Development methods

The main characters of the work are people. In people. Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

When a child is no longer a child, but is still far from coming of age, it was customary in Rus' to call him a youth. Thus, the period of adolescence began at the age of ten or eleven. However, Maxim Gorky called his story, dedicated to the biography of the teenager Alyosha Peshkov, who was left an orphan by the age of eleven, quite differently - “In People”. This name says a lot: to be “among people” meant living with complete strangers, sometimes earning a living through very hard work.

Indeed, after she died

Alyosha Peshkov’s mother, and even earlier his father, the teenager’s own grandfather, Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, died of cholera, said that he was not going to feed his grandson and sent him to a shoe store as a “boy.” Alyosha’s duties included meeting customers, but he had to work more at home: he swept the floor, washed dishes, and set up the samovar. He had to get up early in the morning with the cook and go to bed very late. Melancholy overwhelmed the boy when he went to bed in the evening.

The situation was aggravated by cousin Sasha, who felt superior in age. He pushed Alyosha around, threatened him with witchcraft - in the end the boy was ready to run away, but due to an accident (he spilled hot soup on his hands) he ended up in the hospital, and then with his grandmother.

However, a return to his former life did not work out: many of his old friends died or left the city, Alyosha had already grown out of childhood games, so his love of reading saved him. His grandmother introduced him to folklore and revealed the beauty of his native language. Thanks to her, he fell in love with nature and enjoyed walking into the forest, watching his grandmother talk to the herbs and all living things around him.

With the onset of cold weather, Alexey again had to go “to the people,” because he could no longer make a living by catching birds, as in the summer. But wherever he found himself - in a shoe store, in a drawing workshop - only hard, “menial” work awaited him, and there was no opportunity to learn.

The teenager gained a lot of life experience by accidentally becoming a worker on a ship. He witnessed human meanness and weakness, saw drunkenness and debauchery, and was tormented by the knowledge that in life people are not at all like those described in books. There are no heroes, but only cowards and scoundrels.

It was she who instilled in him a taste for good reading, gave him the opportunity to read Russian classics, to fall in love with the poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Odoevsky: she believed that you need to read Russian books in order to know Russian life. Alyosha experienced his first real love for Queen Margot.

However, he had to continue his difficult path “among people.” Fate even brought him to an icon-painting workshop, where he encountered injustice: he saw how old people were robbed, buying ancient books and icons for next to nothing. In the evenings, Alyosha read aloud to the craftsmen who had gathered to relax after work. But getting books was not an easy task - sometimes you had to beg for them as alms.

At the same time, the teenager had heard more than once from people the expression “forbidden books,” the meaning of which he could not yet understand.

Having accidentally met his former owner, Alyosha agreed to become a “tenman” - an overseer of the workers who were restoring the trade stalls at the fair after the flood. It was not easy for him, a teenager, because the workers openly laughed at his youth and did not really listen. At the age of 15, Alyosha thought that he was already an old man, and everyone around him was strangers.

Just recently he was planning to leave for Astrakhan, and from there flee to Persia, but he did not do this, and time was lost.

Wandering around the city, the matured Alexey saw a lot of abomination in human life, realizing that in a few more years, he himself would become like this if he did not escape from this provincial “swamp.” Fortunately for him, Nikolai Evreinov, a high school student living nearby, persuaded Alyosha to go to Kazan to prepare for entering the university. Thus ends this important era of growing up for every person.

Depicting the terrible way of life, the “leaden abominations” of the life of the urban lower classes, Gorky shows how the preaching of patience, widespread at that time, was overcome in the minds of a teenager, how the will of him and his peers was tempered and the desire to resist evil and violence became stronger. The writer reproduces with psychological accuracy the desire of a boy, and then a young man, for a “beautiful, cheerful, honest” life.

Of course, the autobiographical nature of the story is obvious: Gorky wrote about his fate. But he sincerely considered his biography to be typical of representatives of the lower classes. However, the writer trusts his hero with contact with the era, although the burden of historical responsibility for everything that the reader sees in his fate falls on the hero’s shoulders.

Thus, Maxim Gorky was one of the first to show the conflict between man and era. In works written in Soviet times, but remaining outside the scope of official literature, such a conflict will become the main one, as in B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” or in A. Platonov’s story “Doubting Makar.”

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“In People”, analysis of the story by Maxim Gorky

Still from the film “In People” (1938)

Very briefly

The grandfather sends his grandson to work for strangers. The boy suffers beatings and bullying, his life is dirty and boring. Having matured, he feels a craving for reading and science, and decides to go study.

The story is told on behalf of the boy Alyosha Peshkov.

I

Grandfather Vasily got Alyosha a job as a “boy” in a Nizhny Novgorod shoe store, where his cousin Sasha Yakovlev already worked. Alyosha had to open doors for customers and carry out various small tasks. The boys lived in a house next to a store run by a cook, “a sick and angry woman,” who forced Alyosha to help with the housework - cleaning shoes, fetching water, putting on the samovar.

