Today it is popular, even in the curriculum on literature, Andrei Platonov is studied. "Nikita" is a short story by this writer, which is recommended for primary school age.
The days are gone when this man, now a recognized classic, was harassed by loyal literary figures. When a person creating real national spiritual values was forced to live on his wife’s salary. When his son was sent to prison under a far-fetched pretext to deliver more suffering to his father. When the father took his son, sick with tuberculosis, to die home, he became infected and died himself. Isn't that why Platonov writes his story so movingly and paternally? He does not follow the path of Bulgakov’s satire. But in the lines of Platonov that are incorrect from the point of view of constructing phrases, one can feel the drama of real artistic power.
Who, if not the writer, is able to combine fiction and reality with the marvelous lace of his imagination? Strange as it may seem, in the 20th Iron Age, among the shaft of commissioned Soviet literature, there were real creators, like Andrei Platonov, suffering, but going against the tide, bearing the crown of thorns of the continuation of the work of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky.
Household tales - what is it?
How much imagination and love for people should have a word wizard writing everyday tales! All this fully reflects even a brief summary. “Nikita” by Platonov Andrei Platonovich (the subject of this article) allows you to feel the depth and strength of the author’s talent. The writer worked hard on his unique authorial presentation, "home-made", "awkward", but surprisingly touching. There are no wizards or fairies in his tales, there are no superheroes. They are populated by ordinary people, not at all ideal. However, those who read them still recognize that Platonov’s works are magical in their own way, with a special kind of magic that is much stronger than the most “sophisticated” witchcraft.
Platonic style
The peculiar Platonic language of presentation, intertwined with the lexical, grammatical non-standard inherent in children's speech, somehow amazingly holistically creates a picture of a single world surrounding a person. You will feel it by reading the summary. "Nikita" Platonov leaves the impression that the world of the story is whole, vibrant, and in it "everything is connected with everything."
The apparent simplicity of presentation and the primitiveness of the plot reveals the depth and wisdom of Andrei Platonov, who perceives the world through a prism as multilayered and multifaceted as the classics of the golden period of Russian literature of the late XIX century.
The artistic features of the narration
The protagonist of the Platonic story is a five-year-old boy Nikita. His father is called up for war, and his mother earns workdays from morning until late in the evening to feed herself and her child. The vivid impressions of the child who has no fantasy are a summary for this story. "Nikita" Platonov leads the reader to the realization of the dramatic contrast between the animated world drawn by the child’s imagination and the actual world: gray, beggarly, wretched. Behind the lace of author’s fantasy, creating the integrity of a story that touches the reader’s feelings, one can also see harsh realism and the suffering of ordinary people from the unsettled nature of their lives.
The main character
Where to start summarizing? Nikita Platonova generously shares with her readers her imaginative vision of the world. In it fiction and reality are mixed. However, there are also strokes of realism in the perception of the world by the child.
Mother, working in the field from morning to evening, cannot even feed him breakfast and a full dinner. Nikita is as independent as a five-year-old boy can be. He knows and fulfills his daily "business" firmly: not to burn the house, to collect chicken eggs, to protect "his" cock from the next cock-brawler, not to forget to dine with milk and bread ... Nikita gets hot food once a day only in the evening, when Mom comes home from work. However, the author’s narrative is so fascinating that poverty turns out to be veiled by screens of children's fantasies. It is their wealth in the first place and shows in his story "Nikita" Platonov. Reader reviews of the writer's work reflect an increase in interest in his work, that it is relevant and in demand.
Contemplation instead of education
On the one hand, the child grows like a stalk in the field, practically without upbringing, but on the other, the boy has already laid the main thing in life. He loves his mother, feels responsible for "our economy", remembers his late grandfather, touchingly, childishly associating him with the affectionate sun.
Nikita recalls how previously he was content to contemplate flies, sparrows, spiders. Since there is no one adult to pay attention to, the child studies the subject, animating it. At the same time, he transfers to him everything that he knows about the adult world. For example, he considers the barrel standing in the barn to be the place where a small man was hiding during the day, and certainly with a beard. It was not otherwise that to cut this beard, the other day he pulled scissors from his boy’s mother. Generally speaking, he is not far-sighted. He sleeps during the day, while weeding millet follows. Indeed, otherwise the collective farm accountant would not set off a workday for him, and the peasant would not have bread, respectively. Explicitly entered a hint of a collective farm lifestyle in the story "Nikita" Platonov. The authorities' responses to such courage of this creative person were unambiguous - “kulak henchman”, and Joseph Stalin was even more concise - “bastard”.
Revived items around the house
Let's get back to the plot of the story ... So, the kid ran away from the barrel. It was enough to be heard in the distance with a "hoot." By the way, for some reason, the little men with whom the boy’s imagination inhabited various objects, such as a well, are almost always harmful. "Wells", for example, residents, naturally fantasized by males, are plump, sparrow-sprouted, wet and aggressive, such people may well drink their eyes from sleeping children. Why does the child’s imagination take on frightening forms? The reason is psychological: only a climate unfavorable for a comfortable life for people in the country could awaken such associations in the minds of children.
