Establish a correspondence between the characters appearing in this novel and the facts of their further fate: for each position of the first column, select the corresponding position from the second column.
Write down the numbers in response, arranging them in the order corresponding to the letters:
| A | B | IN |
From that day on, the gun rumble sounded non-stop for four days. Dawns were especially audible. But when the northeast wind blew, the thunder of distant battles was heard even in the middle of the day. Work on the threshing floors stopped for a minute, the women crossed themselves, sighed heavily, remembering their relatives, whispering prayers, and then again the stone rollers began to rumble dully on the currents, the chasing boys urged the horses and bulls, the winnowing machines rattled, the labor day entered into its inalienable rights. The end of August was fine and dry to a marvel. The wind carried chaff dust around the farm, the sweet smell of threshed rye straw, the sun warmed mercilessly, but the approach of autumn was already felt in everything. In the pasture, faded gray sagebrush gleamed dully white, the tops of the poplars behind the Don turned yellow, the smell of Antonovka became sharper in the gardens, the distant horizons cleared up like autumn, and the first villages of migratory cranes already appeared on the empty fields.
On the Hetman's Way, from day to day, wagon trains stretched from west to east, bringing military supplies to the crossings across the Don, and refugees appeared in the Obdon farms. They said that the Cossacks were retreating with battles; some assured that this retreat was deliberate, in order to lure the Reds, and then surround them and destroy them. Some of the Tatars slowly began to get ready to leave. They fed bulls and horses, at night they buried bread in pits, chests with the most valuable property. The rumble of guns, which had been silent, resumed on September 5 with renewed vigor and now sounded distinctly and menacingly. The fighting went on forty versts from the Don, in the direction to the northeast from Tatarsky. A day later thundered upstream in the west. The front moved inexorably towards the Don.
Ilyinichna, who knew that most of the farmers were going to retreat, suggested that Dunyashka leave. She experienced a feeling of confusion and bewilderment and did not know what to do with the household, with the house; whether it is necessary to leave all this and leave with people or stay at home. Before leaving for the front, Pantelei Prokofievich talked about threshing, about the fall, about cattle, but did not say a word about how they should be if the front approaches Tatarsky. Just in case, Ilyinichna decided this: to send Dunyashka with the children and the most valuable property with one of the farmsteaders, and to stay on her own, even if the Reds occupied the farmhouse.
On the night of September 17, Pantelei Prokofievich unexpectedly appeared at home. He came on foot from the Kazan village, exhausted, angry. After resting for half an hour, he sat down at the table and began to eat in a way that Ilyinichna had never seen in her entire life; half-bucket iron of lean cabbage soup seemed to have thrown it for itself, and then fell on millet porridge. Ilyinichna threw up her hands in amazement:
Lord, how can you eat, Prokofich! How, tell me, you haven't eaten for three days!
And you thought - ate, you old fool! For three days there was no poppy dew in my mouth!
Well, they don’t feed you there, do they?
Damn they fed them like that! - purring like a cat, with a full mouth, answered Pantelei Prokofievich. - What you think is what you pop, but I didn’t learn how to steal isho. This is good for young people, they don’t have a conscience even for a semak [two kopecks] ... They got so full of theft for this damned war that I was terrified, terrified, and stopped. All that they see - they take, pull, drag ... Not war, but the passion of the Lord!
(M. A. Sholokhov, Quiet Flows the Don)
What kind of literature does “Quiet Flows the Don” by M. A. Sholokhov belong to?
Explanation.
Epos is a kind of literature (along with lyrics and drama), a narrative about events assumed in the past (as if accomplished and remembered by the narrator). Epic works are characterized by the breadth of coverage of reality: they are comprehensively reflected as private life individual people and public life people.
Answer: epic.
Answer: epic
Name the novel by A. S. Pushkin about the Pugachev uprising, in which, like in The Quiet Don, the elements of the Russian rebellion are depicted.
Explanation.
The element of the Russian rebellion is depicted in historical novel A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
Answer: Captain's daughter.
