Image of Grigory Melekhov. Tragic fate

“Quiet Don” is one of the most famous “Nobel” novels of the 20th century, which caused controversy, gave rise to rumors, and survived immoderate praise and unbridled abuse. The dispute over the authorship of “Quiet Don” was resolved in favor of Mikhail Sholokhov - such a conclusion was given by an authoritative foreign commission back in the nineties of the last century. Today, the novel, cleared of the husks of rumors, is left alone with a thoughtful reader.

“Quiet Don” was created in a terrible time, when Russia was torn apart by an internecine war, senseless and merciless. Divided into whites and reds, society lost not only its integrity, but also God, beauty, and the meaning of life. The country's tragedy was made up of millions of human tragedies.

The exposition of “The Quiet Don” captivates the reader. Sholokhov introduces us to the world of the Russian borderland, the Cossacks. The life of these warrior-settlers, which developed centuries ago, is colorful and original. The description of Melekhov's ancestors is reminiscent of an old tale - leisurely, full of interesting details. The language of "Quiet Don" is amazing - rich, full of dialect words and expressions, organically woven into the fabric of the novel.

Peace and contentment are destroyed by the First World War. Mobilization for a Don Cossack is not at all the same as, say, for a Ryazan peasant. It is hard to part with home and relatives, but a Cossack always remembers his great destiny - the defense of Russia. The time is coming to show your combat skills, to serve God, your homeland and your father-tsar. But the times of “noble” wars have passed: heavy artillery, tanks, gases, machine-gun fire - all this is directed against the armed horsemen, the fellows of the Don. The main character of "Quiet Don" Grigory Melekhov and his comrades experience the murderous power of industrial war, which not only destroys the body, but also corrupts the spirit.

From the imperialist war grew a civil war. And now brother went against brother, father fought with son. The Don Cossacks perceived the ideas of the revolution generally negatively: traditions were too strong among the Cossacks, and their well-being was much higher than the Russian average. However, the Cossacks did not stand aside from the dramatic events of those years. According to historical sources, the majority supported the whites, the minority followed the reds. Using the example of Grigory Melekhov, Sholokhov showed the mental tossing of a person who doubts the correctness of his choice. Who should I follow? Who to fight against? Such questions really torment the main character. Melekhov had to play the role of white, red and even green. And everywhere Gregory witnessed human tragedy. The war passed through the bodies and souls of fellow countrymen like an iron roller.

The civil war once again proved that there are no just wars. Executions, betrayals, and torture became commonplace for both warring sides. Sholokhov was under ideological pressure, but still he managed to convey to the reader the inhuman spirit of the era, where the reckless daring of victory and the fresh wind of change coexisted with medieval cruelty, indifference to an individual person, and a thirst for murder.

“Quiet Don”... Amazing name. By putting the ancient name of the Cossack river in the title of the novel, Sholokhov once again emphasizes the connection between eras, and also points out the tragic contradictions of the revolutionary time: I would like to call the Don “bloody”, “rebellious”, but not “quiet”. The Don waters cannot wash away all the blood spilled on its banks, cannot wash away the tears of wives and mothers, and cannot return the dead Cossacks.

The ending of the epic novel is high and majestic: Grigory Melekhov returns to the earth, his son, and peace. But for the main character, the tragic events are not over yet: the tragedy of his situation is that the Reds will not forget Melekhov’s exploits. Gregory awaits execution without trial or painful death in Yezhov’s dungeons. And Melekhov’s fate is typical. Only a few years will pass, and the people will fully feel what “revolutionary transformations in a single country” really means. The suffering people, the victim people became the material for a historical experiment that lasted more than seventy years...

History does not stand still. Some events are constantly happening that radically affect the life of the country. Changes are taking place in social life itself. And these changes most directly affect the destinies of people. In society, there are usually two camps that are in opposition to each other. Some people support one side in their views, others the other. But not all. Still, there are people who, due to their convictions, cannot choose either side. Their fates are sad, even tragic, since they cannot choose what they like best, according to their hearts.

It is the fate of such a person that is depicted in the epic novel “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Alekseevich Sholokhov. This is how we see the main character, Grigory Melekhov, on the pages of his book. With each chapter read, a clear picture of the tragedy of this strong personality opens before the reader. He rushes about, searches, makes mistakes and tries with all his might to find the truth, which he never finds. Transitions from one camp to another, painful doubts about the correctness of the chosen path reflect the dramatic contradictions of the time, revealing the struggle of different feelings in the soul of the hero. Revolutionary events pose the most complex questions of existence to Melekhov. Gregory strives to comprehend the meaning of life, the historical truth of time.

The formation of Gregory's views begins with the days of the First World War. He serves in the army, more or less supporting the views of his colleagues regarding the order in the country, regarding the state structure. He holds the following opinion: “We need our own, and first of all, the deliverance of the Cossacks from all guardians, be it Kornilov, or Kerensky, or Lenin. We’ll manage on our own field without these figures.”

