The death of the main character ends Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm", the genre of which could be safely described as a tragedy. The death of Katerina in The Thunderstorm is the denouement of the work and carries a special semantic load. The scene of Katerina's suicide gave rise to many questions and interpretations of this plot twist. For example, Dobrolyubov considered this act noble, and Pisarev was of the opinion that such an outcome was "completely unexpected for her (Katerina) herself." Dostoevsky de believed that Katerina's death in the play "Thunderstorm" would have occurred without despotism: "this is a victim of her own purity and her beliefs." It is easy to see that the opinions of critics differ, but at the same time, each is partly true. What made the girl make such a decision, take a desperate step? What does the death of Katerina, the heroine of the play "Thunderstorm" mean?
In order to answer this question, you need to study the text of the work in detail. The reader gets to know Katerina already in the first act. Initially, we observe Katya as a silent witness to the quarrel between Kabanikha and Tikhon. This episode allows us to understand the unhealthy environment of lack of freedom and oppression in which Katya has to survive. Every day she is convinced that the old life, such as it was before marriage, will never be. All power in the house, despite the patriarchal way of life, is concentrated in the hands of the hypocritical Marfa Ignatievna. Katya's husband, Tikhon, is unable to protect his wife from tantrums and lies. His weak-willed submission to his mother shows Katerina that in this house and in this family one cannot count on help.
From childhood, Katya was taught to love life: go to church, sing, admire nature, dream. The girl "breathed deeply", feeling safe. She was taught to live according to the rules of Domostroy: to respect the word of her elders, not to argue with them, to obey her husband and love him. And now Katerina is given in marriage, the situation is radically changing. There is a huge, unbridgeable gulf between expectations and reality. The tyranny of Kabanikh knows no bounds, her limited understanding of Christian laws horrifies the believing Katerina. What about Tikhon? He is not at all the kind of man who deserves respect or even compassion. Katya feels only pity for the often drinking Tikhon. The girl admits that no matter how hard she tries to love her husband, nothing happens.
In no area can a girl fulfill herself: neither as a mistress of the house, nor as a loving wife, nor as a caring mother. The girl regards the appearance of Boris as a chance for salvation. Firstly, Boris is unlike the rest of the inhabitants of Kalinov, and he, like Katya, does not like the unwritten laws of the dark kingdom. Secondly, Katya was visited by thoughts about how to achieve a divorce and after that live honestly with Boris, without fear of condemnation from society or the church. Relations with Boris are developing rapidly. One meeting was enough for two young people to fall in love with each other. Even without being able to talk, Boris dreams of Katya. The girl is very worried about the feelings that have arisen: she is brought up differently, Katya cannot walk with another secretly; purity and honesty "prevent" Katya from hiding love, pretending that everything is "hidden" and others do not guess.
For a very long time, the girl decided on a date with Boris, and yet she went to the garden at night. The author does not describe the ten days when Katerina saw her lover. This, in fact, is not necessary. It is easy to imagine their leisure and the growing sense of warmth that was in Katerina. Boris himself said "only those ten days he lived." The arrival of Tikhon Kabanov revealed new sides in the characters' characters. It turned out that Boris did not want publicity at all, he would rather refuse Katya than involve himself in intrigues and scandals. Katya, unlike the young man, wants to tell both her husband and mother-in-law about the current situation. Being a somewhat suspicious and impressionable person, Katya, driven by the peals of thunder and the words of a crazy lady, confesses everything to Kabanov.
The scene is cut off. Further, we learn that Marfa Ignatievna has become even tougher and more demanding. She humiliates, insults the girl much more than before. Katya understands that she is not as guilty as her mother-in-law wants to convince her, because Kabanikha needs such tyranny only for self-affirmation and control. It is the mother-in-law who becomes the main catalyst for the tragedy. Tikhon, most likely, would have forgiven Katya, but he can only obey his mother and go to drink with Diky.
Imagine yourself in the place of the heroine. Imagine all the things she had to deal with every day. The way her attitude changed after the confession. A husband who cannot argue with his mother, but at every opportunity finds solace in alcohol. The mother-in-law, personifying all that dirt and abomination, from which a pure and honest person wants to stay as far away as possible. The sister of your husband, the only one who is interested in your life, but at the same time cannot fully understand. And a loved one, for whom public opinion and the possibility of receiving an inheritance turned out to be much more important than feelings for a girl.
Katya dreamed of becoming a bird, flying away forever from the dark world of tyranny and hypocrisy, breaking free, flying, being free. Catherine's death was inevitable.
