A very brief retelling of In Bad Society chapter by chapter. Analysis "in a bad society" Korolenko In a bad society reduction

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The main events of the work unfold in the small town of Knyazhye-Veno in the South-Western region. The main character is Vasya, who lives in the family of a judge. It’s quite difficult to call a child’s childhood happy. He grew up lonely and unwanted. After the death of his mother, the father stopped paying attention to his son. Vasya was left to his own devices and wandered the streets all day long. But my father’s feelings towards his daughter Sonya, Vasya’s younger sister, were warm, because she very much resembled his late wife.

In the city where I lived main character, there was an ancient castle. True, its owners left long ago, and it was on the verge of destruction. The inhabitants of this place were urban beggars who had no other shelter. However, disagreements began to emerge among residents. Janusz, one of the count's former servants, was given the right to decide who could stay in the castle and who could not. Few received the right to housing, and the rest had to hide under the old crypt of an abandoned chapel. Old Janusz told Vasya that now only “decent society” remained in the castle and now he could go there. But the boy was interested in those who were hiding in the dungeon, the so-called “bad society.”

Many representatives of “bad society” were known in the city. This is a half-mad, elderly “professor” who was always muttering something; a retired official, Lavrovsky, who liked to drink and told improbable stories about his life. Here is Turkevich, who calls himself a general. The leader of this entire community of “dark personalities” was Tyburtsy Drab. No one knew where he came from. He was known for his extraordinary intelligence and often entertained the public at fairs with interesting stories.

One day Vasya and his friends go to the old chapel. Having made their way inside, the guys saw someone there and ran away out of fear, leaving the boy alone. As it turned out later, there were Tyburtsiy’s children: son Valek and his younger sister Marusya. Vasya became friends with the children and began to visit them often. But the children could only meet when their father was not there. Vasya decided not to tell anyone about his new acquaintances.

Once Valek and Marusya told how Father Tyburtsy loved them. At that moment Vasya felt offended that there was no such thing in his family. But unexpectedly for him, the children told something completely different about Mr. Judge, that he was a fair and honest person.

One day Vasya finds out that his friend Valek is stealing food for his sister. This discovery shocked the boy, but he did not blame him. Valek also showed Vasya the dungeon where the other members of the “bad society” live. When there are no adults, children get together and play hide and seek there. One day Tyburtsy found them, but he allowed the guys to continue playing, although he made Vasya promise that he would not tell anyone about this place.

When autumn came, Marusya fell ill. Vasya wanted to entertain the sick girl so much that he decided to ask his sister for a doll for a while. Sonya agreed, and Marusya was delighted with the new toy and began to get better.

At this time, Janusz began to complain to the judge about the residents of the “bad society” and said that his son communicated with them. The nanny also noticed that Sonechka’s doll was missing. Vasya was punished and not allowed to leave the house, but after a couple of days he runs away.

Marusya's condition worsened. The inhabitants decide that the doll must be returned so that the girl does not notice. But when she saw the toy, the baby was very upset and started crying. Vasya then decides to leave her here for a while longer.

The boy is again not allowed out of the house, and the father is trying to find out where his daughter’s doll is. Then he admits that he took it, but says nothing more. At this moment Tyburtsy appears and a doll is visible in his hands. He talks about the friendship of his children with Vasya. The judge is amazed and feels guilty. He feels ashamed for behaving this way with his son. But Tyburtsy still tells terrible news: Marusya has died. Vasya says goodbye to the girl. Residents of the “bad society” disappear without a trace after a while, only a few remain.

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"IN bad society" is a story by a Russian writer Ukrainian origin Vladimir Korolenko, which first saw the light in 1885 in the tenth issue of the Mysl magazine. Later the work was included in the collection “Essays and Stories.” This work, small in volume but significant in its semantic load, can undoubtedly be considered one of the best in the creative heritage of the famous writer and human rights activist.

Plot

The story was written from the perspective of a six-year-old boy Vasya, the son of a judge in the city of Knyazhye-Veno. The child's mother died early, leaving him and his younger sister Sonya half orphans. After the loss, the father distanced himself from his son, concentrating all his love and affection on his little daughter. Such circumstances could not pass without a trace in Vasya’s soul: the boy is looking for understanding and warmth, and unexpectedly finds them in “bad society”, having made friends with the children of the tramp and thief Tyburtsy Drab, Valik and Marusya.

