Mikhail Sholokhov: Shepherd. Mikhail Sholokhov: Shepherd Characteristics of the heroes of the Don Stories

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was a witness and participant in the bloody events of the civil war that swept our country at the beginning of the twentieth century. The attitude of the Cossacks to the revolution, the difficulty of choosing the right side and the need to raise arms against the brothers - all this was experienced by the writer himself. And this experience turned into Sholokhov's Don Stories, a summary of which we will consider in the article.

About the work

The stories included in the collection are dry, unemotional and therefore incredibly reliable stories of the lives of different people who fell under the merciless wheels of revolutionary changes. Even death is depicted with extreme ordinariness, in which one feels the incredible tragedy of the time, where death is habitual and unremarkable.

It is left to the reader to draw conclusions from Sholokhov's Don Stories. The summary of the work can serve as another proof of this.

In total, the collection includes twenty stories, but we will consider only some of them, since the scope of one article does not allow us to describe all of Sholokhov's Don Stories. A summary of the three works will be given below.

"Food Commissioner"

The main character is Ignat Bodyagin, he is a food commissar (food commissar), that is, a person responsible for collecting and handing over the harvest to the state. He goes to his native village, from where his father kicked him out six years ago. Then Ignat stood up for the worker whom Bodyagin Sr. hit. Returning, the son learns that his father was sentenced to death for refusing to hand over bread. Among the Reds, Bodyagin Sr. recognizes Ignat and curses, predicts that his grief will still be poured out to his son, because the Cossacks are coming to the village to exterminate the Soviet power. They are shot in front of the son of Bodyagin Sr.

Discord between close people perfectly conveys the summary. Sholokhov's "Don Stories" are good because they reflect the harsh reality without embellishment.

The Cossacks are approaching, the battle is approaching. Ignat and Teslenko, the commandant of the tribunal, are forced to linger in order to have time to turn in the bread. An uprising begins in the village. Teslenko and Ignat are forced to flee. On the way, Bodyagin notices a child in a snowdrift. He takes the boy into his saddle. Now the horse is not going so fast, and the chase is getting closer.

Realizing that it will not be possible to leave, Ignat and Teslenko tie the boy to the saddle, letting the horse gallop, while they themselves remain and perish.

"Alyoshkino heart": a summary

Sholokhov's "Don Tales" are valuable for their historicity. They allow you to experience and feel the terrible events of the past time and now.

For two years now, drought and famine have reigned. Alyosha's family did not eat bread for five months. The boy manages to get foals, and in the evening, after overeating, his sister dies. The girl is buried, but the dogs dig her up and eat her. Polya, Alyosha's older sister, climbs into the house of Makarchykha, a wealthy neighbor. He finds cabbage soup in a pot, eats and falls asleep. The mistress, returning, kills her and throws out the body. The next night, Alyoshka himself climbs into Makarchykha, she catches him and beats him.

Leshka's mother dies, the boy runs away from home and ends up in a procurement office. Here he meets the political committee Sinitsyn, who feeds the boy. Alyoshka gets a job and goes to a club to listen to books being read. Upon learning where the boy is missing, the owner beats him up.

Mikhail Sholokhov does not spare his heroes. "Don stories" sometimes even seem unnecessarily cruel, but all this is because they depict a fierce time.

Alyoshka learns about the bandits' attack and warns Sinitsyn. At night, the Reds repulse the attack, and the bandits hide in the house. Alyosha is wounded by a fragment of a grenade, but the boy survives.

"Alien Blood"

This story completes the "Don stories" by M. Sholokhov. Grandfather Gavrila's only son, Peter, disappeared in the war against the Reds. A new government has come, and there is no one to help the old man with the housework.

In the spring, Gavrila and her old woman begin to plow the land, still hoping that their son will return. The old man orders him a sheepskin coat and boots and puts them in a chest.

Colleague Pyotr Prokhor is returning. He talks about the death of a friend. Gavrila cannot believe it and goes to the steppe at night to call for her son.

Procurement begins. They come to Gavrila to take away bread, he argues and is not going to give back what he has acquired by overwork. Here a Cossack drives up and shoots the food processors. One of them remains alive, and the grandfather brings him to the hut. The old people take care of the guy. He comes to his senses, is called Nikolai, but Gavrila and his wife call him Peter.