However, as mentioned above, there are several different points of view on Katerina's suicide. After all, on the other hand, couldn't Katya just run away without making such desperate decisions? That's the thing, she couldn't. It wasn't for her. To be honest with yourself, to be free - this is what the girl so passionately desired. Unfortunately, all this could be obtained only at the cost of one's own life. Is Katerina's death a defeat or a victory over the "dark kingdom"? Katerina did not win, but she did not remain defeated either.
Artwork test
According to N.A. Dobrolyubov, "Thunderstorm" - "the most decisive work of Ostrovsky." In this play, the author depicts the tragedy of a freedom-loving, rebellious soul in an atmosphere of silence and tyranny. Thus, the playwright expresses his strong disagreement with the soulless system of the "dark kingdom".
The life of the main character of the play, Katerina Kabanova, ends dramatically. She is driven to the extreme and forced to commit suicide. How to evaluate this act? Was he a sign of strength or weakness?
Katerina's life cannot be called a struggle in the full sense of the word, and, therefore, it is difficult to talk about defeat or victory. There were no direct clashes between Katerina and the "dark kingdom". The suicide of the heroine can rather be called a moral victory, a victory in the desire to gain freedom. Her voluntary departure from life is a protest against the semi-prison order in a provincial town and heartlessness in Katerina's family.
The play describes merchant life with its patriarchal way of life, with its own well-established notions of morality, largely indirect and hypocritical. People living in this closed little world either fully support its order (Wild and Boar), or are forced to come to terms with it outwardly (Barbara, Tikhon). But Katerina, finding herself in these conditions, is not able to come to terms with her position.
Katerina is strikingly different from the people around her. Love for freedom and susceptibility to beauty have been inherent in her since childhood. “I lived, didn’t grieve about anything, like a bird in the wild,” recalls the heroine. Katerina finds beauty in nature, in the songs of pilgrims, in church services.
For her, God is a moral law that cannot be transgressed. Religiosity Katerina is bright and poetic. Ostrovsky portrays a strong and whole nature, incapable of deceit or pretense. Living in the house of Kabanikha, Katerina does not humiliate herself by pretending to be obedient. She always remains true to herself: “With people, that without people, I’m all alone, I don’t prove anything from myself.”
Life with an unloved husband under the supervision of a despotic mother-in-law seems to the heroine to be hell. Katerina "withered completely" in this unfriendly house - a miniature copy of the "dark kingdom". However, her heart did not rest in captivity. The heroine fell in love with a man who stood out from the merchant environment. For Katerina, he personifies a different - brighter, free, kind - world.
For the sake of her love, Katerina is ready to betray her husband and is faced with a choice: either duty or deceit. The heroine decides to commit adultery, considering it the gravest sin and suffering from it. Having done nothing yet, she already experiences the horror of a moral fall in advance: “It’s as if I’m standing over an abyss and someone is pushing me there, but there’s nothing for me to hold on to.” However, this desperate step is for Katerina a chance to break free.
Having cheated on her husband, Katerina is tormented by the realization of her guilt, she wants to atone for her sin. Following Christian morality, she sincerely believes that repentance partially atones for guilt. Moreover, the heroine cannot live by deceit, since this disgusts her open, ingenuous nature. This is her essential difference from the position of Varvara.
Thus, Katerina confesses everything to her husband, thereby cutting off her path to salvation. Now life in the house of Kabanikha begins to weigh Katerina doubly. Life in a spiritual vacuum loses all meaning for her: “Why should I live now, well, why? I don’t need anything ... ”, the heroine decides. She sees no other way to break free, except to take her own life.
Katerina cannot leave the house, because a woman in the 19th century was almost powerless, belonged to her husband in body and soul, and could not independently manage herself. Katerina also could not leave with Boris, since he turned out to be a completely insignificant, weak, spineless person, incapable of decisive action.
It can be said that, taking her own life, Katerina went against God, became a great sinner, for whom one could not even pray. However, the heroine is sure: "Who loves, he will pray ...". Death doesn't scare her. Even in death, Katerina sees beauty: she draws a picture of calm and peace.
So, Katerina's suicide, in my opinion, is to a certain extent a justified action, which the heroine saw for herself as the only possible one under the given conditions. Katerina's death is a kind of moral victory, a manifestation not of weakness, but of fortitude. The death of Katerina is another step towards the already begun destruction of the "dark kingdom" of petty tyrants.
