Composition. Is the image of Guskov tragic? V.G
"Live and Remember"
The plot of the story by V.G. Rasputin's "Live and Remember" is reminiscent of a detective story: old man Guskov's skis, an ax and a self-gardened gabak disappeared from the bathhouse. However, the work itself is written in a completely different genre: it is a deep philosophical reflection on the moral foundations of being, on the power of love feelings. Since the ax disappeared from under the floorboard, Nasten's daughter-in-law immediately guesses that one of her own took it. A complex range of feelings takes possession of her. On the one hand, she wants to see a husband whom she sincerely loves. On the other hand, he understands that if he is hiding from people, then he deserted from the front, and such a crime in wartime is not forgiven. Near the bright visual and expressive means of V.G. Rasputin shows the depth of Nastena's feelings.
At first, “she lay for a long time in the dark with her eyes open, afraid to move, so as not to betray her terrible guess to someone,” then, like an animal, she sniffed the air in the bathhouse, trying to catch familiar smells. She is tormented by a "stubborn horror in her heart." The portrait of Nastya (long, skinny, with awkwardly protruding arms, legs and head, with frozen pain on her face) shows what moral and physical torment the war brought to the woman. Only the younger sister Katya forced Nastya to show interest in life, to look for work. Nastena endured all the hardships steadfastly, having learned to remain silent. She considered childlessness to be her greatest misfortune. Her husband Andrei was also worried about this and often beat.
Rasputin does not try to justify the desertion of Andrei, but seeks to explain from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved a vacation, wanted to see his wife, but the vacation due to him after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal committed by Andrei Guskov creeps into his soul gradually. At first, he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: "Not today - so tomorrow, not tomorrow - so the day after tomorrow, when the turn turns up." Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the scouts Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he embark on the path of betrayal? At first, Andrei just wants to see his family, with Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in the winter you would not turn around even in three days. Andrei recalled the demonstration execution, when a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village was shot in his presence. Guskov understands that they will not pat him on the head for an AWOL.
Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, for some time, he settled with the mute woman Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally ended up in his native places. However, the hero did not feel joy at the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed a betrayal, Guskov embarked on the bestial path. After some time, the life that he so cherished at the front became not sweet to him. Having committed treason to his homeland, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax even for a minute turn him into a hunted beast.
Andrei's betrayal fatally falls on the shoulders of Nastena. For a long time she cannot comprehend what has happened: her husband, who has come secretly to her native land, seems to her a werewolf: “Understanding little, she suddenly realized: is it her husband? Was it a werewolf with her? Can you make out in the dark? And they, they say, can pretend to be so that even in broad daylight you can’t distinguish from the real one. Because of Andrei, the woman has to lie and dodge. With touching naivete, Nastena tries to resist the cruel reality. It seems to the heroine that she only dreamed of a night meeting with her deserter husband. With fine detail shows V.G. Rasputin, like Nastena, seeks to remove the obsession from himself, to get rid of him, like a nightmare. Official religiosity, lost during the years of Soviet power, is still alive in the depths of the consciousness of the Russian people. It is her (as the strongest tribal amulet) that the unfortunate Nastena calls for help: “Not knowing how to properly lay a cross, she crossed herself at random and whispered the words of a long-forgotten prayer that had come to mind, left over from childhood.” However, the whole depth of the grief and horror of the unfortunate woman, her awareness of the fatal line that Andrey's betrayal drew between their family and the rest of the world, embodies the last phrase of the third part of the story, when Nastena freezes from a traitorous thought: “Isn’t it better if it were Was it really just a werewolf?
Nastena begins to help her husband hide, feeds him. She trades products for things. All worries fell on the shoulders of this woman (about her younger sister, about elderly fathers-in-law). At the same time, a terrible secret puts a stone wall between Nastena and fellow villagers: “Alone, completely alone among people: you can’t talk or cry with anyone, you have to keep everything to yourself.”
The tragedy of the heroine is enhanced by the fact that she became pregnant. Upon learning of this, Andrei first rejoices, and then understands what a difficult situation his wife is in: after all, everyone will think that the woman worked up this child while her husband is fighting at the front. In a heavy conversation on this topic, an important symbolically image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, on the right hand of the Angara. And now two: people and me. It is impossible to bring them together: it is necessary that the Angara dry up, ”says Andrey Nastene.
During the conversation, it turns out that once the heroes had the same dream: Nastena, in a girl's form, comes to Andrei, who lies near the birches and calls him, telling that she was tormented with the children.