Answer: captain's daughter|Captain's daughter
Source: USE - 2017. Early wave
Pantelei Prokofievich uses phrases like “there was no poppy dew in your mouth”, “what you think about is what you pop”. What is the name of such figurative folk sayings?
Explanation.
Such sayings are called proverbs. A proverb is a short, winged, figurative folk saying that has an instructive meaning.
The answer “aphorism or aphorisms” does not fit here, because the question emphasizes that the sayings are folk. Aphorisms are of literary origin and have a specific author, while proverbs are a product of folk poetic creativity.
Answer: proverb.
Answer: proverb
Source: USE - 2017. Early wave
Anna Pogudko
In the novel by M. A. Sholokhov, Cossack women are perhaps the only ones who are not influenced by political passions. However, in the "Quiet Don" there is also the heiress of the "progressives" of F. Dostoevsky - the fiery revolutionary Anna Pogudko. M. Sholokhov the artist does not demonize the heroine, she is characterized by human weaknesses, love-pity for Bunchuk, but the spiritual nature, the spiritual essence of this type of personality - a destructive woman - remains unchanged. She voluntarily joins the team of Red Guard machine gunners to learn how to kill. M. Sholokhov gives an expressive description: “Anna Pogudko delved into everything with keen curiosity. She importunately molested Bunyk, grabbed him by the sleeves of the clumsy demi-season, relentlessly stuck out near the machine gun.
The author notes Anna's "unfaithful and warm gleam of eyes", her passion for speeches, fanned by sentimental romanticism. This pity for the distant is paradoxically combined with hatred for the near. The desire to kill for the sake of a utopian dream is enormous: “a wrong, stumbling trot” leads Pogudko people into the attack. Retribution follows immediately, her death is terrible, naturalism in the description of the agony is deliberately accentuated by the author. From a blooming woman, the heroine turns into a half-corpse, she seems to be burning alive in hell: "Blue-yellow, with streaks of frozen tears on her cheeks, with a pointed nose and a terribly painful fold of her lips", the dying constantly requires water, which is not able to fill her inner, all-burning fire.
The passion for victory at any cost, including death, is higher than love, even on a date with Bunchuk, Anna did not forget about machine guns. She "enchants" Bunchuk until the final spiritual and physical death, his behavior after the death of his girlfriend is infernal - he is likened to a beast. It seems symbolic that his executioner-volunteer Mitka Korshunov kills him, giving him the following assessment: "Look at this devil - he bit his shoulder to blood and died like a wolf, silently."
Unrealized female ambitions, lack of humility result in a desire to destroy everything and everything. People with "new" ideas are very welcome here.
And yet in Anna there is a feminine, maternal principle, which is dissolved in different degrees in almost every true love women for a man: both in the love of Natalya and Aksinya for Grigory, and in the love of the "deep-eyed" Anna Pogudko for Bunchuk ... If for Bunchuk three weeks of his typhoid unconsciousness were weeks of wandering "in another, intangible and fantastic world", then for ideologically exalted girl became a test of her first feelings, when “for the first time she had to look so closely and so nakedly at the underside of communication with her beloved”, to face in “dirty care” with lousy, ugly emaciated, foul-smelling flesh and its grassroots secretions. “Inwardly, everything reared up in her, resisted, but the dirt of the outer did not stain the deeply and securely stored feeling”, “love and pity that had not been experienced before”, love here is motherly self-sacrificing. Two months later, Anna herself came to bed with him for the first time, and Bunchuk, dried up, blackened from execution work in the revolutionary tribunal (although he left there that day), turned out to be powerless - all the erotic moisture of this, albeit ideologically playing himself, executioner on the service of the revolution burned out in horror and breakdown. Anna managed to overcome "disgust and disgust" and, after listening to his stuttering, feverish explanations, "silently hugged him and calmly, like a mother, kissed him on the forehead." And only a week later, Anna's caress, maternal care warmed up Bunchuk, pulled him out of male impotence, burnt out, a nightmare. But when Anna dies painfully in the arms of Bunchuk from a wound in battle, the loss of a beloved woman makes everything in him and around him meaningless, brings him into a state of complete apathy, dispassionate automatism. It does not help at all with what he was strong and fierce before: hatred, struggle, ideas, ideals, historical optimism ... everything flies into hell! Indifferently, half asleep, he adjoins the expedition of Podtelkov, simply "just to move, just to get away from the longing that followed him on the heels." And in the scene of the execution of the podtelkovites, Bunchuk, alone, keeps looking “into the gray distance swaddled with clouds”, “at the gray haze of the sky” - “it seemed that he was waiting for something unrealizable and gratifying”, perhaps from childhood superstitions long trampled about meetings after the coffin , insanely hoping for the only thing that could satisfy his immense longing, that longing that had dropped him as an inflexible Bolshevik and humanized him.
