"The 13th feat of Hercules" a summary for the reader's diary will remind you of the events in the story.

"13 feat of Hercules" very brief content

The thirteenth labor of Hercules is a short story written in 1964 by Fazil Iskander.

The story is told in the first person - a fifth grade student.

In the new academic year, a new mathematics teacher appears at the school, the Greek Kharlampy Diogenovich. The mathematician manages to establish “exemplary silence” in the lessons, he intrigued his pupils by the fact that he never raised his voice, did not force him to study, did not threaten to call his parents to school. Humor was his main weapon. If the student was somehow guilty, Kharlampy Diogenovich joked with him, and the whole class could not help laughing ..

When it came time to write the control, everyone wrote with their own minds and did not copy off, because they knew that Kharlampy Diogenovich would immediately figure out the deceiver and, in addition, would laugh.

One day, a student of the 5th “B” class, the main character of the story, without doing his homework, is waiting for the lesson with fear. At the beginning of the lesson, a doctor and a nurse enter the class and vaccinate against typhoid among the students of the school. At first, injections were supposed to be given to the 5-"A" class, and they went to 5-"B" by mistake. The boy decides to take advantage of the opportunity and offers to take them to the 5-"A" class. On the way, he convinces the doctor that it's best to start giving injections from their class. So he wanted to wait until the end of the lesson.

When during the vaccination one of the students of the class became ill, our hero decides to call an ambulance. But the nurse brings the boy to his senses. After the nurse and the doctor left, Kharlampy Diogenovich calls our hero to the board, but he does not cope with the task. The wise teacher tells the class about the 12 exploits of Hercules and says that 13 have now been completed. But Hercules performed his feats out of courage, and the boy performed this feat because of his cowardice.

The hero "became more serious about homework" and thought about the nature of laughter. He realized that laughter helps fight lies, falsehood, deceit; realized that "too afraid to look funny is not very smart, but it's much worse not to be afraid of it at all." That is, any person can be in a ridiculous position, but it’s bad not to understand that you are ridiculous, to be stupid. The hero is grateful to the teacher: with laughter, he “tempered our crafty children’s souls and taught us to treat our own person with a sufficient sense of humor”

Fazil Abdulovich Iskander

13 feat of Hercules

All the mathematicians that I had to meet in school and after school were slovenly people, weak-willed and quite brilliant. So the statement that Pythagorean pants are supposedly equal in all directions is hardly absolutely accurate.

Perhaps this was the case with Pythagoras himself, but his followers probably forgot about this and paid little attention to their appearance.

And yet there was one mathematician in our school who was different from all the others. He could not be called weak-willed, much less slovenly. I do not know if he was a genius - now it is difficult to establish. I think it most likely was.

His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. Like Pythagoras, he was of Greek origin. He appeared in our class since the new school year. Before that, we had not heard of him and did not even know that such mathematicians could exist.

He immediately established exemplary silence in our class. The silence was so terrible that sometimes the director frightenedly opened the door, because he could not understand whether we were still there or had fled to the stadium.

The stadium was located next to the school yard and constantly, especially during big competitions, interfered with the pedagogical process. The director even wrote somewhere to be moved to another place. He said that the stadium made schoolchildren nervous. In fact, it was not the stadium that made us nervous, but the stadium commandant, Uncle Vasya, who unmistakably recognized us, even if we were without books, and drove us out of there with anger that did not fade over the years.

Fortunately, our director was not obeyed and the stadium was left in place, only the wooden fence was replaced with a stone one. So now those who used to look at the stadium through the cracks in the wooden fence had to climb over.

Nevertheless, our director was in vain afraid that we might run away from the mathematics lesson. It was unthinkable. It was like going up to the director at recess and silently throwing off his hat, although everyone was pretty tired of it. He always, both in winter and summer, wore the same hat, evergreen, like a magnolia. And I was always afraid of something.

From the outside, it might seem that he was most afraid of the commission from the city department, in fact, he was most afraid of our head teacher. It was a demonic woman. Someday I will write a Byronian poem about her, but now I am talking about something else.