Sasha took advantage of his seniority and the position of assistant clerk, pushing and commanding Alyosha in every possible way, although he was taller and stronger. It was painful for the boy, accustomed to freedom, to be in the store all day. He disliked the owner, a quiet man with bright, blind eyes, and the senior clerk, round and somehow slippery.

Many times Alyosha saw how the owner and clerk courted a customer, and then “talked about her dirty and shamelessly.” In addition, Sasha and the clerk robbed the owner by hiding shoes in the chimney. Alyosha remembered his owner’s promise to put him in prison for theft, and this frightened him very much.

Sasha did not like the cook, a strange woman who loved to watch fights, considered her a witch and constantly tried to force Alyosha to do some dirty tricks on her. One morning the cook died right in front of the boys. This frightened Sasha so much that he brought Alyosha closer to him, showed him his chest, filled with buttons, pins and other small items collected on the street, and a hiding place under the root of a tree, where a small chapel was built. In the middle of the chapel there was a coffin with a sparrow, which Sasha himself killed.

Sasha’s “treasures” caused Alyosha “painful surprise.” The boy destroyed the “chapel” when Sasha compared it to his dugout, in which he once lived all summer, hiding from his stepfather. After that, Sasha began to do nasty things to his brother - he smeared soot on his face when he was sleeping, and put needles in the shoes he was cleaning.

Alyosha decided to escape “from all this boring, stupid life,” but on the evening before his escape he scalded his hands with boiling cabbage soup and ended up in the hospital, from where Akulina’s grandmother took him home to the settlement of Kunavino.

II-III

Grandfather greeted Alyosha unkindly. He gave all the money he had left to his nephew “on interest,” but did not receive it back and became even more greedy. Grandmother believed that he did not help the poor enough, and this was the source of all the misfortunes. Now she tried to “appease the gentlemen a little” and at night she gave out “quiet alms” - she placed a patch and a couple of pretzels on the windowsills of other people’s houses.

Nothing has changed at home. Grandfather was still arguing with grandmother, and Alyosha’s brother Kolya, gray and lethargic, was sleeping in a laundry basket. Alyosha’s friend, black-eyed Kostroma, said that he and Churka fell in love with a new neighbor, a beautiful girl on crutches, and now they often quarrel.

At first Alyosha did not like the lame girl Lyudmila because of her painful fragility, but soon he also began to strive to see her as often as possible. Kostroma, Churka and Alyosha competed with each other for Lyudmila’s smile, often to the point of tears and fights. The girl chose Alyosha as her friend. They often sat in the dressing room, read aloud a novel completely incomprehensible to the boy, or talked.

Soon Lyudmila’s mother found a job, the girl was left alone during the day, and Alyosha began to often visit their apartment and help with the housework. When grandfather was not at home, they went to grandmother to have tea. Once Alyosha, with his grandmother’s blessing, spent the night on a bet at the grave of a recently deceased old man, after which he became a “hero” of the street.

One morning Alyosha’s brother Kolya died quietly. He was buried in the grave of Alyosha’s mother. The boy saw the black, rotten boards of his mother’s coffin, for a long time he could not forget what he saw, and told Lyudmila about it. The girl remained indifferent - she wanted to become an orphan so that she could go to a monastery without hindrance. After that, Alyosha lost interest in her.

All summer, Alyosha and his grandmother sold mushrooms, berries, nuts and medicinal herbs collected in the forest. In the fall, his grandfather sent Alyosha to the family of his grandmother’s sister Matryona, who lived in Nizhny Novgorod. Her eldest son, who worked as a draftsman, promised to take the boy as an apprentice and pay his grandfather six rubles a year for him.

IV

Matryona's family lived in a two-story apartment building located near a dirty ravine. Her eldest son, the owner, was a kind man, the youngest, Victor, was a parasite and a slacker. The owner was married to a curvaceous pregnant woman. Alyosha liked the owner and reminded him of his old friend Good Deed.

The family lived unharmoniously. Matryona, “a noisy, indomitably angry old woman,” constantly quarreled with her daughter-in-law and furiously asked God to punish her. She loved Victor blindly and fiercely and constantly begged money for him from the elder.

Relatives treat each other worse than strangers: knowing more bad and funny things about each other than strangers, they gossip angrier, quarrel and fight more often.

Here they loved to eat a lot and discuss their neighbors - both Matryona and her daughter-in-law judged them “mercilessly and mercilessly.” No one was going to teach Alyosha the craft of drawing. For whole days the boy was busy with housework under the command of grandmother Matryona. Alyosha worked willingly - he liked to destroy dirt - but he could not stand the owners, he was impudent and rude to them.