Gradually, Nikolai-Peter recovers, begins to help with the housework, Gavrila invites him to stay. But then a letter arrives from the factory where Nikolai grew up, and he leaves. There is no limit to the grief of the elderly, who again lost their son, albeit an adopted one.

Conclusion

Tragic and bleak "Don stories" by Sholokhov. The summary is a perfect proof of this. Too many deaths and human grief in these stories.

Cartridges, a mutton bone, a field map, a summary, a bridle, a loaf of bread are lying on the table. Nikolka Koshevoy, the squadron commander, is sitting at the table, he fills out a questionnaire. “The rough leaf says sparingly: Nikolai Koshevoy. Squadron commander. Earthman. Member of the RKSM, age - 18 years. He looks like a green boy, but he managed to eliminate two gangs almost without damage and led the squadron into battles and fights for half a year no worse than any old commander. Nikolka hates his age and is ashamed of it.

Nikolka's father is a Cossack, and Nikolka himself is also a Cossack. He recalls how, at the age of five or six, his father put him on a horse, taught him to ride. In the "German" father disappeared. Mother died. From his father, Nikolka inherited a love for horses, incredible courage and a mole the size of a pigeon's egg on his left leg above the ankle. At the age of fifteen, Nikolka left with the Reds for Wrangel.

Nikolka lodges in a hut standing over the Don itself. In the morning he went out into the yard and lay down in the dewy grass. A Cossack came for him and reported that a courier had arrived, reporting on a new gang from the Salsky district, which had already occupied the Grushinsky state farm. The messenger galloped forty miles without rest, drove the horse to death. Nikolka read the order to go to the rescue. He began to get ready, thinking that it would not hurt to learn somewhere, and then the gang showed up. Nikolka is tired of such a life, but there is nothing to do, there is an order from the commander.

For three days the gang escaped from the persecution of Nikolka Koshevoy's detachment. The people in the gang are seasoned, leaving like a wolf. The chieftain is drunk, and all the coachmen and machine-gunners are drunk. For seven years, the chieftain was not in his native land: at first he was in German captivity, then at Wrangel, he went to the Turets region, but then returned with a gang. “Here it is, ataman’s life, if you look back over your shoulder. His soul has hardened, as in summer the footprints in the steppe stale in the brazier ... The pain is wonderful and incomprehensible, sharpens from the inside, fills the muscles with nausea, and the ataman feels: do not forget her and do not fill the likhomanka with any moonshine.

Frost hit the dawn. Melnik Lukich fell ill, he lay down to rest in the bee-house; When he woke up, he was hailed by two military men who had driven out of the forest. The chieftain pretended to be red and began to find out from the miller if there were strangers nearby. He got down from his horse and admitted that he was liquidating the Reds, then he demanded grain for the horses. The miller feels sorry for the grain collected bit by bit, he does not want to give it away; the ataman threatens to kill him for aiding the Reds. The old man lay at his feet, begging for mercy. The ataman laughingly forgave the old man. And the bandits who have arrived are already feeding the horses with grain, spilling golden grains under their feet.

Through the fog, at dawn, Lukich moved to the farm and got on a horseman, who led him to the commander. Lukich was led into Nikolka's house. The miller was glad that he got to the Reds. He recalled to Nikolka how he had recently given him milk to drink when his detachment passed by the mill. The miller complains about the bandits who poisoned all his grain. He reports that they are still at the mill, drunk, sleeping. Nikolka orders to saddle the horses and attack the gang, which was already advancing along the path (road).

The chieftain saw a commander with a saber galloping at him, whom he identified by binoculars hanging on the chest of a young soldier. The ataman took aim angrily and fired. The horse under Nikolka fell, and he himself, shooting, ran closer to the ataman. The ataman was waiting for Nikolka to shoot the clip, and then he ran into the guy like a kite. He waved his saber, and Nikolka's body went limp, slid to the ground. The ataman removed the binoculars and chrome boots from the dead man. With difficulty pulling off his boots with socks, the ataman saw a mole. He turned Nikolka to face him and cried: “Son! Nikolushka! Native! My little blood...” Ataman, realizing that he had killed his son, took out a revolver and shot himself in the mouth.

