How do the heroes feel about the bow? The image and characteristics of Luke in the play at the bottom of the bitter essay. Character Characteristics Analysis

All writers show interest in philosophical themes and problems, which is why reflections on the meaning of life become central to many literary works. One of these works was the play by M. Gorky. “At the Lower Depths” is considered the first drama in Russian literature that touches on social and philosophical problems and issues.

In Gorky's play there are many heroes who are different in character. But still, most of the controversy arises because of the image of Luke and his perception of the world. It is with his appearance in the play that disagreements constantly begin to be heard about what will be best for a person: true, even it will be the most difficult, but it is true and real, or compassion, which can serve as a consolation.

So who is Luke? From the plot of the work, the reader learns that Luke is a preacher, but he does not have a specific place of residence and ministry to God. He wanders the earth and preaches the truths in which he himself believes. One day he appears in a rooming house, where people are devastated and thrown out of everyday life. They rejoice in every day they could live. And some are waiting for their death in order to somehow escape from this life, which has long ceased to bring them joy.

Luka suddenly stops at the shelter when poor Anna dies, and a dispute about conscience and honor arises between the other inhabitants of this basement. After all, being in such a place, many simply forgot about them. Luke becomes a comforter for them. So, first of all, he tries to calm and reconcile everyone. Luke promises everyone deliverance from the suffering that they now have in life and promises that their wishes will come true. He subtly feels people, predicts their desires, so he easily convinces them of what they do not say out loud, but somewhere in the depths of their soul they still hope for it.

Luke has his own position from which he lives and preaches among people. He believes that all fantasies and dreams are life. In the shelter he has a long conversation with Anna, who is dying, but is very afraid of death. Luka consoles her, saying that dying is not painful or scary, because it will help her become free, no longer feel pain, and she will never even suffer again. He also finds comforting words for the Actor, but only by believing Luka will the Actor soon understand that it is impossible to find a hospital to cure alcoholism. After all, he has no money for this at all.

The attitude of all the inhabitants of the basement towards this strange preacher is different for everyone. Someone, for example Nastya, considers him good, that he carries pity and compassion. But there are other opinions about the shelter: someone calls him a deceiver, and someone claims that he simply does not like the truth. Maybe they are right, because it is not for nothing that the author gives such a name to his hero: Luke is the crafty one, that is, cunning. And by his age you can easily determine that he has a lot of experience, because he has already lived most of his life. And if he wanders, then probably there have been many different situations in his life, so he knows how to quickly find a way out of any situation and sees so well the psychology of each inhabitant of this shelter.

But if we consider this image through religion, there was such an apostle in the Gospel. This Gospel Luke is an image in which wisdom and truth are contained. And I remember the story of Gorky’s Luka, how he accidentally met robbers who wanted to kill him, but he was able to persuade them to eat. It’s like in the Bible when it says that any evil must be answered with good.

The image of Luka in Maxim Gorky's play is a complex hero, to whom it is impossible to relate in any unambiguous way, and, probably, there is no need to. The main qualities of his character are kindness, responsiveness, the ability to listen and sympathize with another person, and not think only about himself. Another advantage of this hero is his sincerity; he knows how to communicate with people without imposing his opinions and views on them.

And if Luke tells a lie, then his lie is comforting, from which he himself has no benefit. He simply tries to lift a person’s spirits, strengthen his spirit, and instill hope. But it’s still impossible to answer unequivocally about how to relate to this character. Even the author himself could not answer this question, who suddenly finds himself on his side, justifying compassion, then suddenly Maxim Gorky himself calls him a swindler and even a scoundrel. At the end of the play, the author does not allow the other inhabitants of the shelter to judge his strange hero. The writer leaves it to the reader to do this so that he can think about Gorky’s controversial character, who has been causing controversy for many years.

The humanity that Luka carries is needed by people, but due to the fact that dreams cannot come true and hopes turn out to be empty, people suffer even more and then not every person can withstand it. For example, the Actor who simply hanged himself at the end of the play. Luke is trying to heal tormented human souls, and the result, due to the reality in which these people find themselves, can be very different. Therefore, there is no point in judging or praising Luke.

Introduction

M. Gorky's play “At the Lower Depths” is the first socio-philosophical drama in Russian literature, raising questions of human existence, the meaning of life, truth and lies. Written in 1902, the work realistically depicts the life of the marginalized, “people who find themselves at the bottom of life,” who do not believe in themselves or in the future.

Mite, Actor, Ash, Nastya and others are weak people, unable to defend their interests, and who do not see the point in this.

