Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin is a representative of the generation of “children of war”. And not just those living in their families amid the military devastation, but the children from the orphanage, where everyone from an early age is for himself. The writer grew up in an environment in which it was easier to die than to survive.
This bitter childhood memory gave rise to a series of painfully truthful works describing poverty, vagrancy, hunger, and early adulthood of children and adolescents of that cruel time. One of them was the story "The Golden Cloud Spent the Night", the analysis of which will be considered below.
Prose by A.I. Pristavkin in world literature
The works of Pristavkin in different years were published in Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, France, Czech Republic, Finland. In December 2001, he became an adviser to the president of the Russian Federation. The writer is a laureate of the USSR State Prize , as well as a number of literary Russian and foreign awards. Pristavkin was awarded the national German Prize for youth literature.
His autobiographical prose is close and understandable to a young reader. In modern schools with children, not only the analysis of the work “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is being worked out. Other stories are included in the circle of youth reading: “Portrait of a father”, “Between the lines”, “Stars”, “Shard”, “Relatives of the Baby”, “Doctor”, “Steps behind you”, “Shurka”, etc. All of them nagging, lyrical, revealing a person from the deepest, sometimes the most unexpected side.
Theme of the work
In 1981, A. Pristavkin created his most famous work, which reached the general reader only in 1987. The analysis of the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is carried out in extracurricular reading lessons , and its study is included in many of the author's literature programs for high school. Along with the general theme of the war, the writer talks about the harsh and difficult childhood of the military generation, reflects on friendship and fellowship, and on love for his native land.
The most vivid sensation of the tragedy of life and the constant will to overcome it can be seen precisely in the story "The Golden Cloud Spent the Night" (Pristavkin). The analysis of the work is carried out in the context of the drama of difficult orphanages, wartime, where, in spite of everything, there is a huge charge of optimism, faith in a person, his strength, stamina, reason, faith in good. The story included the development of the theme of homeless childhood in orphanages, which subsequently brought Pristavkin fame.
The main characters of the story
The main characters of the story, Sasha and Kolka Kuzmina, pupils of the orphanage. They are sent to the North Caucasus, where they later find themselves drawn into the terrible, even tragic realities of the mass migration of North Caucasian peoples. It was undertaken in our country in 1943 - 1944. This is how the description of the boys in the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin) begins, the analysis of which follows below: “... The brothers were called Kuzmyonyshy, they were eleven years old, and they lived in an orphanage near Moscow. There, the children’s life revolved around a found frozen potato, rotten potato peelings and, as the summit of desire and dream, a bread crust, just to exist, to wrest an extra war day from fate. ”
Theme of moving and road
At the beginning of the story, the director of the orphanage invites the brothers to go to the Caucasus, just freed from the Germans. Naturally, the guys were attracted by adventure, and they did not miss this opportunity. And so the brothers ride through the war, completely destroyed and still not having time to rise after fascist raids on a surprisingly insanely funny train.
The topic of the road in his work is not accidentally touched upon by A. Pristavkin. “A golden cloud slept,” the analysis of which includes the problems of the road and the life path of the heroes - this is a memory tale. The author complains: “But there were half a half of us in that line-up! Hundreds then, right before my eyes, already began to disappear, simply to perish on that distant new land where we were brought at that time. ”
Even on the way of the twin brothers to the Caucasus, a strange, sinister meeting took place - on the adjacent tracks at one of the stations, Kolka Kuzmyonysh found wagons. From the barred windows children’s black-eyed faces looked, arms extended, strange cries were heard. Kolka, not realizing that they are asking for a drink, hands someone the blackthorn berries. Such a touching, sincere impulse is capable only of a street boy abandoned by all. The description of the soul of a child torn to pieces goes through the whole story, supplementing its literary analysis. “A golden cloud slept” (Pristavkin) - this is a tale-contradiction, where parallels are drawn between phenomena that are essentially opposite.
Survival Science: Military Realities through the Eyes of Children
In the war years, hunger overtook both children and adults, but for people like Kuzmenysh and orphanages, food was the main dominant of life. Hunger drives brothers' actions, pushes them to theft, to desperate and ingenious actions, sharpening feelings and imagination.
Kuzmenysh comprehend the science of survival, therefore they have a special value system - it is counted "from the devourer." And contact with adults begins with this: not taken away, but fed, which means good, you can trust. In the novel “A Cloud of Gold Spent the Night,” the analysis is based on children's eyes seeing military reality and the people in it.
Dramatic turn in the fate of heroes
It was difficult for the Kuzmyonysh to figure out what was happening around, to which they were eyewitnesses. When the worst thing happened to Kolka (he saw his brother, who was hanged by the armpits on the edge of the fence, and fell ill from the shock), then Sasha’s place was taken by the same eleven-year-old orphan Alkhuzor - Chechen.
Kolka calls him his brother first, to save him from Russian soldiers, and then according to a deeper feeling, when Alkhuzor saved Kolka from a Chechen gun aimed at him. This is a fraternity of children and raises A. Pristavkin.
“A golden cloud slept”: analysis
The main leitmotif of the work is the friendship of single children who are in danger everywhere, but who defend their right to love and affection with all their might. Kolka and Alkhuzor were not the only ones in the detention center, where they were taken, picking up half dead in the mountains. There already lived the Crimean Tatar Musa, the German Lida Gross “from the big river”, and the Nogay Balbek. All of them had a common bitter and terrible share.
Children-orphans, abandoned by the war in the Caucasus region far from their native places, are tragically confronted with the fact that they are not yet able to understand, understand, with an attempt by the totalitarian system to destroy the life of entire nations. This is what the “red thread” goes through the story, complementing its analysis.
“A golden cloud slept” (Pristavkin) - this is a story in which boys who are constantly hungry, ragged, and do not know the warmth and comfort of home learn the price of harsh social injustice from their own bitter experience. They learn the lessons of warmth, black human hatred and inadvertent mercy, cruelty and a great spiritual brotherhood. The history of the Tomilinsky orphanage is only a small part of this tragic and inhuman process. But even in such cruel conditions, the colonists received lessons of eternal values: morality, kindness, justice, compassion.
Connection of times
The main characters of the story, Sashka and Kolka Kuzmina, go through many adventures and difficulties. In them - street children - they show the features of early adulthood, which is so characteristic of the entire generation of children of the 1940s, who faced completely non-children's problems. The story leaves a feeling of indissoluble unity of the child with the adult world.
If we touch more deeply on the work “The Golden Cloud Sleeped” (Pristavkin), the analysis of the story should be completed by indicating the main idea. In his story, Anatoly Pristavkin tries to show that the war and everything connected with it were not overgrown with past. “I will not hide,” the author writes, “the idea has come up more than once that they are alive, that after all somewhere there are all these people who, without thought and fear from His (Stalin's) name, did His will.”
Conclusion
Having expressed the truth, exposing it in all its terrible guise, the writer may have removed part of the burden from his own soul, but he certainly did not lighten the reading souls. Although this is the whole of A. Pristavkin (“A golden cloud slept”) - each has his own analysis of his works, this was what the author sought. According to the writer, the meaning of this literature is not to sweeten the ear, not to “bring about a golden dream”, but in every way to encourage the reader to think, feel, compassion and draw conclusions. The book encourages mental work, the birth of doubt within oneself, and the reassessment of the familiar world. It serves not only as a description of “that present,” but as a warning to the future.