitter for the rest of her life", so she fiercely defends her love for Grishka, which has become the meaning of her existence. For her sake, Aksinya is ready for any test. Gradually, almost maternal tenderness appears in her love for Gregory: with the birth of her daughter, her image becomes cleaner. Separated from Grigory, she becomes attached to his son, and after the death of Ilyinichna, she takes care of all the children of Grigory as if they were her own. Her life was cut short by a random steppe bullet when she was happy. She died in the arms of Gregory.

Natalia is the embodiment of the idea of ​​a home, family, the natural morality of a Russian woman. She is a selfless and affectionate mother, a pure, faithful and devoted woman. She takes a lot of suffering from her love for her husband. She does not want to put up with her husband's betrayal, does not want to be unloved - this makes her lay hands on herself. The hardest thing will be for Gregory to go through the fact that before her death she “forgave him everything”, that she “loved him and remembered him until the last minute.” Upon learning of Natalya's death, Grigory for the first time felt a stabbing pain in his heart and a ringing in his ears. He is tormented by remorse.

"Quiet Don" is a work that shows the life of the Don Cossacks in one of the most difficult historical periods in Russia. The realities of the first third of the twentieth century, which turned the whole habitual way of life upside down, like caterpillars drove through the fate of the common people. Through the life path of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”, Sholokhov reveals the main idea of ​​the work, which is to depict the clash of the individual and the historical events that do not depend on him, his wounded fate.

The struggle between duty and feelings

At the beginning of the work, the protagonist is shown as a hardworking guy with a hot temper, which he inherited from his ancestors. Cossack and even Turkish blood flowed in him. Oriental roots endowed Grishka with a bright appearance that could turn the head of more than one Don beauty, and the Cossack stubbornness, in places bordering on stubbornness, ensured the stamina and steadfastness of his character.

On the one hand, he shows respect and love for his parents, on the other hand, he does not listen to their opinion. The first conflict between Gregory and his parents happens because of his love affair with a married neighbor Aksinya. To end the sinful connection between Aksinya and Grigory, his parents decide to marry him. But their choice in the role of the sweet and meek Natalya Korshunova did not solve the problem, but only exacerbated it. Despite the official marriage, love for his wife did not appear, and for Aksinya, who, tormented by jealousy, was increasingly looking for a meeting with him, only flared up.

The blackmail of his father with his house and property forced the hot and impulsive Gregory to leave the farm, his wife, relatives in his hearts and leave with Aksinya. Because of his act, the proud and adamant Cossack, whose family from time immemorial cultivated their own land and grew their own bread, had to become a mercenary, which made Grigory ashamed and disgusted. But he now had to answer both for Aksinya, who had left her husband because of him, and for the child she was carrying.

War and betrayal of Aksinya

A new misfortune was not long in coming: the war began, and Gregory, who swore allegiance to the sovereign, was forced to leave both the old and the new family and recover at the front. In his absence, Aksinya remained in the master's house. The death of her daughter and news from the front about the death of Grigory crippled the woman's strength, and she was forced to succumb to the onslaught of the centurion Listnitsky.

Coming from the front and learning about Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his family again. For some period, his wife, relatives and soon appeared twins delight him. But the troubled time on the Don, associated with the Revolution, did not allow them to enjoy family happiness.

Ideological and personal doubts

In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" Grigory Melekhov's path is full of quests, doubts and contradictions both politically and in love. He constantly rushed about, not knowing where the truth was: “Everyone has his own truth, his own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life. We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ... ". He decided to lead the Cossack division and repair the pillars of the advancing Reds. However, the longer the Civil War continued, the more Gregory doubted the correctness of his choice, the more clearly he understood that the Cossacks were waging war with windmills. Nobody was interested in the interests of the Cossacks and their native land.