The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful insolubility of the situation that Nastena found herself in.
Talking about the fate of the heroine, V.G. Rasputin along the way sets out his views on life, on happiness. They are sometimes expressed by him in aphoristic phrases: “Life is not clothes, it is not tried on ten times. What is is all yours, and it is not good to disown anything, even the worst.” It is paradoxical, but, left alone with their common joy and misfortune, the heroes finally gained that spiritual closeness, that mutual understanding that was not there when they lived happily with their family before the war.
Upon learning of Nastya's pregnancy, the villagers condemn her. Only Andrei Mikheich's father understands in his heart the bitter truth, about which he is so stubbornly silent. Tired of shame and eternal fear, she throws herself from a boat into the waters of the Angara River. Plot-story by V.G. Rasputin's "Live and Remember" shows that in difficult moments for the motherland, each person must courageously share her fate, and those who have shown cowardice and cowardice will be punished. They have no future, no right to happiness and procreation.
In addition to the main storyline, the story contains interesting author's reflections on the fate of the village. During the war, the village becomes shallow. Stale from grief and the souls of people. Pain for the fate of the Russian village is a cross-cutting theme of V.G. Rasputin.
V.G. Rasputin "Live and Remember"
The events described in the story take place in the winter of forty-five, in the last war year, on the banks of the Angara in the village of Atamanovka. The name, it would seem, is loud, and in the recent past even more frightening - Razboinikovo. “... Once upon a time, in the old days, the local peasants did not disdain one quiet and profitable trade: they checked the goldsmiths coming from Lena.” But the inhabitants of the village had long been quiet and harmless and did not hunt for robbery. Against the backdrop of this virgin and wild nature, the main event of the story takes place - the betrayal of Andrei Guskov.
questions raised in the story.
Who is to blame for the moral fall of man? What is a person's path to betrayal? What is the measure of a person's responsibility for his own destiny and the destiny of the Motherland?
The war, as an exceptional circumstance, placed all people, including Guskov, before a "choice" that everyone had to make.
The path to betrayal
War is a severe test for the people. But if in strong people she brought up stamina, inflexibility, heroism, then in the hearts of the weak cowardice, cruelty, selfishness, disbelief, despair germinated and began to bear their bitter fruits.
In the image of Andrei Guskov, the hero of the story “Live and Remember”, the soul of a weak person is revealed to us, crippled by the harsh events of the war, as a result of which he became a deserter. How did this man, who honestly defended his homeland from enemies for several years and even earned the respect of his comrades in arms, decide on an act despised by everyone, always and everywhere, regardless of age and nationality?
V. Rasputin shows the way to the betrayal of the hero. Of all those leaving for the front, Guskov experienced this the hardest: “Andrey looked at the village in silence and resentment, for some reason he was ready not to war, but to blame the village for being forced to leave it”. But despite the fact that it is hard for him to leave home, he says goodbye to his family quickly, dryly: “What has to be cut off, must be cut off immediately ...”
Andrei Guskov at first did not intend to desert, he honestly went to the front and was a good fighter and comrade, earning the respect of his friends. But the horrors of the war, the injury sharpened the egoism of this man, who placed himself above his comrades, deciding that it was he who needed to survive, be saved, come back alive at all costs.
Knowing that the war was already coming to an end, he tried to survive at any cost. His wish came true, but not quite: he was injured and was sent to the hospital. He thought that a severe wound would free him from further service. Lying in the ward, he already imagined how he would return home, and he was so sure of this that he did not even call his relatives to the hospital to see him. The news that he was again sent to the front struck like a lightning bolt. All his dreams and plans were destroyed in an instant.
The author Valentin Rasputin does not try to justify the desertion of Andrei, but seeks to explain from the position of a hero: he fought for a long time, deserved a vacation, wanted to see his wife, but the vacation due to him after being wounded was canceled. The betrayal committed by Andrei Guskov creeps into his soul gradually. At first, he was haunted by the fear of death, which seemed inevitable to him: "Not today - so tomorrow, not tomorrow - so the day after tomorrow, when the turn turns up." Guskov survived both wounds and shell shock, experienced tank attacks and ski raids. V.G. Rasputin emphasizes that among the scouts Andrei was considered a reliable comrade. Why did he embark on the path of betrayal? At first, Andrei just wants to see his family, with Nastena, stay at home for a while and return. However, having traveled by train to Irkutsk, Guskov realized that in the winter you would not turn around even in three days. Andrei recalled the demonstration execution, when a boy who wanted to run fifty miles away to his village was shot in his presence. Guskov understands that they will not pat him on the head for an AWOL. Thus, unaccounted for circumstances made Guskov's path much longer than he expected, and he decided that this was fate, there was no turning back. In moments of spiritual turmoil, despair and fear of death, Andrei makes a fatal decision for himself - to desert, which turned his life and soul upside down, made him a different person.