Fate brought the children together completely unexpectedly, but Vasya’s attachment to Valik and Marusa turned out to be so strong that it was not hindered by either the unexpected news that his new friends were tramps and thieves, or the acquaintance with their seemingly menacing father. Six-year-old Vasya does not miss the opportunity to see his friends, and his love for his sister Sonya, with whom the nanny does not allow him to play, transfers to little Marusya.

Another shock that worried the child was the news that little Marusya was seriously ill: some “gray stone” was taking away her strength. The reader understands what kind of gray stone it can be, and what a terrible disease often accompanies poverty, but for the mind of a six-year-old child, who perceives everything literally, the gray stone appears in the form of a cave where children live, so he tries to get them out into the fresh air as often as possible air. Of course, this doesn't help much. The girl is weakening before our eyes, and Vasya and Valik are trying to somehow bring a smile to her pale face.

The culmination of the story is the story of the doll that Vasya asked from his sister Sonya to please Marusya. A beautiful doll, a gift from a deceased mother, is not able to cure the baby, but it brings her short-term joy.

They notice a missing doll in the house, the father does not let Vasya leave the house, demanding an explanation, but the boy does not break his word to Valik and Tyburtsy and does not tell anything about the tramps. At the moment of the most intense conversation, Tyburtsy appears in the judge’s house with a doll in his hands and the news that Marusya has died. This tragic news softens Father Vasya, and shows him from a completely different side: as a sensitive and sympathetic person. He lets his son go to marry Marusya, and the nature of their communication changes after this story.

Even as the eldest, Vasya does not forget either about his little friend, who lived only four years, or about Valik, who, after the death of Marusya, suddenly disappeared along with Tyburtsy. She and her sister Sonya regularly visit the grave of a little blond girl who loved to sort through flowers.

Characteristics

Speaking about the heroes who appear before us on the pages of the story, first of all we should, of course, dwell on the image of the narrator, because all events are presented through the prism of his perception. Vasya is a six-year-old child, on whose shoulders has fallen a burden too heavy for his age: the death of his mother.

Those few warm memories of the boy’s dearest person make it clear that the boy loved his mother very much, and suffered the loss hard. Another challenge for him was the alienation of his father and the inability to play with his sister. The child gets lost, meets tramps, but even in this society he remains himself: every time he tries to bring Valik and Marusya something tasty, he perceives Marusya as his own sister, and Valik as his brother. This very young boy is not devoid of perseverance and honor: he does not break under the pressure of his father and does not break his word. Another positive feature that complements the artistic portrait of our hero is that he did not take the doll from Sonya secretly, did not steal it, did not take it away by force: Vasya told his sister about poor sick Marusa, and Sonya herself allowed him to take the doll.

Valik and Marusya appear before us in the story as real children of the dungeon (by the way, V. Korolenko himself did not like the shortened version of his story of the same name).

These children did not deserve the fate that fate had prepared for them, and they perceive everything with adult seriousness, and, at the same time, childish simplicity. What in Vasya’s understanding is designated as “bad” (the same as theft), for Valik it is an ordinary everyday thing that he is forced to do so that his sister does not go hungry.

The example of children shows us that for true sincere friendship, origin, financial status and other external factors do not matter. It's important to remain human.

The opposites in the story are the fathers of the children.

Tyburtsy- a beggar thief whose origins evoke legends. A person who combines education and a peasant, non-aristocratic appearance. Despite this, he loves Valik and Marusya very much and allows Vasya to come to his children.

Vasya's father- a respectable man in the city, famous not only for his occupation, but also for his justice. At the same time, he closes himself off from his son, and often the thought flashes in Vasya’s head that his father doesn’t love him at all. The relationship between father and son changes after Marusya's death.

It is also worth noting that the prototype of Vasya’s father in the story was Vladimir Korolenko’s father: Galaktion Afanasyevich Korolenko was a reserved and stern man, but at the same time incorruptible and fair. This is exactly how the hero of the story “In Bad Society” appears.