Soon the owner began to teach Alyosha, but Matryona did her best to interfere with these lessons, and they quickly stopped. The grandmother was offended that her son was teaching not his brother, but someone else’s boy. Victor did not like the boy, often beat and mocked him.

In the courtyard of the house there was an outbuilding where the officers and their orderlies lived. The courtyard was in full swing with life, full of bestial debauchery and senseless cruelty. The owners discussed all this in detail over dinner, and Alyosha was unbearably disgusted to listen to them.

Sometimes the boy was visited by his grandmother. Matryona received her sister at the doorstep like a beggar, and for a long time “sawed and scraped her grandmother with her tireless tongue,” but the owner and his wife received Akulina with respect, for which Alyosha was deeply grateful to them.

Alyosha was allowed out of the house only on Saturdays and holidays, to go to church. He liked being in church, but on quiet nights he skipped services and wandered around the city, looking into the windows of houses.

In the spring, Alyosha became addicted to games of knucklebones, ball and towns, lost the money they gave him for a candle, and soon became known as the most skillful gambler on the street. He had to confess this to the priest, but he was not impressed by Alyosha’s sins, he only asked if the boy had read forbidden literature. These “forbidden books” interested Alyosha very much.

Spring came. Alyosha became even more disgusted with taking care of other people’s households and watching “dog weddings” in the yard.

V-VI

Easter Field Alyosha ran away. He was ashamed to return to his grandmother in Kunavino, and the boy got a job as a dishwasher on the Dobry steamship, which transported barges with prisoners along the Volga. The passengers on the ship - “quiet slackers” - dirty a lot of dishes, and Alyosha washed them from six in the morning until midnight.

The cook in the steamship kitchen was commanded by Smury, fat and huge as a bear. Alyosha quickly realized that Smury was a kind man, even though he was a drunkard. The boy did not like the rest of the kitchen staff. When they started talking dirty about women, Smury took Alyosha to his cabin and forced him to read out loud incomprehensible books without beginning or end. He believed that the whole mind is in books, and in order to understand them, one must read more than once.

Soon Smury and Alyosha began to borrow good books from the captain's wife and became addicted to reading. The cook forced the boy to read, and entrusted his work to the senior cook, Maxim, for which the barmaid took a dislike to Alyosha and did all sorts of dirty tricks on him.

One day, a “red-faced woman and a girl,” drunk and approachable, boarded the ship. At night, Alyosha’s enemies dragged him to these women’s cabin to “get him married,” but Smury fought off the boy. In the morning the captain found Maxim in the women’s cabin and put all three of them ashore. The hunchbacked waiter Sergei, who was obsessed with women, was to blame for the “mischief,” and Alyosha felt sorry for the kind and serious Maxim.

In Maxim's place he took a skinny soldier, inept and helpless, whom not only the ship's servants, but also the passengers began to cruelly mock, and almost drove the unfortunate man to suicide. Alyosha didn’t understand why there was so much cruelty in people.

What is quiet, timid and sadly submissive is noticeable in people above all, and it is so strange and scary when cruel, senseless and almost always sad mischief suddenly breaks through this crust of humility.

One night, something burst in the engine room, the deck was covered in steam, the passengers decided that the ship was sinking, and panic began. Alyosha observed for the first time how previously intelligent people turned into a herd mad with fear. And besides this, there was a lot that did not allow the boy to understand whether people were evil or good.

It was soon discovered that Sergei was stealing and selling cutlery. Alyosha was suspected of colluding with him and was fired.

VII

Alyosha returned to his grandparents, who moved from the settlement to Nizhny Novgorod. The boy started catching songbirds, and his grandmother sold them at the market. This activity fed them until late autumn.

Opposite the new house there was a vast field where soldiers were training. Alyosha ran with the soldiers and it seemed to him that there were no people better than them, until a young non-commissioned officer gave him a joke for the sake of a cigarette filled with gunpowder. Then the boy began to run to the Cossack barracks. One day he saw how a Cossack, who sang the best and seemed to the boy to be a “fairy-tale creature,” raped a woman. “Petrified from amazement and a bitter, melancholy feeling,” Alyosha thought that this could happen to his grandmother or mother.

VIII-IX

In winter, the grandfather again took Alyosha to his grandmother Matryona. Over the summer, the boy grew up and matured, but nothing has changed here. The owners still ate until their stomachs hurt and gossiped disgustingly. Alyosha talked about his service on the ship, but the narrow-minded women did not believe him. The owners were afraid of books and were sure that reading was very harmful.

Now there were two small children in the house, and Alyosha worked even more. Every week he went to rinse his clothes to a small stream, where washerwomen from all over the area gathered. Most of all Alyosha liked “Natalya Kozlovskaya, a woman of about thirty, fresh, strong, with mocking eyes, with a particularly flexible and sharp tongue.” Other laundresses respected her for her efficiency, neatness, and for the fact that she sent her only daughter to study at the gymnasium.

Listening to the women's conversations, Alyosha was surprised at how shamelessly they talked about themselves. The washerwomen talked evilly and mockingly about their romances and men, and the boy felt that Grandma Matryona was right when she said that “a woman is strength.”

In addition to the laundresses, Alyosha met the orderlies Ermokhin and Sidorov. Ermokhin was a kind man, but he treated women “rudely and simply like a dog.” He deceived them, arousing self-pity; he believed that the woman wanted to be deceived, and everyone was lying in this “shameful matter.”

In one of the apartments of the house lived a cutter, a non-Russian man, childless, with a small, quiet wife who “read books day and night.” The officers who lived in the house decided to play a cruel joke on the cutter - they began to write her love letters and laugh at her answers. Unable to bear it, Alyosha told the woman the truth. This is how their acquaintance began.

The cutter gave the boy a thick novel, which he carefully hid from his owners and read at night. Alyosha’s awakened passion for reading brought him a lot of “severe humiliation, resentment and anxiety.”

Since the New Year, the owner has ordered the “Moscow Leaflet” and Alyosha in the evenings read aloud the novels published there - “literature for the digestion of people killed to death by boredom.” There was not enough newspaper for the evening, and the boy suggested reading the subscriptions to Ogonyok and Zhivopisnoe Obozreniye, lying under the bed - the owners subscribed to these magazines for the sake of the reproductions of paintings attached to them.

Thanks to these magazines, the boy learned about other countries and cities. Many words were incomprehensible to him. Their meaning was explained to Alyosha by the pharmacy pharmacist, who “had the keys to all the secrets.”

Words, ‹…› are like leaves on a tree, and in order to understand why a leaf is like this and not another, you need to know how a tree grows - you need to study!

During Lent, cathedral bells began to ring and it became known that the king had been killed. For what, Alyosha didn’t understand; it was forbidden to talk about it.

Soon an unpleasant story happened to Alyosha - the owner’s child let water out of the boiling samovar, it broke apart and fell apart. Grandmother Matryona beat the boy with a bunch of pine splinters, which left many splinters under the skin. Alyosha’s back became swollen, and he was taken to a doctor, who suggested that the boy draw up a report on the torture. Alyosha did not complain and for this he received permission to take books from the cutter.

Alyosha began reading thick adventure novels, but soon noticed that despite the variety of plots, they were very similar - in all of them, virtue triumphs over evil. The dissimilarity of life described on the pages of novels with reality made the boy doubt the veracity of the novels. He wanted something different, something real, and he often thought about “forbidden books.” People in the yard were talking worse and worse about the cutter; soon she left, and her husband changed apartments.

X-XI

Even before the cutter’s departure, a young, beautiful aristocrat with her little daughter and old mother settled in the house of Alyosha’s owners. For her beauty and regal bearing, the boy called her Queen Margot to himself. Alyosha often played with her daughter. Queen Margot wanted to give Alyosha money, but he asked for some book. The lady began to give the boy good books and often said that he needed to study.

There is more work for Alyosha at home. Now he was not only a maid and an “errand boy,” but also helped the owner, who received a contract to rebuild the shopping arcades at the fair and worked from morning to night.

In the courtyard they spoke about Queen Margot “as bad and viciously as about the cutter,” but be careful - the woman was “the widow of a very noble man.” It was hard for Alyosha to hear dirty gossip about her, and the residents of the house disgusted him.

Observing people's vices is the only entertainment that can be enjoyed for free.

One day the boy told Queen Margot that they were talking about her in the courtyard. It turned out that she knew about the gossip, but did not attach any importance to it. In gratitude for her pure love, Queen Margot allowed Alyosha to come to her at any time and talked with him for a long time.

Queen Margot was going to arrange for Alyosha to study somewhere, but did not have time. On Trinity Sunday, Ermokhin smashed Sidorov's head with a log, and the boy looked after him all day. The next day, he found Sidorov’s empty wallet in the barn, and he accused the boy of stealing money. The owners, who saw Alyosha talking to the laundress Natalya Kozlovskaya, decided that he had stolen money to pay her for intimacy, and severely beat the boy.

The rumor of the theft spread throughout the house. The boy was saved by Natalya, who said that it was not Alyosha who offered her money, but Ermokhin, who stole the wallet. After lying down, Alyosha left the house. He did not have the courage to say goodbye to Queen Margot.

All summer Alyosha served as a kitchen worker on the Perm steamship. The most interesting person here was the fireman Yakov Shumov, an unusually gluttonous man who constantly told all sorts of funny tales about himself. He reminded Alyosha of a Good Deed, but the boy was repulsed by “his thick... indifference to people.”

XII-XV

In late autumn, Alyosha “entered an icon painting workshop as an apprentice,” but soon the owner, an always drunk old woman, sent him to work as a “boy” in a shop where icons were sold. The boy was supposed to lure buyers into the shop - Old Believers from the Volga region. Often old men and women brought ancient icons and books for sale. The clerk, together with the bookkeeper Pyotr Vasilyevich, shamelessly deceived them, buying valuables for pennies.

Pyotr Vasilyevich, an expert on old printed books and icons, was an intelligent man, he knew “all the secrets of merchants, officials, priests, and townspeople.” Often other readers would gather in the shop and have long debates and conversations on religious topics.

In the evenings Alyosha sat in the icon-painting workshop - a large basement room. The icons were painted on a conveyor belt: one master made the background, another made the faces, a third planed the boards, and another primed them. This craft was boring and did not interest anyone. Alyosha fell in love with the people living and working there and became friends with student Pashka Odintsov, who was two years older.

In the mornings, Alyosha prepared the samovar, tidied up the workshop, ran to the shop, and mixed paints. In the evenings, the boy told the masters about his life on ships or stories he had read in books. Soon he and Pashka began to organize entire performances, which amused and entertained the icon painters, saving them from a dreary, secluded life. Gradually Alyosha took the place of storyteller and reader in the workshop.

With us, fun never lives and is not valued in itself, but it is deliberately raised from under the bush as a means to moderate Russian sleepy melancholy.

Alyosha turned thirteen years old in the workshop. The young clerk from the store took a dislike to the boy. He was supposed to marry the niece of a childless widowed housewife and already felt like the owner of a workshop.

The clerk found fault with Alyosha, encouraged him to steal, and the boy was almost ready to run away to Astrakhan, and from there to Persia, but one spring he met his former owner, his grandmother’s nephew. He said that this year he had a lot of contracts, called Alyosha to be his assistant and promised that he would no longer be a servant.

Alyosha could not return to his grandmother - an unemployed grandson and a granddaughter who had run away from her cruel husband were sitting on her neck, and his grandfather was quietly going crazy. The boy accepted the owner's offer. He served in the icon painting workshop for three years.

XVI-XVIII

Nizhny Novgorod shopping arcades stood in the lowlands. Every year they were flooded and then rebuilt. Alyosha became a foreman, making sure that the workers fulfilled their duties and did not steal too much.

Now Alyosha spent the whole day at the construction site, and Grandma Matryona no longer forced him to help with the housework. Queen Margot had left long ago; now a large family lived in her apartment - five daughters and two high school-age sons. They gave Alyosha books in abundance.

The owner had so much drafting work that he invited Alyosha’s aristocratic stepfather, who was dying of consumption, to be his assistant. He called the boy by his first and patronymic names, and soon a “cautious and unclear relationship” was established between them. The family treated his stepfather with senseless hostility, and this brought Alyosha closer to him.

His stepfather also believed that Alyosha needed to study.

If you have character, the school educates you well. Only very literate people can move life.

By the end of the summer, my stepfather fell ill and in August died in a hospital ward in front of Alyosha. The boy was unable to attend his funeral.

Among the workers Alyosha managed, there were also interesting people. The boy knew them before - on Sundays they came to the owner for payment. Alyosha was given little money for food, he was always hungry, and the workers invited him to have dinner with them. Often the boy stayed in one of the artels overnight and had long conversations with the men.

The most difficult and incomprehensible to Alyosha seemed to be Osip, a gray-haired, handsome old man, the head of a carpenter's artel. The workers respected him, but warned the boy that he should be careful with the cunning old man and not trust him too much. Later Alyosha learned that Osip conveyed to the owner every word he said.

Among the workers there were honest, pious people, but all of them were broken by a gray, poor life, full of drunkenness and debauchery. Alyosha was especially struck by the fate of the mason Ardalyon, the best worker in the artel. In the spring he was going to go to Siberia to build a church under the leadership of his son-in-law, but suddenly he went on a spree, spent all his earnings on obscene girls and by spring he became a beggar, settled on Millionnaya Street, where tramps lived.

Alyosha visited Ardalyon until Osip reported to the owner that the boy was on Millionnaya Street too often. Alyosha began going there secretly and one day he met the laundress Natalya Kozlovskaya. This once strong and intelligent woman fell into disrepair, drank, and worked as a prostitute because her only daughter abandoned her. After graduating from high school, she began to feel shy about her laundress mother and went to work as a teacher with a rich friend. Alyosha saw how Ardalyon beat Natalya just because she was a “walker” and stopped going to Millionnaya.

XIX

In winter there was no work at the fair, and Alyosha returned to household duties, and in the evenings he again read aloud to the owners. The owner became quiet and thoughtful. One day he confessed to Alyosha that he had fallen in love with a woman whose husband had been convicted of counterfeiting. To follow him to Siberia, money was needed, the woman earned money by selling herself, and soon left for a settlement following her beloved husband.

Alyosha served as a foreman for three summers. He was tired of constant theft, deception, life seemed “incoherent, ridiculous” and stupid. Alyosha could only talk with Osip, but he could not understand “what he loves, what he hates” and soon began to feel hostility towards the cunning and indifferent old man.

Life has become like an autumn forest - the mushrooms have already disappeared, there is nothing to do in the empty forest, and it seems that you know it through and through.

Fifteen-year-old Alyosha felt old and tired from his experience. It was as if two people lived in it: one dreamed of a quiet, secluded life, the other was always ready for battle.

One day Alyosha met his uncle Yakov. He went broke, skipped everything, and for some time served as an assistant warden for the prisoners. He was deprived of his place because he let some prisoners go for a walk. Now he lived with his son, a soloist in the church choir, and performed the duties of a footman with him.

The uncle was also filled with indifference and his speeches confused Alyosha even more. On the same day, he made a decision and left for Kazan in the fall, hoping to get a job there to study.

Among a series of countless chapters and events, it is sometimes difficult to single out the only thing for which the work was written. Not everyone fully understands that dialogues, characters and events, although they are key factors in the narrative, cannot in themselves answer the question: “What was this work about?”

This is especially true in the works of the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorkov; it is not for nothing that his stories and novellas are studied exclusively in high school. The story “In People” is no exception to this list.

Analysis of this work causes difficulties for many people, and sometimes it becomes very difficult for them to explain: “What, exactly, was this story about?”

The work “In People” itself, throughout all its chapters, tells about the fate of an early orphaned child who was forced to work “in people” all his childhood, far from home and family. Every now and then he had to do the dirtiest and most difficult work in order to somehow feed himself.

He saw a lot of dirt and injustice in the world on his way, and only the books that he read in rare moments of leisure were able to save him from the gloom of what was happening around him and, time after time, give him the strength to wake up every new morning.

The end of this story is open, but gives hope for a better future: after long wanderings, Alyosha decides to get out of the “swamp” that surrounds him and makes the fateful decision to go to college in a big city.

What does this work tell between the lines? In fact, there are quite a lot of topics, but a number of the main ones stand out clearly. Firstly, this is, of course, the theme of the deep depravity of society of that era. This is evidenced by many episodes in the life of an orphan. These are also memories of a Cossack who tricked a certain woman out of her house, after which he brutally beat and raped her. These are also stories about the family of the owner in whose house Alyosha worked.

Stories of men and women who wasted away from boredom and whose only goal was to eat and sleep. As a child, Alyosha was perhaps the only character who could read. The small child looked around, but saw only half-people with rotten souls, capable only of violence, deception and betrayal. Alyosha's rare meetings with truly good people were extremely rare.

The second theme flows smoothly from the first: the theme of early adulthood of children and their moral education. Maxim Gorky repeatedly emphasized that at the age of 13-15, the main character felt almost like a flabby old man, tired of life. In the living conditions in which poor children found themselves, they had no chance of remaining children.

They grew up too quickly, became smart and sad beyond their years. But the Author also retains some optimism. Using the example of the main character, he shows that such difficult living conditions for strong people are not only not destructive, but also save them. After all, difficulties only strengthened Alyosha’s soul and character, making him a truly strong and kind person, capable of overcoming any hardships of life.

The third topic is the role of books in a child’s life. Think about what kept Alyosha afloat all these years? Did it not allow him to give up, forced him to go forward, made him truly wise in his thoughts and decisions, and ultimately helped him not to blend in with the fading crowd? Did it help you get out of the vicious circle? Yes, they were books. Books in which the heroes were brave and smart were the right example for Alyosha. The books that taught him to think gave him the opportunity to go to college. They played a truly huge role in Alyosha’s life.

So what is M. Gorky’s story “In People” about? It is about the impoverishment and ugliness of society, which has lost its human appearance in boredom and lack of education. It is about the early growing up of children who are faced with non-childish difficulties and about the moral education of such children. In the end, it is about the invaluable contribution of books to the life and improvement of not only a child, but every individual person.

Series: Book 2 – Gorky’s Autobiographical Trilogy

Year of publication of the book: 1916

Gorky's work "In People" is a logical continuation of Gorky's story "Childhood". This is a fairly well-known work that has received high reviews from critics and readers. It was quite successfully filmed and, despite the passing years, is still popular among modern readers. This allowed Gorky’s work “In People” to take a high place among.

Gorky's story "In People" summary

Gorky’s story “In People” is quite a large work, so its summary is best presented in chapters. At the same time, it is possible to reflect only the main episodes, which does not always allow you to create a full-fledged image of the events taking place. That is why it is better to read Gorky’s story “In People” in full on the pages of our website.

IN 14 In the chapter of Gorky’s book “In People” you will learn how Alyosha and Pashka Odintsov entertained the icon painters. So almost every evening Alyosha read Lermontov for them. In addition, they staged theatrical performances and made the artisans laugh. One day Kapendyukhin came drunk and, putting lead in his gloves, began beating everyone in the workshop. Only Sitanov managed to contrive and stun him with a stool. In general, in the workshop and outside it they talked a lot about God, but no one wanted to fix the rotten floorboard or grease the window, and when he and Pashka washed the dying Davidov, everyone laughed at them. After all, he will die soon anyway.

IN 15 In the chapter of Gorky’s work “In People,” you can read about how Alyosha was given an image of Alexei for his birthday. In general, everyone in the workshop loved him except the clerk. He constantly gave him the dirtiest work, and once he took him out and threw him face first into the snow so that Lesha could clean him. In addition, he constantly scattered money in the hope of catching Alyosha stealing. He reported the slightest offense to the owner, and when he found out that he and Sitanov were writing something down in a notebook, he began to pester him. The grandfather denied all of Alyosha’s complaints, and the grandmother told him to endure it. The main character was about to decide to flee to Persia, but he met his former owner Vasily and he invited him to come to him. Everyone took the news of Lesha’s departure badly, and the owner angrily said that she was going to kick him out anyway.

IN 16 In the chapter of M. Gorky’s story “In People” you can read about how Alyosha moved to Vasily. Just at this time, the shops that were rebuilt every year were flooded. Alyosha took the owner on a boat, and he got to hear a lot about his first love. Moreover, from how sadly it was told, Alyosha realized that these were the best days in the life of the narrator. Five young ladies and two students settled in Queen Margot's apartment. Lesha often visited them and borrowed new books. There were works here, and. Between reading, Alyosha fell in love with the young lady Ptitsina, with whom almost everyone was in love. Once I decided to ride her on a board, but she turned over, and the green mud of the river washed away all the beauty of the young lady. The owner was helped around the house by his stepfather, who ate a lot and was sick, so he worked little. The owner always accepted his practical advice, but others did not like him. Alyosha found a common language with him and often talked about the books he had read. So when he died he was very upset. Especially because he didn’t find the young lady at the funeral whom he saw at his bed.

IN 17 In the chapter of Gorky’s story “In People,” you can read about how Alyosha met builders at a fair. He had to look after them so that they did not carry building materials. These people were different, but they always tried to fool each other. Against this background, only the plasterer Gregory stood out, who did not like litter. Alyosha was ashamed to look after these people, but the carpenter Osip supported him. Since little money was given, the main character lived from hand to mouth. The workers fed him, for which he decided to read “The Carpenter's Artel” to them. Pisemsky’s work caught the attention of many and was discussed for a long time. Alyosha was only unpleasantly surprised by the fact that the thoughts of Osip and the cabman Peter from the work coincided.

IN 18 Chapter of Gorky's story "In People" in a brief summary you will learn how Osip became very important to Alyosha. He seemed to him smarter than all the people, and the main character spent a lot of time with him. Also standing out was Foma, who himself did not work very well, but knew how to make others work. Thomas first intended to become a monk, then he successfully married, but became a sex worker in a tavern. For this, his former comrades did not respect him, and then he was caught for burglary. Alyosha also developed a good relationship with the mason Alralyon, but he soon disappeared. They found him drunk on the Millionnaya Beggar Street. Alyosha went to visit him, for which he received Osip’s condemnation, but one day he found out that the bricklayer had beaten an old acquaintance, Natalya, who had drunk herself, and stopped going to see him. It was during this period that he met Odintsov, who spoke about the life of the workshop. Sitanov is drinking himself to death, Gogolev was eaten by wolves, and only Zhikharev is still with his horse. Alyosha realized how far he had moved away from the workshop and that there was no turning back.

IN 19 In the chapter of Gorky Maxim’s story “In People” you can read about how Alyosha began working in the owner’s house for the winter, because there was no work at the fair. At this time, the owner became quiet and thoughtful, and the main character tried to write poetry. Alyosha also became addicted to going to the tavern to listen to the singer Kleshchov. He was a lousy man, but no one could sing better than him. Here he met the octavist Mitropolsky, who drank a lot and said that when he was sober, he was a man of few words. One day they found a murdered man with him, and while Alyosha was running after the police, the octavist finished off the murdered man’s vodka. But he was soon arrested and sent to prison. At the same time, Alyosha brought his master to listen to the singer; he was so moved by the songs that he cried. In addition, he admitted that he fell in love with a woman who was planning to go to her husband in Siberia. Since he was a nobleman and was used to living well, she earned money in a “shameless” way. The owner admitted that if he met her again, he would throw everything to hell.

In the last 20 The chapter of Gorky’s work “In People” tells how Alyosha had already worked as a foreman for three years and watched how shopping malls were demolished in the fall and built in the spring. By this time he already felt like a man tired of life, and his work was stupid, like his whole life. However, when he saw a brothel janitor abusing a drunken girl, he saved her. But since then the relationship with the janitor has been bad. Once he even killed a cat in front of the main character, for which Alyosha rushed into a fight and almost killed him. Having also met Yakov, I immediately remembered Gypsy. Now Yakov is broke and lives on his son’s income. After this, the main character realized that if he did not leave, this life would swallow him. Therefore, I decided to go to study in Kazan.

Gorky's story "In People" on the Top books website

It is not for nothing that Maxim Gorky ranks high among our ratings, because many of his works are also presented on the pages of our website. So Gorky’s story “In People” is so popular to read that the work was included in the rating and took far from the last place there. At the same time, interest in the work is quite stable, which is characteristic only of truly significant books.

When a child is no longer a child, but is still far from coming of age, it was customary in Rus' to call him a youth. Thus, the period of adolescence began at the age of ten or eleven. However, Maxim Gorky called his story, dedicated to the biography of the teenager Alyosha Peshkov, who was left an orphan by the age of eleven, quite differently - "In people". This name says a lot: to be "in people" meant living with complete strangers, sometimes earning a living through very hard work.

Indeed, after Alyosha Peshkov’s mother died, and even earlier, his father, the teenager’s grandfather, Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, died of cholera, said that he was not going to feed his grandson and sent him to a shoe store "boy". Alyosha’s duties included meeting customers, but he had to work more at home: he swept the floor, washed dishes, and set up the samovar. He had to get up early in the morning with the cook and go to bed very late. Melancholy overwhelmed the boy when he went to bed in the evening. The situation was aggravated by cousin Sasha, who felt superior in age. He pushed Alyosha around, threatened him with witchcraft - in the end the boy was ready to run away, but due to an accident (he spilled hot soup on his hands) he ended up in the hospital, and then with his grandmother.

With the onset of cold weather, Alexey had to go again "to the people", because he could no longer make a living by catching birds, as in the summer. But wherever he found himself - in a shoe store, in a drawing workshop - only heavy, "black" work, but no opportunity to study was provided.

But there were still those who left a mark on the boy’s soul. Once upon a time, Good Deed first pushed him towards a book; later Alyosha took books from educated women, one of whom most shocked the hero’s imagination. She was a beautiful and proud woman, surrounded by the attention of men, but clearly suffering from inner loneliness. Alyosha called her Queen Margot. It was she who instilled in him a taste for good reading, gave him the opportunity to read Russian classics, to fall in love with the poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Odoevsky: she believed that you need to read Russian books in order to know Russian life. Alyosha experienced his first real love for Queen Margot.

However, he had to continue his difficult path "in people". Fate even brought him to an icon-painting workshop, where he encountered injustice: he saw how old people were robbed, buying ancient books and icons for next to nothing. In the evenings, Alyosha read aloud to the craftsmen who had gathered to relax after work. But getting books was not an easy task - sometimes you had to beg for them as alms. At the same time, the teenager more than once heard from people the expression "banned books", the meaning of which I could not yet understand.

Having accidentally met his former owner, Alyosha agreed to become "foreman"- supervisor of the workers who restored the shopping arcades at the fair after the flood. It was not easy for him, a teenager, because the workers openly laughed at his youth and did not really listen. At the age of 15, Alyosha thought that he was already an old man, and everyone around him was strangers. Just recently he was planning to leave for Astrakhan, and from there flee to Persia, but he did not do this, and time was lost.

Wandering around the city, the matured Alexey saw a lot of abomination in human life, realizing that in a few more years he himself would become like this if he did not break out of this provincial life. "swamps". Fortunately for him, Nikolai Evreinov, a high school student living nearby, persuaded Alyosha to go to Kazan to prepare for entering the university. Thus ends this important era of growing up for every person.

Drawing a terrible life, "lead abominations" life of the urban lower classes, Gorky shows how the preaching of patience, widespread at that time, was overcome in the minds of a teenager, how the will of him and his peers was tempered and the desire to resist evil and violence became stronger. The writer reproduces with psychological accuracy the desire of a boy, and then a young man, to "beautiful, cheerful, honest" life.

Certainly, autobiography The story is obvious: Gorky wrote about his fate. But he sincerely considered his biography to be typical of representatives of the lower classes. However, the writer trusts his hero with contact with the era, although the burden of historical responsibility for everything that the reader sees in his fate falls on the hero’s shoulders. Thus, Maxim Gorky was one of the first to show the conflict between man and era. In works written in Soviet times, but remaining outside the scope of official literature, such a conflict will become the main one, as in B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” or in A. Platonov’s story “Doubting Makar.”