And in the evening, when horsemen loomed over the copse, a kite-vulture fell off the ataman's shaggy head.

M.A. Sholokhov is a wonderful writer who is known throughout the world. All his life he lived on the Don in the village of Veshenskaya, Rostov Region, and therefore the Cossacks, their life and way of life is his favorite topic. He writes about this in his work “Don Stories”. On our Don Stories website, a summary will help students, and even ordinary readers, get acquainted with the plot of this wonderful work.

food committee leader

The plot of the first work in the collection "Don Stories" is as follows: the head of the food committee, Bodyagin Ignat, is heading to the village. Dad drove him out of the village a few years ago, because Ignat defended the farm laborer whom dad wanted to beat. Bodyagin's father suggested that the Cossacks not give up their bread. The revolutionary tribunal sentenced him to death. The father, of course, recognized his son among the Red Army. He asked, they say, if he didn’t let the Reds into his pantry, then he is an enemy, and they roam the barns of the Cossacks, but they are power, right? Bodyagin Sr. cursed Ignat. Father was shot in front of Bodyagin.
Detachments of Cossacks are getting closer to the village. The commandant of the revolutionary tribunal Teslenko and Ignat lingered in the village to hand over the confiscated bread. The uprising of the Cossacks began. Ignat and Teslenko are trying to escape, but Bodyagin noticed a little boy in a snowdrift not far from the village and picked him up. He put the baby on the horse and wrapped him in his own sheepskin coat, which made the mare move more slowly. Teslenko began to persuade him to leave the child, even cutting Bodyagin's hands into blood, but Ignat did not ask for the child. Then the riders realized that they could not get rid of the chase. They got off their horses, tied the boy to the saddle and let their horses go to the steppe. They fought and fought back, but died.

The second small work in the collection "Don Stories" was "Alyosha's Heart".

A two-year drought caused famine. Alyosha's family has not eaten bread for five months. Alyosha got the meat of a foal, recapturing it from a hungry pack of dogs. And in the evening, Alyosha's younger sister, Nyura, died because she ate too much meat. Alyosha and his mother buried the girl in the garden, but the dogs dug her up and ate her. Polya's older sister climbed into the neighbor's house, ate cabbage soup from the pot and fell asleep with her head in the stove. And the hostess came home, found Polya sleeping there, beat her to death with an iron and threw her into the well, which was abandoned.
Alyosha saw it. At night, the boy climbed into the cellar of this neighbor and drank milk. A neighbor caught him there, beat him severely and threw him out near the river, thinking that the boy had died. Then this neighbor went to Alyosha's mother in order to buy her a house for her daughter and son-in-law. But Alyosha's mother had already died of starvation. Leaving the house, the neighbor saw Alyosha, who was crawling home covered in blood, and ran away.
The wounded child asks the priest for something to eat, but he is refused. After that Alyosha trudges to the office. Political commissar Sinitsyn fed him steamed wheat grains with vegetable oil. Alexei began to go to Sinitsyn every day, and the commissar noticed that the boy had a wound on his head that was festering, there were worms in it. Sinitsyn removed the worms from the wound. So they became friends. A wealthy farmer Alekseev Ivan accepted Alyosha as a worker. Sinitsyn asked Lesha why he no longer comes to him, and having received an answer, he called the boy to the club. There he read a book about exploitation to Alexei. The owner found out where Alyosha was at night, so he beat him badly. But the boy had a kind heart, he was not angry with the owner, because he feeds him.
At night, Alyosha pretended to fall asleep, and he himself heard that bandits had come to Ivan and said that tomorrow at midnight they would attack the village. In the morning Alyosha ran to Sinitsyn and told him what he had heard at night. The owner of Alyoshka was arrested, and the Red Army soldiers set up an ambush. The bandits took refuge in the shed. And Alyosha had to throw a grenade out the window. But when he reached the window and pulled out the pin, Alyosha saw that a man with a girl in his arms and a woman came out of the barn, they decided to surrender. Alyosha closed the grenade with his body, Sinitsyn managed to snatch and throw away the grenade. But Alyosha was wounded by a shrapnel next to his heart. When the boy woke up, he saw in the hands of the commissioner a Komsomol ticket in his name. Sinitsyn shook hands with Alexei, and the child saw that his older comrade was crying.

