The cruel morals of the city of Kalinov in a thunderstorm essay. Brief description of the city of Kalinov in the play by A.N.

Essay on literature.

Cruel morals in our city, cruel...
A.N. Ostrovsky, "The Thunderstorm".

The city of Kalinov, in which the action of “The Thunderstorm” takes place, is outlined by the author very vaguely. Such a place could be any town in any corner of vast Russia. This immediately increases and generalizes the scale of the events described.

Preparations for the reform to abolish serfdom are in full swing, which affects the life of all of Russia. Outdated orders give way to new ones, previously unknown phenomena and concepts arise. Therefore, even in remote towns like Kalinov, ordinary people are worried when they hear the steps of a new life.

What is this “city on the banks of the Volga”? What kind of people live there? The stage nature of the work does not allow the writer to directly answer these questions with his thoughts, but it is still possible to get a general idea about them.

Externally, the city of Kalinov is a “blessed place.” It stands on the banks of the Volga, from the steepness of the river an “extraordinary view” opens. But most local residents “have either taken a closer look or don’t understand” this beauty and speak disdainfully about it. Kalinov seems to be separated by a wall from the rest of the world. They don’t know anything here about what’s going on in the world. Residents of Kalinov are forced to draw all information about the world around them from the stories of “wanderers” who “they themselves have not walked far, but have heard a lot.” This satisfaction of curiosity leads to ignorance of the majority of citizens. They talk quite seriously about the lands “where people have dog heads” and that “Lithuania fell from the sky.” Among the residents of Kalinov there are people who “don’t give an account to anyone” for their actions; ordinary people, accustomed to such lack of accountability, lose the ability to see logic in anything.

Kabanova and Dikoy, living according to the old order, are forced to give up their positions. This embitters them and makes them even more furious. Dikoy attacks everyone he meets with abuse and “doesn’t want to know anyone.” Aware internally that there is nothing to respect him for, he, however, reserves the right to deal with the “little people” like this:

If I want, I will have mercy, if I want, I will crush.

Kabanova relentlessly pesters her family with ridiculous demands that contradict common sense. She is scary because she reads instructions “under the guise of piety,” but she herself cannot be called pious. This can be seen from Kuligin’s conversation with Kabanov:

Kuligin: We must forgive our enemies, sir!
Kabanov: Go talk to your mother, what will she say to you about this.

Dikoy and Kabanova still seem strong, but they begin to realize that their strength is coming to an end. They have “nowhere to rush,” but life moves forward without asking their permission. That is why Kabanova is so gloomy, she cannot imagine “how the light will stand” when her order is forgotten. But those around, not yet feeling the powerlessness of these tyrants, are forced to adapt to them,

Tikhon, a good man at heart, came to terms with his situation. He lives and acts as “mama ordered,” having finally lost the ability to “live with his own mind.”

His sister Varvara is not like that. Tyrant oppression did not break her will, she is bolder and much more independent than Tikhon, but her conviction “if only everything was sewn and covered” suggests that Varvara was unable to fight her oppressors, but only adapted to them.

Vanya Kudryash, a daring and strong character, has become accustomed to tyrants and is not afraid of them. The Wild One needs him and knows this, he will not “slave in front of him.” But the use of rudeness as a weapon of struggle means that Kudryash can only “take an example” from the Wild, defending himself from him with his own techniques. His reckless daring reaches the point of self-will, and this already borders on tyranny.

Katerina is, as the critic Dobrolyubov put it, “a ray of light in a dark kingdom.” Original and lively, she is not like any of the characters in the play. Its national character gives it inner strength. But this strength is not enough to withstand Kabanova’s relentless attacks. Katerina is looking for support - and does not find it. Exhausted, unable to further resist oppression, Katerina still did not give up, but left the fight, committing suicide.

Kalinov can be located in any corner of the country, and this allows us to consider the action of the play on a scale throughout Russia. Tyrants are living out their days everywhere; weak people still suffer from their antics. But life moves tirelessly forward, no one can stop its rapid flow. A fresh and strong stream will sweep away the dam of tyranny... Characters freed from oppression will spill out in all their breadth - and the sun will break out in the “dark kingdom”!