Of course, there was no way we could escape from the math lesson. If we ever skipped class at all, it was usually singing class.

It used to happen that as soon as our Kharlampy Diogenovich entered the class, everyone immediately calmed down, and so on until the very end of the lesson. True, sometimes he made us laugh, but it was not spontaneous laughter, but fun organized from above by the teacher himself. It did not violate discipline, but served it, as in geometry proof of the contrary.

It happened like this. Say, another student is a little late for the lesson, well, about half a second after the bell, and Kharlampy Diogenovich is already entering the door. The poor student is ready to fall through the floor. Maybe it would have failed if there hadn't been a teacher's room right under our classroom.

Some teacher will not pay attention to such a trifle, another will scold him in the heat of the moment, but not Kharlampy Diogenovich. On such occasions he would stop at the door, shift the magazine from hand to hand, and, with a gesture of respect for the student's personality, point to the passage.

The student hesitates, his bewildered physiognomy expresses a desire to slip through the door somehow more discreetly after the teacher. But the face of Kharlampy Diogenovich expresses joyful hospitality, restrained by decency and understanding of the unusualness of this moment. He makes it clear that the very appearance of such a student is the rarest holiday for our class and personally for him, Kharlampy Diogenovich, that no one expected him, and since he has already arrived, no one will dare to reproach him for this little delay, especially since he, modest a teacher who, of course, will enter the classroom after such a wonderful student and will close the door behind him as a sign that the dear guest will not be released soon.

All this lasts a few seconds, and finally the student, awkwardly squeezing through the door, stumbles to his place.

Kharlampy Diogenovich looks after him and says something magnificent. For example:

Prince of Wales.

The class is laughing. And although we do not know who the Prince of Wales is, we understand that he cannot appear in our class. He simply has nothing to do here, because the princes are mainly engaged in deer hunting. And if he gets tired of hunting for his deer and he wants to visit some school, then he will definitely be taken to the first school, which is near the power plant. Because she is exemplary. As a last resort, if he had taken it into his head to come to us, we would have been warned long ago and prepared the class for his arrival.

That's why we laughed, realizing that our student could not possibly be a prince, let alone some kind of Wales.

But here Kharlampy Diogenovich sits down. The class is instantly silent. The lesson starts.

Large-headed, short, neatly dressed, carefully shaven, he imperiously and calmly held the class in his hands. In addition to the journal, he had a notebook where he entered something after the survey. I don't remember him yelling at anyone, or persuading anyone to study, or threatening to call his parents to school. All these things were of no use to him.

During the tests, he did not even think of running between the rows, looking into the desks, or vigilantly tossing his head there at every rustle, as others did. No, he calmly read something to himself, or fingered a rosary with beads as yellow as cat's eyes.

It was almost useless to copy from him, because he immediately recognized the copied work and began to ridicule it. So we wrote off only as a last resort, if there was no way out.

It happened that during the test work he would tear himself away from his rosary or book and say:

Sakharov, please move to Avdeenko's.

Sakharov gets up and looks at Kharlampy Diogenovich questioningly. He does not understand why he, an excellent student, should change to Avdeenko, who is a poor student.

Have pity on Avdeenko, he might break his neck.

Avdeenko looks blankly at Kharlampy Diogenovich, as if not understanding, or perhaps not really understanding, why he can break his neck.

Avdeenko thinks he is a swan, Kharlampy Diogenovich explains. “The black swan,” he adds after a moment, hinting at Avdeenko's tanned, sullen face. - Sakharov, you can continue, - says Kharlampy Diogenovich.

Sakharov sits down.

And you, too, - he turns to Avdeenko, but something in his voice has barely perceptibly shifted. A well-measured dose of mockery poured into him. - ... Unless, of course, you break your neck ... a black swan! - he firmly concludes, as if expressing a courageous hope that Alexander Avdeenko will find the strength to work independently.