But, having been wounded, he ends up in a hospital, where he meets the machine gunner Garanzha. This meeting made a profound revolution in the soul of the protagonist. Garangi’s words ingrained deep into Gregory’s soul, forcing him to radically reconsider all his views. “Day after day, he introduced hitherto unknown truths into Gregory’s mind, exposed the real reasons for the outbreak of the war, and caustically ridiculed the autocratic government. Grigory tried to object, but Garanzha baffled him with simple questions, and Grigory was forced to agree.” Melekhov was forced to admit that Garanzha’s words contained a bitter truth that shattered his existing relationship to the events that were taking place.

Civil war... Grigory was mobilized into the ranks of the White Army. He served there for quite a long time, receiving a high rank. But thoughts related to the structure of life do not leave his consciousness. Gradually he moves away from the whites.

After meeting with Podtelkov, Grigory leans towards the Reds, fights on their side, although his soul has not yet landed on any shore. Having gone over to the side of the Reds, he not only goes to another camp, he also moves away from his family and friends. After all, now he and his father and brother are, as it were, enemies. After being wounded near the village of Glubokaya, he goes to his home village. And it’s heavy in his chest. “Back there, everything was confused and contradictory. It was difficult to find the right path; as if in a thin path, the soil swayed under your feet, the path became fragmented, and there was no certainty as to whether it was the right one to follow.” Being among the Reds, Gregory learned the basics of the Bolshevik structure of society. But many provisions are contradictory to his views; he did not see his truth in them. And gradually he began to realize that there was no place for him there either, since he saw what disasters they brought to them, that is, to the Cossacks.

“...And little by little Gregory began to become imbued with anger towards the Bolsheviks. They invaded his life as enemies, took him away from the earth! Sometimes in battle it seemed to Grigory that his enemies from Tambov, Ryazan, Saratov were moving, driven by the same jealous feeling for the land.”, “We are fighting for it as if for a lover.”

Melekhov rejected the old world, but he did not understand the truth of the new reality, which was being established in struggle, blood, and suffering, did not believe it, and in the end he found himself at a historical crossroads. In a tense situation, saving his life, he ends up in Fomin’s gang. But there is no truth for him either.

But the most tragic thing is that, rushing from one side to the other, Gregory saw that there was no place for him either here or here. He understood that neither the whites nor the reds had the truth. “They fight so that they can live better, but we fought for our good life. There is no one truth in life. It can be seen whoever defeats whom will devour him... But I was looking for the bad truth. I was sick at heart, I was swinging back and forth. In the old days, it is heard, the Tatars offended the Don, they went to take away the land, to force it. Now - Rus'. No! I won't make peace! They are strangers to me and to all Cossacks. The Cossacks will now become wiser. The fronts asked, and now everyone, like me: ah! - it’s too late.”

The author constantly reminds us that wherever the hero went, wherever he rushed, he always reached out to those who fought for a happy life. After all, it is in his throwing that Gregory acquires his best qualities, gains his strength and power.

The tragedy of the fate of Grigory Melekhov is enhanced by another line of the novel, namely the personal life of the Cossack. He not only cannot deal with political issues, but he also cannot handle his own heart. From the days of his youth, he loves Aksinya Astakova, his neighbor’s wife, with all his heart. But he is married to someone else, Natalya. Although after many events peace reigned in the family, children appeared, but he remains cold towards her. Grigory says to her: “You’re cold, Natalya.” Aksinya is always in the hearts of the Cossack. “A feeling blossomed and fermented in him, he loved Aksinya with the same exhausting love, he felt it with his whole body, with every beat of his heart, and at the same time he realized before his eyes that this was a dream. And he rejoiced at the dream and accepted it as life.” The love story permeates the entire novel. Wherever Gregory runs, no matter how hard he tries to break up with this woman, their paths always converge again. And before marriage, despite all the threats of the father, and during hostilities, when the life of Gregory and Natalya had already improved, and after the death of his wife, they reunite again.

But here too the main character is torn between two fires. On the one hand, home, family, children, on the other hand, the beloved woman.

The tragedy of Gregory’s life reaches its highest level not when he tries to choose a side to join, but against a personal background, during the death of Aksinya. He remains alone. Completely alone, quietly swaying, Gregory is kneeling near Aksinya’s grave. The silence is not broken by the noise of battles or the sounds of an ancient Cossack song. Only the “black sun” shines here for Gregory alone.

Everything disappeared in the bloody whirlpool: parents, wife, daughter, brother, beloved woman. At the very end of the novel, when Aksinya is tired of explaining to Mishatka who his father is, the writer says: “He’s not a bandit, your father. He’s such a…unhappy person.” How much sympathy there is in these words!

In “Quiet Flows the Flow” the writer raised to a universal height the suffering of a strong personality, enslaved in his development, in the movement towards the most humane philosophy of life, by the burden of both the old moral order and the inhumane norms of the new system. He finds neither work nor goal for himself in terms of the scale and depth of his “conscience,” soul, talent; he is in the “minority” within all situations of his time. But who was not, following Gregory, in the minority, in the zone of death and extermination in the 30s and 40s among a firmly established command-administrative system? The “minority” often contained everything universally human.