"The Thunderstorm" - drama AN. Ostrovsky. Written in July-October 1859. First publication: the magazine “Library for Reading” (1860, vol. 158, January). The first acquaintance of the Russian public with the play caused a whole “critical storm”. Prominent representatives of all directions of Russian thought considered it necessary to speak out about the “Thunderstorm”. It was obvious that the content of this folk drama reveals “the deepest recesses of non-Europeanized Russian life” (A.I. Herzen). The dispute about it resulted in a debate about the basic principles of national existence. Dobrolyubov’s concept of the “dark kingdom” emphasized the social content of the drama. And A. Grigoriev considered the play as an “organic” expression of the poetry of folk life. Later, in the 20th century, a point of view arose on the “dark kingdom” as the spiritual element of the Russian person (A.A. Blok), and a symbolic interpretation of the drama was proposed (F.A. Stepun).

Image of the city of Kalinova

The city of Kalinov appears in the play “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky as a kingdom of “captivity”, in which living life is regulated by a strict system of rituals and prohibitions. This is a world of cruel morals: envy and self-interest, “dark debauchery and drunkenness,” quiet complaints and invisible tears. The flow of life here has remained the same as one hundred and two hundred years ago: with the languor of a hot summer day, decorous Compline, festive revelry, and nightly dates of couples in love. The completeness, originality and self-sufficiency of the life of the Kalinovites does not need any going beyond its limits - to where everything is “wrong” and “in their opinion everything is the opposite”: the law is “unrighteous”, and the judges “are also all unrighteous”, and “ people with dog heads." Rumors about the long-standing “Lithuanian ruin” and that Lithuania “fell from the sky on us” reveal the “historiosophy of the laity”; simple-minded reasoning about the picture of the Last Judgment - “theology of the simple,” primitive eschatology. “Closedness”, distance from “big time” (M.M. Bakhtin’s term) is a characteristic feature of the city of Kalinov.

Universal sinfulness (“It is impossible, mother, without sin: we live in the world”) is an essential, ontological characteristic of Kalinov’s world. The only way to fight sin and curb self-will is seen by the Kalinovites in the “law of life and custom” (P.A. Markov). The “law” has burdened, simplified, and crushed living life in its free impulses, aspirations and desires. “The predatory wisdom of this world” (the expression of G. Florovsky) comes through in the spiritual cruelty of Kabanikha, the dense obstinacy of the Kalinovites, the predatory spirit of Kudryash, the resourceful sharpness of Varvara, the flabby compliance of Tikhon. The stamp of social outcast marks the appearance of the “non-covetous” and silver-free Kuligin. Unrepentant sin wanders around the city of Kalinov in the guise of a crazy old woman. The graceless world languishes under the oppressive weight of the “Law”, and only the distant rumbles of a thunderstorm remind of the “final end”. The all-encompassing image of a thunderstorm appears in action, as breakthroughs of higher reality into the local, otherworldly reality. Under the onslaught of an unknown and formidable “will,” the life of the Kalinovites “began to decline”: the “last times” of the patriarchal world are approaching. Against their background, the time of action of the play can be read as the “axial time” of the breakdown of the integral way of Russian life.

The image of Katerina in “The Thunderstorm”

For the heroine of the play, the disintegration of the “Russian cosmos” becomes a “personal” time of experiencing tragedy. Katerina is the last heroine of the Russian Middle Ages, through whose heart the crack of the “Axial Time” passed and revealed the formidable depth of the conflict between the human world and the Divine heights. In the eyes of the Kalinovites, Katerina is “somehow strange,” “somehow tricky,” incomprehensible even to those close to her. The “otherworldliness” of the heroine is emphasized even by her name: Katerina (Greek - ever-pure, eternally pure). Not in the world, but in the church, in prayerful communication with God, the true depth of her personality is revealed. “Oh, Curly, how she prays, if only you would look! What an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.” These words of Boris contain the key to the mystery of Katerina’s image in “The Thunderstorm”, an explanation of the illumination and luminosity of her appearance.