Separate place in the story, the vagabonds, led by Tyburtsy, are condemned.

Professor, Lavrovsky, Turkevich - these characters are not the main ones, but they perform an important role for the artistic design of the story: they present a picture of the vagabond society into which Vasya ends up. By the way, these characters evoke pity: the portrait of each of them shows that every person, broken by a life situation, can slide into vagrancy and theft. These characters do not evoke negative feelings: the author wants the reader to sympathize with them.

Two places are vividly described in the story: the city of Knyazhye-Veno, the prototype of which was Rivne, and the old castle, which became a haven for the poor. The prototype of the castle was the palace of the Lubomirsky princes in the city of Rivne, which during the time of Korolenko actually served as a haven for beggars and vagabonds. The city and its inhabitants appear in the story as a gray and boring picture. The main architectural decoration of the city is the prison - and this small detail already gives a clear description of the place: there is nothing remarkable in the city.

Conclusion

“In Bad Society” is a short story that presents us with just a few episodes from the lives of the heroes, just one tragedy of a life cut short, but it is so vivid and vital that it touches the invisible strings of the soul of every reader. Without a doubt, this story by Vladimir Korolenko is worth reading and experiencing.

From my friend's childhood memories

I. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. My father, completely absorbed in his grief, seemed to completely forget about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister and took care of her in his own way, because she had her mother’s features. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one constrained my freedom. The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Knyazh-gorodok. It belonged to one seedy but proud Polish family and represented all the typical features of any of the small towns of the South-Western region, where, among the quietly flowing life of hard work and petty fussy Jewish gesheft, the pitiful remains of the proud lordly greatness live out their sad days. If you approach the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself lies below sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by a traditional “outpost”. A sleepy disabled person, a figure browned in the sun, the personification of a serene slumber, lazily raises the barrier, and - you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. Gray fences, vacant lots with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with dim-sighted huts sunk into the ground. Further on, a wide area gapes in different places the dark gates of Jewish “visiting houses”, government institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-like lines. A wooden bridge spanning a narrow river groans, trembles under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Beyond the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, benches, little shops, tables of Jewish money changers sitting under umbrellas on the sidewalks, and with awnings of kalachniki. The stench, the dirt, the heaps of kids crawling in the street dust. But another minute and you’re already outside the city. The birch trees whisper quietly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings with a sad, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph. The river over which the aforementioned bridge was thrown flowed from a pond and flowed into another. Thus, the town was fenced from the north and south by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds became shallower year by year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds waved like the sea in the huge swamps. There is an island in the middle of one of the ponds. On the island there is an old, dilapidated castle. I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. They said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “The old castle stands on human bones,” the old-timers said, and my frightened childhood imagination pictured thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting with their bony hands the island with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we came closer to it, it often brought on us fits of panic horror - the black depressions of the long-dug out windows; in the empty halls there was a mysterious rustling sound: pebbles and plaster, breaking away, fell down, awakening a echo, and we ran without looking back, and behind us for a long time there was knocking, stomping, and cackling. And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplars swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the entire city. “Oh-vey-peace!” - the Jews said timidly; God-fearing old bourgeois women were baptized, and even our closest neighbor, the blacksmith, who denied the very existence of demonic power, went out into his courtyard at these hours, made the sign of the cross and whispered to himself a prayer for the repose of the departed. Old, gray-bearded Janusz, who, for lack of an apartment, took refuge in one of the castle basements, told us more than once that on such nights he clearly heard screams coming from underground. The Turks began to tinker under the island, rattling their bones and loudly reproaching the lords for their cruelty. Then weapons rattled in the halls of the old castle and around it on the island, and the lords called the haiduks with loud shouts. Janusz heard quite clearly, under the roar and howl of the storm, the tramp of horses, the clanking of sabers, the words of command. Once he even heard how the late great-grandfather of the current counts, glorified forever for his bloody exploits, rode out, clattering the hooves of his argamak, to the middle of the island and furiously swore: “Keep quiet there, laidaks, psya vyara!” The descendants of this count left the home of their ancestors long ago. Most of the ducats and all sorts of treasures, from which the chests of the counts were previously bursting, went over the bridge, into the Jewish hovels, and the last representatives of the glorious family built themselves a prosaic white building on the mountain, away from the city. There their boring, but still solemn existence passed in contemptuously majestic solitude. Occasionally only the old count, the same gloomy ruin as the castle on the island, appeared in the city on his old English nag. Next to him, in a black riding habit, stately and dry, his daughter rode through the city streets, and the horsemaster respectfully followed behind. The majestic countess was destined to remain a virgin forever. Suitors equal to her in origin, in pursuit of the money of merchant daughters abroad, cowardly scattered around the world, leaving their family castles or selling them for scrap to the Jews, and in the town spread out at the foot of her palace, there was no young man who would dare to look up at beautiful countess. Seeing these three horsemen, we little guys, like a flock of birds, took off from the soft street dust and, quickly scattering around the courtyards, watched with frightened and curious eyes the gloomy owners of the terrible castle. On the western side, on the mountain, among decaying crosses and sunken graves, stood a long-abandoned Uniate chapel. This was the native daughter of the philistine city itself, which was spread out in the valley. Once