For the first time in literature, Mikhail Sholokhov showed the life of the Don Cossacks and the revolution with such breadth and scope. The best features of the Don Cossack are expressed in the image of Grigory Melekhov. “Grigory took firm care of the Cossack honor.” He is a patriot of his land, a man completely devoid of the desire to acquire or rule, who has never stooped to robbery. The prototype of Gregory is a Cossack from the village of Bazki, village of Veshenskaya, Kharlampiy Vasilyevich Ermakov.

For the first time in literature, Mikhail Sholokhov showed the life of the Don Cossacks and the revolution with such breadth and scope.

The best features of the Don Cossack are expressed in the image of Grigory Melekhov. “Grigory took firm care of the Cossack honor.” He is a patriot of his land, a man completely devoid of the desire to acquire or rule, who has never stooped to robbery. The prototype of Gregory is a Cossack from the village of Bazki, village of Veshenskaya, Kharlampiy Vasilyevich Ermakov.

Gregory comes from a middle-class family that is accustomed to working on its own land. Before the war, we see Gregory thinking little about social issues. The Melekhov family lives in abundance. Grigory loves his farm, his farm, his work. Work was his need. More than once during the war, Gregory recalled with deep melancholy his close people, his native farm, and work in the fields: “It would be nice to take the chapigi with your hands and follow the plow along the wet furrow, greedily taking in with your nostrils the damp and insipid smell of loosened earth, the bitter aroma of grass cut by a ploughshare. "

In a difficult family drama, in the trials of war, the deep humanity of Grigory Melekhov is revealed. His character is characterized by a heightened sense of justice. During haymaking, Grigory hit a nest with a scythe and cut a wild duckling. With a feeling of acute pity, Gregory looks at the dead lump lying in his palm. This feeling of pain revealed that love for all living things, for people, for nature, which distinguished Gregory.

Therefore, it is natural that Gregory, thrown into the heat of war, experiences his first battle hard and painfully, and cannot forget the Austrian he killed. “I cut down a man in vain and because of him, the bastard, my soul is sick,” he complains to his brother Peter.

During World War I, Grigory fought bravely, was the first from the farm to receive the St. George Cross, without thinking about why he shed blood.

In the hospital, Gregory met an intelligent and sarcastic Bolshevik soldier, Garanzha. Under the fiery power of his words, the foundations on which Gregory’s consciousness rested began to smoke.

His search for the truth begins, which from the very beginning takes on a clear socio-political overtones, he has to choose between two different forms of government. Grigory was tired of the war, of this hostile world, he was overcome by the desire to return to peaceful farm life, plow the land and care for the livestock. The obvious senselessness of the war awakens in him restless thoughts, melancholy, and acute discontent.

The war did not bring anything good to Gregory. Sholokhov, focusing on the internal transformations of the hero, writes the following: “With cold contempt he played with someone else’s life and his own... he knew that he would no longer laugh as before; he knew that his eyes were sunken and his cheekbones were sticking out sharply; he knew that it was difficult for him, when kissing a child, to look openly into clear eyes; Gregory knew what price he paid for a full bow of crosses and production.”

During the revolution, Gregory's search for the truth continues. After an argument with Kotlyarov and Koshev, where the hero declares that the propaganda of equality is just bait to catch ignorant people, Grigory comes to the conclusion that it is stupid to look for a single universal truth. Different people have their own different truths depending on their aspirations. The war appears to him as a conflict between the truth of the Russian peasants and the truth of the Cossacks. The peasants need Cossack land, the Cossacks protect it.

Mishka Koshevoy, now his son-in-law (since Dunyashka’s husband) and chairman of the revolutionary committee, receives Grigory with blind distrust and says that he should be punished without leniency for fighting against the Reds.

The prospect of being shot seems to Grigory an unfair punishment due to his service in Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army (he fought on the side of the Cossacks during the Veshensky uprising of 1919, then the Cossacks united with the whites, and after the surrender in Novorossiysk Grigory was no longer needed), and he decides to evade arrest . This flight means Gregory's final break with the Bolshevik regime. The Bolsheviks did not justify his trust by not taking into account his service in the 1st Cavalry, and they made an enemy out of him with their intention to take his life. The Bolsheviks failed him in a more reprehensible way than the Whites, who did not have enough steamships to evacuate all the troops from Novorossiysk. These two betrayals are the climaxes of Gregory's political odyssey in Book 4. They justify his moral rejection of each of the warring parties and highlight his tragic situation.

The treacherous attitude towards Gregory on the part of the whites and reds is in sharp contradiction with the constant loyalty of the people close to him. This personal loyalty is not dictated by any political considerations. The epithet “faithful” is often used (Aksinya’s love is “faithful”, Prokhor is a “faithful orderly”, Gregory’s sword served him “faithfully”).

The last months of Gregory's life in the novel are distinguished by a complete disconnection of consciousness from everything earthly. The worst thing in life - the death of his beloved - has already happened. All he wants in life is to see his native farm and his children again. “Then I might as well die,” he thinks (at the age of 30), that he has no illusions about what awaits him in Tatarskoye. When the desire to see the children becomes irresistible, he goes to his native farm. The last sentence of the novel says that his son and his home are “all that is left in his life, what still connects him with his family and with the whole ... world.”