Her monologues in the first act expand the boundaries of the plot action and take us beyond the boundaries of the “small world” designated by the playwright. They reveal the free, joyful and easy soaring of the heroine’s soul to her “heavenly homeland.” Outside the church fence, Katerina faces “captivity” and complete spiritual loneliness. Her soul passionately strives to find a kindred spirit in the world, and the heroine’s gaze stops on the face of Boris, alien to Kalinov’s world not only due to his European upbringing and education, but also spiritually: “I understand that all this is our Russian, native, and all- I still can’t get used to it.” The motive of voluntary sacrifice for his sister - “I feel sorry for the sister” - is central to the image of Boris. Doomed “to be a sacrifice,” he is forced to meekly wait for the drying up of the Wild’s tyrant will.

Only in appearance, the humble, hidden Boris and the passionate, decisive Katerina are opposites. Internally, in a spiritual sense, they are equally alien to this world. Having seen each other only a few times, without ever speaking, they “recognized” each other in the crowd and could no longer live as before. Boris calls his passion “foolish” and recognizes its hopelessness, but Katerina “cannot be removed” from his mind. Katerina's heart rushes to Boris against her will and desire. She wants to love her husband - but cannot; seeks salvation in prayer - “there is no way to pray”; in the scene of her husband’s departure, she tries to curse fate (“I will die without repentance if I ...”) - but Tikhon does not want to understand her (“... and I don’t want to listen!”).

Going on a date with Boris, Katerina commits an irreversible, “fatal” act: “After all, what am I preparing for myself. Where do I belong..." Exactly according to Aristotle, the heroine guesses about the consequences, foresees the coming suffering, but commits a fatal act, not knowing all the horror of it: “Why feel sorry for me, no one is to blame - she did it herself.<...>They say it’s even easier when you suffer for some sin here on earth.” But the “unquenchable fire”, “fiery Gehenna”, predicted by the crazy lady, overtake the heroine during her lifetime - with pangs of conscience. The consciousness and feeling of sin (tragic guilt), as experienced by the heroine, leads to the etymology of this word: sin - to warm (Greek - heat, pain).

Katerina’s public confession of what she has done is an attempt to extinguish the fire burning her from within, to return to God and find her lost spiritual peace. The climactic events of Act IV, both formally, semantically, meaningfully, and figuratively, are symbolically connected with the feast of Elijah the Prophet, the “formidable” saint, all of whose miracles in folk legends are associated with the bringing down of heavenly fire to the earth and the intimidation of sinners. The thunderstorm that had previously rumbled in the distance broke out right above Katerina’s head. In combination with the image of a painting of the Last Judgment on the wall of a dilapidated gallery, with the shouts of the lady: “You can’t escape from God!”, with Dikiy’s phrase that the thunderstorm is “sent as punishment,” and with the remarks of the Kalinovites (“this thunderstorm will not pass in vain” ), it forms the tragic climax of the action.

In Kuligin’s last words about the “merciful judge” one hears not only a reproach to the sinful world for the “cruelty of morals,” but also Ostrovsky’s belief that the Supreme Being is unthinkable without mercy and love. The space of Russian tragedy is revealed in “The Thunderstorm” as a religious space of passions and suffering.

The protagonist of the tragedy dies, and the Pharisee triumphs in her rightness (“I understand, son, where the will leads!..”). With Old Testament severity, Kabanikha continues to uphold the foundations of Kalinov’s world: “escape into ritual” is the only conceivable salvation for her from the chaos of will. The escape of Varvara and Kudryash into the open air, the rebellion of the previously unrequited Tikhon (“Mama, it was you who ruined her! You, you, you...”), the cry for the deceased Katerina - foreshadow the onset of a new time. The “milestone”, “turning point” of the content of “The Thunderstorm” allows us to speak of it as “Ostrovsky’s most decisive work” (N.A. Dobrolyubov).