Luke's image

The most controversial hero of the play is considered to be Luke, a traveling preacher who came to the shelter in the midst of disputes about honor and justice. The main question of the work is directly related to the image of the old man - “What is better – truth or compassion?”

Luke is a comforter, trying to calm everyone down and give hope for an end to suffering. It is significant that he knows how to see in everyone the trait that particularly concerns a person. To the dying Anna he promises deliverance from pain and resentment in the next world, to the drinking Actor he tells a fairy tale about hospitals for alcoholism, to Nastya that an unearthly happy love awaits her, to Vaska Peplu he helps to take a fresh look at Siberia.

The night shelters like his unrealistic stories; they believe in them. Luke himself says that what you believe is what it is. In other words, the wanderer is trying to save people, give them the opportunity to believe in themselves and change their attitude towards life, to give them a kind of impetus.

righteous man

The appearance of the righteous man divides the inhabitants of the shelter into two camps - those who believe in Luke’s sermons and those who are prejudiced and skeptical about them. Nastya, after Luka’s disappearance, says that he was a good old man, Kleshch notes his compassion, even Satin, who does not accept a position of compassion, claims that the old man lied solely out of love for people.

The opinions of literary critics were also divided. Some compared him to the tempter. The name Luke is similar in sound to the name of Satan - the Evil One. The old man was accused, first of all, of unwillingness to confront reality. Other researchers correlated his name with the image of the Evangelical Apostle Luke, thereby associating him with wisdom and biblical commandments.

Another interesting fact is that by lying to save Luke, he violates one of the commandments - do not lie. But it seems to me that he simply does not think in these categories; for him it does not matter where the truth is, where the lie is. The main thing for a righteous person is to do good to a person. Probably, the commandment is closer to him - do no harm.

Author's attitude

The author's attitude towards Luke is ambiguous. Sometimes he condemns him, sometimes his image becomes so strong that it goes beyond Gorky’s plan. Readers must decide for themselves whether to accept a lie for salvation, or to share Satin’s statements about the priority of truth. In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in the middle of their positions.

Luka is one of the main characters in Maxim Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”, an ambiguous character, an elderly wanderer who unexpectedly appeared in a shelter. He has a wealth of life experience and is on a mission to console frustrated people. Almost all the people in the shelter are disappointed for various reasons and find themselves at the bottom of their lives. Some people's dreams have collapsed, some have become poor and impoverished, some are sad about the irrevocably past past. In order to somehow help these poor people, Luke resorts to “comforting lies.” So, for example, he tells the dying Anna that happiness awaits her in the next world. He tells the prostitute Nastya, who assures that there was sincere love in her life, that this was most likely the case. Pepel persuades the thief Vaska to go to Siberia, because there he can earn an honest living. And the drunken Actor convinces him that there is a free clinic in which he will be completely cured.

He explains his pity for people by the fact that he himself once felt sorry for the robbers, as a result of which he saved both them and himself. He also tells the guests a parable “about the righteous land,” in which one person believed in its existence, but there was no such land on the scientist’s map. The poor man took it out of grief and hanged himself. This parable will later be repeated with the Actor. Luka disappeared as suddenly as he appeared, right during the conflict between Kostylev and Vaska Ash.

Luka is the most controversial and most important hero of M. Gorky’s play “At the Depths”. Controversial because it is impossible to interpret his image in any way that is unambiguously acceptable to the majority - the perception of Luke depends solely on the personal qualities of the reader, the viewer. Important because he is the personification of the problem raised in the work: what does a person need - the cruel truth about him or sympathy and “white lies”?

Luka appears in the Kostylevs’ shelter when we are already familiar with all its inhabitants and their tragedies. This is an old man of 60 years old, a wanderer who does not tell anything about himself, skillfully avoiding direct answers to all personal questions. We only learn that he once guarded a dacha near Tomsk, perhaps an escaped convict.

Luka treats all the night shelters evenly and kindly, and for some he becomes a consolation. It is suggested to Anna, dying of consumption and completely forgotten, that death will be liberation from suffering, pain, and desired peace: “Nothing will happen! Nothing! Believe it! Calm down and nothing more!” Vaska Peplu shows the path to liberation from both theft and “love slavery” - escape to Siberia. But critics consider Luke’s story about a hospital where alcoholics are cured to be the most blatant “lie”: the wanderer reassures the drunken Actor that he will be cured and return to the theater.

Anna is dying. The actor stops drinking for a while and, on Luke’s advice, prepares for treatment. Ash thinks more and more seriously about Siberia and calls Natasha with him. But one day a fight occurs in the shelter, in which the owner Kostylev is killed. And then it turns out that Luka has disappeared.

