Satin from the story at the bottom. The image and characteristics of satin in the play at the bottom of the bitter essay. Truth makes a man free

Satin Konstantin

AT THE BOTTOM Pictures
Play (1902, publ. 1903)

Satin Konstantin is one of the inhabitants of the shelter, a former telegraph operator. According to him in my own words, in his youth he played on stage, danced well and was a cheerful person; but, having killed the man who had deceived his sister, he went to prison and was completely changed. S. is a card sharper and a drunkard, in whose speech the remnants of his former “intelligence” sometimes appear, albeit in a grotesque form. Actor S. says that Luka “lied” about the free hospital. To Kleshch, Anna’s husband, who sold all the tools to bury his wife, S. advises “to do nothing” and “just burden the earth”: “Think about it - you won’t work, I won’t... hundreds more... thousands more ... All! - understand? Everyone stops working!” S. jokingly advises Ash to kill Kostylev and marry Vasilisa. When the murder is actually committed, S. calms Ash by volunteering to be a witness for the defense. Despite the ironic attitude towards Luka, after his disappearance S. says that he was not a charlatan: “A man - that’s the truth! He understood it<...>He lied... but it was out of pity for you.” Although S. states that “lies are the religion of slaves and masters,” but, according to him, Luke affected him “like acid on an old dirty coin”; S. pronounces an abstract “revolutionary” monologue about man as the highest value: “Everything is in man, everything is for man. Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain! Human! It's great! It sounds... proud! Human! We must respect the person! Do not feel sorry, do not humiliate him with pity...<...>Man is beyond satiety!” S. owns the last line in the play; to Bubnov’s words that the Actor hanged himself, he replies: “He ruined the song... you fool!”

All characteristics in alphabetical order:

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In the play “At the Bottom,” Maxim Gorky describes the life of the inhabitants of the shelter - people who have fallen to the social bottom. This seemingly simple story is actually a socio-philosophical drama. The work raises many problems: the meaning of life, the search for truth, faith and disbelief, the humiliating position of man in society, and many others.

One of the tramps - Satin - is a prisoner, a murderer and a cheater. Konstantin Satin was a telegraph operator in his youth; he ended up in a shelter after being released from prison. He was convicted of murder, but, according to him, he stood up for his sister’s honor. At the time of the story, he is approximately 40 years old, he is daring and smart. Satin correctly assesses other heroes: “dumb as bricks,” tries to defend the dignity of other people, to open their eyes to their own capabilities.

Satin’s life position contains echoes of humanism, and they are revealed in his monologue about man: “Everything is in man, everything is for man!” The hero argues with the wanderer Luke about “comforting” lies and condemns any manifestation of it. Konstantin considers “white lies” unacceptable, because a person has the right to know the truth, whatever it may be.

Satin, of his own free will, sinks to the bottom of life, despises moral values ​​and rejects work: “Man is above satiety!..”. He exclaims: “The rich need honor and conscience, yes!”, thereby helping the night shelters justify their immorality. Satin’s monologues do not correspond to his image, but the hero himself says: “Why can’t a sharper sometimes speak well if decent people...speak like a sharper?” Satin's words often convey the position of Gorky himself, and his image is undoubtedly very important in the play. Also, Satin utters the last terrible line in the work - a reaction to the death of the Actor: “He ruined the song... you fool!”

At the turn of the century, some changes are always expected. They occur not only in the lives of ordinary people, but also in art and literature. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries becomes a truly turning point for Russia and for the people.

The writer Maxim Gorky is becoming a new phenomenon for Russian literature. He is the founder of Soviet socialist literature. But long before the appearance Soviet Union the writer addresses the pressing issues of his time. This is how his famous play “At the Lower Depths” appears, which received great recognition and was subsequently staged by director Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater.

Essay about Satin

The work “At the Bottom” by Gorky tells us a tragic story, which is based on almost every third life story of an ordinary person of that time. The work reveals amazing images, which in turn reveal the work itself.

You should take a closer look at the image of Satin. Satin - a middle-aged man with very strong atheistic convictions, with which he lived all his life and continues to live. The author describes him as a reasonable person, trying to be optimistic, but has long been disillusioned with life, which for him has lost all its colors and contrasts. He is used to relying only on himself, without placing his problems on others, which is why few of his roommates really know him.

He is also accustomed to despising people who try to deceive others for their benefit, he despises the very idea of ​​lying for the benefit, and at the same time, despising religion and all its followers, arguing that there is no point in hoping for some non-existent forces, the existence of which and it is impossible to prove. It is for this reason that he disagrees with Luke.

In the episode of the conflict with the preacher Luke, the author shows us that Satin is ready to defend his interests and beliefs, since he has repeatedly witnessed that good people suffered due to misinformation. And then he promised himself to tell only the truth, and only what he thought.