upon a time, at the sound of a bell, townspeople in clean, although not luxurious, kuntushas gathered in it, with sticks in their hands instead of sabers, which rattled the small gentry, who also came to the call of the ringing Uniate bell from the surrounding villages and farmsteads. From here the island and its dark, huge poplars were visible, but the castle was angrily and contemptuously closed off from the chapel by thick greenery, and only in those moments when the southwest wind broke out from behind the reeds and flew onto the island, did the poplars sway loudly, and because The windows gleamed from them, and the castle seemed to cast gloomy glances at the chapel. Now both he and she were corpses. His eyes were dull, and the reflections of the evening sun did not sparkle in them; its roof had collapsed in some places, the walls were crumbling, and, instead of a loud, high-pitched copper bell, the owls started playing their ominous songs in it at night. But the old, historical strife that separated the once proud master's castle and the bourgeois Uniate chapel continued even after their deaths: it was supported by the worms swarming in these decrepit corpses, occupying the surviving corners of the dungeon and basements. These grave worms of dead buildings were people. There was a time when the old castle served as a free refuge for every poor person without the slightest restrictions. Everything that could not find a place for itself in the city, every existence that had jumped out of the rut, which, for one reason or another, had lost the opportunity to pay even a pittance for shelter and a place to stay at night and in bad weather - all this was drawn to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious heads, paying for hospitality only with the risk of being buried under piles of old garbage. “Lives in a castle” - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty and civil decline. The old castle cordially received and covered the rolling snow, the temporarily impoverished scribe, the lonely old women, and the rootless vagabonds. All these creatures tormented the insides of the decrepit building, breaking off the ceilings and floors, heating the stoves, cooking something, eating something - in general, they carried out their vital functions in an unknown way. However, the days came when divisions arose among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, and discord arose. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the small count “officials,” procured for himself something like a sovereign charter and seized the reins of government. He began reforms, and for several days there was such noise on the island, such screams were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons to take revenge on the oppressors. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the sheep from the goats. The sheep that remained in the castle helped Janusz drive out the unfortunate goats, who resisted, showing desperate but useless resistance. When, finally, with the silent, but nevertheless quite significant assistance of the guard, order was again established on the island, it turned out that the coup had a decidedly aristocratic character. Janusz left in the castle only “good Christians,” that is, Catholics, and, moreover, mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count’s family. These were all some old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, loud and ugly, but who had retained their bonnets and cloaks in the last stages of impoverishment. All of them constituted a homogeneous, closely knit aristocratic circle, which took, as it were, a monopoly of recognized beggary. On weekdays, these old men and women walked, with prayer on their lips, to the houses of the wealthier townspeople and middle-class people, spreading gossip, complaining about fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they made up the most respectable persons from the public that lined up in long rows near the churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of “Mr. Jesus” and “Mr. Our Lady.” Attracted by the noise and shouts that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made our way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed elders and ugly shrews, drove out of the castle the last to be expulsion, residents. Evening was coming. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapped in extremely torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, scurried around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to sneak unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the vigilantes, shouting and cursing, drove them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands, maintaining armed neutrality, obviously friendly to the triumphant party. And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, dejectedly, disappeared behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another they drowned in the slushy twilight of the quickly descending evening. Since this memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which previously a vague grandeur emanated from me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. It used to be that I loved to come to the island and, although from afar, admire its gray walls and mossy old roof. When, at dawn, various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some kind of respect, as if they were creatures clothed in the same mystery that shrouded the entire castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there, when the moon peers into the huge halls through the broken windows or when the wind rushes into them during a storm. I loved to listen when Janusz used to sit down under the poplars and, with the loquacity of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the deceased building. Before the children's imagination, images of the past arose, coming to life, and a majestic sadness and vague sympathy for what once lived on the dull walls breathed into the soul, and the romantic shadows of someone else's antiquity ran through the young soul, as the light shadows of clouds run on a windy day across the light greenery of the pure fields. But from that evening both the castle and its bard appeared before me in a new light. Having met me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a pleased look that now “the son of such respectable parents” could safely visit the castle, since he would find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I snatched my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the upper floor were boarded up, and the lower floor was in the possession of bonnets and cloaks. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattered me so cloyingly, cursed among themselves so loudly that I was sincerely surprised how the stern dead man, who pacified the Turks on stormy nights, could tolerate these old women in his neighborhood. But the main thing is that I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove away their unfortunate roommates, and when I remembered the dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank. Be that as it may, from the example of the old castle I learned for the first time the truth that from the great to the ridiculous there is only one step. The great things in the castle were overgrown with ivy, dodder and mosses, and the funny seemed disgusting to me, too cutting to a child’s sensibility, since the irony of these contrasts was not yet accessible to me.