KATERINA'S SUICIDE. Many strong characters have been created by the masters of Russian literature, many warm hearts have been sung. But always or almost always the fate of such heroes is more than sad - they are truly tragic! The tragedy of firmness of spirit, faith in a dream, commitment to one's ideals and aspirations, the tragedy of goodness and beauty. One of these tragedies was the fate of Katerina, the heroine of the drama by A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm".
In the mouth of Kuligin, a local self-taught mechanic, the song “Among the Flat Valley” sounds, which became the poetic grain of the whole work: the richer spiritually, the higher morally a person, the less external supports he has, the more dramatic his existence. “Where can I rest my heart when the storm rises?” - desperately asks the heroine. “Where can I go poor? Who can I grab onto? »
The well-known critic N. A. Dobrolyubov wrote that in The Thunderstorm "the Russian strong character is expressed", which "amazes us with its opposition to any self-impossible beginnings." “Not with an instinct for violence and destruction, but also not with practical dexterity to settle his own affairs for high purposes, not with meaningless, crackling pathos, but not with diplomatic, pedantic calculation, he appears before us ... no, he is concentratedly resolute, unswervingly faithful instinct of natural truth, full of faith in new ideals and selfless, in the sense that death is better for him than life with those principles that are contrary to him.
Katerina Ostrovsky lives in an era when all moral values and principles are gradually dying out, when harmony between the aspirations of an individual and the rules of his environment is impossible, when all relations are based only on oppression, violence and cruelty.
The sensitive soul of the heroine is alien and disgusting to this world. And what is most terrible, almost everyone who belongs to this world by birth and upbringing does not see these changes. “Why, it’s the same with us,” Varvara exclaims, after listening to Katerina’s story about life before marriage. But for the heroine herself, this difference is obvious: in her mother-in-law's house, for her, everything is “as if from bondage!”. But before it was different.
Katerina lived in her parents' house, "like a bird in the wild": her day began and ended with prayer, and the rest of the time was spent walking in the garden. Her youth is covered with mysterious, bright dreams: angels, golden-domed temples, gardens of Eden. And this is the best evidence of the originality of her nature.
In the Kabanov family, the heroine is not only forced to live in an environment alien to her, but she herself begins to change under the influence of the rules of this world. No, Katerina has no doubts about the moral value of her moral ideas. Only she clearly begins to understand that no one in the world around her cares about the true essence of these values.
A girl enters a strange family with a desire to love and honor her mother-in-law and her husband. But she expects the same love and support from her husband. Only Tikhon did not live up to her expectations. He does not at all correspond to the moral ideal of the heroine, her ideas about what a husband should be like.
In her actions, behavior, Katerina is used to proceeding not from external requirements and circumstances, but from her inner qualities - sincerity, striving for goodness, beauty, justice, and freedom of feelings. .
Once in captivity, faced with a world of tyranny, hypocrisy, lack of love and mutual respect, she feels an increased need to live freely. And he sees the opportunity to satisfy such a need in love. Gradually, Katerina comes to the fact that she herself begins to violate those unwritten laws that have been formed and strengthened in her soul over the years. This is the main tragedy of the heroine.
When the “fall” is over, Katerina seems to rise above herself, she feels unprecedented strength in herself, she feels the will, and this gives her extraordinary courage: “I wasn’t afraid of sin for you, if I’m afraid of human court!” she says to Boris. It is sad that Katerina's lover turned out to be a weak-willed person, dependent on his uncle, deliberately tolerating his tyranny.
Love gave Katerina a sense of freedom, which she lacked so much. But it is from this feeling, from this surge of courage and strength, that Katerina's main tragedy begins. The consciousness of a perfect sin covers her entirely and becomes completely unbearable when a short happiness in the wild ends. And this consciousness is all the more painful because the heroine herself excludes forgiveness and mercy for herself - this excludes her faith, her deep religiosity. She sees no other way but death. Katerina's death is inevitable, and nothing can stop and prevent her. If only because neither the self-consciousness of the heroine herself, nor the social order in which she exists, allow the feeling awakened in her to be embodied in everyday life.
The decision to commit suicide comes to Katerina along with internal self-justification. Fear disappears in her heart, she feels ready to stand before a moral court. After all, people say: "Death by sins is terrible." So if Katerina is not afraid, then her sins are atoned for. She dies at the moment when death becomes the only worthy outcome for her, the only salvation of that highest that is preserved in her. This death reminds us of the prayer of the young heroine in the temple, returning us to the beginning of the tragedy. And this especially strengthens us in the thought that Katerina's death is in fact a moral victory, a triumph of the real Russian soul over the forces of the "dark kingdom" of the Wild and Kabanovs.