"The thirteenth feat of Hercules" the main characters of the story by Fazily Iskander

"13 feat of Hercules" main characters

• Narrator- the main character, a student of grade 5-B
• Kharlampy Diogenovich- mathematic teacher
• Shurik Avdeenko- study poorly. When the teacher laughs at him, calling him a "black swan," Avdeenko "sits furiously bending over his notebook, showing the powerful efforts of the mind and will thrown into solving the problem." He has a sullen, tanned face, and is long and awkward. Shurik is not even happy when he is finally given an injection. The narrator calls him "the darkest man in our class".
• Alik Komarov- Most afraid of injections. Alik's real name is Adolf, but the war started, the boy was teased, and he wrote "Alik" on his notebook. He is a "quiet and humble student". The narrator says of him: “He was sitting over his open notebook, neat, thin and quiet, and because his hands were on the blotting paper, he seemed even quieter. He had such a stupid habit - to keep his hands on a blotter, from which I could not wean him. While Alik is being injected, freckles appear on his face. He is reddish, and the narrator thinks that the boy would probably be teased as a redhead if there was no real redhead in the class.
• Sakharov- excellent student. Even while laughing, he tries not to stop being an excellent student. The narrator says this about him: “- Correct,” he nods his head to me with such disgusting confidence on an intelligent, conscientious face that I immediately hated him for his well-being..

Each hero of this story is remembered for a long time, because the author highlights the main, main features of the appearance and character of the hero, and focuses on them, emphasizing Avdeenko's gloom several times, Sakharov's well-being and Alik's modesty and invisibility.

"13 feat of Hercules" characteristic of the protagonist

The protagonist of the story is a smart, mischievous and crafty boy. He, like many boys, loves to play football, sometimes he cannot cope with the task, laughs with everyone at his classmates, whom Kharlampy Diogenovich puts in a ridiculous position.
The hero treats classmates in a friendly way, with irony. The narrator is observant and accurately describes the main features of his friends. He notices the constant well-being of Sakharov, who, even laughing, tries to remain an excellent student, notices the modesty and invisibility of Alik Komarov and the gloom of Shurik Avdeenko. But Kharlampy Diogenovich has no favorites in the class. Anyone can be funny. And here comes the moment. when the class laughs at the main character.
The main character did not cope with the task in mathematics. Instead of asking for help from his comrades, he up the lessons and fell to football, convincing himself that the answer in the textbook is wrong. Then he tried to evade responsibility for his actions by tricking and deceiving doctors into giving injections during a math lesson. When he finds himself at the blackboard and does not find the strength to honestly admit that he did not solve the problem, Kharlampy Diogenovich understands why the doctors came specifically to the mathematics lesson. The teacher does not punish the student with laughter, but his cowardice. He says that the narrator performed "the thirteenth feat of Hercules", that is, a feat that actually did not exist, which is not a feat at all. Yes, he changed the situation, but he changed it not out of noble motives, but out of cowardice.
The hero during the development of events experiences a variety of feelings. At first, he resents the "wrong" task. Then his conscience calmed down. After a conversation with Sakharov, he got scared: “I got scared and scolded myself for first agreeing with the football player that the task was wrong, and then disagreeing with the excellent student that it was right. And now Kharlampy Diogenovich probably noticed my excitement and will be the first to call me. After calling the duty officer, the hero breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to the teacher for the respite. Then he experienced cowardly hope and disappointment when "the sudden hope that had lit up our class with its snow-white robe disappeared." He became insolent with fear and boldly offered to show where the fifth "A" was, even thinking up an excuse for himself. He then lied to the doctor that their class was going to the museum, and slyly convinced them to return to the fifth B. He himself cowardly ran forward in order to "eliminate the connection between himself and their arrival." The hero felt some gloating when the nurse rubbed his back with cotton after the injection. After the doctor left, the boy was alarmed when the teacher began to click the beads of his rosary: ​​"I felt that there was a smell of some kind of danger in the air." From the look of Kharlampy Diogenovich, “my heart slammed into my back,” says the narrator. He did not go to the blackboard, but “slagged” towards it. The hero never wanted to become funny, but the teacher proved that cowardice and lies are actually funny, and no tricks can help hide these bad qualities.
In conclusion, the narrator says: “Since then, I have become more serious about homework and have never meddle with the football players with unsolved problems.”
The author has a philosophical attitude to his hero: a little detached and ironic. At the end of the story, the author no longer speaks on behalf of a fifth-grader, but on behalf of a person who has already become an adult, and says that the method of Kharlampy Diogenovich taught him a lot: “With laughter, he, of course, tempered our crafty childish souls and taught us to treat our own a person with a good sense of humor."