Gradually Andrei began to hate himself. In Irkutsk, for some time, he settled with the mute woman Tanya, although he had absolutely no intention of doing this. A month later, Guskov finally ended up in his native places. However, the hero did not feel joy at the sight of the village. V.G. Rasputin constantly emphasizes that, having committed a betrayal, Guskov embarked on the bestial path. After some time, the life that he so cherished at the front became not sweet to him. Having committed treason to his homeland, Andrei cannot respect himself. Mental anguish, nervous tension, the inability to relax even for a minute turn him into a hunted beast.
Forced to hide in the forest from people, Guskov gradually loses all the human, good beginning that was in him. Only anger and indefatigable egoism remain in his heart by the end of the story, he is only worried about his own fate.
Andrei Guskov deserts consciously, for the sake of his life, and Nastya, his wife, forces him to hide, thereby dooming her to live in a lie: “That's what I'll tell you right away, Nastya. No dog must know that I am here. Tell someone I'll kill you. Kill - I have nothing to lose. I have a firm hand on this, it won’t break, ”- with these words he meets his wife after a long separation. And Nastya had no choice but to simply obey him. She was at one with him until her death, although sometimes she was visited by thoughts that it was he who was to blame for her suffering, but not only for her, but also for the suffering of her unborn child, conceived not at all in love, but in a rude impulse, animal passion. This unborn child suffered along with his mother. Andrei did not realize that this child was doomed to live his whole life in disgrace. For Guskov, it was important to fulfill his masculine duty, to leave an heir, and how this child would live on, he was of little concern. The author shows how, having betrayed himself and his people, Guskov inevitably betrays the closest and understanding person to him - his wife Nastya, who is ready to share the guilt and shame of her husband, and his unborn child, whom he cruelly dooms to a tragic death.
Nastya understood that both the life of her child and herself were doomed to further shame and suffering. Shielding and protecting her husband, she commits suicide. She decides to rush into the Angara, thereby killing herself and her unborn baby. In all this, of course, Andrey Guskov is to blame. This moment is the punishment with which higher powers can punish a person who has violated all moral laws. Andrei is doomed to a painful life. Nastena's words: "Live and remember," will knock on his inflamed brain until the end of his days.
Why did Guskov become a traitor? The hero himself would like to shift the blame to "rock", before which the "will" is powerless.
It is no coincidence that the word “fate” runs like a red thread through the whole story, to which Guskov clings so. He's not ready. He does not want to be responsible for his actions, for his crime he tries with all his might to hide behind “fate”, “fate”. “This is all war, all of it,” he again began to justify himself and conjure. “Andrey Guskov understood: fate had turned him into a dead end, from which there was no way out. And the fact that there was no way back for him freed Andrei from unnecessary thoughts. The unwillingness to recognize the need for personal responsibility for one's actions is the reason for the appearance of a wormhole in Guskov's soul, which determines his crime (desertion).
War on the pages of the story
The story does not describe battles, deaths on the battlefield, the exploits of Russian soldiers, front-line life. Only life in the rear. And yet - this is precisely the story of the war.
Rasputin explores the deforming influence on a person of a force whose name is war. Without the war, apparently, Guskov would not have succumbed only to the instilled fear of death and would not have reached such a fall. Perhaps, since childhood, the egoism and resentment that have settled in him would have found a way out in some other forms, but not in such an ugly one. If there hadn't been a war, the fate of Nastya's friend, Nadya, who remained at twenty-seven with three children in her arms, would have been different: a funeral came to her husband. Don't be a war... But it was, it was on, people died on it. And he, Guskov, decided that it was possible to live according to other laws than the whole people. And this incommensurable opposition doomed him not only to loneliness among people, but also to an indispensable reciprocal rejection.
The result of the war for the family of Andrei Guskov was three broken lives. But, unfortunately, there were many such families, many of them collapsed.