Gregory's love for Aksinya illustrates the author's view of the predominance of natural impulses in man. Sholokhov's attitude towards nature clearly indicates that he, like Grigory, does not consider war the most reasonable way to solve socio-political problems.

Sholokhov's judgments about Gregory, known from the press, vary greatly from each other, since their content depends on the political climate of the time. In 1929, before workers from Moscow factories: “Gregory, in my opinion, is a kind of symbol of the middle Don Cossacks.”

And in 1935: “Melekhov has a very individual fate, and in him I am in no way trying to personify the middle peasant Cossacks.”

And in 1947 he argued that Grigory personifies the typical features of not only “a well-known layer of Don, Kuban and all other Cossacks, but also the Russian peasantry as a whole.” At the same time, he emphasized the uniqueness of Gregory’s fate, calling it “largely individual.” Sholokhov, thus, killed two birds with one stone. He could not be reproached for hinting that most Cossacks had the same anti-Soviet views as Grigory, and he showed that, first of all, Grigory is a fictitious person, and not an exact copy of a certain socio-political type.

In the post-Stalin period, Sholokhov was as stingy in his comments about Gregory as before, but he expressed his understanding of Gregory’s tragedy. For him, this is the tragedy of a truth-seeker who is misled by the events of his time and allows the truth to elude him. The truth, naturally, is on the side of the Bolsheviks. At the same time, Sholokhov clearly expressed an opinion about the purely personal aspects of Gregory’s tragedy and spoke out against the gross politicization of the scene from the film by S. Gerasimov (he rides up the mountain - his son on his shoulder - to the heights of communism). Instead of a picture of a tragedy, you can get a kind of light-hearted poster.

Sholokhov's statement about Grigory's tragedy shows that, at least in print, he speaks about it in the language of politics. The tragic situation of the hero is the result of Gregory’s failure to get closer to the Bolsheviks, the bearers of the true truth. In Soviet sources this is the only interpretation of the truth. Some place all the blame on Gregory, others emphasize the role of the mistakes of the local Bolsheviks. The central government, of course, cannot be blamed.

Soviet critic L. Yakimenko notes that “Gregory’s struggle against the people, against the great truth of life, will lead to devastation and an inglorious end. On the ruins of the old world, a tragically broken man will stand before us - he will have no place in the new life that is beginning.”

Gregory's tragic fault was not his political orientation, but his true love for Aksinya. This is exactly how the tragedy is presented in “Quiet Don” according to the later researcher Ermolaev.

Gregory managed to maintain his humane qualities. The impact of historical forces on it is frighteningly enormous. They destroy his hopes for a peaceful life, drag him into wars that he considers senseless, make him lose both his faith in God and his feeling of pity for man, but they are still powerless to destroy the main thing in his soul - his innate decency, his ability to true love.

Grigory remained Grigory Melekhov, a confused man whose life was burned to the ground by the civil war.

Image system

There are a large number of characters in the novel, many of whom do not even have their own names, but they act and influence the development of the plot and the relationships of the characters.

The action is centered around Grigory and his immediate circle: Aksinya, Pantelei Prokofievich and the rest of his family. A number of genuine historical characters also appear in the novel: Cossack revolutionaries F. Podtelkov, White Guard generals Kaledin, Kornilov.

The critic L. Yakimenko, expressing the Soviet view of the novel, identified 3 main themes in the novel and, accordingly, 3 large groups of characters: the fate of Grigory Melekhov and the Melekhov family; Don Cossacks and revolution; party and revolutionary people.

Images of Cossack women

Women, wives and mothers, sisters and loved ones of the Cossacks steadfastly bore their share of the hardships of the civil war. The difficult, turning point in the life of the Don Cossacks is shown by the author through the prism of the lives of family members, residents of the Tatarsky farm.

The stronghold of this family is the mother of Grigory, Peter and Dunyashka Melekhov - Ilyinichna. Before us is an elderly Cossack woman, whose sons are grown up, and her youngest daughter, Dunyashka, is already a teenager. One of the main character traits of this woman can be called calm wisdom. Otherwise, she simply would not have been able to get along with her emotional and hot-tempered husband. Without any fuss, she runs the household, takes care of her children and grandchildren, not forgetting about their emotional experiences. Ilyinichna is an economical and prudent housewife. She maintains not only external order in the house, but also monitors the moral atmosphere in the family. She condemns Grigory’s relationship with Aksinya, and, realizing how difficult it is for Grigory’s legal wife Natalya to live with her husband, treats her like her own daughter, trying in every possible way to make her work easier, takes pity on her, sometimes even gives her an extra hour of sleep. The fact that Natalya lives in the Melekhovs’ house after a suicide attempt says a lot about Ilyinichna’s character. This means that in this house there was the warmth that the young woman so needed.