Productions

The first performance of “The Thunderstorm” took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theater (Moscow). In the role of Katerina - L.P. Nikulina-Kositskaya, who inspired Ostrovsky to create the image of the main character of the play. Since 1863, G.N. acted as Katerina. Fedotov, from 1873 - M.N. Ermolova. The premiere took place at the Alexandrinsky Theater (St. Petersburg) on ​​December 2, 1859 (in the role of Katerina - F.A. Snetkova, the role of Tikhon was brilliantly performed by A.E. Martynov). In the 20th century, “The Thunderstorm” was staged by directors: V.E. Meyerhold (Alexandrinsky Theatre, 1916); AND I. Tairov (Chamber Theatre, Moscow, 1924); IN AND. Nemirovich-Danchenko and I.Ya. Sudakov (Moscow Art Theater, 1934); N.N. Okhlopkov (Moscow Theater named after Vl. Mayakovsky, 1953); G.N. Yanovskaya (Moscow Youth Theater, 1997).

Only ideas, not words, have lasting power over society.
(V. G. Belinsky)

The literature of the 19th century is qualitatively different from the literature of the previous “golden age”. In 1955–1956 freedom-loving and freedom-realizing tendencies in literature are beginning to manifest themselves more and more actively. A work of art is endowed with a special function: it must change the system of reference points and reshape consciousness. Sociality becomes an important initial stage, and one of the main problems becomes the question of how society distorts a person. Of course, many writers in their works tried to solve the problem posed. For example, Dostoevsky writes “Poor People,” in which he shows the poverty and hopelessness of the lower strata of the population. This aspect was also the focus of playwrights. N.A. Ostrovsky in “The Thunderstorm” showed the cruel morals of the city of Kalinov quite clearly. Viewers had to think about social problems that were characteristic of the entire patriarchal Russia.

The situation in the city of Kalinov is completely typical for all provincial cities of Russia in the second half of the 19th century. In Kalinov you can recognize Nizhny Novgorod, the cities of the Volga region, and even Moscow. The phrase “cruel morals, sir” is pronounced in the first act by one of the main characters of the play and becomes the main motif that is associated with the theme of the city. Ostrovsky in “The Thunderstorm” makes Kuligin’s monologue about cruel morals quite interesting in the context of Kuligin’s other phrases in previous phenomena.

So, the play begins with a dialogue between Kudryash and Kuligin. Men talk about the beauty of nature. Kudryash does not consider the landscape to be anything special; external scenery means little to him. Kuligin, on the contrary, admires the beauty of the Volga: “Miracles, truly it must be said that miracles! Curly! Here, my brother, for fifty years I have been looking across the Volga every day and I still can’t get enough of it”; “The view is extraordinary! Beauty! The soul rejoices." Then other characters appear on the stage, and the topic of conversation changes. Kuligin talks to Boris about life in Kalinov. It turns out that there is, in fact, no life here. Stagnation and stuffiness. This can be confirmed by the phrases of Boris and Katya that you can suffocate in Kalinov. People seem deaf to expressions of dissatisfaction, and there are many reasons for dissatisfaction. They are mainly related to social inequality. All the power of the city is concentrated only in the hands of those who have money. Kuligin talks about Dikiy. This is a rude and petty person. Wealth has given him a free hand, so the merchant believes that he has the right to decide who can live and who cannot. After all, many in the city ask for a loan from Dikoy at huge interest rates, while they know that Dikoy most likely will not give this money. People tried to complain about the merchant to the mayor, but this also led to nothing - the mayor actually has absolutely no power. Savl Prokofievich allows himself offensive comments and swearing. More precisely, his speech amounts to only this. He can be called an outcast to the highest degree: Dikoy often drinks and is devoid of culture. The author's irony is that the merchant is rich materially and completely poor spiritually. It’s as if he doesn’t have those qualities that make a person human. At the same time, there are those who laugh at him. For example, a certain hussar who refused to fulfill the request of the Wild. And Kudryash says that he is not afraid of this tyrant and can answer Diky’s insult.