The same model of behavior is typical in the personal life of the protagonist of the work. Over time, he forgives Aksinya, realizing that he cannot live without her love and takes him to the front. After he sends her home, where she is forced to once again return to her husband. Arriving on a visit, he looks at Natalya with different eyes, appreciating her devotion and loyalty. He was drawn to his wife, and this intimacy culminated in the conception of a third child.

But again the passion for Aksinya took over him. His last betrayal led to the death of his wife. Gregory drowns his remorse and the impossibility of resisting feelings in the war, becoming cruel and merciless: “I got so smeared on someone else’s blood that I didn’t have any stings left for anyone. Childhood - and I almost do not regret this one, but I don’t even think about myself. The war took everything out of me. I became terrible myself. Look into my soul, and there is blackness, as in an empty well ... ".

Alien among their own

The loss of loved ones and the retreat sobered Gregory, he understands: you need to be able to save what he has left. He takes Aksinya with him on his retreat, but due to typhus, he is forced to leave her.

He again begins to search for the truth and finds himself in the Red Army, taking command of a cavalry squadron. However, even participation in hostilities on the side of the Soviets will not wash away Grigory's past, stained by the white movement. He is threatened with execution, about which his sister Dunya warned him. Taking Aksinya, he makes an attempt to escape, during which the woman he loves is killed. Having fought for his land and on the side of the Cossacks and the Reds, he remained a stranger among his own.

The path of Grigory Melekhov's search in the novel is the fate of a simple man who loved his land, but lost everything that he had and appreciated, protecting it for the life of the next generation, which in the finale is personified by his son Mishatka.

Artwork test

At the beginning of the story, young Grigory - a real Cossack, a brilliant horseman, hunter, fisherman and hardworking rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. He is a rebel by nature, does not tolerate violence against himself. And now he is almost forcibly married. Grigory and Natalya live outwardly peacefully, but this is only outwardly. He is weighed down by his unloved wife, she feels it and suffers silently. But it couldn't go on like this for long. The rebellion that had been brewing in Grigory's soul from the day of the wedding broke out.

Sholokhov endows Grigory with a sensitive soul. It is revealed in the history of his relationship with two women Aksinya and Natalya. His love for Aksinya, full of dramatic moments, shocks with its strength and depth.

By the time the First World War began, we see a different Gregory. This is no longer the carefree young man. “Both that and not that,” Aksinya thinks on the night before Grigory leaves for the army. Already another person, oppressed by painful thoughts, rides in a soldier's carriage. The traditional Cossack commitment to military duty helps him out in the first tests on the bloody battlefields in 1914. He is distinguished from brothers in arms by his sensitivity to all manifestations of cruelty, to any violence against the weak and defenseless ... The war forced Grigory to take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he is after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, he has doubts about loyalty to the tsar, fatherland and military duty. In the civil war, Melekhov is at first on the side of the Reds, but their murder of unarmed prisoners repels him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, committing robberies and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again, Gregory's search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a man completely lost in the cycle of events. “They are all the same,” he says to his childhood friends leaning towards the Bolsheviks, “They are all a yoke on the face of the Cossacks!”

But among the white officers, Grigory feels like a stranger. In the end, he joins the cavalry of Budyonny and heroically fights with the Poles, wanting to cleanse himself of his war before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former orderly that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Listnitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but everything is still unclear to me. They both have their own, straight roads, their own ends, and since 1917 I have been walking along the forks, swinging like a drunk ... "

Under the threat of arrest, and, consequently, the inevitable execution, Grigory, together with Aksinya, flees from his native farm in the hope of making his way to the Kuban and starting a new life. But their happiness is short-lived. On the way, they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. Grigory buries his Aksinya. “Now there was no need for him to rush. It was all over…”

Speaking about the moral choice of Gregory in life, it is impossible to say unequivocally whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better path in life, and this desire of his was not a simple desire to "live the best." It affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him. Despite the fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although not for a very long time. But these short moments of happiness were enough. They did not disappear in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain.