Interesting Facts. Essay on the topic: The fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel Quiet Don, Sholokhov The predetermination of the tragic fate of Grigory Melikhov

The purpose of the lesson: to show the inevitability of the tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov, the connection of this tragedy with the fate of society.

Methodological techniques: checking homework - adjusting the plan drawn up by the students, conversation according to the plan.

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Methodological development of a lesson on the topic “The fate of Grigory Melekhov as a path to finding the truth.” Grade 11

The purpose of the lesson: to show the inevitability of the tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov, the connection of this tragedy with the fate of society.

Methodological techniques: checking homework - adjusting the plan drawn up by the students, conversation according to the plan.

During the classes

Teacher's word.

Sholokhov’s heroes are simple, but extraordinary people, and Grigory is not only brave to the point of despair, honest and conscientious, but also truly talented, and not only the hero’s “career” proves this (a cornet from ordinary Cossacks at the head of a division is evidence of considerable abilities, although such cases were not uncommon among the Reds during the Civil War). This is confirmed by his collapse in life, since Gregory is too deep and complex for the unambiguous choice required by time!

This image attracts the attention of readers with its features of nationality, originality, and sensitivity to the new. But there is also something spontaneous in him, which is inherited from the environment.

Checking homework

Approximate plot plan for “The Fate of Grigory Melekhov”:

Book one

1. Predetermination of tragic fate (origin).

2. Life in my father's house. Dependence on him (“like dad”).

3. The beginning of love for Aksinya (thunderstorm on the river)

4. Skirmish with Stepan.

5 Matchmaking and marriage. ...

6. Leaving home with Aksinya to become farm laborers for the Listnitskys.

7. Conscription into the army.

8. Murder of an Austrian. Losing a foothold.

9. Wound. News of death received by relatives.

10. Hospital in Moscow. Conversations with Garanzha.

11. Break with Aksinya and return home.

Book two, parts 3-4

12. Etching the truth of Garanji. Going to the front as a “good Cossack.”

13.1915 Rescue of Stepan Astakhov.

14. Hardening of the heart. Chubaty's influence.

15. Premonition of trouble, injury.

16. Gregory and his children, desire for the end of the war.

17. On the side of the Bolsheviks. The influence of Izvarin and Podtelkov.

18. Reminder about Aksinya.

19. Wound. Massacre of prisoners.

20. Infirmary. “Who should I lean against?”

21. Family. "I am for Soviet power."

22. Unsuccessful elections to detachment atamans.

23. Last meeting with Podtelkov.

Book three, part 6

24. Conversation with Peter.

25. Anger towards the Bolsheviks.

26. Quarrel with father over stolen goods.

27. Unauthorized departure home.

28. The Melekhovs have Reds.

29. Dispute with Ivan Alekseevich about “male power.”

30. Drunkenness, thoughts of death.

31. Gregory kills the sailors

32. Conversation with grandfather Grishaka and Natalya.

33. Meeting with Aksinya.

Book four, Part 7:

34. Gregory in the family. Children, Natalya.

35. Gregory's dream.

36. Kudinov about Gregory’s ignorance.

37. Quarrel with Fitzkhalaurov.

38. Family breakdown.

39. The division is disbanded, Gregory is promoted to centurion.

40. Death of wife.

41. Typhoid and recovery.

42. Attempt to board a ship in Novorossiysk.

Part 8:

43. Grigory at Budyonny.

44. Demobilization, conversation with. Mikhail.

45. Leaving the farm.

46. ​​In Owl's gang, on the island.

47. Leaving the gang.

48. Death of Aksinya.

49. In the forest.

50. Returning home.

Conversation.

The image of Grigory Melekhov is central in M. Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don”. It is impossible to immediately say about him whether he is a positive or negative hero. For too long he wandered in search of the truth, his path. Grigory Melekhov appears in the novel primarily as a truth-seeker.

At the beginning of the novel, Grigory Melekhov is an ordinary farm boy with the usual range of household chores, activities, and entertainment. He lives thoughtlessly, like grass in the steppe, following traditional principles. Even love for Aksinya, which has captured his passionate nature, cannot change anything. He allows his father to marry him, and, as usual, prepares for military service. Everything in his life happens involuntarily, as if without his participation, just as he involuntarily dissects a tiny defenseless duckling while mowing - and shudders at what he has done.

Grigory Melekhov did not come into this world for bloodshed. But harsh life put a saber into his hardworking hands. Gregory experienced the first shed of human blood as a tragedy. The image of the Austrian he killed later appears to him in a dream, causing mental pain. The experience of war completely turns his life upside down, makes him think, look into himself, listen, and take a closer look at people. Conscious life begins.

The Bolshevik Garanzha, who met Gregory in the hospital, seemed to reveal to him the truth and the prospect of change for the better. “Autonomist” Efim Izvarin and Bolshevik Fyodor Podtelkov played a significant role in shaping the beliefs of Grigory Melekhov. The tragically deceased Fyodor Podtelkov pushed Melekhov away, shedding the blood of unarmed prisoners who believed the promises of the Bolshevik who captured them. The senselessness of this murder and the callousness of the “dictator” stunned the hero. He is also a warrior, he killed a lot, but here not only the laws of humanity are violated, but also the laws of war.

“Honest to the core,” Grigory Melekhov cannot help but see the deception. The Bolsheviks promised that there would be no rich and poor. However, a year has already passed since the “Reds” were in power, and the promised equality is not there: “the platoon leader is in chrome boots, and the Vanyok is in windings.” Grigory is very observant, he tends to think about his observations, and the conclusions from his thoughts are disappointing: “If the gentleman is bad, then the boorish gentleman is a hundred times worse.”

The civil war throws Grigory either into the Budennovsky detachment or into the white formations, but this is no longer thoughtless submission to the way of life or a combination of circumstances, but a conscious search for the truth, the path. He sees his home and peaceful work as the main values ​​of life. In war, shedding blood, he dreams of how he will prepare for sowing, and these thoughts make his soul warm.

The Soviet government does not allow the former ataman of the hundred to live peacefully and threatens him with prison or execution. The surplus appropriation system instills in the minds of many Cossacks the desire to “re-conquer the war”, to replace the workers’ government with their own, the Cossack’s. Gangs are forming on the Don. Grigory Melekhov, hiding from persecution by the Soviet regime, ends up in one of them, Fomin’s gang. But bandits have no future. For most Cossacks it is clear: they need to sow, not fight.

The main character of the novel is also drawn to peaceful labor. The last test, the last tragic loss for him is the death of his beloved woman - Aksinya, who received a bullet on the way, as it seems to them, to a free and happy life. Everything died. Gregory's soul is scorched. There remains only the last, but very important thread connecting the hero with life - this is his home. A house, a land waiting for its owner, and a little son - his future, his mark on the earth.

The depth of the contradictions through which the hero went through is revealed with amazing psychological authenticity and historical validity. The versatility and complexity of a person’s inner world is always the focus of M. Sholokhov’s attention. Individual destinies and a broad generalization of the paths and crossroads of the Don Cossacks allow us to see how complex and contradictory life is, how difficult it is to choose the true path.

What is the meaning of Sholokhov when he speaks of Gregory as a “good Cossack”? Why was Grigory Melekhov chosen as the main character?

(Grigory Melekhov is an extraordinary person, a bright individuality. He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions (especially in relation to Natalya and Aksinya (see episodes: last meeting with Natalya - part 7, chapter 7; Natalya’s death - part 7, chapter 16 -18;death of Aksinya). He has a responsive heart, a developed sense of pity and compassion (duckling in the hayfield, Franya, the execution of Ivan Alekseevich).

Grigory is a person capable of action (leaving Aksinya for Yagodnoye, breaking up with Podtelkov, clashing with Fitzkhalaurov - part 7, chapter 10; decision to return to the farm).

In which episodes is Gregory’s bright, extraordinary personality most fully revealed? The role of internal monologues. Does a person depend on circumstances or make his own destiny?

(He never lied to himself, despite doubts and tossing (see internal monologues - part 6, chapter 21). This is the only character whose thoughts are revealed by the author. War corrupts people and provokes them to commit acts that a person would never normally do did not commit. Gregory had a core that did not allow him to commit meanness even once. A deep attachment to home, to the land is a strong spiritual movement: “My hands need to work, not fight.”

The hero is constantly in a situation of choice (“I’m looking for a way out myself”). Turning point: dispute and quarrel with Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov, Shtokman. The uncompromising nature of a man who never knew the middle. Tragedyas if transported into the depths of consciousness: “He painfully tried to understand the confusion of thoughts.” This is not political vacillation, but a search for truth. Gregory yearns for the truth, “under the wing of which everyone could warm themselves.” And from his point of view, neither the whites nor the reds have such truth: “There is no truth in life. It is clear that whoever defeats whom will devour him. And I was looking for the bad truth. I was sick at heart, I was swaying back and forth.” These searches turned out to be, as he believes, “in vain and empty.” And this is also his tragedy. A person is placed in inevitable, spontaneous circumstances and already in these circumstances he makes a choice, his destiny.) “What a writer needs most,” said Sholokhov, “he himself needs, is to convey the movement of a person’s soul. I wanted to talk about this charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov...”

Do you think the author of “Quiet Flows the Flow” manages to “convey the movement of the human soul” using the example of the fate of Grigory Melekhov? If so, what do you think is the main direction of this movement? What is its general character? Does the novel's protagonist have what you might call charm? If so, what is its charm? The main problematic of "Quiet Don" is revealed not in the character of one, even the main character, which is Grigory Melekhov, but in the comparison and contrast of many, many characters, in the entire figurative system, in the style and language of the work. But the image of Grigory Melekhov as a typical personality, as it were, concentrates the main historical and ideological conflict of the work and thereby unites all the details of a huge picture of the complex and contradictory life of many characters who are bearers of a certain attitude towards the revolution and the people in a given historical era.

How would you define the main issues of “Quiet Don”? What, in your opinion, allows us to characterize Grigory Melekhov as a typical personality? Can you agree that it is in it that “the main historical and ideological conflict of the work” is concentrated? Literary critic A.I. Khvatov states: “Grigory contained a huge reserve of moral forces necessary for the creative achievements of the emerging new life. No matter what complications and troubles befell him and no matter how painfully what he did under the influence of a wrong decision fell on his soul, Gregory never looked for motives that weakened his personal guilt and responsibility to life and people.”

What do you think gives a scientist the right to claim that “a huge reserve of moral forces was hidden in Gregory”? What actions do you think support this statement? What about against him? What “wrong decisions” does Sholokhov’s hero make? In your opinion, is it generally acceptable to talk about the “wrong decisions” of a literary hero? Think about this topic. Do you agree that “Gregory never looked for motives that weakened his personal guilt and responsibility to life and people”? Give examples from the text. “In the plot of the combination of motives, the inescapability of love that Aksinya and Natalya give him, the immensity of Ilyinichna’s maternal suffering, the devoted comradely loyalty of fellow soldiers and peers are artistically effective in revealing the image of Gregory,” especially Prokhor Zykov. Even those with whom his interests intersected dramatically, but to whom his soul was revealed... could not help but feel the power of his charm and generosity.”(A.I. Khvatov).

Do you agree that a special role in revealing the image of Grigory Melekhov is played by the love of Aksinya and Natalya, the suffering of his mother, as well as the comradely loyalty of fellow soldiers and peers? If so, how does this manifest itself in each of these cases?

With which of the heroes did Grigory Melekhov’s interests “dramatically intersect”? Can you agree that even these heroes reveal the soul of Grigory Melekhov, and they, in turn, were able to “feel the power of his charm and generosity”? Give examples from the text.

The critic V. Kirpotin (1941) reproached Sholokhov's heroes for primitivism, rudeness, and “mental underdevelopment”: “Even the best of them, Grigory, is slow-witted. A thought is an unbearable burden for him.”

Are there any among the heroes of “Quiet Don” who seemed to you rude and primitive, “mentally undeveloped” people? If so, what role do they serve in the novel?Do you agree that Sholokhov’s Grigory Melekhov is a “slow-witted” person, for whom thought is an “unbearable burden”? If yes, give specific examples of the hero’s “slow-mindedness,” his inability, and unwillingness to think. The critic N. Zhdanov noted (1940): “Gregory could have been with the people in their struggle... but he did not stand with the people. And this is his tragedy.”

In your opinion, is it fair to say that Gregory “did not stand with the people”? Are the people only those who are for the Reds?What do you think is the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov? (This question can be left as homework for a detailed written answer.)

Homework.

How do the events that gripped the country compare with the events in Grigory Melekhov’s personal life?

Introduction

The fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov becomes the focus of the reader’s attention. This hero, who by the will of fate found himself in the midst of difficult historical events, has been forced to search for his own path in life for many years.

Description of Grigory Melekhov

From the very first pages of the novel, Sholokhov introduces us to the unusual fate of grandfather Grigory, explaining why the Melekhovs are outwardly different from the rest of the inhabitants of the farm. Gregory, like his father, had “a drooping kite nose, in slightly slanting slits there were bluish almonds of hot eyes, sharp slabs of cheekbones.” Remembering the origin of Pantelei Prokofievich, everyone in the farmstead called the Melekhovs “Turks.”
Life changes Gregory's inner world. His appearance also changes. From a carefree, cheerful guy, he turns into a stern warrior whose heart has hardened. Gregory “knew that he would no longer laugh as before; knew that his eyes were sunken and his cheekbones were sticking out sharply,” and in his gaze “a light of senseless cruelty began to shine through more and more often.”

At the end of the novel, a completely different Gregory appears before us. This is a mature man, tired of life, “with tired squinting eyes, with the reddish tips of a black mustache, with premature gray hair at the temples and hard wrinkles on the forehead.”

Characteristics of Gregory

At the beginning of the work, Grigory Melekhov is a young Cossack living according to the laws of his ancestors. The main thing for him is farming and family. He enthusiastically helps his father with mowing and fishing. Unable to contradict his parents when they marry him to the unloved Natalya Korshunova.

But, for all that, Gregory is a passionate, addicted person. Contrary to his father's prohibitions, he continues to go to night games. He meets Aksinya Astakhova, the neighbor’s wife, and then leaves his home with her.

Gregory, like most Cossacks, is characterized by courage, sometimes reaching the point of recklessness. He behaves heroically at the front, participating in the most dangerous forays. At the same time, the hero is not alien to humanity. He is worried about a gosling he accidentally killed while mowing. He suffers for a long time because of the murdered unarmed Austrian. “By obeying his heart,” Grigory saves his sworn enemy Stepan from death. He goes against an entire platoon of Cossacks, defending Franya.

In Gregory, passion and obedience, madness and gentleness, kindness and hatred coexist at the same time.

The fate of Grigory Melekhov and his path of quest

The fate of Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don” is tragic. He is constantly forced to look for a “way out,” the right road. It's not easy for him in the war. His personal life is also complicated.

Like the beloved heroes of L.N. Tolstoy, Grigory goes through a difficult path of life’s quest. At the beginning, everything seemed clear to him. Like other Cossacks, he is called up for war. For him there is no doubt that he must defend the Fatherland. But, getting to the front, the hero understands that his whole nature is opposed to murder.

Grigory moves from white to red, but even here he will be disappointed. Seeing how Podtyolkov deals with captured young officers, he loses faith in this power and the next year he again finds himself in the White Army.

Tossing between the whites and the reds, the hero himself becomes embittered. He loots and kills. He tries to forget himself in drunkenness and fornication. In the end, fleeing the persecution of the new government, he finds himself among the bandits. Then he becomes a deserter.

Grigory is exhausted from tossing and turning. He wants to live on his land, raise bread and children. Although life hardens the hero and gives his features something “wolfish,” in essence, he is not a killer. Having lost everything and not having found his way, Grigory returns to his native farm, realizing that, most likely, death awaits him here. But a son and a home are the only things that keep the hero alive.

Gregory's relationship with Aksinya and Natalya

Fate sends the hero two passionately loving women. But Gregory’s relationship with them is not easy. While still single, Grigory falls in love with Aksinya, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, his neighbor. Over time, the woman reciprocates his feelings, and their relationship develops into unbridled passion. “So unusual and obvious was their crazy connection, they burned so frantically with one shameless flame, people without conscience and without hiding, losing weight and blackening their faces in front of their neighbors, that now for some reason people were ashamed to look at them when they met.”

Despite this, he cannot resist his father’s will and marries Natalya Korshunova, promising himself to forget Aksinya and settle down. But Gregory is unable to keep his vow to himself. Although Natalya is beautiful and selflessly loves her husband, he gets back together with Aksinya and leaves his wife and parental home.

After Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his wife again. She accepts him and forgives past grievances. But he was not destined for a calm family life. The image of Aksinya haunts him. Fate brings them together again. Unable to bear the shame and betrayal, Natalya has an abortion and dies. Grigory blames himself for the death of his wife and experiences this loss cruelly.

Now, it would seem, nothing can stop him from finding happiness with the woman he loves. But circumstances force him to leave his place and, together with Aksinya, set off on the road again, the last for his beloved.

With the death of Aksinya, Gregory's life loses all meaning. The hero no longer has even a ghostly hope for happiness. “And Gregory, dying of horror, realized that it was all over, that the worst thing that could happen in his life had already happened.”

Conclusion

In conclusion of my essay on the topic “The Fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don””, I want to fully agree with critics who believe that in “Quiet Don” the fate of Grigory Melekhov is the most difficult and one of the most tragic. Using the example of Grigory Sholokhov, he showed how the whirlpool of political events breaks human destiny. And the one who sees his destiny in peaceful work suddenly becomes a cruel killer with a devastated soul.

Work test

Among books about revolutionary events and the civil war, “Quiet Don” stands out for its original uniqueness. What captivates readers with this book? I think, first of all, the significance and scale of the events described in it, the depth and realism of the characters’ characters, which allows us to think about the moral and philosophical questions raised in the novel. The writer unfolded before us, the readers, a picture of the life of the Cossack Don, with its characteristics, traditions, and its own imaginative way of life, which unfolds against the backdrop of historical life. In the intersection of individual human destinies with social upheavals there is genuine truth, a look at the revolution and civil war not from one side, as was the case in most books of that time, but from both. Narrating about the merciless clash of classes in the bloody civil war, the author with unique force expressed thoughts and feelings of the entire people, universally human. He did not try to hide or muffle the bitterness of the tragedy born of the revolution. Therefore, first of all, contemporary readers were drawn to “The Quiet Don,” regardless of their “class” affiliation, since everyone found in it something of their own, personally experienced, felt, and common to all, global, philosophical.

With great national grief, the war with Germany invaded the life of the Cossacks of the Tatar farm. In the spirit of old beliefs, the writer paints a gloomy landscape that portends trouble: “At night, clouds thickened behind the Don, thunderclaps burst dryly and loudly, but the rain did not fall on the ground, bursting with feverish heat, lightning burned in vain. At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible screams hung over the farmstead, and an owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery... “It will be bad,” the old men prophesied. “The war will come.” And now the established peaceful way of life is abruptly disrupted, events are developing more and more alarmingly and rapidly. In their menacing whirlpool, people swirl like chips in a flood, and the peaceful, quiet Don is shrouded in gunpowder smoke and the fumes of fires. History inevitably “walks” through the pages of “Quiet Don”; the fates of dozens of characters who find themselves at the crossroads of the war are drawn into the epic action. Thunderstorms rumble, warring parties collide in bloody battles, and against this background the tragedy of the mental trials of Grigory Melekhov plays out, who finds himself a hostage of the war: he is always at the center of terrible events. It is impossible to fully understand the humanistic content of the book without understanding the complexity of the protagonist’s path and the generalizing artistic power of this image.

Gregory did not come into this world for bloodshed. From a young age he was kind, responsive to the misfortune of others, and in love with all living things in nature. Once, in a hayfield, he accidentally killed a wild duckling and with a sudden feeling of acute pity looked at the dead lump lying in his palm. The writer makes us remember Gregory in harmonious unity with the sensitive world of nature. But harsh life put a saber into his hardworking hands. Gregory experiences the first human blood he shed as a tragedy. In the attack he killed two Austrian soldiers, one of which could have been avoided. The realization of this fell with a terrible weight on the hero’s soul. The mournful appearance of the murdered man later appeared to him in his dreams, causing “visceral pain.” Describing the faces of the young Cossacks who came to the front, the writer found an expressive comparison: they resembled “stems of mown grass, withering and changing its appearance.” Melekhov also became such a beveled, withering stem - the need to kill deprived his soul of moral support in life.

The first meetings with the Bolsheviks (Garanzha, Podtelkov) set Gregory up to accept the ideas of class hatred: they seem fair to him. However, with a sensitive mind, he also discerns in the actions of the Bolsheviks something that distorts the idea of ​​​​people's liberation. Finding himself the chairman of the Don Revolutionary Committee, Podtelkov became arrogant, cruel, and power went to his head like hops. By his order and with his personal participation, the prisoners of Chernetsov’s detachment were beaten without justice. This unjustified inhumanity pushed Melekhov away from the Bolsheviks, since it contradicted his ideas about conscience and honor. Grigory had to observe the cruelty of both whites and reds many times, so the slogans of the class struggle began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, a hostile and incomprehensible world... I was drawn to the Bolsheviks - I walked, led others with me, and then I began to think, my heart grew cold." To Kotlyarov, who enthusiastically proves that the new government has given the poor Cossacks rights and equality, Grigory objects: “This government, apart from ruin, gives nothing to the Cossacks! Where did this alignment go? Take the Red Army. The platoon leader is in chrome boots, and Vanek is in windings. I saw the commissar covered in leather, both his pants and his jacket, and the other one didn’t have enough leather for his boots. Even if the year of their power has passed, and they will take root, where will equality go?” Melekhov’s soul suffers “because he stood on the brink in the struggle of two principles, denying both of them.” Judging by his thoughts and actions, he was inclined to look for peaceful ways to resolve life’s contradictions. Justifying the “Upper Don Vendee”, which arose as a result of the Bolshevik policy of “decossackization of the Don,” he, nevertheless, did not want to respond with cruelty to cruelty: he ordered the release of the captured Cossack Khoper, released those arrested from prison, and rushed to save the communists Kotlyarov and Koshevoy.

Civil strife exhausted Melekhov, but the human feelings in him did not fade away. So he, smiling, listened for a long time to the cheerful chirping of the children. “How these kids’ hair smells! The sun, grass, a warm pillow and something else infinitely familiar. And they themselves - this flesh of his flesh - are like tiny steppe birds... Gregory’s eyes were obscured by a foggy haze of tears...” This is universal - the most precious thing in “Quiet Don”, his living soul. The more Melekhov was drawn into the whirlpool of the civil war, the more desirable his dream of peaceful labor became: “...Walking along the soft arable furrow as a plowman, whistling at the bulls, listening to the blue trumpet call of a crane, affectionately removing the deposited silver of cobwebs from his cheeks and continuously drinking the wine smell of autumn, the earth raised by the plow, and in return - bread cut by the blades of the roads.” After seven years of war, after another injury while serving in the Red Army, which gave him the moral right to realize his peaceful dream, Grigory made plans for the future: “... He will take off his overcoat and boots at home, put on spacious chiriki... It would be nice to take the chapigi with his hands and follow the wet furrow behind the plow, greedily taking in with your nostrils the damp and insipid smell of loosened earth...” Having escaped from Fomin’s gang and getting ready for Kuban, he repeated his cherished words to Aksinya: “I don’t disdain any work. My hands need to work, not fight. My whole soul ached..."

From grief, loss, wounds, and wandering in search of social justice, Melekhov grew old early and lost his former prowess. However, he did not lose “the humanity in man”; his feelings and experiences - always sincere - did not dull, but, perhaps, only intensified. Manifestations of his responsiveness and sympathy for people are especially expressed in the final parts of the work. The hero is shocked by the sight of the dead: “baring his head, trying not to breathe, carefully,” he circles around the dead old man, stretched out on the scattered golden wheat. Driving through places where the chariot of War was rolling, he sadly stops in front of the corpse of a tortured woman, straightens her clothes, and invites Prokhor to bury her. He buried the innocently murdered, kind and hardworking grandfather Sashka under the same poplar tree where the latter had buried him and Aksinya’s daughter. “...Gregory lay down on the grass not far from this small, dear cemetery and looked for a long time at the blue sky stretched majestically above him. Somewhere out there, in the highest boundless expanses, the winds were blowing, cold clouds illuminated by the sun were floating, and on the earth, which had just received the cheerful horseman and drunkard Grandfather Sashka, life was still boiling furiously..." This picture, full of sadness and deep philosophical content, the mood echoes an episode from L. N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” when the wounded Andrei Bolkonsky sees above him the bottomless, calm sky of Austerlitz.

In the stunning scene of Aksinya’s funeral, we see a grief-stricken man who has drunk to the brim a full cup of suffering, a man who has aged before his time, and we understand: only a great, albeit wounded, heart could feel the grief of loss with such profound force. Grigory Melekhov showed extraordinary courage in his search for the truth. But for him she is not just an idea, some distant symbol of a better human existence. He is looking for its embodiment in life. Coming into contact with many small private truths, and ready to accept each one, he discovers their inconsistency when confronted with life. The internal conflict is resolved for Gregory by renouncing war and weapons. Heading to his native farm, he threw it away and “carefully wiped his hands on the floor of his overcoat.” What will happen to the man, Grigory Melekhov, who did not accept this warring world, this “bewildered existence”? What will happen to him if he, like a female little bustard, who is unable to frighten off the volleys of guns, having traveled all the roads of war, stubbornly strives for peace, for life, for work on earth? The author does not answer these questions. Melekhov was not trusted when he could still count on it. The truthful artist M. Sholokhov could not change anything in his fate and did not succumb to the temptation to embellish the ending. Melekhov's tragedy, reinforced in the novel by the tragedy of almost all the people close and dear to him, reflects the drama of an entire region that has undergone a violent “class remake.” With his novel, M. Sholokhov also addresses our time, teaching us to look for moral and aesthetic values ​​not on the paths of class intolerance and war, but on the paths of peace and humanism, brotherhood and mercy.