"Native Blood" is the next story in the collection "Don Stories".

Grandfather Gavrila at night thought about his son Peter, who disappeared during the war. He remembered how he accompanied him to the fight against the Reds, bought a good horse, for which he had to sell two bulls. How he gave him a saddle and a silver bridle, which he inherited from his grandfather. As he punished his son on the wires to serve faithfully and bravely, as his father served, so as not to shame the Cossack army and the entire Don.
Red Army soldiers appeared in the village, a month after seeing Peter off to the front. Old man Gavrila, out of spite, wore red Cossack trousers with stripes. He wore on his chest all his awards, which he received for having bravely served the king. Grandfather was offended by the red government. There was no strength for anything.
But in the spring, grandfather began to plow the field. He and his wife are still hoping that Peter will show up. Gavrila ordered to sew a sheepskin coat for Peter, bought boots for his son, and sewed a hat for him. Once he saw his wife holding this hat in her arms, like a baby, and rocking it. Grandfather hid the hat, but from that moment his wife's eye twitched and her mouth twisted.
Peter's brother-soldier, Likhovidov Prokhor, returned from Turkey. He said that the son of the old people died a heroic death during the battle with the Red Army for Novorossiysk. Parents plunged into great grief. But Gavrila does not believe in the death of his son, he goes out into the steppe at night and calls Peter.
In the meantime, food distribution is taking place in the village. So the Red Army men and the chairman came to Gavrila's house to take away the bread. Grandfather began to swear, but quickly realized that swearing would not help here. While the food detachment was in the grandfather's yard, a Cossack on horseback rode up to the fence and shot all the Red Army soldiers from a rifle. They took a whole sack of oats from Gavrila for this "service". Late in the evening, grandfather decides to go to the threshing floor, where the Red Army soldiers from the food detachment are lying. The executed were wearing only underwear, as the Cossacks took away their sheepskin coats. One young guy with white hair was still alive. Gavrila dragged him into the house. And he and his wife began to nurse this young man. Gavrila noticed that the old woman began to treat the guy like a son. The commander of the Red Army came to Gavrila's house and asked to take care of his comrade. The wounded came out. He said that his name was Nikolai, but Gavrila and his wife called him Peter. And the grandfather gets used to it more and more, and the image of his own son gradually fades. He tried to return the old feeling of pain, but it did not work, which made the old man ashamed.
When the wounded man was able to walk, he was presented with a sheepskin coat, boots and hat, which were intended for Peter. Nikolai began to help with the housework and call Gavrila father. "Peter" said that he was a worker and was born in the Urals. He does not know his parents, he grew up at a factory, joined the army, became a member of the Communist Party. And Gavrila told him about the loss of his son and that he and his wife fell in love with the Red Army soldier like their own child. Gavrila invited "Peter" to stay with them, promised to marry him and leave him the household. "Peter" agreed to stay, but he cannot work, because his right hand has stopped moving due to the injury.
But then "Peter" received a letter from his factory, his name is back. Gavrila realized that the "son" would decide to leave. "Peter" told the old people that he could not stay, because his conscience did not allow him to leave his factory. Gavrila agrees, but asks to comfort the old woman with the hope of the return of her "son". The old man sees off "Peter" and is very sad, but tries to hold on. Peter is leaving. Gavrila screams for him to return, but felt that the "son" would not return.

Eight-year-old Minka lives in the village with his mother and grandfather. For his character and the fact that his mother gave birth to an unmarried woman, he received the nickname "impudent". Soon the boy's father returns home from the war - the Red Guard Foma, in the past a rural shepherd. At first, Minka is frightened of her father, but then she is imbued with respect and love for him, listens to his stories about the war, about the struggle with the masters and Comrade Lenin. The impudent one constantly has to defend his father in front of the local boys, who call him a “communist” and a bloodsucker. At the next meeting, Foma is elected chairman of the collective farm, although the rich people of the village are unhappy with this choice. Then a food detachment comes to the village and begins to take surplus wheat from the population.