Telling us about the tragedy of Nastya and Andrei Guskov, Rasputin shows us war as a force that deforms a person’s personality, capable of destroying hopes, extinguishing self-confidence, undermining unstable characters and even breaking the strong. After all, Nastena, unlike Andrey, is an innocent victim, who suffered as a result of the inability to choose between her people and the person with whom she once connected her life. Nastena never cheated on anyone, always remaining true to the moral principles that were laid down in her since childhood, and therefore her death seems even more terrible and tragic.
Rasputin highlights the inhumane nature of war, which brings suffering and misfortune to people, without understanding who is right, who is to blame, who is weak, who is strong.
War and love
Their love and war are the two driving forces that determined the bitter fate of Nastena and the shameful fate of Andrei. Although the characters were initially different - the humane Nastena and the cruel Andrey. She is kindness and spiritual nobility itself, he is blatant callousness and selfishness. At first, the war even brought them closer, but no trials endured together can overcome moral incompatibility. After all, love, like any other relationship, is broken by betrayal.
Andrey's feeling for Nastya is rather consumer. He always wants to receive something from her - whether it be objects of the material world (an ax, bread, a gun) or feelings. It is much more interesting to understand if Nasten loved Andrey? She rushed into marriage, "like into water", in other words, she did not hesitate for a long time. Nastena's love for her husband was built partly on a feeling of gratitude, because he took her, a lonely orphan, to his house, did not let anyone offend. True, her husband's kindness was only enough for a year, and then he even beat her half to death, but Nastena, following the old rule: they agreed - you have to live, patiently carried her cross, getting used to her husband, to family, to a new place.
In part, her attachment to Andrey can be explained by a sense of guilt because they did not have children. Nastena did not think that Andrei could be at fault here. So later, for some reason, she blamed herself for her husband's crime. But in essence, Nastena cannot love anyone other than her husband, because one of the sacred family commandments for her is marital fidelity. Like all women, Nastena was waiting for her husband, eager for him, worried and afraid for him. He also thought about her. If Andrei had been a different person, he would most likely have returned from the army, and they would have lived a normal family life again. Everything happened wrong: Andrei returned ahead of schedule. He returned as a deserter. Traitor. A traitor to the Motherland. In those days, this stigma was indelible. Nastena does not turn away from her husband. She finds the strength in herself to understand him. Such behavior is the only possible form of existence for her. She helps Andrei, because it is natural for her to feel sorry, give and sympathize. She no longer remembers the bad things that overshadowed their pre-war family life. She knows only one thing - her husband is in big trouble, he must be pitied and saved. And she saves as best she can. Fate brought them together again and, as a huge ordeal, sent them a child.
The child should be sent as a reward, as the greatest happiness. How once Nastena dreamed of him! Now the child - the fruit of the love of his parents - is a burden, a sin, although he was conceived in a legal marriage. And again Andrei thinks only of himself: "We don't care about him." He says "we", but really "spit" only to him. Nastena cannot be as indifferent to this event. For Andrei, the main thing is that a child is born, the race continues. He does not think at this moment about Nastya, who will have to endure shame and humiliation. Such is the extent of his love for his wife. Of course, it cannot be denied that Guskov is attached to Nastya. Sometimes even he has moments of tenderness and enlightenment, when he thinks with horror about what he is doing, into what abyss he is pushing his wife.
Their love was not the kind that is written about in novels. This is the usual relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife. The war revealed both Nastya's devotion to her husband and Guskov's consumerist attitude towards his wife. The war also destroyed this family, like the family of Nadya Berezkina and thousands of other families. Although someone still managed to maintain their relationship, like Lisa and Maxim Voloshin, And Lisa could walk with her head held high. And the Guskovs, even if they had saved their family, would never have been able to raise their eyes in shame, because in love and in war one must be honest. Andrew couldn't be honest. This determined the difficult fate of Nastena. So peculiarly Rasputin solves the theme of love and war.
The meaning of the name. The title of the story is connected with the statement of V. Astafiev: “Live and remember, man, in trouble, in the turmoil, in the most difficult days and trials: your place is with your people; any apostasy, caused by your weakness, or foolishness, turns into even greater grief for your Motherland and people, and therefore for you.