Afterwards the author reveals it to us with opposite side. Although he almost always upsets people with his harsh and hard truth, he can also support them. In one of the episodes, he gives a fiery speech in which he says that only work and perseverance will save a person, and not some promises of salvation of the soul and paradise. He forces his listeners to turn to the voice of reason. He doesn't even blame Luke for his lies, since he understands his situation and accepts it. Through this episode and image, the author tries to convey to us his opinion, which he is doing excellently, since the image was thought out perfectly, and he also perfectly conveys his idea to the reader.

Option 3

Maxim Gorky's play “At the Depths” was significantly different from literary works that time. The play shows not only bottom layer society. The main characters of the play are people who cannot even be attributed to this layer. Before writing the play, M. Gorky communicated and studied people who had lost not only material well-being, but also humanity. All images are revealed close to real people and their stories. Life destinies heroes can evoke compassion, and their habitat can shock. At the bottom you can meet the dreamer Nastya, Anna, who is living out her last days, the skeptic Satin and the worker Luke. All heroes are different, but they common feature What remains is passivity and acceptance of all life circumstances.

Satin – main character plays, this is a man who has sunk to the bottom. His life wasn't always like this. He was an educated man, read a lot, worked in the theater. But he went to prison for the murder of his sister's rapist. Now he's all his free time drinks and engages in card fraud. He is always gloomy and embittered at the whole world. From old life All that remains is the ability to express yourself beautifully and insert clever words. Satin was significantly different from the other residents of the shelter. It seems that he ended up here absolutely by accident and he lacks inner rod radically change your life. He is kind at heart and cheerful man, loved his sister, but life circumstances changed it appearance. Satin is a skeptic and knows that there is no other future waiting for him. It is convenient for him to be passive and not expect anything from life.

Satin's monologues are captivating; he talks about truth, goodness and man. Gorky himself writes that there is no longer a hero in the play who could say this. The image of Satin plays important role, it expresses the position of the author. And it seems to complement the other characters of the early works. The consonance with Satan is not accidental. Satin does not allow other heroes to throw off the shackles of poverty and begin new life. He is a free person and feels like this only at the bottom of society, because he despises work and social shackles. Satin is a bright personality, even in the conditions in which he finds himself, he stands out and has his own life position, knows how to analyze and draw conclusions. This became the reason for a new position in life - skepticism. Therefore, he is the main antagonist of Luka, who wants to positively influence the other residents of the shelter.

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  • Spiritual life in the Kostylevo basement took on a more intense character with the appearance of the wanderer Luke, the most significant personality among the characters in the play.

    The image of Luke is an image of a wandering common philosopher, unprecedented in Russian literature, an image that embodied the searches and wanderings of a certain part of the social lower classes, the desire for truth, for “order in life” and for “purity” (that is, for high morality) and confusion of concepts, sober realism of thinking and fantastic escape to utopian countries created by the imagination of tired workers... Luke is the bearer of a Christian-tinged and at the same time popularly original, bizarre system of views, in which there is both childish faith and cold skepticism, there is a condescending consolation, but there is also a share of true sensitivity, there is its own ethics, and its own irony; there is extreme individualism and a desire for the collective, and there are their own concepts of the state.

    There have always been plenty of wanderers in Rus'. When analyzing the play at the bottom, the character of Luke is not quite an ordinary wanderer: he is much smarter, sharper, more insightful than many of his brothers; he is quite a subtle psychologist. And most importantly, his wanderings took place during an unusual period of history, when the spiritual life of the people took on an increasingly intense character. This desire to comprehend social existence and existence in general also affected Gorky’s hero.

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    Luka is a tireless observer; he really wants to know how this colorful, interesting, terrible life, full of injustice and evil, works and how it will work in the future. In it, as Franz Mehring noted, “there is something philosophical.”

    In the complex set of concepts and sentiments of this wandering philosopher, a clear hostility towards the owners, towards the police state and elements of skepticism towards the idea of ​​​​the “existence of God” are noticeable.

    However, in Luke’s consciousness, in his ethical concepts, the Christian principle still makes itself felt. Luke spreads the gospel ethic both in the form of a direct call to “endure,” as Christ commanded, and in the form of a repetition of the thesis beloved by Christians that “we are all strangers on earth,” and especially in the form of an affirmation of universal, indiscriminate pity (“Christ is from I felt sorry for everyone...", "not a single flea is bad" etc.). Luke’s sermon in defense of patience objectively corresponds to Kostylev’s “program”. That is why Borovsky called Luka a “charlatan of humanity.” Only Luke should not be reduced to this formula. It is much more complex and interesting. By the way, in relation to such types as Kostylev, Luka does not show Christian meekness at all; here he is clearly betraying Christianity...