The night shelters accuse Luka that he lied to them and with his lies violated the cruel, but balanced order in their world. Many critics also accuse the wanderer of lying, arguing that it led to crime and even greater disappointment for already unhappy people.

But was Luke lying?..

Characteristics of the hero

Luka cannot be described as a person. An old man, quiet, kind, helpful, cunning, secretive - that's all. She doesn’t talk about herself, she’s keenly interested in others, she doesn’t react to evil words, she doesn’t condemn others, she even feels sorry for them: “... Girl, someone needs to be kind... we need to feel sorry for people! Christ felt sorry for everyone and told us so ... I’ll tell you - it’s time to feel sorry for a person... it happens well!..”

The conflict in interpretations of his image is that some of Luke’s stories are interpreted as a destructive lie, others as a gift of hope.

What did Luke lie about? What you can start in Siberia new life? But so it was: in distant and rich Siberia, the fugitives found both shelter and the opportunity to live differently - the land here was free and free, those who worked did not suffer.

Luke’s philosophy is explained by his story about a righteous land, where everything is according to reason and justice. As long as a person believed in the righteous land, he worked, strengthened himself, “he did not lose his spirit.” And as the scientist told him that there was no such land, the man died...

(Ivan Moskvin in the role of Luka, from the age of twenty-eight he played the role in the Moscow Art Theater performances based on M. Gorky’s play “At the Depths”)

Luke, who has seen and experienced a lot, believes that one can be saved with a kind, kind and encouraging word. But not empty, but having a real basis. Only a person must want, find the strength to be saved.

Luka disappears, having completed his “mission”. He showed the way - he gave a “fishing rod” to the hungry. But is it his fault that the “hungry” has completely forgotten how to do something? And, in general, he doesn’t want to.

Gorky's nochlezhka is a “cave of philosophers,” not workers. Neither the cruel truth nor a dream can save them. Each inhabitant of the “cave” receives a peculiar pleasure from the way he lives - idle, without money, but not hungry and without worries.

The image of the hero in the work

A complex interpretation of Luke's image is a complex answer to the question of what a person needs to be human.

“Be silent! ...keep silent about the old man!.. The old man is not a charlatan! What is the truth? Man - that's the truth! He understood it... you don’t!” - this is how Satin, the most handsome, intelligent and lively of all the inhabitants of the shelter, ends his condemnation of Luke.

His words can be taken as Gorky’s position - they sound so weighty. Indeed: the wanderer Luke told everyone about him the best, the possible, what a person can and should do. And somewhere else, Luke’s words will become salvation, gain, but here - the bottom.

Here are those who chose this life themselves. Since childhood, Gorky knew what it meant to be a beggar, without corner and support. And he knew that he could get out, because he did.

Therefore, one should not accuse Luke of lying - he was just telling the truth about a person: “What you believe in is what it is.”

Luka is a character from Maxim Gorky's play “At the Lower Depths”.

Luke is sixty years old in the play. He was bald and walked with a kettle at his belt, leaning on a stick. Like all the inhabitants of the shelter, he did not have his own home. This old man was a wanderer.

The name Luke has two meanings: the first – as “the evil one”, and the second – as the Gospel apostle Luke. This name is closely related to the character's character. There is still debate about his significance in the play: some believe that Luka is a negative character, while others say he is positive. The author himself claimed that the old man turned out to be more positive and wiser than he had planned.

Luka served as a watchman near Tomsk for an engineer. One can guess that he appeared in the shelter after he escaped from Siberia from hard labor, where he ended up for some crime. He loved to sing and thought that he sang well, but that was not the case. Luke was a gentle person, because, according to him, he experienced a lot in this life. He believed that he became bald because of women, because of difficulties in relationships with them. He had more women than hairs on his head. But he was a very smart man. Luke did not always tell the truth, because he believed that the truth destroys a person and takes away faith in himself.

Natasha brought him to Kostylev’s shelter. The old man immediately began to be considered kind, sweet and compassionate. Luke believed that all people should be pitied and supported with a kind word, as Christ himself commanded. He began to console everyone in the shelter, even if it was not true. I thought that a person should have faith in something that will help him live on and achieve something better for himself. So he told the actor that there is a clinic that treats alcoholics for free. The actor then stopped drinking and began saving money to go to this clinic. Luke told the dying Anna that after death she would be free from all pain and torment. He advised Vaska Peplu to go to Siberia and said that he would find liberation there together with Natasha.