Grandfather Minka honestly shows his stocks and takes eight sacks of wheat to the convoy. Then the food detachment enters the courtyard of the local priest. Together with them, Minka slips there. Popadya immediately begins to cry that they have no wheat at all and she and her husband cannot give anything to the food detachment. The military begin to look for an underground in the house, but it is carefully hidden from prying eyes. Helps him find Minka. The underground is filled to the very top with wheat. The food detachment takes away the surplus, and the impudent curses the hit in the back. In the village of Minka there is no one to play with, all the local boys are offended by him for having handed over the supplies of the priest. And then my father was going to war again. Minka's mother does not want to let her father go, the grandfather also quietly brushes away tears and tries to persuade his son to stay.

But he is adamant: he must defend Soviet power. Thomas and twenty other volunteers set off. Almost immediately, shots are fired, after which a man comes and says that a detachment of Red Guards was attacked in the ravine and the locals must take the bodies of their relatives. The sobbing grandfather brings the body of the murdered Thomas on a wagon. Then he puts Minka on a horse and orders him to ride for help to a detachment of Red Guards who are standing across the river. Minka fulfilled the order, but already at the detachment he fell off his horse, as a result of which he broke his leg.

Essay on literature on the topic: Summary of Nakhalenok Sholokhov

Other writings:

1. Mole On the table are cartridges, a lamb bone, a field map, a summary, a bridle, a loaf of bread. Nikolka Koshevoy, the squadron commander, is sitting at the table, he fills out a questionnaire. “A rough leaf says sparingly: Koshevoy Nikolai. Squadron commander. Earthman. Member of the RKSM, age 18. In appearance Read More ......
2. Quiet Don At the end of the penultimate Turkish campaign, the Cossack Prokofy Melekhov brought home, to the village of Veshenskaya, a captive Turkish woman. From their marriage a son was born, named Panteley, as swarthy and black-eyed as his mother. Subsequently, Pantelei Prokofievich took up the arrangement of the economy and Read More ......
3. Upturned Virgin Soil On the extreme alley to the steppe on a January evening in 1930, a rider rode into the Gremyachiy Log farm. I asked passers-by the way to Yakov Lukich Ostrovnov's kuren. The owner, recognizing the visitor, looked around and whispered: “Your honor! Otkel you?.. Mr. Yesaul…” It was Read More ......
4. The fate of man Andrey Sokolov Spring. Upper Don. The narrator and his friend rode in a carriage drawn by two horses to the village of Bukanovskaya. It was difficult to drive - the snow began to melt, the mud was impassable. And here, near the Mokhovsky farm, the Elanka River. Shallow in summer, now spilled on Read More ......
5. Foal There is a civil war. At the time of the shelling, the horse-breeder Trofim calved a mare. The foal appeared, began to eagerly suck the breast of the mare and for the first time looked at the world around. At that moment, Trofim entered the barn and saw this exciting picture. The man lit a cigarette and Read More ......
6. The story “Nakhalenok” is one of the first in the creative biography of M. A. Sholokhov. Written in 1925, it absorbed the writer's memories of his own childhood, the realities of the Civil War era, and, sadly, Sholokhov's propaganda moods. Read More ......
7. I discovered MA Sholokhov this year. We are used to the fact that discoveries happen in science and technology, but I think they are found in literature at every turn. In any writer, a person finds for himself something close to his worldview. Read More ......
8. Mikhail Sholokhov, everyone opens it in their own way. Everyone likes their hero of Sholokhov's stories. This is understandable. After all, the fate of the heroes, the problems raised by Sholokhov, are in tune with our time. But my Sholokhov is not only the author of works. First of all, he is a man of interesting, bright destiny. Judge for yourself: Read More ......

Summary Nakhalenok Sholokhov

Sholokhov Mikhail

Mikhail Sholokhov

From the steppe, brown, scorched by the sun, from salt marshes, cracked and white, from sunrise - sixteen days a hot wind blew.