    In an essay on the topic, the image of Luke is a bright and holistic artistic generalization of the features of the common people's form of Christianity, still clinging to life and trying to fulfill its social function reconciliation of slaves with their bitter fate, but already devoid of inner conviction, already corroded by skepticism.

    At the same time, the image of Luke is also evidence of the talents hidden among the people. For this man is undoubtedly gifted and original. He has a huge supply of cheerfulness, healthy humor and poisonous irony, which manifests itself in clashes with the masters of life. The most subtle Russian artist Nesterov said very well about Luka: “Luka - a peasant, a wanderer, a holy soul, a joker - brings an unusually Russian note to the action, he is a complete optimist and, most importantly, an optimist - a living one.”

    It is unlikely that we will agree that the image of Luke is a “holy soul,” but a kind of folk optimism is indeed inherent in him. The life of humanity appears to Luke as an intricate and complex process, with various aspirations. “And that’s all, I see, smarter people They’re becoming more and more interesting... and even though they live, they’re getting worse, but they want to be better... stubborn!” Luke encourages such “stubbornness” and believes that sooner or later people (“People are always looking, everyone wants what’s best...”) will find what they need. Luke's faith in the future may be abstract, but it was socially useful.

    In relation to the inhabitants of the shelter, Luke acts both as a preacher of Christian patience - this, of course, is a harmful part of his philosophy, and as a humanist who has come to a kind of cult of man (“man can do anything”) - in this way, Luke is, of course, useful, and simply as smart and cheerful expert on everyday affairs.

    Usually condemned by literary critics for his hostility to the harsh truth, Luke - this is the paradox of his activity! - in each specific situation acts as the most sober, business-like consultant. His practical advice is a kind of minimum program for the inhabitants of the shelter. He advises the actor to get a job in a hospital for alcoholics, and in the meantime, “get ready,” that is, stop drinking. The wandering sage advises Ash to take Natasha and go to Siberia to start a working life there. He advises Natasha to quickly leave the Kostylevs and reasonably, psychologically subtly explains to her that she can trust Vaska Ash, since he is “nothing, a good guy” and, besides, he needs her more than she needs him. And he recommends to all the inhabitants of the shelter (however, this is already beyond the scope of purely practical advice) respect each other a little more.

    Combined with reasonable practicality, Luke’s opinion that there is no need to stun a person with the “butt” of truth lost a significant part of its social harmfulness. And in some cases, Luke’s artistic imagination, perhaps, brought some benefit. Couldn’t, for example, a simple-minded romantic dream of a “righteous land” serve as an impulse for some of the declassed, desperate people to rise above the nightmare and dirt of the “Bottom” and reach for a more spiritual life?1

    The practical advice that Actor, Vaska Pepl and Natasha received from Luka was not implemented, but not because the advice was bad, but because the inhabitants of the “bottom” lacked the energy and will to implement them. But the souls of the inhabitants of the shelter were excited by the wanderer, their minds began to work more intensely. Thus, Vaska Pepel - under the influence of Luka - utters words in which the usual nihilism in relation to moral values ​​is already combined with new aspirations and, apparently, gives way to them: “I don’t repent... I don’t believe in conscience... But I feel one thing: we must live... differently! We need to live better! I have to live like this... so that I can respect myself..."

    The strongest spiritual impulses were received from Luke by the most intelligent and intelligent man of the “bottom” - Satin. Everything that remained serious and real in the depths of his soul suddenly stirred. This is how Satin’s famous tirades about the truth, about man, arise, in which he somewhat confusedly, but brightly and passionately takes up arms against the narrow, blind truth of Bubnov or the even more insignificant, anecdotal truth of the Baron, living as if in a dream, weak-willed and thoughtlessly floating with the flow of life , and against the gospel teachings of Luke, covering up the oppression of man by man.

    At the same time, Satin, as it were, picks up and raises to the height of the sacred principle Luke’s humanistic thought about the value of man (“He, whatever he is, is always worth his price,” “Man can do anything... if only he wants to...”, “Respect person..."). What was expressed fragmentarily and inconsistently by Luke (the theory that large human contingents are valuable not in themselves, but only as material for something better, somewhat smacks of Nietzscheanism), was purified and coined by Satin in the form of an aphorism: man sounds proudly .

    By character, Satin is not a hero of action, he is only a hero of words. However, Satin’s excited speeches testified that the spark of living life, the spark of spirit did not go out even on the social “bottom”. This was evidenced by the painful doubts of other inhabitants of the shelter. And Luke’s intricate sermon, which combined both useful and harmful and sober-realistic and conservative-utopian elements, also in its own way spoke of a living spark flaring up in the grassroots of the people. We should not forget that Luke is not a professor, not a publicist, not a priest, he is a simple peasant, an uneducated person, perhaps even illiterate. It is all the more remarkable that he lives such an intense spiritual life, is overwhelmed by such a restless desire to understand social relations, in a variety of human characters (“I want to understand human affairs...”), in what Gorky would later call the “hellish turmoil” of the century.