In any life situation, Ilyinichna is deeply decent and sincere. She understands Natalya, who is tormented by her husband’s infidelities, lets her cry, and then tries to dissuade her from rash actions. Tenderly cares for the sick Natalya and her grandchildren. Condemning Daria for being too free, she nevertheless hides her illness from her husband so that he does not kick her out of the house. There is some kind of greatness in her, the ability not to pay attention to the little things, but to see the main thing in the life of the family. She is characterized by wisdom and calmness.

Natalya: Her suicide attempt speaks volumes about the strength of her love for Gregory. She has experienced too much, her heart is worn out by constant struggle. Only after the death of his wife does Gregory realize how much she meant to him, what a strong and beautiful person she was. He fell in love with his wife through his children.

In the novel, Natalya is opposed by Aksinya, also a deeply unhappy heroine. Her husband often beat her. With all the ardor of her unspent heart, she loves Gregory, she is ready to selflessly go with him wherever he calls her. Aksinya dies in the arms of her beloved, which becomes another terrible blow for Gregory, now the “black sun” is shining for Gregory, he is left without warm, gentle, sunshine - Aksinya’s love.

Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and fratricidal civil war, the attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, Cossack freedom and the fate of the people merged together. The strong character, integrity and rebellion inherited from his father have haunted him since his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, disdaining public morality and his father’s prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person who stands up for justice. The author shows his hard work in scenes of hunting, fishing, and haymaking. Throughout the entire novel, in harsh battles on one side or the other, he searches for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, its glorious victories, in Voronezh the Cossacks hear from a local old man the phrase thrown after them with pity: “My dear... beef!” The elderly man knew that there is nothing worse than war, this is not an adventure in which you can become a hero, it is dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Gregory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The first to fall from his horse was the cornet Lyakhovsky. Prokhor galloped at him... With a cutter, like a diamond on glass, he cut out Gregory’s memory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhor’s horse with barbed slabs of teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind him... They fell again. The Cossacks and horses fell.”
In parallel, the author shows events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how much simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under their palms, we won’t be able to wait for those dear to our hearts! No matter how many tears stream from swollen and faded eyes, it will not wash away the melancholy! No matter how much you cry on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the eastern wind will not carry their cries to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!”
The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of hardships and deaths that change all the foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious things that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty, intransigence, and thirst for the blood of his enemies as the Whites. War destroys the smooth 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 the fratricidal war is being waged. For whose sake and what should they die in the prime of life? After all, life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hope, and opportunity. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; it is they, not the commanders, who will starve and die.
There are also characters in the work who think completely differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country solely 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 changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind, fair 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 the only one who thinks about the terrible downside of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It’s easier to kill someone else who has broken their hand in this matter than to crush a louse. The man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Grigory - Aksinya, is perceived as a death sentence for all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all living people; it is not for nothing that Gregory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees above him a black sky and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two warring sides. 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 feel sorry for the children either.”
Realizing that the war is killing the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise his children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. in his immortal work, he raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by burning fires, Grigory’s life became black...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.

THE FATE OF GRIGORY MELEKHOV

In "Quiet Don", as already noted, there are many characters. But among them there is one whose controversial life and tragic fate attracts the most attention. This is Grigory Melekhov, whose image, without a doubt, is the main one in the epic. One can argue about who is the central character of “Eugene Onegin” - Onegin or Tatiana, “War and Peace” - Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov or the people, but when we talk about “Quiet Don”, the answer is clear: the main character of the work is Grigory Melekhov.

Grigory Melekhov is the most complex Sholokhov character. This is a truth seeker. Melekhov's life path is difficult and tortuous. In search of truth, the hero rushes between two warring camps: he is now in the camp of the Reds, now in the camp of the Whites. However, he never finds what he is looking for - truth - it constantly eludes him. And this complexity of Grigory Melekhov’s character and the tortuousness of his life’s path gave rise to various interpretations of this image in criticism.

In the discussion about Grigory Melekhov, two wings of critics can be distinguished. The first wing consists of those who adhere to the so-called concept of “renegadeism.” These are researchers such as Lezhnev, Gura, Yakimenko. The work of these Sholokhov scholars is permeated by the idea that Grigory Melekhov, being in a camp hostile to Soviet power, loses his positive qualities, gradually turns into a pitiful and terrible semblance of a person, into a renegade.

A striking example of a critical statement by representatives of this camp is I. Lezhnev’s commentary on one of the episodes of the novel.

Almost the very end of the work. After a long separation, Grigory and Aksinya are together again. Aksinya looks at the sleeping Grigory: “He was sleeping, his lips slightly parted, breathing regularly. His black eyelashes, with tips burnt by the sun, trembled slightly, his upper lip moved, revealing his tightly closed white teeth. Aksinya looked at him carefully and only now noticed how he had changed during these few months of separation. There was something stern, almost cruel, in the deep transverse wrinkles between her lover’s eyebrows, in the folds of his mouth, in his sharply defined cheekbones... And for the first time she thought how terrible he must be in battle, on a horse, with a drawn sword. Lowering her eyes, she glanced briefly at his large, gnarled hands and for some reason sighed.”