Andrey Guskov is least of all worried that he betrayed his land, his Motherland, abandoned his comrades in arms in a difficult moment, depriving, according to Rasputin, his life of the highest meaning. Hence the moral degradation of Guskov, his savagery. Having left no offspring and betraying everything dear to him, he is doomed to oblivion and loneliness, no one will remember him with a kind word, because cowardice combined with cruelty has always been condemned. A completely different Nastena appears before us, who did not want to leave her husband in trouble, voluntarily shared the blame with him, and assumed responsibility for someone else's betrayal. Helping Andrei, she does not justify either him or herself before the human court, because she believes that betrayal has no forgiveness. Nastya's heart is torn to pieces: on the one hand, she considers herself not entitled to leave the person with whom she once connected her life in difficult times. On the other hand, she suffers endlessly, deceiving people, keeping her terrible secret and therefore suddenly feeling lonely, cut off from the people.
In a heavy conversation on this topic, an important symbolically image of the Angara arises. “You only had one side: people. There, on the right hand of the Angara. And now two: people and me. It is impossible to reduce them: it is necessary that the Angara dry up", - says Andrey Nastene.
During the conversation, it turns out that once the heroes had the same dream: Nastena, in a girl's form, comes to Andrei, who lies near the birches and calls him, telling that she was tormented with the children.
The description of this dream once again emphasizes the painful insolubility of the situation that Nastena found herself in.
The heroine finds the strength to sacrifice her happiness, peace, her life for the sake of her husband. But realizing that by doing so she breaks all ties between herself and the people, Nastena cannot survive this and tragically dies.
And yet, the highest justice triumphs at the end of the story, because people understood and did not condemn Nastena's actions. Guskov, on the other hand, does not cause anything but contempt and disgust, since "a person who has stepped onto the path of betrayal at least once, goes along it to the end."
Andrey Guskov pays the highest price: there will be no continuation of it; no one will ever understand him the way Nastena does. From this moment on, it doesn’t matter how he, having heard the noise on the river and prepared to hide, will live on: his days are numbered, and he will spend them like before, like an animal. Maybe, being already caught, he will even howl like a wolf in despair. Guskov must die, and Nastena dies. This means that the deserter dies twice, and now forever.
... In all of Atamanovka there was not a single person who would simply feel sorry for Nastena. Only before his death, Nastena hears the cry of Maxim Vologzhin: "Nastena, don't you dare!" Maxim - one of the first front-line soldiers who knew what death is, understands that life is the greatest value. After Nastya's body was found, she was not buried in the cemetery of the drowned, because "the women did not give it", but they buried her among her own, but from the edge.
The story ends with the author's message, from which it is clear that they do not talk about Guskov, they do not "remember" - for him "the connection of times has broken up", he has no future. The author speaks of the drowned Nastya as if she were alive (nowhere replacing her name with the word "deceased"): “After the funeral, the women gathered at Nadya’s for a simple wake and wept: it was a pity for Nasten”. With these words, which signify the “connection of times” restored for Nastena (the traditional ending for folklore is about the hero’s memory through the ages), V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember” ends.
The title of the book is "Live and Remember". These words tell us that everything that is written on the pages of the book should become a lesson in the life of every person. Live and remember that in life there is betrayal, meanness, human fall, the test of love with this blow. Live and remember that you cannot go against conscience and that in moments of difficult trials you must be with the people. The call “Live and remember” is addressed to all of us: a person is responsible for his actions!
"Everyone's duty is to love the Motherland, to be incorruptible and courageous, to remain faithful to it even at the cost of life," - back in the time of Tacitus Publius Cornelius, people learned to value loyalty and kept it in everything: both in love and in war. After all, there, on the verge of life and death, a person is aware of everything that he once did, and repents of it. Love for the Motherland is even more important than love for a person. But there are also reverse examples, which are widely represented in the domestic literature.
A person always faces a choice: to remain true to his principles and moral convictions, or to succumb to the opinion of the crowd and change himself.
Often people make mistakes, change life in the wrong direction. Often we regret the things we have done and want everything back. But having changed once, a person seems to have morally fallen, trust in him is lost. This is how one of the sons of Taras Bulba from the story of the same name by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol appears to the reader. To be honest, when I was just starting to get acquainted with the characters, the brothers and their external characteristics seemed very similar, but later the difference between Ostap and Andriy became obvious both in characters and in actions. The choice of Andriy, who abandoned his family and serving his country, fulfilling his duty to his homeland for the sake of love for a beautiful Polish woman, seems to the reader to be a low act. Gogol compares him with his brother, who, on the contrary, fights to the end for his native land.