Platonov’s story “Nikita” tells us that wherever the baby goes, some entities invented by him pursue him. Perhaps they are serpentine, living in burrows. In the middle of the night, they can crawl into their hut and meanly sting him or his mother in a dream. Platonov’s story “Nikita” further takes the boy to the garden, where a stump sticks out, resembling a head peering out of the ground. From this head there is also a threat, but of a different kind. A stump-head can well eat all the cabbage in the garden, leaving the boy and his mother without cabbage soup in the cold and hungry winter. An abandoned bathhouse, in which the late grandfather once soared "in black", resembles an angry, curved old woman.
The boy was scared seriously. Platonov brings him to the brink of a nervous shock. The story “Nikita” further brings the boy’s fears to their climax. When, after meeting with a stump-head, he lay down on the ground and pressed his ear to it, he heard some voices there. “Yes, they are omnipresent!” - thought the kid about the people living underground. Now even his native hut seemed to him grumbling hostilely. Even she did not like him and his mother because the damage from them, because how much wheat bread is spent on them!
The child’s heart intuitively feels the hostility of the surrounding world.
Father is back
However, there is someone who saves the baby from this ubiquitous hostility, Platonov said. The story "Nikita" immerses the boy in the saving rays of his grandfather-sun. Perhaps this is how the soul of the deceased grandfather protects his grandson. The kid, caressed by the rays of the sun, calms down and goes home to his mother, waiting for him with dinner. He opens the front door and sees that mom is not alone at home, she is some old soldier with her. This is the father who returned from the war. With short, but well-aimed strokes showing the tormented soul of a loving father (“it's time to think about you and your mother”, “I’ll be with you forever”), his whole and deep image of Platonov creates (“Nikita”). The main characters - son, mother, father - together again.
Father is father ...
How did the boy take his father, whom, in principle, he did not remember? His dad went to the front when he was still a baby. He believed this "old uncle." The boy’s soul entered a family resonance with his father’s soul. He believed him and trusted how the son believes his father, he felt that their family finally became complete. As the writer shows all this? Not by numerous sentimental inflections, but again by one short, precise stroke of the artist. The boy went outside and told everyone that now their father will live with them. How simple and talented Platonov’s story is written! “Nikita”, whose protagonists are solid, deep, created succinctly and exhaustively, in a word, masterfully, has become the “calling card” of the author.
Parenting
Now the main character of the story felt differently. Of course, the growing boy lacked a father. Indeed, not only the mother should take part in the education of the future man. If the mother’s love is always unaccountable, programmed by nature itself, the father’s love is always objective, socially oriented. We are approaching the answer to the question of what Platonov’s story “Nikita” teaches. First of all, when he returned home, the boy’s dad examined various instruments. However, soon we become convinced that he is not only the owner, but also the educator. The boy, driven by his father, driven his first nail, notices that he resembles a good man. The boy is pleased and surprised - finally, a good creature!
Good and eternal created by labor
The father contributes to the formation of his son's assessments of himself and the world around him. This is what Platonov writes (Nikita). The main idea that he brings back to his child from the front is that everything created by labor is good. Therefore, labor is important. And what he saw and drafted is fragile, and therefore is often associated with evil. So, with simple, simple words, he outlines for his son the priorities in his future life.
No wonder the image of the father conveys the writer to the reader through his attitude to work. This is no coincidence. The father of Andrei Platonovich himself, the train engine driver Klimentov Platon Firsovich, who raised a real worker from him, did not just respect work. He was twice awarded the title of Hero of Labor. Perhaps the words of his father adorned the story of Platonov ("Nikita"). The main idea of the story concerns the importance of establishing a kind of boundary between fiction and the results of labor. Created by man’s hands firmly, reliably, serves him for the good.
Kind heart
The good nail-man became that cornerstone which changed Nikita's consciousness. At the same time, the father warns with his explanation the possible question of his son: "Is the fantasy world good or poorly created by him?" The reason is the responsiveness and mercy of the boy, who generously fills life with surrounding objects and nature. The father approves this property of his nature, believing that, having preserved it, the son will also save his kindness for many years of his future life. These paternal judgments are deeply humane and wise in nature, because a person who is dry, devoid of imagination, as a rule, is also devoid of humanity.
An analysis of Platonov’s story “Nikita” is also valuable from the perspective of the formation in the mind of a five-year-old boy of the concepts of male subculture, the direction of his interests, and understanding the main direction of his development through work.
This work, like the entire creative legacy of the writer, became available to a wide readership only in the mid-80s.
Conclusion
Readers of this work, of course, feel how deeply the author is compressed with his characters. Even a brief summary of Platonov’s short story “Nikita” makes it clear how deep a writer, a true engineer of human souls was Platonov. Fundamentally abandoning party ideology, he put the personality of a person at the heart of each of his works.
Andrei Platonovich dreamed that everyone should be rich and happy. In the revolution, he saw the impoverishment and fooling of people, and in the war - their bitterness.
Moreover, he did not know how to lie, did not want to write pathetically. His best works were not printed by Soviet publishers, he "wrote to the table." However, he undoubtedly had his own unique style.