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“In a Bad Society” is a story by a Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, Vladimir Korolenko, which was first published in 1885 in the tenth issue of the magazine “Mysl”. Later the work was included in the collection “Essays and Stories.” This work, small in volume but significant in its semantic load, can undoubtedly be considered one of the best in the creative heritage of the famous writer and human rights activist.

Plot

The culmination of the story is the story of the doll that Vasya asked from his sister Sonya to please Marusya. A beautiful doll, a gift from a deceased mother, is not able to cure the baby, but it brings her short-term joy.

Characteristics

Speaking about the heroes who appear before us on the pages of the story, first of all we should, of course, dwell on the image of the narrator, because all events are presented through the prism of his perception. Vasya is a six-year-old child, on whose shoulders has fallen a burden too heavy for his age: the death of his mother.

Valik and Marusya appear before us in the story as real children of the dungeon (by the way, V. Korolenko himself did not like the shortened version of his story of the same name).

The example of children shows us that for true sincere friendship, origin, financial status and other external factors do not matter. It's important to remain human.

The opposites in the story are the fathers of the children.

A special place in the story is given to the tramps, led by Tyburtsy.

Conclusion

Korolenko’s story “In Bad Society” was written in 1885. The work was first published in the same year in the magazine “Russian Thought”.

The story tells the story of how the judge’s son, Vasya, made friends with beggar children. Having lost his mother early and deprived of his father's warm attention, the boy spent most of his time with street children. One day, together with the boys, he made his way into the old cemetery chapel. Noticing that someone was there, the boys ran away in fear, but Vasya remained. A boy and a little girl came out to him. Soon the children became friends. The boy learned that their guardian Tyburtsy lived with the children. Vasya liked to communicate with Valek, and he brought gifts to his sister Marusya. Comparing the girl with her sister Sonya, Vasya saw how different the girls of the same age were. Sonya was well-fed, healthy child, and Marusya is fragile and pale “like a flower that grew without the sun.” To bring joy to Marusya, Vasya brought her a beautiful doll taken from his sister.

The writer not only talks about the life of various segments of the town’s population, but poses the problem of relationships between people both within the same family and between representatives of different social classes. A boy from a wealthy family makes friends with poor children, sympathizes with their bitter fate, and in the poor Tyburtia he sees, first of all, a kind and fair person who respects his father, with a reputation as an honest judge. Using the example of the main character, the formation of his personality is shown, problems of mutual understanding, kindness, friendship, respect for a person, regardless of class, are revealed.

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