Kuligin also talks about Marfa Kabanova. This rich widow does cruel things “under the guise of piety.” Her manipulations and treatment of her family can terrify anyone. Kuligin characterizes her as follows: “she gives money to the poor, but completely eats up her family.” The characterization turns out to be quite accurate. Kabanikha seems much more terrible than Dikoya. Her moral violence against loved ones never stops. And these are her children. With her upbringing, Kabanikha turned Tikhon into an adult, infantile drunkard, who would be glad to escape from his mother’s care, but is afraid of her anger. With her hysterics and humiliations, Kabanikha drives Katerina to suicide. Kabanikha has a strong character. The author's bitter irony is that the patriarchal world is led by a powerful and cruel woman.

It is in the first act that the cruel mores of the dark kingdom in “The Thunderstorm” are most clearly depicted. The frightening pictures of social life are contrasted with the picturesque landscapes on the Volga. Space and freedom are contrasted with a social swamp and fences. Fences and bolts, behind which residents fenced themselves off from the rest of the world, are sealed in a bank, and, carrying out lynching, are rotting without permission from lack of air.

In "The Thunderstorm" the cruel morals of the city of Kalinov are shown not only in the pair of characters Kabanikh - Dikaya. In addition, the author introduces several more significant characters. Glasha, the Kabanovs' maid, and Feklusha, identified by Ostrovsky as a wanderer, discuss the life of the city. It seems to women that only here the old house-building traditions are still preserved, and the Kabanovs’ house is the last paradise on earth. The wanderer talks about the customs of other countries, calling them incorrect, because there is no Christian faith there. People like Feklusha and Glasha deserve “bestial” treatment from merchants and townsfolk. After all, these people are hopelessly limited. They refuse to understand and accept anything if it diverges from the familiar world. They feel good in the “blah-a-adati” that they have built for themselves. The point is not that they refuse to see reality, but that reality is considered the norm.

Of course, the cruel morals of the city of Kalinov in The Thunderstorm, characteristic of society as a whole, are shown somewhat grotesquely. But thanks to such hyperbole and concentration of negativity, the author wanted to get a reaction from the public: people should realize that change and reform are inevitable. We need to participate in the changes ourselves, otherwise this quagmire will grow to incredible proportions, when outdated orders will subjugate everything, finally eliminating even the possibility of development.

The given description of the morals of the residents of the city of Kalinov can be useful for 10th graders when preparing materials for an essay on the topic “Cruel morals of the city of Kalinov.”

Work test

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was a master of precise descriptions. The playwright in his works managed to show all the dark sides of the human soul. Perhaps unsightly and negative, but without which it is impossible to create a complete picture. Criticizing Ostrovsky, Dobrolyubov pointed to his “folk” worldview, seeing the writer’s main merit in the fact that Ostrovsky was able to notice those qualities in Russian people and society that can hinder natural progress. The theme of the “dark kingdom” is raised in many of Ostrovsky’s dramas. In the play “The Thunderstorm” the city of Kalinov and its inhabitants are shown as limited, “dark” people.

The city of Kalinov in “The Thunderstorm” is a fictional space. The author wanted to emphasize that the vices that exist in this city are characteristic of all Russian cities at the end of the 19th century. And all the problems that are raised in the work existed everywhere at that time. Dobrolyubov calls Kalinov a “dark kingdom.” The definition of a critic fully characterizes the atmosphere described in Kalinov.
Residents of Kalinov should be considered inextricably linked with the city. All the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov deceive each other, steal, and terrorize other family members. Power in the city belongs to those who have money, and the mayor’s power is only nominal. This becomes clear from Kuligin’s conversation. The mayor comes to Dikiy with a complaint: the men complained about Savl Prokofievich, because he cheated them. Dikoy does not try to justify himself at all; on the contrary, he confirms the words of the mayor, saying that if merchants steal from each other, then there is nothing wrong with the merchant stealing from ordinary residents. Dikoy himself is greedy and rude. He constantly swears and grumbles. We can say that due to greed, Savl Prokofievich’s character deteriorated. There was nothing human left in him. The reader even sympathizes with Gobsek from the story of the same name by O. Balzac more than with Dikiy. There are no feelings towards this character other than disgust. But in the city of Kalinov, its inhabitants themselves indulge the Dikiy: they ask him for money, they are humiliated, they know that they will be insulted and, most likely, they will not give the required amount, but they ask anyway. Most of all, the merchant is annoyed by his nephew Boris, because he also needs money. Dikoy is openly rude to him, curses him and demands that he leave. Culture is alien to Savl Prokofievich. He doesn't know either Derzhavin or Lomonosov. He is only interested in the accumulation and increase of material wealth.