Here is how I. Lezhnev comments on this episode: “The eyes of a beloved are the mirror of the soul. Sholokhov’s description of Grigory’s cruel face and terrible gnarled hands, as Aksinya saw them, says with restrained strength and captivating persuasiveness: this is the appearance of a murderer.”
The second wing of the discussion about the image of Grigory Melekhov is represented by those researchers who tend to see the hero’s story in an unconditionally rosy light. These are V. Petelin, F. Biryukov, Yu. Lukin, V. Grishaev and others. Their point of view boils down to approximately the following: a great artist could write his book only about a crystal-clear hero, only about a noble soul, and Grigory Melekhov is exactly like that. And if there were some hiccups on his way, then it was not he himself who was to blame, but various kinds of “tragic circumstances” and accidents - Mikhail Koshevoy was to blame, Commissioner Malkin was to blame, Poddelkov was to blame, Fomin was to blame...

It seems to critics belonging to this wing of the discussion that only by defending Grigory Melekhov can they express their admiration and love for the novel. However, with their naive defense they only compromised him and are compromising him.

Sholokhov himself was not satisfied with any of the above-mentioned interpretations of the image of the main character. In an interview with the newspaper “Soviet Russia”, given in August 1957, he said that he wanted to tell the world about the “charm of a person” in Grigory Melekhov,” therefore, the writer did not agree with those who considered the main character of the novel a “renegade.” But, on the other hand, Sholokhov also criticized those who tried to see in Grigory Melekhov the future builder of socialism. He, in particular, criticized the film based on “Quiet Don,” to which the director and screenwriter attached an optimistic ending. In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper (published on July 1, 1956), Sholokhov said: “From the tragic end of Grigory Melekhov, this rushing seeker of truth, who became entangled in events... the screenwriter makes a happy ending... In the script, Grigory Melekhov puts Mishatka on his shoulder and goes with him somewhere up the mountain, so to speak, a symbolic end, Grishka Melekhov rises to the shining heights of communism. Instead of a picture of a person’s tragedy, you can end up with a kind of frivolous poster.”

Both interpretations of the image of the main character of “Quiet Don” suffer from the same drawback: they extremely schematize the image, reducing it only to social aspects. As G. Nefagina correctly noted, “Gregory’s character is much richer. It includes the typical features of the Cossack mentality that developed over two centuries and the new things that the 20th century brought with its wars and revolutions. The image of Gregory is a reflection of not only the typical socio-psychological, but also the sharply individual. Hence the tragedy of a hero is a tragedy not so much of a type as of a personality.”

On the one hand, in Grigory Melekhov, Sholokhov strives to show the best features of the Cossacks: hard work, humanity, daring, dexterity, military valor, self-esteem, nobility, on the other hand, we cannot help but notice that the main character of the novel from the very beginning of the work something sharply different from the rest of the inhabitants of the farm. He is seriously upset about a duckling that was cut off with a scythe. And in another episode, the enraged father, who raised his hand against him, declares: “I won’t let him fight!” Seeing through the fence how Stepan beats Aksinya, Grigory immediately rushes to defend her, although in his youth he is much weaker than Stepan Astakhov. The fact that he is an extraordinary character, that he is not like everyone else, becomes extremely clear after his escape with Aksinya to Yagodnoye. For the sake of love for a woman, Gregory sacrifices everything - family, wealth, reputation - an act unheard of at that time.

It is Grigory, with his brutal, hate-filled gaze, that frightens the officer at the inspection (“How are you looking! How are you looking, Cossack?”). It is Grigory who at first finds it more difficult than others to adapt to army service: for the freedom-loving Grigory, the army with its suffocating lack of freedom is the most difficult test.

In the army, the hero meets Chubaty, who teaches Melekhov the first lessons of cruelty: “Cut a man boldly. Don't think about how or what. You are a Cossack, your job is to chop without asking... You cannot destroy an animal without need - a heifer, say, or whatever - but destroy a person. He’s a rotten man...” However, Grigory is extremely reluctant to learn these lessons. Philanthropy, even in war, remains one of the defining traits of his personality. This is evidenced by the episode with the Polish woman Franya, when Melekhov, alone against an entire platoon, rushes to protect her. Being seriously wounded, Grigory carries the officer out of the battle. In battle, he finally saves his mortal enemy, Aksinya’s husband Stepan Astakhov, from death. Sholokhov emphasizes: “I saved by obeying my heart.”

Gregory is sensitive to changes happening around him. Personal qualities do not allow him to remain outside the struggle that has gripped the entire country since the beginning of 1917. He pesters either the reds or the whites. But, seeing that the words of both of them are at odds with the deeds, he quickly loses faith in the justice of the actions of both warring camps. He is alien to both, and both whites and reds treat the hero with distrust. And all because Melekhov, despite his inherent straightforwardness and gullibility, does not take anything for granted. Whatever colors fanaticism is painted in, it remains absolutely unacceptable for Gregory. In a decaying, chaotic world, which has consigned elementary human values ​​and freedoms to oblivion, the hero is looking for integrity and harmony, looking for truth, for the sake of whose triumph it would not be necessary to suppress entire groups of people. But the events, each of which is more catastrophic and bloodier than anything that human history has known so far, which Melekhov witnesses, lead the hero to disappointment in life, the loss of its meaning. We begin to notice strange changes in Gregory's behavior.