Teacher characteristic

Mathematic teacher — «<…>There was one mathematician in our school who was different from all the others.<…>
His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. Like Pythagoras, he was of Greek origin.
The main weapon of Kharlampy Diogenovich is to make a person funny, to educate with laughter. Nobody wants to be funny.
The teacher revealed to the whole class what the main character was hiding from himself: all his cunning actions were dictated by cowardice. And there was nothing to argue. The deuce, which he so diligently tried to avoid, would have been just a salvation for him, but this was also unrealizable. Better a deuce than the laughter of the whole class. "The long-awaited bell, like a funeral bell, tore through the laughter of the whole class."

"All the mathematicians that I had to meet in school and after school were slovenly people, weak-willed and quite brilliant."

But one mathematician in our school was different from all the others. He was neither weak-willed nor slovenly.

“His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. Like Pythagoras, he was of Greek origin. He appeared in our class since the new school year ...

He immediately established exemplary silence in our class. The silence was so terrible that sometimes the director frightenedly opened the door, because he could not understand whether we were still there or had fled to the stadium.

The stadium was next to the school yard ... "

Children often ran to the stadium, which irritated the headmaster very much. But not from math lessons!

The teacher knows how to subtly ridicule a delinquent student. No one wants to be the object of his wit.

He “imperiously and calmly held the class in his hands ... It was almost useless to copy from him, because he immediately recognized the copied work and began to ridicule it ...

A student who deviates from school rules is not a lazy person, not a lazybones, not a hooligan, but just a funny person. Or rather, not just funny, perhaps many would agree to this, but some kind of offensively funny. Funny, not realizing that he is funny, or the last to know about it ...

The whole class is laughing at you. Everyone laughs against one."

Once the object of ridicule is the hero-narrator. He failed to solve his homework. And he waved it off: probably the answer in the textbook is wrong!

“Next to me sat a quiet and modest student. His name was Adolf Komarov. Now he called himself Alik and even wrote Alik on his notebook, because the war had begun and he did not want to be teased by Hitler. All the same, everyone remembered his name before, and on occasion reminded him of this.

I liked to talk, and he liked to sit quietly. We were put together to influence each other, but, in my opinion, nothing came of it. Everyone stayed the way they were."

Adolf solved the problem. The hero becomes more and more uncomfortable. But suddenly a nurse comes into the classroom. The school is vaccinated against typhoid. It's better to be vaccinated than to be ridiculed with your unsolved problem!

“I was not afraid of injections, because they gave me a lot of injections for malaria, and these are the most disgusting of all injections in existence.”

But the white coats are looking for the fifth "A". The boy is studying in the fifth "B".

- Can I show them where the fifth "A" is? I said, emboldened with fear.

This class was in one of the outbuildings at the school yard, and the doctor's wife could really get confused ... "

The doctor says that class "B" will be given injections in the next lesson. The boy, hoping to avoid embarrassment in the math class, invents that class "B" in the next lesson is going to the museum in an organized manner.

The doctor and nurse decide to go to the fifth B. Many children are afraid of injections, especially Alik Komarov.

“With every minute he became stricter and paler. He kept looking at the doctor's needle...

His back was as hard as a board from the tension...”

Alik almost fainted during the injection. The narrator, nicknamed the "painter" by the doctors, behaves heroically.

But here is the procedure.

“Open the window,” said Kharlampy Diogenovich, taking his seat. He wanted the spirit of hospital freedom to leave the classroom with the smell of medicine.

- As you know, Hercules performed twelve labors ... - he said. — One young man wanted to correct Greek mythology.

And accomplished the thirteenth feat...

We immediately understood from his voice what a false and useless feat it was, because if Hercules had needed to perform thirteen labors, he would have performed them himself, and since he stopped at twelve, it means that it was necessary and there was nothing to climb with your amendments.