Luka sincerely tried to help everyone, but he did not expect that this, on the contrary, could take someone’s life. For example, an actor committed suicide after the unexpected departure of an old man. Ash, trying to take Natasha and go to Siberia, lost everything.

After the murder of Pepel, the owner of Kostylev’s flophouse, Luka went to Ukraine. His departure had a mixed effect on the inhabitants. They tried to condemn the old man, but Satin began to stand up for him, who spoke in the words of Gorky himself, and who was at first skeptical of Luke.

These people have no future. The old man knew this very well. But he wanted them to have at least some hope, so that they could move on with something warm in their souls.

Essay about Luke

Maxim Gorky's play "At the Lower Depths" touches on important issues, for example, philosophical or social ones. This play features a variety of characters, but undoubtedly the most important of them is Luke. His views on the world cause constant controversy and questions. Luke talks about the truth, whether it is necessary to tell it if a person becomes ill after learning it, or whether it is better to show compassion, which will make a person’s life a little easier.

Luke is a preacher, he wanders around the country, he does not have his own home. He is trying to spread his views, his worldview. His appearance in the shelter has a strong influence on its inhabitants. The people gathered in the shelter are very different, some love life and enjoy every moment, others, on the contrary, want to die, because life does not bring them pleasure.

Luke appears in the play at the most important moment, when Anna dies. After her death, the residents of the shelter argue about conscience and honor. Many, being in the shelter, completely forgot about them. Luka helps everyone survive grief, he consoles, instills faith in good things, and tries to inspire that all problems can be solved. Thanks to the fact that Luka can find a common language with every person, he understands at a glance what a person is silent about.

Luke believes that life is about dreams and hope. Before Anna's death, Luke talks with her, helping her accept her fate. Luka helps the Actor realize what is happening, Luka assures him that he will be able to overcome his alcohol addiction, thanks to the hospital.

The author tries to show Luke in the image of a righteous man, he brings wisdom and truth to people. This is proven by the situation that happened to him - thieves broke into the house, but main character feeds these people, responding to evil with good.

As soon as Luka appears in the shelter, one can note his positive qualities - responsiveness, desire to help others without demanding something in return, the ability not only to listen, but also to hear others.

Although Luka lies to other heroes, he does this to console, to restore hope and the desire to live. But the most important thing is that after Luka leaves, no one condemns or reproaches him; on the contrary, they are grateful to him, and the author himself calls Luka a swindler, a negative hero of his work.

Option 3

The play “At the Bottom” was published in 1902. It tells about those who could not stay afloat and, having crossed the line, found themselves at the very bottom. Their familiar world collapsed, they lost faith in the future, the callousness of harsh everyday life overwhelmed them. The play takes place in a rooming house.

The elderly wanderer Luke is one of the main characters in the work. He is as poor as the rest of the inhabitants of the shelter, but has not lost his humanity. With kind words and advice he helps everyone who needs it. Ingenuously, with intelligible words, he finds an approach to the other inhabitants of the rooming house. For everyone, there is compassion and mercy in his heart. His words confirm that by nature he is very good-natured and sympathetic.

The old man’s attentive attitude towards people, his ability to listen and support the dream of his interlocutor gives them hope for a bright future. Luke’s ability to find an individual approach to everyone makes his “neighbors in misfortune” listen to his words. Only the Baron does not lose his cynicism and hatred of people, he makes an attempt to expose the wanderer. But Luke’s recent opponent Satin unexpectedly stands up for the old man.

To Anna, who is on her deathbed, Luke describes a heavenly life without earthly torment. He tells an actor who likes to drink about a non-existent clinic where they can help get rid of alcohol addiction. Recommendations to the thief Vaska to start a new life increase the self-esteem of the shelters. Most of them begin to believe that not everything is lost, and that everything in life is still possible. Some even make an attempt to gain human dignity. Luke managed to warm their souls with his sympathetic attitude. His main intention to awaken hope in people has been achieved.

Luke's eloquence divides the residents of the shelter into 2 camps: dreamers and skeptics. His speeches excite some and embitter others. At the end of the story, the inhabitants of the lodging house attempt to judge Luka. The actions they take after listening to him do not always lead to the expected result. In most cases, the outcome is sad, for example, the death of an Actor. Of course, the night shelters themselves are to blame for this, but the consequences of Luke’s speeches become fatal.

Critics have long assessed Luke's image as negative. They blamed the old wanderer for lying and for showing indifference to the deceived inhabitants of the shelter. His disappearance is not interpreted in his favor either, but more criticism concerns his position towards people. He brings empathy and compassion to the masses, which at that time was regarded as something suspicious and unnecessary.