The earth was charred, the grasses warped with yellowness, at the wells, densely scattered along the path, the veins dried up; and the grain ear, which had not yet swept out of the pipe, faded kvelo, withered, bent down to the ground, hunched over like an old man.

At noon, across the farm dozing - copper bursts of bell ringing.

Hot. Silence. Only legs shuffle along the wattle fence - they row the dust, and the grandfathers' crutches tap out over the bumps - they feel the road.

They call for a farm meeting. Hiring a shepherd is on the agenda.

The chairman tapped the stub of his pencil on the table.

Citizens, the old shepherd refused to guard the herd, he says, they say, the pay is dissimilar. We, the executive committee, propose to hire Grigory Frolov. Nashevsky he is a rozhak, an orphan, a Komsomol member ... His father, as you know, was a chebotar. He lives with his sister, and they have no food. I think, citizens, you will enter into such a position and hire him to guard the herd.

Old man Nesterov could not stand it, his backside wriggled and fidgeted.

This is impossible for us... The herd is healthy, but what a shepherd he is! By autumn, half of the calves will be missing ...

Ignat the miller, a wise old man, snarled in a snarky honeyed voice:

We’ll find a shepherd even without an executive committee, it’s only our business with regards to ... And we need to choose an old, reliable and courteous man to the point of cattle ...

That's right, grandpa...

Hire an old man, citizens, so his calves will soon disappear ... Times are not the same, theft is enormous everywhere ... - This chairman said insistently and expectantly; and here back supported:

Old worthless ... You take into account that these are not cows, but summer calves. This is where dog legs come in. The herd will close - go collect it, the grandfather will run and lose the giblets ...

Laughter rolls, and grandfather Ignat his behind in an undertone:

The communists have nothing to do with it ... It is necessary with a prayer, and not anyhow ... - And the mischievous old man stroked his bald head.

But here the chairman with all severity:

Please, citizen, no tricks... For such... like... I will remove from the meeting...

At dawn, when the smoke creeps from the chimneys like shreds of smeared cotton wool and spreads low on the square, Grigory gathered a herd of one and a half hundred heads and drove it across the farm to a gray-haired and unfriendly hillock.

The steppe was stained with brown pimples of marmot holes; marmots whistle long and wary; little bustards take off from dens with squat grass, sparkling with silvered plumage.

Tabun is calm. The cloven hooves of calves pop out like a fractional rain along the earthy wrinkled bark.

Next to Grigory, Dunyatka, the shepherd sister, walks. Her tanned, freckled cheeks, her eyes, her lips, laugh all over, because it was only the seventeenth spring that went to her on the red hill, and at seventeen everything seems so funny: both the frowning face of her brother, and the lop-eared calves chewing weeds on the go , and it’s even funny that the second day they don’t have a single piece of bread.

Gregory doesn't laugh. Under the worn-out cap, Gregory's forehead is steep, with transverse wrinkles, and his eyes are tired, as if he had lived much more than nineteen years.

Calmly the taboo walks along the side of the road, crumbling into a spotty swath.

Grigory whistled at the lagging calves and turned to Dunyatka:

Let's earn, Dun, bread by autumn, and then we'll go to the city. I'll go to the workers' faculty and attach you somewhere ... Maybe some kind of study too ... In the city, Dunyatka, there are a lot of books and they eat clean bread, without grass, not like ours.

And we’ll take the money from the cell ... to go, then?

You eccentric... They'll pay us twenty poods of bread, well, that's the money... We'll sell it for a pood, then we'll sell millet, dung.

Grigory stopped in the middle of the road, draws in the dust with a whip, calculates.

Grisha, what are we going to eat? There is no bread...

I still have a piece of stale donut in my bag.

Let's eat today, but what about tomorrow?

Tomorrow they will come from the farm and bring flour ... The chairman promised ...

The midday sun is hot. Grigory's baggy shirt was soaked with sweat and stuck to his shoulder blades.

The herd moves restlessly, gadfly and flies sting the calves, the roar of cattle and the itch of gadflies hang in the heated air.

In the evening, before sunset, we drove the herd to the base. Nearby is a pond and a hut with straw rotted from the rains.