As if he had forgotten with what disgust he had recently treated the robberies, like the last marauder, Grigory undresses the red commander: “Take off your sheepskin coat, commissar!.. You are smooth. You ate your fill of Cossack bread, I bet you won’t freeze!”

Having so painfully experienced Podtelkov’s bloody reprisal of the captured officers, Grigory, having become the head of the rebel division, became so carried away by executions and shootings that the rebel leadership was forced to turn to Melekhov with a special message: “Dear Grigory Panteleevich! Insidious rumors have reached our attention, allegedly you are committing cruel reprisals against captured Red Army soldiers... You go with your hundreds, like Taras Bulba from the historical novel by the writer Pushkin, and you put everything to fire and sword and worry the Cossacks. Please settle down, don’t put the prisoners to death...”

Having cut down a sailor machine-gun crew, Grigory, in an epileptic fit, struggles in the arms of the Cossacks, covered in white foam, wheezing: “Let me go, you bastards!.. Sailors!.. Everyone!.. Rrrub-lu!..”
The moral and physical decline of the hero is also expressed in endless drinking and partying. The novel says that “even the sweatshirt on the saddle” of Melekhov was saturated with the smell of moonshine. “Women and girls who had lost their maiden color walked through the hands of Gregory, sharing a short love with him.”

Gregory’s very appearance changes: “he is noticeably flabby, stooped; the baggy folds began to turn blue under the eyes, and the light of senseless cruelty began to appear more and more often in his gaze.” Grigory lives now, “with his head down, without a smile, without joy.” The bestial, wolfish quality emerges more and more clearly in him.

Realizing the extent of his fall, Grigory explains it with the following reasons (in a conversation with Natalya): “Ha! Conscience!.. I forgot to think about it. What kind of conscience is there when your whole life has been stolen... You kill people... I smeared myself so much on other people’s blood that I didn’t even have any regrets left for anyone. I almost don’t regret my childhood, but I don’t even think about myself. The war took everything out of me. I’ve become scary to myself... Look into my soul, and there’s blackness there, like in an empty well...”

Gregory's state of mind will change little in the future. He will end his difficult life in Fomin’s gang and among deserters hiding in the forest. After the death of Aksinya, with whom the hero pinned his last hopes, life will lose all interest for him, and he will wait for the outcome. It is this desire to end his life, to bring the ending closer, that explains the hero’s return to the farm at the end of the novel. Gregory returns before the amnesty. Inevitable death awaits him. The correctness of this assumption is confirmed by the fate of Melekhov’s prototypes: Philip Mironov and Kharlampy Ermakov. Both were shot without trial, one in 1921, the second in 1927. In the novel, it was impossible to show the execution of a hero beloved by readers, given the situation in the country in the thirties.
What did Sholokhov want to convey to the reader by depicting the complex, contradictory path of Grigory Melekhov? This question is answered in different ways. Some researchers believe that, using the example of the image of the protagonist, Sholokhov defends the concept of a historically responsible person, others talk about the responsibility of the era to the individual. Both of these points of view are legitimate, but, I think, they greatly detract from the importance of Sholokhov’s character.

Grigory Melekhov stands on a par with numerous heroes of Russian literature, whom we call truth-seekers, and rightfully occupies one of the first places among them. No wonder he is called the “Russian Hamlet.” Hamlet is a tragic hero. Melekhov too. He is looking for the highest meaning of life, but these searches lead the hero to disappointment and moral devastation. Sholokhov shows the inevitable tragedy of idealistic people in a world that has entered a protracted period of social experiments and historical cataclysms, testing the strength of the humanistic traditions of human culture.

M. A. Sholokhov in his novel “Quiet Don” poetizes the life of the people, deeply analyzes its way of life, as well as the origins of its crisis, which largely affected the fate of the main characters of the work. The author emphasizes that the people play a key role in history. It is he, according to Sholokhov, who is its driving force. Of course, the main character of Sholokhov’s work is one of the representatives of the people - Grigory Melekhov. Its prototype is believed to be Kharlampy Ermakov, a Don Cossack (pictured below). He fought in the Civil War and the First World War.

Grigory Melekhov, whose characteristics interest us, is an illiterate, simple Cossack, but his personality is multifaceted and complex. The best features that are inherent in the people were endowed by the author.

at the beginning of the work

At the very beginning of his work, Sholokhov tells the story of the Melekhov family. Cossack Prokofy, Gregory's ancestor, returns home from the Turkish campaign. He brings with him a Turkish woman who becomes his wife. With this event, a new history of the Melekhov family begins. Gregory's character is already ingrained in her. It is no coincidence that this character is similar in appearance to other men of his kind. The author notes that he is “like his father”: he is half a head taller than Peter, although he is 6 years younger than him. He has the same “dangling kite nose” as Pantelei Prokofievich. Grigory Melekhov stoops just like his father. Both of them even had something in common, “animalistic,” even in their smile. It is he who continues the Melekhov family, and not Peter, his older brother.