Kabanikha is different from Wild. “Under the guise of piety,” she tries to subordinate everything to her will. She raised an ungrateful and deceitful daughter and a spineless, weak son. Through the prism of blind maternal love, Kabanikha does not seem to notice Varvara’s hypocrisy, but Marfa Ignatievna perfectly understands what she has made her son. Kabanikha treats her daughter-in-law worse than the others.
In her relationship with Katerina, Kabanikha’s desire to control everyone and instill fear in people is manifested. After all, the ruler is either loved or feared, but there is nothing to love Kabanikha for.

It is necessary to note the telling surname of Dikiy and the nickname Kabanikha, which refer readers and viewers to wild, animal life.

Glasha and Feklusha are the lowest link in the hierarchy. They are ordinary residents who are happy to serve such gentlemen. There is an opinion that every nation deserves its own ruler. In the city of Kalinov this is confirmed many times. Glasha and Feklusha are having dialogues about how there is “sodom” in Moscow now, because people there are starting to live differently. Culture and education are alien to the residents of Kalinov. They praise Kabanikha for advocating for the preservation of the patriarchal system. Glasha agrees with Feklusha that only the Kabanov family has preserved the old order. Kabanikha’s house is heaven on earth, because in other places everything is mired in depravity and bad manners.

The reaction to a thunderstorm in Kalinov is more similar to a reaction to a large-scale natural disaster. People are running to save themselves, trying to hide. This is because a thunderstorm becomes not just a natural phenomenon, but a symbol of God’s punishment. This is how Savl Prokofievich and Katerina perceive her. However, Kuligin is not at all afraid of thunderstorms. He urges people not to panic, tells Dikiy about the benefits of the lightning rod, but he is deaf to the requests of the inventor. Kuligin cannot actively resist the established order; he has adapted to life in such an environment. Boris understands that in Kalinov, Kuligin’s dreams will remain dreams. At the same time, Kuligin differs from other residents of the city. He is honest, modest, plans to earn money by his own labor, without asking the rich for help. The inventor studied in detail all the ways in which the city lives; knows what is happening behind closed doors, knows about the Wild One’s deceptions, but cannot do anything about it.

Ostrovsky in “The Thunderstorm” depicts the city of Kalinov and its inhabitants from a negative point of view. The playwright wanted to show how deplorable the situation is in the provincial cities of Russia and emphasized that social problems require immediate solutions.

The given description of the city of Kalinov and its inhabitants will be useful to 10th grade students when preparing an essay on the topic “The city of Kalinov and its inhabitants in the play “The Thunderstorm”.”

“Thunderstorm” the city of Kalinov and its inhabitants in Piecha - an essay on the topic |

Option I

The drama “The Thunderstorm” is a landmark work by A. N. Ostrovsky. The action takes place in the city of Kalinov, standing on the banks of the beautiful Volga River.

The city of Kalinov is described in detail, specifically and in many ways. An important role in the drama is played by the landscape, which is described not only in the author's remarks, but also in the dialogues of the characters. Some see its beauty, others are indifferent to it. The high Volga bank and the distances beyond the river define the motive of flight, inseparable from Katerina.

Beautiful nature, pictures of youth at night, songs heard in Act III - all this is the poetry of the city of Kalinov. But in the life of the city there is also a bleak prose: the everyday cruelty of residents towards each other, the inevitable poverty and lack of rights for the majority of the townspeople.

