Zoshchenko’s work is a quite distinctive phenomenon in Russian literature of the Soviet period. The writer had his own view of the processes characteristic of the time in which he lived. The author deduced in the satirical description a whole gallery of characters who subsequently gave rise to the household name "Zoshchenkovsky hero."
Characters of the author
Zoshchenko always illustrated his characters with humor. The writer's works are understandable and accessible to ordinary readers, and primarily because their characters are ordinary people of that time, ordinary inhabitants. So, for example, in the story "Bath" the character is somewhat absent-minded, clumsy, obviously not rich. The work illustrates the situation when the protagonist lost his number and suggests looking for it "according to signs", offering a rope from the number, after which he describes a battered, old coat with a torn pocket and one button. The author in this story shows the comic nature of the situation precisely through the illustrated image. And all the writer's works are devoted to just such cases.
Comic prose as a new art tool
It should be noted that Zoshchenko stood at the very origins of satirical-humorous Russian prose. It was he who created the original comic short story, which became a continuation of the traditions of early Chekhov, Leskov and Gogol in new historical circumstances. As a result, he managed to form his own, absolutely unique artistic style. About forty years Mikhail Zoshchenko devoted Russian prose . "Case history", "Bath", other stories and feuilletons became classics of the satirical genre of that time. On the path of his work, the author himself notes that he is gradually depriving his stories of exaggeration, emphasizing that when people speak absolutely elegantly in society, he will not lag behind.
Structural adjustment of the author’s works
It should be noted that the rejection of the tale was not just a formal act. This event entailed a structural restructuring of Zoshchenko's short stories. The style, plot compositional principles underwent a change. Psychological analysis is also widely introduced. Zoshchenko’s "medical history" is one of such "updated works." On the example of this and many other “fresh” narratives, it can be noted that even externally the works become different - their volume has doubled or even tripled the size of the previous ones. Often the author, as it were, returns to his early experience. But now this is a more mature approach, a qualitatively new attitude to comic works. Conducting an analysis of Zoshchenko’s short story “Case History ”, it becomes clear that the writer uses the traditions of the fictionalized satirical-humorous short story in a new way.
Art techniques
The feuilleton is directed against the existing “unlikely style” (as the author himself delicately puts it) of the work of institutions, according to which an outwardly subtle, but quite effective system of dividing the population into two categories was established, the inequality between which was expressed quite clearly: on one side “we ", and on the other -" you. " In reality, as the author himself claims, “you” is “we”, and “we” are partly “you”. In the finale, a sad warning sounds of some inconsistency. It is this inconsistency that has reached a certain grotesque degree, and is exposed in the work of M. M. Zoshchenko, "Case history." What is the narrative? More on this later in the article.
Summary
Zoshchenko’s “case history” illustrates the manners and life of a special hospital where visitors are greeted by a “cheerful” poster on the wall about the regimen for issuing corpses. In this case, the newly admitted patient expresses his dissatisfaction with such an announcement. To which the paramedic replies that this poster can be criticized only by the recovered people, and recovery in the hospital is an unlikely event.
Further along the narrative, the protagonist has to go through a few more shocks. First, his nurse leads him to the bathroom, where there is one bathtub, in which an elderly woman is already sitting. The hero is invited to climb up to the old woman and wash herself. Of course, under normal circumstances, the nurse should apologize and postpone the bathing procedure to another time. But a hospital employee was used to seeing patients, not people. And she does not consider ceremonial ceremony with patients. And at the sight of the confusion of the newly arrived patient, she simply says that the old woman does not actually care who will be with her in the bathroom, because she does not react to anything, due to the increased body temperature. The trials of the hero do not end there. He does not receive a bathrobe in size, then, after a few days, approaching recovery, he becomes infected with whooping cough. And still the same as at the beginning of the story, the nurse tells him that, apparently, he caught a disease from a neighboring outbuilding. In the neighborhood there was a children's department. The nurse suggested that the hero had the imprudence to eat from a plate that someone with whooping cough had used before. At the same time, Zoshchenko emphasizes that it is not the hospital staff responsible for sterility that is guilty, but the patient himself, who behaves so imprudently. When the main character gets better, he doesn’t manage to check out. Either they forget about him, then someone is not there, then the staff of the institution is busy. We did not cite all the events that took place in the narrative, but only a brief summary of them. The "case history" Zoshchenko ends for the patient at home.
"Last test" of the hero
Yes, the patient had to go through a lot ... You can guess this without even bothering to read the full story, just look at the above summary. Zoshchenko's "case history", however, does not end there. What happened next? After the patient nevertheless left the hospital and returned home, his wife says that a week before his return she received a notification that she would take the corpse of her husband. As it turned out, it was sent by mistake. The “former patient” became so unpleasant that he wanted to go sort out the hospital. But remembering how things were going on there, he changed his mind. And he decided after this "last test" to be treated at home, on his own.
The image of the central hero
In order to most accurately represent the character of Zoshchenko’s work “Case History”, one should take into account all those small lines that are scattered in separate narratives. A large topic reveals the entire work of the writer as a whole. Reading Zoshchenko’s work “Case History”, we see a psychological portrait of a person who is used to his insignificant position in society and to the fact that his whole fate is nothing compared to any accepted instruction, paragraph or order. The author tries to show that people lose their self-esteem when they cease to treat them as thinking, original personalities. It is from here that a person’s worship of officials begins, disbelief in the disinterestedness of those who are close, and ingratiation towards those on whom he has to depend.
The eternal question of human happiness
Zoshchenko’s work “Case history” is an illustration of not only the insignificant position of a citizen, but also the dependence of this provision on the social fabric, and the person’s unwillingness to change anything. Many contemporaries of the writer at first thought that they would be able to put an end to the legacy of the past quickly enough. But the author himself neither then nor later shared such benign illusions. The story of Zoshchenko's “Case History” reflects, first of all, the writer’s reaction to the tenacity of various social weeds that he noticed in his way, while not underestimating the abilities of the layman and tradesman for adaptability and mimicry. Subsequently, to solve the eternal question of human happiness, more and more prerequisites arise due to powerful socialist reforms and the cultural revolution. All this has a significant impact on the direction and nature of Zoshchenko’s work. Some instructive intonations appear in the writer's works. They were not before in his narratives. The author not only - and not even so much - tries to make fun of how much to patiently interpret, explain, referring to
the conscience and mind of readers.
Conclusion
Zoshchenko’s story “Case history” is, first of all, an image of extreme disrespect, rudeness, spiritual callousness, manifested in relation to a person. All this vile attitude is brought to the limit. When writing out, for example, from a hospital, a person is glad that he left at least alive. And, remembering the conditions under which he was there, he decides to still get sick at home. And this happens everywhere: no matter where the "small" person is, everywhere he will feel somehow humiliated. And this happens only because others see anyone in it - a buyer, a patient, just a visitor, but not a person, not a person.