Connection with nature

From the very first pages, Gregory is depicted in everyday activities typical of the life of peasants. Like all of them, he takes horses to watering, goes fishing, goes to games, falls in love, and participates in common peasant labor. The character of this hero is clearly revealed in the meadow mowing scene. In it, Grigory Melekhov discovers sympathy for the pain of others, love for all living things. He feels sorry for the duckling that was accidentally cut with a scythe. Gregory looks at him, as the author notes, with “a feeling of acute pity.” This hero has a good feel for the nature with which he is vitally connected.

How is the character of the hero revealed in his personal life?

Gregory can be called a man of decisive actions and actions, strong passions. Numerous episodes with Aksinya speak eloquently about this. Despite his father's slander, at midnight, during haymaking, he still goes to this girl. Panteley Prokofievich cruelly punishes his son. However, not afraid of his father’s threats, Gregory still goes to his beloved again at night and returns only at dawn. Already here the desire to reach the end in everything is manifested in his character. Marriage to a woman whom he does not love could not force this hero to abandon himself, from sincere, natural feelings. He only calmed Pantelei Prokofievich a little, who called out to him: “Don’t be afraid of your father!” But no more. This hero has the ability to love passionately, and also does not tolerate any ridicule of himself. He does not forgive jokes about his feelings even to Peter and grabs a pitchfork. Gregory is always sincere and honest. He directly tells Natalya, his wife, that he does not love her.

How did life with the Listnitskys influence Grigory?

At first he does not agree to run away from the farm with Aksinya. However, the impossibility of submission and innate stubbornness ultimately force him to leave his native farm and go to the Listnitsky estate with his beloved. Grigory becomes a groom. However, life away from his parents’ home is not at all his thing. The author notes that he was spoiled by an easy, well-fed life. The main character became fat, lazy, and began to look older than his years.

In the novel "Quiet Don" he has enormous inner strength. The scene of this hero beating Listnitsky Jr. is clear evidence of this. Grigory, despite the position that Listnitsky occupies, does not want to forgive the offense he inflicted. He hits him on the hands and face with a whip, not allowing him to come to his senses. Melekhov is not afraid of the punishment that will follow for this act. And he treats Aksinya harshly: when he leaves, he never even looks back.

The self-esteem that is inherent in a hero

Complementing the image of Grigory Melekhov, we note that in his character there is a clearly expressed strength. It is in him that his strength lies, which is capable of influencing other people, regardless of position and rank. Of course, in the duel at the watering hole with the sergeant, Grigory wins, who did not allow himself to be hit by his senior in rank.

This hero is able to stand up not only for his own dignity, but also for that of others. It is he who turns out to be the only one who defended Franya, the girl whom the Cossacks violated. Finding himself in this situation powerless against the evil being committed, Gregory for the first time in a long time almost cried.

Gregory's courage in battle

The events of the First World War affected the destinies of many people, including this hero. Grigory Melekhov was captured by the whirlwind of historical events. His fate is a reflection of the fates of many people, representatives of the ordinary Russian people. Like a true Cossack, Grigory completely devotes himself to battle. He is brave and decisive. Grigory easily defeats three Germans and takes them prisoner, deftly repels the enemy battery, and also saves the officer. The medals and officer rank he received are evidence of the courage of this hero.

Killing a person, contrary to the nature of Gregory

Gregory is generous. He even helps Stepan Astakhov, his rival, who dreams of killing him, in battle. Melekhov is shown as a skilled, courageous warrior. However, the murder still fundamentally contradicts Gregory’s humane nature and his life values. He confesses to Peter that he killed a man and because of him “his soul is sick.”

Changing worldview under the influence of other people

Quite quickly, Grigory Melekhov begins to experience disappointment and incredible fatigue. At first, he fights fearlessly, without thinking about the fact that he is shedding both his own and other people’s blood in battles. However, life and war pit Gregory against many people who have completely different views on the world and the events taking place in it. After communicating with them, Melekhov begins to think about the war, as well as about the life he lives. The truth that Chubatiy conveys is that a person must be cut down boldly. This hero easily talks about death, about the right and opportunity to take the life of others. Grigory listens to him attentively and understands that such an inhumane position is alien and unacceptable to him. Garanja is the hero who sowed the seeds of doubt in Gregory's soul. He suddenly doubted the values ​​that had previously been considered unshakable, such as Cossack military duty and the Tsar, who is “on our necks.” Garanja makes the main character think about a lot. The spiritual quest of Grigory Melekhov begins. It is these doubts that become the beginning of Melekhov’s tragic path to the truth. He is desperately trying to find the meaning and truth of life. The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov unfolds at a difficult time in the history of our country.

Of course, Gregory’s character is truly folk. The tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov, described by the author, still evokes the sympathy of many readers of "Quiet Don". Sholokhov (his portrait is presented above) managed to create a bright, strong, complex and truthful character of the Russian Cossack Grigory Melekhov.