The play of Maxim Gorky, “At the Bottom”, was created at a very turbulent time, when people were in power, sometimes they knew nothing about it. That is why the work contains two parallel lines at once, one of them is philosophical, the other social and everyday. Their development is carried out in parallel, they do not intersect anywhere. As a result of such an unusual arrangement of the play, two planes appeared at once: internal and external. Summary "At the bottom" will help to reveal the work from various angles.
The play takes place in an overnight house owned by Mikhail Ivanovich Kostylev and his wife Vasilisa Karlovna, while the husband is 25 years older than his wife. “Former people” live in this building, which is what the author calls them. This category includes those who do not have a certain social status, as well as the poor, who are forced to work hard for pennies.
In addition to the owners of the rooming house, the following characters are present in the play: Actor, Satin, Andrey Dmitrievich Kleshch (all three are 40 years old), locksmith Kleshcha's wife Anna (30 years old), 24-year-old prostitute Nastya, hookers Krivoy Zob and Tatarin, Alyosha twenty years old, thief Vaska Ashes and 33-year-old Baron. Secondary heroes of the work are police Medvedev, an uncle of Vasilisa, as well as a trader of Kvashnya dumplings. Summary “At the bottom” demonstrates a huge number of characters in the play, each of which hides a difficult fate.
A difficult relationship develops between the characters, quite often scandals occur in the house. Vasilisa loves Vaska Ashes and persuades him to kill Kostylev. She wants to be the sole owner of the rooming house. The thief loves Vasilisa's younger sister Natalia. Kostylev’s wife finds out about this and beat her.
The actor and Sateen have long sunk to the bottom, they are leading a loose lifestyle. The most miserable character in the play is the Baron, who yesterday held the position of a nobleman, and today he was penniless and forced to live in a rooming house. The hard worker Mite is trying to feed himself and his wife with the help of locksmith skills, but he can’t even buy medicine for his sick wife. After her death, the locksmith finally loses faith in himself and begins to drink. Summary “At the bottom”, alas, is not able to show all the pain that the hero feels after losing his wife.
The Luke wanderer, appearing in the middle of the play, symbolizes a pipe dream. However, having inspired hope for the suffering people, he simply disappears. The actor does not stand this and commits suicide.
The reflector of the collision of two philosophical “truths” at once was the play “At the Bottom”, the brief content of which once again emphasizes this. The lodging house in this context plays the role of humanity, which has become at an impasse, having lost hope for a higher mind and not having found faith in its own strength. It is this that becomes the cause of a general feeling of hopelessness and hopeless darkness. Summary “At the bottom” allows you to feel this feeling without delving into the fine details of the work.
Satin is honest and prefers not to hide the truth from everyone. In his conversation with Mite, the topic of lack of meaning in life takes on a completely new sound. Satin plays the role of a radical that takes on the whole absurdity of the world where God disappeared and a void appeared. Luke, on the contrary, believes that if a person needs to lie to maintain his own life, then he cannot do without lies, otherwise he will not be able to withstand the harsh truth and die.
The conflict between Luke and Satin plays the role of a catalyst for action for everyone around. To some extent, the second understands the philosophy of the first and even partially agrees with it. According to both, a person should feel his own importance and begin to act only for the good of himself. In this work, M. Gorky (the play "At the Bottom") most clearly reflects the life vicissitudes of people who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century.