Both brothers die, but in completely different ways: one is a traitor, the other is a hero. It is impossible to compare these two deaths, because Andrei is not aware of what has been accomplished even at gunpoint. Ostap, on the contrary, honors his native land and, above all, his father until his last breath.
"For treason to the Motherland, an extraordinary baseness of the soul is needed," - the words of N. Chernyshevsky very accurately describe the situation that has developed in the Taras family. But even in modern times, this phrase will be relevant. A vivid example of this is the story of Valentin Rasputin "Live and Remember". War is a very difficult period in the life of a country. The period when wives have to say goodbye to their husbands, mothers to see off their sons to the front. And ahead - the unknown ... Undoubtedly, a person always strives to return home, to meet with loved ones. The hero of the story, Andrei, wanted this no less than other front-line soldiers. But what price did he pay for this meeting? We see that the hero betrays not only the Motherland, having arbitrarily returned home, but also his wife. Even after learning about Nastya's pregnancy, he continues to hide in the forests. But in the village no one knows whose child this is - Nastya's husband should be at war at that time. Andrei simply cannot appreciate the dedication of his wife, who was there at a difficult moment for him. As a result, Nastya committed suicide due to the weakness and indecision of her husband.
I believe that the main thing is not at all that Andrei betrayed others, he betrayed himself. Valuable human qualities are lost in him. And the episode in which his wolf howl is described shows his moral decay. It is not for nothing that the author is silent about the future of the hero - with such a person only the final disintegration of the personality can occur.
If a person cheated once, you cannot be sure that he will not do it again. On the contrary, it is possible to aggravate the situation even more, to lose society's faith in such a person can be much faster than to make him forget the betrayal and give him another chance.
Updated: 2017-12-05
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Victor Astafiev called the story of V. G. Rasputin one of the best books about the past war, noting "a stunning, deep tragedy." "Live and Remember" like no other work is a journey into the depths of the human soul, revealing the inner tragedy of the individual.
The writer, a sensitive researcher, is trying to understand Guskov's character and find the origins of his act - desertion. A hard-working peasant peasant who honestly did his job for several years in a row and even earned the respect of his comrades: they could take him on intelligence for a difficult task, that is, they completely trusted him when it came to life and death. How dare he betray them, and on what basis did he decide that they might die, while he must survive? Cowardice, cowardice, cunning, cruelty? First of all, selfishness, which M. Gorky called "the native father of meanness." He is offended by everything and everyone, and the author carefully emphasizes these grievances of Guskov, drawing the reader's attention to them. If a person is closed only on himself, on personal well-being, then he lives in vain, and this wastiness does not go unnoticed: it destroys the soul, gives rise to further vices in it, from envy to malice and opportunism.
Guskov, knowing the sin behind himself, tries to judge others (although should he judge?) By standards, first of all, of negative qualities, as if he no longer recognizes the existence of good principles and bright feelings in people. His soul, sooty by the constantly smoldering thought of his own meanness, no longer misses even a ray of normal life, to which he opposed himself and which, for the same reason, he hated, as already unattainable, irretrievably lost. Even to his wife Nastya, at the first meeting, he says cruel words: “Not a single dog should know that I am here. If you tell someone, I will kill. I will kill - I have nothing to lose. won't break." Now everyone is an enemy to him.
From the very first pages of the story, an aversion to Guskov, actively supported by the writer, arises in us. It is not for nothing that the author, even in the first chapter, presents him as something terrible and even inanimate: "something ... shebursha, climbed into the bathhouse," aggravating this with Andrey's rudeness, his selfishness, outright consumerism: he needs Nastena only as a breadwinner - bring a gun, matches, salt.
One must have the character of this woman in order to understand Guskov. She finds the strength in herself to understand a person who finds himself in an extremely difficult situation, even if he created it himself. Following her, we gradually come to an understanding. No, not to justification, not to forgiveness - to understanding, which is facilitated by the deep disclosure by the author of the processes taking place in the soul of the hero. Tragedy opens before us, and tragedy, no matter who it happens to, requires respect for itself, because it is not just a duel of life and death, but the last duel in which victory is already a foregone conclusion.
At first, Andrei did not even think about desertion, if only because he perfectly remembered the "demonstrative" execution that he happened to see in the spring of forty-two: they shot a forty-year-old "crossbow" and a very young boy who wanted to run away to his native village, located fifty miles . But the thought of his own salvation lived in him constantly, turning more and more into fear for his life: he was already praying to fate that he would be wounded - if only to gain time, not to go into battle again, and there, you see, and war will end. Was it not from this thought that the fatal act was then born?
