Alexander Vampilov always has this: a tragedy with comedy elements and a comedy with tragedy elements. The creator of Duck Hunt did nothing special, he simply tried to reproduce life in its works as it is. In it, there is no only black and white, the existence of man is filled with half tones. Our task is to talk about this in an article in which the analysis will be made. Vampilov, “The Eldest Son” is the focus of attention.
It should immediately be noted that a brief retelling (it will contain some analytical observations) of the Vampilov’s masterpiece is also necessary. We are getting to it.
Failed party for four
It all starts with the fact that two young guys (Vladimir Busygin and Semyon Sevostyanov) saw off the girls for a little over 20 and expected a pleasant evening, but the girls turned out to be “not like that,” which they informed the boyfriends. Of course, the guys argued a little for a look, but there is nothing to do, on the side of the girls there is always a key word in the romantic question. They remained on the outskirts of the city, without a shelter, and it was cold outside, the last train left.
In this area there are two zones: the private sector (there are village houses) and directly opposite - a small stone house (three stories high) with an arch.
Friends decide to split up: one goes to look for overnight in a stone haven, and the other handles the private sector. Busygin is knocking at the house of a 25-year-old local court worker, Natalya Makarskaya. Some time ago, she quarreled with 10-grader Vassenka, who, apparently, had long and hopelessly in love with her. She thought it was a young man again, but no. Makarskaya and Busygin quarrel for some time, but the young man naturally does not receive an overnight stay.
Sevostyanov Semyon (Silva) denies a resident of the house opposite. Young people find themselves where they were - on the street.
And suddenly they observe how an elderly person - Sarafanov Andrey Grigoryevich - is a clarinet player who serves in the orchestra, according to the official version, but actually plays at funerals and dances, knocks on Natasha and asks for a few minutes. Young people think this is a date, and decide to break into Sarafanov’s apartment on any pretext, they don’t want to freeze on the street.
Our task is analysis: Vampilov (The Elder Son, his play) is his object, so it should be noted that the characters Busygin and Silva at first seem completely superficial, frivolous, but in the process of developing the plot one of them changes before the reader's eyes: it acquires depth of character and even some appeal. We will find out further.
Bearing in mind the goal, I must also say that Busygin is a fatherless and medical student, his mother lives in Chelyabinsk with his older brother. What Silva does is completely irrelevant in the context of our plan.
Unexpected family replenishment
Young people are not mistaken: indeed, the door to the Sarafanov’s apartment remains open, and Vasenka, upset by the recent love affair, is about to run away from the house, as it turns out a little later, his goal is the taiga. The daughter of Sarafanova (Nina) will not leave for Sakhalin today, tomorrow, the other day she is marrying a pilot. In other words, a tear reigns at home, and its residents are not up to the guests, at least expected, but at least not, so the aliens have successfully chosen the moment. This is also useful for us to carry out the analysis. Vampilov ("The Eldest Son") wrote his play filigree, all the characters perform their parts perfectly and realistically.
Busygin pretends to be familiar with Vassenka’s father and says the following phrase: “All of us people are brothers.” Silva begins to unwind this idea and brings it to the point that Vladimir is Vasenko’s unexpectedly found half-brother. The young man was shocked, Busygin, too, was slightly stunned by his friend's agility, so what to do, I do not want to spend the night on the street. They are playing this performance before the Sarafanovs. As analysis shows, Vampilov (“Elder Son”) began the play with a rally. At the base of the drama, he has a joke, and the whole play seems to be a bit of a comedy, but this is only at first glance.
Vasya is looking for a drink. Young people, including the 10th grader, consume. Then Sarafanov appears, and unsuccessful mourners hide in the kitchen. Vasya tells his father the whole story of his eldest son. The old man begins to loudly recall the details of the meeting with the possible mother of Vladimir and unwittingly gives the swindlers all the necessary information, and they eagerly catch every word: the name of the woman, the city (Chernigov), the right age of the eldest son, if he were.
Then Vladimir appears, answers all his father's questions correctly. The house is overwhelmed with general glee, and the booze continues, but now Sarafanov Sr. has already joined her.
Nina comes to the noise and needs an explanation. At first, the girl does not believe her elder brother, then she also trusts him.
Busygin begins to believe in his own game. Character rebirth point
Contact is made between Busygin and an elderly person, and the father opens his whole soul to the prodigal son. They talked all night. From night communication, Vladimir learns the details of the life of the Sarafanovs, for example, the fact that Nina will soon marry the pilot, as well as the mental anguish of her father. How hard it was for the family. Impressed by the night conversation, after his father went to bed, Vladimir wakes up Semyon and begs him to leave quickly, but Andrei Grigoryevich finds them in the doorway. He asks the eldest son to accept a family relic - a silver snuff box. And then a spiritual revolution occurs with Vladimir. Either he felt very sorry for the old man, or himself, because he did not know his father. Busygin imagined that he owed it to all these people. He believed that he was related to them. This is a very important point in the study, and the analysis of Vampilov’s play “The Eldest Son” moves on.
Love as a unifying force
When the holiday rustled, it was necessary to clean the table and generally tidy up the kitchen. This volunteered to do two - Busygin and Nina. During the joint work, which is known to unite, love took out its Finnish knife and pierced the heart of each of the young people. Further narration only follows from such a momentous event. To this conclusion we are led by an analysis of Vampilov’s play “The Eldest Son”
Towards the end of the cleaning, Busygin, for example, allows himself very caustic and sharp remarks addressed to Nina’s husband without five minutes. She doesn’t just reject them, but she’s not too opposed to her brother’s poison. This suggests that the "relatives" are already on a friendly footing with each other, and only strong mutual sympathy can be responsible for the rapid development of trusting relationships in a short time.