Dunyasha
After the death of Natalya and Ilyinichna, Dunyashka becomes the mistress of the Melekhov kuren, she will have to reconcile the antagonist heroes in the same house: Melikhov and Koshevoy. Dunyashka - especially attractive female image in the novel.
The author introduces us to the youngest of the Melekhovs - Dunyasha - when she was still a long-armed, big-eyed teenager with thin pigtails. Growing up, Dunyasha turns into a black-browed, slender and proud Cossack woman with an obstinate and persistent Melekhovsky character.
Having fallen in love with Mishka Koshevoy, she does not want to think about anyone else, despite the threats of her father, mother and brother. All the tragedies with the household are played out before her eyes. The death of his brother, Daria, Natalya, father, mother, niece takes Dunyasha very close to his heart. But, despite all the losses, she needs to move on. And Dunyasha becomes the main person in the ruined house of the Melekhovs.
Dunyasha is a new generation of Cossack women who will live in a different world than her mother and brothers, Aksinya and Natalya. She entered the novel as a sonorous, ubiquitous, hardworking teenage girl and went all the way to the beautiful Cossack woman, without tarnishing her dignity in anything. The image is imbued with lyricism and dynamism of youth, openness to the whole world, immediacy of manifestation and trepidation of the first dawn of feelings, which Sholokhov associates with the dawn - the rising hope for life in new conditions. In the act of the daughter, with which Ilyinichna was forced to come to terms, there is a rejection of some outdated elements of the traditionally Cossack (and not only Cossack) family, but there is no destruction of its foundations here. Yes, the personal choice of the future spouse seems to be more “happy” for Dunyasha to create a family. But he also considers parental blessing obligatory, and, despite all the difficulties, he receives it. With difficulty, but still, he achieves from the atheist and "utterly evil at himself and everything around" Mikhail Koshevoy the church consecration of their marriage. She maintains an unshakable faith in the healing power of the Orthodox canons of family love.
Perhaps she managed to understand something in the new time that was not understood by many of her contemporaries: people are embittered and commit acts, sometimes vile and tragic in their consequences, not at all due to natural depravity, but becoming victims of circumstances. They should not only feel sorry for them, but to the best of their ability to help them become themselves.
One of the most beloved heroes of the work "Quiet Don" for the author and readers is Dunyasha. The author is very sensual towards the heroine, because it is not for nothing that he affectionately calls Evdokia Panteleevna Melekhova Dunyasha.
Sholokhov represents the heroine from an early age. Over time, the girl grows, not only her appearance changes, but also her life.
Outwardly, the author presents Dunyasha as a thin girl with brown eyes and dark hair. The older Dunyasha gets, the more beautiful. By the age of fifteen, she becomes a pretty, prominent girl. She took after her father with her dark skin. With her long pigtails, the girl disposes to herself, they give her childish carelessness. The girl is distinguished by special kindness and calmness, but at the same time she is very persistent and strong in character.
Dunyasha always has a lot of housework to do. She is very economical and hardworking. Now she milks the cow, then she lubricates the wheels, then she picks hay, then she sows wheat. Despite the fact that the heroine always has chores around the house, Dunyasha is still very educated. There were difficulties with education at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the girl grew up very well-read, educated. To all this, by the age of fifteen she could write and read quickly. She learned all this on her own.