— Hercules performed his exploits like a brave man. And this young man did his feat out of cowardice ... "

The trickster is still called to the board. In the home task, we are talking about an artillery shell.

“An artillery shell…” the schoolboy mutters.

Kharlampy Diogenovich makes fun of him:

- Did you swallow the projectile? Then ask the military instructor to clear mines for you ...

The whole class laughed.

“Sakharov laughed, trying not to stop being an excellent student during laughter. Even Shurik Avdeenko, the gloomiest person in our class, whom I saved from the inevitable deuce, laughed.

Komarov laughed, who, although he is now called Alik, but as he was, he remained Adolf.

“Since then, I have become more serious about homework ... Later, I noticed that almost all people are afraid of seeming ridiculous. Women and poets are especially afraid of seeming ridiculous...

Of course, being too afraid of looking funny isn't very smart, but it's far worse not to be afraid of it at all."

Option 1

A new mathematics teacher Kharlampy Diogenovich appears at the school. From the first minutes of his appearance at school, he manages to establish "exemplary silence" in the lessons. Kharlampy Diogenovich immediately intrigued his pupils by the fact that he never raised his voice, did not force him to study, did not threaten to call his parents to school. Humor was his main weapon. If the student was somehow guilty, Kharlampy Diogenovich joked with him, and the whole class could not help laughing.

Once a student of the 5th "B" class (from whom the narration is being conducted), having not learned his homework, came to a lesson with Kharlampy Diogenovich. The boy was very afraid that after going to the blackboard with his homework, he would become a target for his teacher's sparkling humor. Some time after the start of the lesson, a doctor entered the classroom along with a nurse who were vaccinating against typhus among the students of the school. They were looking for 5 "A", but mistakenly entered a parallel class. To protect himself from going to the blackboard, the student-narrator volunteered to take the doctors to the lesson by 5 "A". Moreover, while they were walking through the corridors of the school, the "valiant" fifth-grader managed to convince the doctors to start vaccination in 5 "B". Thus, he managed to save himself and his classmates from the inevitable deuce and humor of the teacher.

After the doctoral "executions" that disrupted the lesson, there was very little time left before the bell bell, and during this period Kharlampy Diogenovich decided to listen to the solution of the homework from our fifth grader. The hero, who had just saved the class, could not escape either the sarcasm of his teacher or the laughter of his classmates. Since then, he has become much more responsible in approaching homework. This feat was not due to courage, but due to cowardice, due to the fact that he did not do his homework in mathematics.

Option 2

In Fazil Iskander's story "The Thirteenth Feat of Hercules", the story is told on behalf of a boy who studies in the fifth grade of a men's school in Georgia.

The story takes place during the war. We learn about this from the narrator himself, who teases his desk mate named Adolf.

The protagonist of the story is a smart, mischievous and crafty boy. He, like many boys, loves to play football, sometimes he cannot cope with the task, laughs with everyone at his classmates, whom Kharlampy Diogenovich, the teacher, puts in a ridiculous position.

The hero treats his classmates in a friendly manner, with irony. The narrator is observant and accurately describes the main features of his friends. He notices the constant well-being of Sakharov, who, even laughing, tries to remain an excellent student, notices the modesty and invisibility of Alik Komarov and the gloom of Shurik Avdeenko. But Kharlampy Diogenovich has no favorites in the class. Anyone can be funny. And then the moment comes when the class laughs at the main character.

The main character did not cope with the task in mathematics. Instead of asking for help from his comrades, he played football before the lessons, convincing himself that the answer in the textbook was wrong. Then he tried to evade responsibility for his actions by tricking and deceiving doctors into giving injections during a math lesson. When he finds himself at the blackboard and does not find the strength to honestly admit that he did not solve the problem, Kharlampy Diogenovich understands why the doctors came specifically to the mathematics lesson.

The teacher does not punish the student with laughter, but his cowardice. He says that the narrator performed "the thirteenth feat of Hercules", that is, a feat that actually did not exist, which is not a feat at all. Yes, he changed the situation, but he changed it not out of noble motives, but out of cowardice.