The spontaneously arising love between Vladimir and Nina builds the whole further plot and is the force that unites the Sarafanov family again into a single whole.
Divergence in different areas of Busygin and Sevostyanov
Thus, remembering the recently born love, the reader understands that Vladimir is now not illusory, but really becomes his own in the Sarafanov family. An unexpected guest becomes the nail that does not allow relatives to lose touch with each other, he connects them, becomes the center. Silva, on the contrary, turns out to be more and more alien to Busygin and the house where they accidentally brought them, so Semyon tries to extract at least something from the current situation and tries to start an affair with Natasha Makarska. A wonderful play was written by Vampilov - “The Eldest Son” (analysis and summary continue).
The appearance of the groom
A significant event should happen on the day of cleaning the kitchen: Nina plans to introduce her father to her fiancé, Mikhail Kudimov, a cadet of the flight school.
Between morning and evening a whole chain of events takes place, which is worth mentioning at least briefly: Makarskaya changes her attitude towards Vasenka from anger to mercy and invites him to the movies. He rushes to buy tickets, not suspecting that Silva is already weaving her web of temptation. In her, he expects to catch Natasha. She is readily, naturally, inferior to a lover of women, because Semyon is more suitable for her by age. Silva and Natasha should meet exactly at 22:00. At the same time, an enthusiastic guy takes tickets for a movie show. Natasha refuses to go with him and reveals the secret that Andrei Grigoryevich came to her at night to marry Vasyatka.
A fiery young man in despair, he again runs to collect his backpack, so that he can leave the house in the arms of the taiga. Somehow, the characters in extreme nervous tension await the evening and the arrival of the groom.
Representation of the parties somehow immediately goes at random. The newly made elder brother and Silva play a trick on the cadet, he is not offended, because he “loves funny guys.” Kudimov himself is always afraid to be late for a military dormitory, and in general, he is a burden to him.
Here comes the father of the family. Having got acquainted with Sarafanov, the groom begins to suffer from the fact that he cannot remember where he saw the face of the future father-in-law. The elderly man, in turn, says that he is an artist, so, probably, the pilot saw his face either in the philharmonic or in the theater, but he dismisses all this. And suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, a cadet says: “I remembered, I saw you at the funeral!” Sarafanov is forced to admit that yes, indeed, he has not been working in the orchestra for 6 months now.
After the secret was revealed, which was no longer a secret to anyone, since the children had been in the know for a long time, another scandal was played out: with shouts and groans, Vasya leaves the house, determined to get to the taiga. The groom also, having seen enough, hurries to return to the military dormitory before it is closed. Silva goes to the cinema. The family father has a tantrum: he also wants to go somewhere. Busygin and Nina calm him, the musician succumbs. All this is very important, as it is directly related to the climax. Masterfully everything was done by Vampilov. The “eldest son” (we give an analysis of the work) continues.
Catharsis
Then Vladimir confesses to Nina that he is not her brother and, even worse, he loves her. At the moment, probably, according to the author’s intention, a catharsis should happen with the reader, but this is not quite a denouement. On top of that, Vasyatka runs into the apartment and admits that he set fire to Makarska’s apartment just at the time she was there with Silva. The latter's trousers fell into disrepair due to the hooligan antics of the young man. To complete the picture, an unfortunate father came out of his room with a suitcase, ready to go to Chernigov to Vladimir’s mother.
Fed up with the performance in the wake of disappointment from spoiled clothes, Semyon lays down Busygin and says that Vladimir is the same son to Sarafanov as he is his niece, and leaves.
Sarafanov does not want to believe and claims the opposite. Moreover, Volodya even offers to move from a student hostel to them. In the cunning of all these events, Busygin discovers that he was late for the train again. Everyone is laughing. Everyone is happy. Thus ends the play written by Alexander Vampilov. The Eldest Son (analysis also shows this) is an extremely difficult and controversial piece to evaluate. It remains for us to draw some conclusions.
Deadlocked Family
Now that we know the whole story, we can reflect on who the eldest son ’spoke in all of this story.
Obviously, the family was falling apart: the father lost his job, began to drink. The walls of loneliness began to converge, he was in despair. My daughters were tired of pulling the whole family (she was forced to work, and therefore looked older than her 19 years), it seemed to her that leaving for Sakhalin as the wife of a military pilot was a wonderful way out. Still better than such a life. Vassenka was also looking for a way out and could not find, so he decided to leave for the taiga, because he did not succeed in killing himself with a more experienced woman (Natasha Makarskaya).
During a night conversation, when the father dedicated his son to the details of his life and the details of his family’s life, he described the situation very accurately, it could be fit into one phrase: “Everyone is running, foreseeing the enormous tragedy looming over them.” Only Andrei Grigoryevich has nowhere to run.
Busygin as a savior
The older brother came just when everyone needed him. Vladimir restored the balance and harmony of the family. Their love with Nina filled the empty reservoirs of family grace, and no one wanted to run anywhere.
The father felt that he had a son, the eldest son on whom to rely. Nina realized that it was not necessary to go to the island, and her brother was able to defeat his painful affection for a girl much older than herself. Naturally, under Vasya’s love for Natasha, there was a global longing for his mother, a sense of security and comfort.
The only character in the play who was completely defeated is Silva, since all the other main characters formed a certain inner circle. Only Semyon was expelled from it.
Of course, Vladimir Busygin won in the end: he had a father, whom he had dreamed about since childhood. In other words, the play ends with a scene of general family harmony. On this I want to finish a brief analysis. “The Eldest Son” by Vampilov was written brilliantly, and this is not only wonderful, but also a profound work that poses serious questions to the reader.