In all the plays of Maxim Gorky, one way or another, there is a common important motive. Namely, passive humanism, which refers to such feelings as compassion and pity, as well as active humanism opposed to it, which engenders in people a desire for resistance, protest, struggle. And the play, created by the author in 1902, was no exception.
General patterns
The “At the Bottom” analysis is an analysis of social drama, a deeply philosophical work in which unusual characters encounter common problems. The division into main and secondary characters in the play, as you can easily see, is not. The plot is dominated not by a clash of people in certain situations, but a clash of their views and attitudes. Everything in the work is subject to a philosophical conflict, and therefore the basis of the play is an intense dialogue, often turning into a debate. The playwright minimizes the number of monologues; they, as a rule, are for the most part the completion of some stage of the characters' argument or even the author’s declaration (an example of this is the satin monologue). The conflicting parties seek to convince each other, and therefore the speech of each of the heroes is bright, rich, rich in aphorisms.
A feature of the play “At the Bottom” is the parallel development of several plots.
The analysis "At the bottom" should be carried out immediately in several parallel channels, almost independent of each other - this is how the work itself is built. For example, the relationship between Kostylev (the owner of the overnight stay), his wife Vasilisa and her sister Natasha, as well as the thief Pepl, could well form the basis for a separate social drama. Another direction is the relationship of the mechanic Mite, who remained unemployed and sank “to the bottom”, with his dying wife, Anna. The work also has other plot nodes: Nastya and Baron, Kvashnya and Medvedev, the stories of Bubnov, Actor, Alyosha and other heroes. At first glance, it even seems that Gorky simply depicted several examples from the lives of those who live “at the bottom”, and that if the number of such examples had decreased or increased, nothing would have changed much.
On the other hand, conducting the analysis “At the Bottom”, one can get the impression that the playwright consciously sought such an effect of “torn apart”. The author seems to divide the scene into several sections, each of which lives its own special life and is inhabited by new characters. A curious polyphonic dialogue is formed, during which the remarks sounded on one of the sections of the scene seem to accidentally find a response in the words sounded on the other. The final effect is very unexpected. Ashes in one corner of the stage convinces Natasha that she is afraid of nothing and nobody, and then in another, Bubnov, patching his cap, gives out the phrase: “And the strings are rotten ...”, which sounds like irony in the direction of Ashes. A drunken actor in one corner tries, but is not able to read a poem, and Bubnov in another corner during a game of drafts with city Medvedev, gloatingly says: "Your lady has disappeared." And again there is a feeling that this is addressed not only to Medvedev, but also in part to the Actor, which is said in these words not only about the party in checkers, but also about human fate as a whole.
The image of Luke - a connecting link in the work of M. Gorky
This cross-cutting action in the play is quite complex. To realize it, you need to understand what role Luke plays in all this. The analysis “At the Bottom” cannot be carried out without referring to the image of a wandering preacher who is trying to console everyone, promises everyone an early deliverance from suffering, and calls not to lose hope and faith. Luke is an unusual person. This is a smart person with a keen interest in people and vast life experience. The convictions of Luke himself are very well characterized by his phrase "What you believe, that is." The preacher is convinced that the soul cannot be healed by truth, and indeed nothing can be done, but a comforting lie helps to alleviate pain. Moreover, Luka is truly sorry for the people, he wants to help them.
Such clashes help form the end-to-end action of the play. For this purpose, the author needed parallel developing stories of different characters. These people differ in vitality, ability to believe in a person, and resist. Luke’s sermon, on the other hand, allows you to check how so different people will react to it, which makes such a test even more convincing.
Dying Anna, a woman who during her life did not know peace, Luke says that she would die "with joy, without anxiety." And the patient, on the contrary, intensifies the thirst for life. “If there is no flour there, one can tolerate here,” she says. And this is Luke's first defeat. Natasha, the preacher, is telling a parable about the “righteous land”, wanting to convince her of the pernicious truth and the saving power of deception. However, Natasha, upon hearing his words, comes to the completely opposite conclusion - she believes that the hero of the parable, who committed suicide, simply "could not endure the deception." These words, in turn, shed light on the tragedy of the Actor, who believed the consolations of Luke and failed to withstand disappointment.
An analysis of the work “At the Bottom” of Gorky allows us to trace how the old man’s short conversations with his “protégé” intertwine with each other and create a tense internal movement in the work. The illusive hopes of the unfortunate grow, and as soon as the illusions begin to dissipate, Luke quietly disappears.
Sateen's speech - the anthem of life, first sounded "at the bottom"
Luke suffers the greatest defeat from Sateen. In the last act, when the preacher is no longer in a rooming house, people begin to argue about who he was and what he was trying to achieve. Tramps worry how and what to live on now. Expresses the general condition of the baron. Admitting that he used to live as if "in a dream" and did not understand anything, he begins to dreamily reflect: "... because for some reason I was born ...". People begin to listen to each other. Satin at first defended Luke and denied that the preacher deliberately deceived everyone. However, pretty quickly this defense transforms into an offensive, and now Satin says that all this Luke did out of pity for the people. The hero says that falsehood is the religion of slaves and masters, and the god of a free man is true. Sateen continues his soulful speech, and now one can hear words from him that “there is only a man, yet the rest is the work of his hands and brain”. And despite the fact that even he who speaks further than these words will not go, the shelter for the first time makes a serious speech and there is pain from a dead life.
The last three acts of the play end in death. At the end of the second act, Satin screams, “The dead do not hear!” The movement of the drama is associated with the awakening of "living corpses", their emotions, hearing. This is precisely the main, moral significance of the play, although it ends tragically.
Conclusion
There is still much debate about the play “At the Bottom”. An analysis of the work that you just got acquainted with allows you to make sure that it is a truly deep, unconventional work that exposes the acute philosophical and moral conflicts of that era and their gradual development. For Gorky himself, it was extremely important to make a person wake up, push his ability to reason, to comprehend the essence.