Dunyasha's life has been unfolding since childhood. in the best way. From an early age, the heroine loses almost all of her relatives. The only survivor is her brother Gregory.
At the age of 15, sympathy arises between Dunyasha and her neighbor Misha. They constantly see each other, spend evenings together. Every time Dunyasha falls in love with Misha more and more.
The war begins, but this does not stop the children. They rarely and fleetingly continue to see each other. In the war, Mikhail kills the heroine's brother. Dunyasha's relatives forbid her to see each other and think about Misha. But you can't tell your heart. She continues to love him blindly. Dunyasha is torn between her beloved and her family.
As a result, the wedding took place. Dunyasha managed to persuade the atheist Misha to get married in a church. This once again shows her authority.
In the image of Dunyasha, one can understand how, in such a difficult wartime, to preserve kindness, humanity, sincerity. Dunyasha lost all her relatives, but remained strong, strong-willed, but at the same time a good and sensual person. Deception, bad deeds did not break her.
Composition about Dunyasha (Quiet Don)
Dunya Melekhova is the younger sister of Grigory Melekhov in the novel Quiet Flows the Don.
At the beginning of the novel, Dunyasha appears as an angular teenager, his father's favorite. She is a black-eyed thin girl with pigtails. The novel shows how her growing up takes place, from a clumsy teenager Dunya Melekhova turns into a beautiful young girl. She looks like her father, swarthy, black-eyed, slender. Dunyasha is a literate girl, which is a rarity among the Cossacks. She can read and write. In addition, Dunyasha is an economic and sharp-witted girl. She is in love with Mishka Koshevoy, who, oddly enough, later turns out to be an enemy of her family. Time civil war"Red" and "White" makes its own adjustments to the life and relations of ordinary people.
Dunyasha's relatives die, she loses her parents and brother Peter. The most annoying thing is that her beloved Mikhail is on the opposite side, on the side of the "Reds", but no matter what, Dunya does not give up her love. The Melikhov family flatly refuses to give Dunya for Mikhail Koshevoy, as a result, they still get married at night in the church.
After the wedding, Dunyasha becomes prettier, becomes beautiful with that feminine, calm beauty. But her anxiety for her brother does not leave her, Gregory was left alone with her. Despite everything, Dunya and Grigory are trying to maintain family relations, Dunyasha's husband is dissatisfied with this. Their relationship begins to go wrong, and Dunyasha, as if between two fires, cannot leave either her brother or her husband. It was at this time that it is clear how difficult and not calm her life is, Dunya is torn between her beloved husband and brother, cannot reconcile them and suffers from this. Once she manages to save Gregory from arrest, after listening to her husband's conversation, she understands that he wants to extradite Gregory, and persuades him to run away from the farm.
When Grigory and Aksinya flee the farm, Dunya takes custody of Grigory's children. It becomes clear that she is a real Russian woman, with a strong will and good heart. For Dunyasha, family feelings are very strong, she feels sorry for her brother and his children, she is afraid for her husband in such a turbulent time. The image of Dunyasha, the image of a strong Cossack woman who achieves her goal no matter what, does not abandon her brother and his children, despite her husband's displeasure.
Some interesting essays
- State and personality in Pushkin's works
The relationship between the individual and the state, their confrontation and conflict are, throughout the poet's work, interesting for consideration and reasoning, while at different stages creative activity attitude changes
The main character of the work is Kovalev Platon Kuzmich, who presents himself as a writer in the form of a collegiate assessor.
Women's fate in the epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don"
Women are central to the epic; women of different ages, different temperaments, different destinies- mother of Grigory Ilyinichna, Aksinya, Natalya, Daria, Dunyashka, Anna Pogudko and others.