    February 7, 2014

    In the play "At the Depths" Gorky wanted to describe real life people who have descended to the lowest rung of society. To do this, the writer visited shelters, flophouses, and communicated with lost individuals. All of his characters are based on real people whom Gorky met while traveling around Russia. In Moscow at that time there was a Khitrov market, which was a gathering place for beggars, thieves, prostitutes and murderers. It became the prototype of the shelter. In the play, people with different characters and outlooks on life meet under one roof: the trusting Actor, the dreamy Nastya, the terminally ill Anna, the hard-working Klesh, the compassionate Luka, the skeptical Satin. Gorky wrote “At the Lower Depths” to show the life of the lower classes, their hopelessness.

    Mistakes of the past and no future

    Previously, Satin was a very cheerful and sociable guy, he played on stage, loved to dance, and make people laugh. Smart and well-read person A wonderful future could have developed, but fate decreed otherwise. While defending his sister, Satin killed a man, for which he went to prison, which crossed out his whole life, because with a criminal record, no one needs him. The hero does not consider himself alive, he simply exists in Kostylev’s rooming house. He got drunk, became addicted to cards, lost interest in life - that’s how Satin ended up at the bottom.

    The characterization of Konstantin shows how apathetic and passive he is in life. His main motto is “Do nothing.” This hero was not just thrown to the bottom, he himself came here, ruined life with his own hands. Hiding from everyone, hiding in the basement, playing cards, drinking away money is much more convenient and easier than trying to make your way into the world normal people, but Konstantin himself wished to remain at the bottom. The characterization of Satin shows that he is a character with a special philosophy of a “free man”; for him, truth is most important.

    Confrontation between bitter truth and sweet lies

    Konstantin Satin is the antagonist of Luka, a wanderer who pities all the inhabitants of the shelter and invents his own truth for everyone. The new resident instills in others faith in a better future, although he himself does not believe that life can somehow be changed. Luka promises the Actor to give the address of a free hospital for alcoholics, calms the dying Anna, and supports Nastya’s illusions. He feels sorry for people who find themselves at the bottom for some reason. Satin, whose characteristics reveal him as a sane person, calls everything a “mirage.” It seems that he alone understands the hopelessness of such a life and does not believe the sweet speeches of the wanderer.

    Truth makes a man free

    From the hero’s speeches and his actions, we can conclude that Satin ended up at the bottom quite by accident. The characterization shows how kind he is at heart, because he loved his sister and was the first to run to protect Natasha. The hero does not accept lies, believing that they humiliate a person’s dignity and make him a slave. Konstantin speaks the right things, but it is so difficult to be strong, brave and independent, because it is much easier to meet Luka and succumb to the temptation to invent an illusory world for yourself. Human weaknesses and what they can lead to are discussed in Gorky’s play “At the Bottom.” Satin (the characterization speaks of him as an intelligent, but skeptical person looking at the world) does not build an illusory world for himself, he would be glad to believe Luke, but he has no hope for a better future.


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    In the drama “At the Bottom” M. Gorky reflects on what is better: sweet lie or the bitter truth? A supporter of the bitter truth, the bearer of the idea of ​​its greatness, is Satin.

    Satin is an inhabitant of a flophouse where people live who have sunk to the bottom of life. The hero ended up in it after prison, which he went to because he killed his sister’s offender, defending her honor. The hero himself says that in the past he was an educated man, worked as a telegraph operator, and read a lot. It is this hero who plays the role of a preacher, it is he who argues with Luke that one cannot feel sorry for a person, this humiliates him, and the man - “this sounds proud.” He confronts Luke, who believes that the truth does not heal a person’s soul, it is cruel, but a lie consoles.

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    Satin defends his opinion and tries to convince other night shelters of its correctness, the truth for him is “the god of a free man.”

    But at the same time, his image is very ambiguous. He persuades Ash to kill Kostyleva’s husband, and then largely provokes this murder and even then beats Kostyleva himself. Satin is indifferent to people and moral values. The only way out of the shelter for its inhabitants is through work, but Satin rejects work. He is a card sharper and lives on money earned from games. He does not use the education he received early, but deliberately takes the dishonest path. Honor and conscience are alien concepts to him; he believes that only the rich need them.

    In Satin's monologues they sound right thoughts, glorifying man and his dignity. But at the same time, Satin himself is nothing more than an ordinary sharper who rejects morality. He not only lives “at the bottom” himself, but also contributes to the moral decay of others.

    Thus, the ambiguity of Satin’s image lies in the fact that, although he has the right ideas, he himself does not follow them and contradicts them.

    Updated: 2017-08-07

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