From action to action, the feeling of Salinov’s lostness intensifies. The life of this city is completely closed and unchanged. Residents do not see anything new and do not want to know about other lands and countries. And about their past they retained only dark legends, devoid of connections and meaning (like the legend about Lithuania, which “fell to us from the sky”). Life in Kalinov freezes, dries up, the past is forgotten, “there are hands, but there is nothing to work.” News from the big world is brought to the residents of this city by the wanderer Feklusha, and they trustingly listen to stories about countries where people with dog heads “for infidelity”, about the railway, where “they began to harness a fiery serpent” for speed.

Among the characters in the play there is no one who does not belong to the world of this city. The lively and the meek, the powerful and the oppressed, merchants and clerks - they all move in this closed patriarchal world. Not only the dark Kalinovsky inhabitants, but also Kuligin, who, at first glance, is the bearer of progressive views, is flesh of the flesh of this world. He is a self-taught mechanic, but all his technical ideas are a clear anachronism for the 30s of the 19th century, to which the action of “The Thunderstorm” is attributed. The sundial he dreams of came from antiquity, the “perpetuum mobile” is a typical medieval idea, the unrealizability of which was beyond doubt in the 19th century. Kuligin is a dreamer and poet, but he writes “in the old-fashioned way,” like Lomonosov and Derzhavin. Kind and delicate, dreaming of changing the lives of the Kalinovsky poor, who received an award for the discovery of a perpetual motion machine, he appears to his fellow countrymen as something of a city holy fool.

There is only one person who does not belong to the inhabitants of this city by birth and upbringing - Boris. He feels like a stranger, he is not accustomed to the local customs, but he recognizes the power of the laws of this city over himself. That is why he behaves as if he were financially dependent on the Wild One or was obliged to obey him as the eldest in the family.

The city of Kalinov is not just a drama setting. This is a symbol of patriarchal merchant life with its poetry and cruelty. This is a symbol of all of Russia.

Option II

A. N. Ostrovsky went down in the history of Russian art as the co-creator of the realistic “folk theater”, the creator of a rich and diverse world of artistic types. One of his outstanding works is the drama “The Thunderstorm”. N. Krutikova in the article “Creator of the People’s Theater” writes that “The Thunderstorm” seems to be “specifically national, having only local, ethnographic significance,” and then immediately clarifies that “within the framework of the ancient merchant life, within one family, Ostrovsky raised fundamental social problems and created images of global significance.”

The drama takes place on the banks of the deep, wide Russian Volga River, which is a symbol of the Russian soul. Here, as Kuligin says, “the view is extraordinary! Beauty! The soul rejoices." Against this background, the image of a dark, deceitful merchant city is especially clear, where “we can never earn more than our daily bread through honest labor. And whoever has money, sir, tries to enslave the poor so that he can make even more money from his free labors.”

The rulers of the city, legislators, executors and judges at the same time are the limited, grumpy Kabanikha and the unbridled tyrant Dikoy. They are the main force of the dark kingdom. The first is known for its despotic character, which is based on the dogma of subordinating all actions to the rules, and the rules are not written, but ossified in her dark head: everything must be done “as it should be” (“Why are you standing there, don’t you know the order? Order wife, how to live without you”). The second is an unreasonable boor and a warrior in the “war on women”, a petty, mean and stingy old man, guided by the principle “I won’t pay them a penny extra per person, but I make thousands out of this, so it’s good for me.” !”

Among the ignorant and hypocritical rich people of the city, who lock themselves in their houses not from thieves and not because of piety, but “so that people do not see how they eat their household and tyrannize their family,” young people are the true treasure: Katerina , Varvara, Kudryash, trying to fight Kalinov’s darkness and boredom. Standing apart is no longer the young, smart, self-taught watchmaker Kuligin, who not only clearly sees the life that this city lives, but also tries to somehow really help the residents: he persuades Dikiy to donate money for the construction of a clock and a lightning rod, and also offers his labor free of charge and selflessly.