The fate of female Cossacks is the most tragic. It is impossible to name a single heroine who would always be happy. Dependent on male power and whim, they meekly accept all hardships, but their souls do not become stale, but on the contrary, it is women who try to smooth out those situations that arise in connection with the terrible times of war and revolution. Inviolability among the Cossacks of the house, family M. Sholokhov reveals in female images. The mother of Grigory Ilyinichna and his wife Natalya embody the best features of a Cossack woman - reverence for the sanctity of the hearth, fidelity and devotion in love, patience, pride, diligence. Natalya's rival Aksinya is a beautiful woman with an independent bold character, a stormy temperament, complements the female image of a Cossack, making it more vivid.
The image of the old Ilyinichna, personifying the difficult lot of a Cossack woman, her high moral qualities, is full of charm in the novel. The wife of Panteley Melekhov, Vasilisa Ilyinichna, is a native Cossack of the Upper Don region. Life with her husband was not sweet, sometimes, having flared up, he severely beat her, she grew old early, got fat, suffered from illnesses, but remained a caring, energetic housewife. Fate did not spoil this woman, but love for children was her only consolation. With unquestioning understanding, she accepted all the ordeals of life of her children.
Gregory's mother was a truly close person for him. She understood him like no other. She also called him to philanthropy: “We used a rumor that you chopped up some sailors ... Lord! Yes, you, Grishenka, come to your senses! You’ve got to get out, looking at what children are growing up, and these, ruined by you, also, I suppose, have left children ... In your childhood, how affectionate and desirable you were, but at the same time you live with shifted eyebrows.
Human life is priceless, and no one has the right to dispose of it even in the name of the noblest ideas. Grigory's mother spoke about this, and the hero himself came to the realization of this as a result of his life ordeals.
Ilyinichna, yearning before her death, hopes only to see Grigory, the only surviving successor of the Melekhov family. But fate deprived her even of this joy.
Ilyinichna, in her eternal female pity and wisdom, shows a worthy way of reconciling one camp with another. Gregory's mother, resigned to her daughter's will, to the force of circumstances, steps over the natural repulsion from the murderer of her eldest son, takes into the house a person so hated by her, charged with an alien "truth". But gradually, peering into him, she highlights some of his unexpected reactions (say, attention and affection for the son of Grigory Mishatka) and suddenly begins to feel “unsolicited pity” for him when he is exhausted, oppressed and tormented by malaria. Time is running, and suddenly an unbidden pity for this hated person - that aching maternal pity that conquers even strong women, woke up in Ilyinichna's heart.
Great, redemptive pity for the lost children of this cruel world is the fate of a mother's heart. And before her death, she gives Dunyasha the most precious thing for Mishka - Grigory's shirt, "let him wear it, otherwise he was already soaked with sweat." This is the highest gesture of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Natalya, resigned, faithful to her husband, is an image perfect woman, whose fate is always decided by someone else, but whose life and death are always in her hands. Strong in character, Natalya put up with the position of an unloved wife for a long time and still hoped for a better life. But she can resolutely stand up for herself and her children, powerfully declare her right to a bright, real life. She curses and loves Gregory endlessly. With unprecedented depth in the last days of her life, the strength of spirit and the conquering moral purity of this heroine are revealed. Her happiness came to her. The family was restored, Natalya's asceticism brought harmony and love to her. She gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter. Natalia turned out to be just as loving, devoted and caring mother as she was a wife. This a beautiful woman the embodiment of the dramatic fate of a strong, beautiful, selflessly loving nature, which can sacrifice everything, even life, in the name of a high feeling. Natalya, a quiet, selfless, pure woman, turns out to be capable of a pure sin (according to Christian concepts) - to lay hands on herself, and even on Easter night, and later - albeit in a burning resentment against her husband for his infidelity - to kill her own fetus, their possible future child.
To the point of impossibility to carry and endure his child - taking revenge on him and herself by cutting out a living embryo, forgives Gregory before death, dying reconciled.