His original, born on the day he left for the war, "resentment at everything that remained in place, from which he was torn away and for which he had to fight," now flared up with renewed vigor: resentment against doctors, the village, all those who she lived, in the whole wide world. And resentment won in him. Rather, he allowed her to win this victory.
What happened is what V. Rasputin will later say: "A person who has stepped onto the path of betrayal at least once, goes along it to the end." Guskov stepped on this path to the point of betrayal, he was already prepared internally by admitting the possibility of escape.
Rasputin explores the deforming influence on a person of a force whose name is war. And in this sense, "Live and Remember" is a story about the war, and by right it is among the anti-war masterpieces of modern classics. If there had been no war, Guskov would not have succumbed only to death to the inspired fear and would not have reached such a fall.
There was no war ... But it was, it was going on, people died on it, and we feel it when reading the story, although we do not meet direct descriptions of the battles. And he, Guskov, decided that it was possible to live according to other laws than the whole people. And this incommensurable opposition doomed him not only to loneliness among people, but also to an indispensable reciprocal rejection.
Living in a winter hut and getting game for food with the help of a gun brought by his wife, Guskov is already gradually ceasing to be a man and becoming an armed humanoid beast.
Once on a hunt, having shot a roe deer, he “did not finish it off as it should, but stood and watched, trying not to miss a single movement, how the dying animal suffered, how the convulsions subsided and reappeared, how the head fiddled with it. at the end, he lifted her and looked into her eyes - they widened in response ... ".
It is natural that after this incident, scaring away the wolf who got into the habit of going to the winter quarters, Guskov himself howled like a wolf, so much so that he was struck by the similarity of voices. “In the end, the wolf could not stand it and retreated from the winter hut,” but a man could already replace him: “when it became completely sick, he opened the door and, as if fooling around, having fun, let out a plaintive and demanding bestial howl over the taiga.” And then, already in April, he took a step logically arising from his changed lifestyle, which can only be called murder.
Somehow he went out to the village, he himself still did not know why, but obeying an imperious inner call. May Day was celebrated in the village, only a few days remained until the end of the war, and Guskov, who especially acutely felt his uselessness, abandonment, was filled, perhaps, with the transcendent energy of alienation, which had to find a way out. And then a cow with a small calf caught his eye. He tried to drive the heifer away from the mother, but she would not let it drive away, and then "the man's anger turned into a rage": he caught the calf, sould him, dragged him into the forest, tied him to an aspen and, in front of the exhausted cow, hit him with the butt of an ax, chopped carcass to pieces. He himself understood that this was a murder, sadistic, unnatural, and he "did not know whether the heifer had decided only for the sake of meat, or for the sake of something else that had settled in him since then firmly and powerfully."
Moral categories gradually become conventions for Guskov, which must be followed when living among people, and a burden when he is left alone with himself. As a result, only biological needs remain, from time to time brightened up by the same attempts at self-justification, without which Guskov is already unthinkable.
Walking through the fields where he worked before the war and which he remembers by heart, he once again tries to convince himself that he is not a stranger here, that “people should be remembered by the land where they lived. happened to him, for her he is a pure person. But even this self-deception is doomed, because the land does not owe Guskov anything, but he is indebted to her, it was he who betrayed her, refused to defend.
The image of Guskov suggests the conclusion expressed by Viktor Petrovich Astafiev: “Live and remember, a person in trouble, in a torment, in the most difficult days and trials: your place is with your people; great grief for your homeland and people, and therefore for you."
Guskov was supposed to die, but Nasten and her unborn child die. This means that the deserter dies twice, and now forever.
Guskov pays the highest price: he will never continue in anyone; no one will ever understand him the way Nastena does. From that moment on, it doesn’t matter how he, who heard the noise on the river and prepared to hide, will live on: his days are numbered, and he will spend them, like before, in an animal way. Maybe, being already caught, he will even howl like a wolf in despair.
The writer opened for us a wormhole in the character of Guskov, which explained his desertion. However, Rasputin elevates a concrete historical fact to the rank of great socio-philosophical generalizations, which makes him related to such predecessors as Dostoevsky and Gorky. We are talking about "crossing" over moral barriers, which leads to the manifestation of extreme individualism "everything is allowed" and to the destruction of the personality of the "crossed".