The fates of Ilyinichna and Natalya are vivid examples of the fates of the majority of Cossack women. Their destinies are broken not so much by great historical events, but by personal tragic experiences associated with the death of loved ones, personal insult inflicted by someone, betrayal. It cannot be said here that external social circumstances do not in any way affect the fate of women. Great historical events leave their mark on the lives of the heroines, but, unlike men, they experience all this not with their minds, but with their souls, which drains their strength. There is a logical chain: wars, revolution, uprising in their own way decided the fate of many Cossacks, in turn, this was reflected in the fate of their native women.
The restrained, modest in feelings worker Natalya is opposed by the ardent, passionate Aksinya, with her "vicious beauty". The fate of both Aksinya and Natalya is tragic. There was a lot of hard things in their lives, but they both knew real human happiness, which they sought and kept as best they could. The image of Aksinya, drawn with remarkable skill, runs through the whole novel. World literature knows no other work where the writer would penetrate so deeply into inner world peasant women, idle women from the people. Aksinya is a complex nature and rich in her own way, with strong and deep feelings.
The fate of Aksinya is also tragic. Young Aksinya does not break down from the rape of her father and his murder by relatives (which, perhaps, is even worse), and even never, in any way, remembers this. Love for Gregory, huge and all-consuming, concentrated in itself all the brightest that she had in her sorrowful life. A faithful companion and friend of Gregory, she not only shares with him all the hardships, not only experiences all the humiliations, all the bitterness of her ambiguous position, but also becomes a victim of Melekhov's fatal mistakes. Aksinya shares tragic fate Gregory himself. She, too, could not find her way in life. Her love for Gregory was not able to give her true happiness, to make life meaningful and meaningful. This love eventually led Aksinya to death.
Aksinya's love for Gregory borders on heroism. And even though we have a simple semi-literate Cossack woman in front of us, we cannot forget how beautiful the inner world of this woman with a difficult fate is. However, unlike many other women, Aksinya decides her own fate: she independently and consciously chooses between her unloved husband and Gregory the second, although he knows that this will be a shame for life. But this still did not allow her happiness to be fenced off from external circumstances. The death of an only daughter leads to betrayal of a loved one, and his departure to subsequent disappointment in life.
Love is the force that brings Aksinya back to life. She worries about Gregory, loves his children after the death of their mother, thinks about how to arrange their lives in the future. The struggle for happiness gives strength to the fateful decisions in her life: she leaves the village with Grigory and the Cossacks for the first time, and tragically dies from a bullet when leaving with Grisha for the second time. The fate of Aksinya, and in turn Grigory, was decided by a stranger. Here again it should be said that the only thing that affects the fate of Cossack women is only love, an eternal feeling.
The fates of female Cossacks are in many ways similar. Despite all the sorrows, they try to make life better. Their fate often depends on other people's decisions, external circumstances, but the ability to accept this and fill their lives with love for others distinguish them from male images. Neither politics nor the new government will force them to change their aspirations to know happiness. And in the end it becomes clear that it was not whites and reds who thought about the future most of all, but wives and mothers who, despite grief, war and betrayal, continue the human race, are ready to understand and forgive a lot.
Images of Cossack women in M. Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don"
The novel by M. Sholokhov "The Quiet Flows the Don" tells about the most difficult time in the life of Russia, which brought enormous social and moral upheavals. Habitual ways of life collapsed, destinies were distorted and broken, human life was devalued. Sholokhov himself characterized his work as "an epic novel about a national tragedy." There is none actor in a novel that would not be touched by the grief and horrors of war. The special burden of this time fell on the shoulders of female Cossacks.
The figure of the Cossack mother Ilyinichna, a simple elderly woman, is monumental. In her youth, she was beautiful and stately, but she grew old ahead of time from hard work and because of the tough temper of her husband, Pantelei Prokofievich, "who reached unconsciousness in anger." The strong, wise Ilyinichna constantly fusses, worries and takes care of all the household members, tries in every possible way to protect them from troubles, adversities, from rash acts; stands between her husband, who is uncontrollable in anger, and proud, temperamental sons, for which he receives blows from her husband, who, feeling the advantage of his wife in everything, thus asserts himself.
Ilyinichna loves and knows how to dress beautifully, unlike her husband; she keeps the house in strict order, economical, prudent. She does not approve of Grigory’s connection with Aksinya: “How long should I accept such a fear in my old age?” She treats Aksinya coldly, but during the war, worries about her loved one and the expectation of news from him brought them closer.
The youngest daughter-in-law, Natalya, Ilyinichna takes as if she were her own daughter, pities her, trying to take on some of the worries or shift it to the lazy Daria, as she remembers "her hunchbacked life in work." She is hurt that Grigory is cheating on his wife and brings Natalya to a suicide attempt; Ilyinichna feels guilty and responsible for this. The death of her beloved, dear "Natalyushka" shocked the old woman.
Ilyinichna loves her grandchildren with all her big and kind heart, seeing them as her bloodlines. All her life she, not sparing her health, worked, making good bit by bit. And when the situation forces her to drop everything and leave the farm, she declares: “Let them kill you at the threshold - everything is easier than dying under someone else's wattle fence!” This is not greed, but the fear of losing one's nest, roots, without which a person loses the meaning of life. She understands this with a feminine, maternal instinct, and it is impossible to convince her otherwise.
She did not accept the Reds, she called them antichrists and felt that they brought destruction, a threat to the established life, the end of the measured Cossack life. However, she is also critical of the Cossacks, noticing excesses on both sides.
Ilyinichna appreciates in people honesty, decency, purity; he is afraid that the cruelty surrounding them will affect the soul and consciousness of Mishatka's grandson. She resigned herself to the idea that the murderer of her son Peter became a member of their family by marrying Dunyashka; the old mother does not want to go against the feelings of her daughter, and besides, man's strength is needed in the household.
Having buried her eldest son, husband, daughter-in-law within a year, Ilyinichna was most afraid of Grigory's death. He was the last thread holding her in this world; she even became cold to her grandchildren. She fell ill, and did not get up again; recalling the past years, Ilyinichna was surprised, “how short and poor this life turned out to be and how much hard and sadness was in it, which I didn’t want to remember.”
The life of Ilyinichna is tragic, because there is nothing more painful than the grief of a mother losing her children, and there is nothing stronger than her hope, there is no courage greater than the courage of a mother.
The image of Aksinya, a proud Don Cossack woman, who endured a lot in her difficult life, passes through the whole novel. life path. Beautiful, stately, perceiving life very emotionally and impulsively, she, like any woman, wanted happiness, but troubles fell on her head early: at the age of sixteen, her father raped her, a year later Aksinya was married to the unloved Stepan Astakhov, who beat her with a mortal combat; the early death of a child, exhausting housework alone, since the husband was lazy, he liked to take a walk: “having combed his forelock”, he disappeared from the house at night. Her heart wanted love, her soul was torn to freedom, so Aksinya responded to the courtship of Grigory Melekhov. A huge, all-consuming love flared up, burning in its fire the fear of her husband and his beatings, the shame of fellow villagers. Grigory's marriage to Natalya makes Aksinya suffer; after a long separation, when she saw him near the river, she felt “how cold the yoke under her hands and the blood of whiskey showered with heat”, tears covered her eyes. Aksinya realized that it was impossible and useless to fight this feeling. Upon learning that they are again furtively meeting, the father kicks Gregory out of the house. Aksinya, without hesitation, follows her beloved.
Their life as workers at the landowner Listnitsky was difficult and dramatic: the birth of a child, Grigory's suspicions, his departure for the service, the death of his daughter, despair, loneliness and grief of Aksinya, the master's son turned up at an unkind hour - "comforter". Returning from the service, Grigory learns about Aksinya's betrayal and, offended, returns to his wife. Aksinya remains alone, but not for long, because "not an azure scarlet color - a drunken roadside blooms late woman's love." Life repeatedly separates them and again throws them into each other's arms.
Despite wars, revolutions, all the humiliations, the ambiguity of his position, Aksinya every time desperately seeks Grigory, wherever he calls. Once it almost cost her her life, but the severe, debilitating illness receded. The return to life was so joyful that everything around evoked an unreasonable feeling of happiness, fullness and unity with spring and nature: “She wanted to touch a currant bush blackened by dampness, press her cheek against an apple tree branch covered with a bluish velvety bloom ... and go there. where... fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance, the winter field...” Aksinya organically fits into nature; whatever she does, she does it naturally, harmoniously: whether she cooks dinner for Gregory, whether she carries water, whether she works in the field. She always patiently waits for Gregory, loves, pities his children left without a mother, takes care of them. However, Gregory's throwing between different political camps does not bring happiness and peace to anyone, but leads to Aksinya's senseless death.
Tragic is the fate of another Cossack woman, Natalya, Grigory's wife. Beautiful, unrequitedly loving her unlucky husband all her life, she never (even in her thoughts) cheated on him. Nature is maximalistly direct, she makes an attempt at suicide. Left crippled, Natalya still loves her husband and hopes for his return to the family. To complete dedication, forgetting herself, she loves children, in every line of them noticing the resemblance to her beloved husband. All the Melekhovs love her; even the stern Pantelei Prokofievich, who does not give anyone a descent, regrets and stands up for her, as for her own daughter. Natalia is hardworking, responsive, kind, patient; she repeatedly forgives Gregory's betrayals, but finally she can't stand it and decides to leave him. Everything ends tragically: in the prime of life, Natalya dies from a large loss of blood, leaving her children orphans, but until her last breath she thinks and talks about her husband, forgives him all the bad words and deeds.
Natalya's death made Gregory take a different look at her: "... memory persistently resurrected ... minor episodes life together, conversations ... a lively, smiling Natalya rose before his eyes. He remembered her figure, gait, the manner of straightening her hair, her smile, the intonation of her voice ... ”By killing Natalya, Grigory doomed himself to eternal torment of conscience.
The image of Daria, the wife of Peter Melekhov, appears before us completely different in its moral qualities. She is also beautiful, but with some kind of vicious, snake-like beauty, slender, flexible, with a wobbling gait, lazy to work, but a great lover of gatherings and feasts. She does not know how to suffer and worry for a long time; after the murder of her husband, she very soon recovered, “at first she was sad, turned yellow with grief, and even seemed to grow old. But as soon as the spring breeze blew, the sun warmed up, and Darya's melancholy left along with the melting snow. And Daria set off in all serious ways, not burdening herself with the limits of decency, entering into casual relationships with men. Daria gets sick. Knowing what awaits her, she decided, under the guise of repentance, to confess to Natalya, which contributed to the secret meeting between Grigory and Aksinya. However, the insightful Natalya understands: “... it was not out of pity that you confessed how you pandered, but so that it would be harder for me ...” Daria replies to this: “That's right! .. Judge for yourself, shouldn't I suffer alone?” There is no pity and compassion in her for anyone, she did not truly love anyone: “But I haven’t had a chance to love a single one. I loved like a dog, somehow, as I had to ... Now I would have to start my life all over again - maybe I would have become different? But life is lived, and Daria, without waiting for her shameful end, drowns herself.
We met the youngest of the Melekhovs, Dunyasha, when she was still a long-armed, big-eyed teenager with thin pigtails. Growing up, Dunyasha turns into a black-browed, slender and proud Cossack woman with an obstinate and persistent Melekhovsky character. Having fallen in love with Mishka Koshevoy, she does not want to think about anyone else, despite the threats of her father, mother, brother. All the tragedies with the household are played out before her eyes. The death of his brother, Daria, Natalya, father, mother, niece takes Dunyasha very close to his heart. But, despite all the losses, you need to live on.
The images of ordinary Cossack women in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" are drawn by M. Sholokhov with amazing skill. Their fate cannot but excite the reader: you become infected with their humor, laugh at their colorful jokes, rejoice at their happiness, feel sad with them, cry when their life ends so absurdly and senselessly, in which, unfortunately, there were more difficulties, sorrows, loss than joy and happiness.
