Composition
Vasily Yegorych is a timid, inert creature, and his fate, for all its touchingness, is, in general, not very instructive. There are no special conclusions for anyone from PSE. There are, of course, the interests of higher humanism, and they, apparently, require that people, when confronted with such weirdos, show more sensitivity, tolerance, if not participation. By…
We are arranged in such a way that we reckon only with the fact that Tan or otherwise concerns us, participates in our life - whether in a positive or negative way. Freaks like Vasily Yegorych are completely indifferent to us, but we simply don’t usually have the time or generosity to delve into all the “valid” reasons for their ridiculous actions. Yes, however, after all, they themselves will do nothing in order to be taken seriously. For with each of their involuntary collisions with reality, they can only, that they rub the resulting bruise guiltily and ask themselves the question: “Why am I like this; is there something?
There are, however, situations when you still have to take the freaks seriously.
In 1973, six years after The Freak, Shukshin wrote the story Strokes for a Portrait. Some specific thoughts II. N. Knyazev, man and citizen. The hero of the story, a certain Nikolai Nikolaevich Knyazev, an elderly man who works as a television master in a regional town, is also from the breed of weirdos. He, like his namesake Vasily Yegorych (a very remarkable detail, in my opinion), also gets into all sorts of strange stories at every step, and also not due to any special coincidence of circumstances, but solely due to the properties of his character. True, many things distinguish him from Vasily Yegorych. He, as we remember, was timid, passive and simply stupid. This one, on the contrary, is active, proud, prickly. And even smart in his own way, despite the obvious absurdity of the idea to which he subordinated his life. In any case, in many of his judgments, non- | looking (I repeat once again) at the absurdity of the original premise, one feels the experience of intense and concentrated spiritual work, and this is always a sign of intellectual independence.
Nikolai Nikolaevich also "stalled". He stalled on the theory of the “expedient state,” in particular, on the fact that, as he believes, people do not understand the supreme expediency of social division. Another hero of The Brothers Karamazov drew attention to the potential ambiguity of the Gogol symbol. “In my sinful opinion,” he said, “the ingenious artist ended up like this either in a fit of childishly innocent fine thinking, or simply fearing the then censorship. For if only his own heroes, the Sobakevichs, the Nozdrevs and the Chichikovs, are harnessed to his troika, then no matter who you plant as a coachman, you won’t get to what good on such mines!
The state appears to him as something like a huge anthill, in which the activity of each ant is entirely and exclusively subordinated to the common interests. In the preface to his extensive work “Thoughts on the State”, which, in his opinion, should finally open people’s eyes, he writes like this: “I began to ask myself with sadness and surprise:“ What would happen if we , like ants, carried the maximum to the state?” Just think about it: no one steals, drinks, loafers - everyone puts his own brick in this grandiose building in his place ... I realized that one global thought about the state should subordinate to itself all specific thoughts related to our life and behavior.
This, so to speak, is the theoretical side of Nikolai Nikolayevich's views, and if it were only this, then all his "eccentricity" would, apparently, come down only to the fact that he invents the wheel. It would be a completely harmless oddity and, in fact, not related to anyone - you never know the eccentrics in the world.
The whole point, however, is that the views of Nikolai Nikolayevich are not just “some specific thoughts II. N. Knyazev, a man and a citizen”, but his very position in life, and the position is active, even offensive. Op does not just theorize - he judges everyone and everything, at every step proving to people how far they are and) far from an ideal person. Let's say, a person came to the village on vacation, wants to take a walk in the forest, go fishing at his leisure - in a word, spend time in accordance with his usual ideas about rest. Nikolai Nikolaevich sees this as a clear evasion of this person (in the story this is a certain Silchenko) from his duties to society, almost desertion from the labor front. And he brings down on the head of the poor vacationer a cloud of all sorts of important lectures, caustic parables, ridicule, direct denunciations, in response to which, complacently at first, Silchenko resolutely takes up the log. The theoretical dispute, thus, turns into a serious scandal.
The clash with Silchenko looks somewhat anecdotal, and, probably, that is why the moral basis of Nikolai Nikolayevich's views and actions remains not entirely clear to us, obscured by the obvious absurdity of his logic. But the next episode - an incident with a tipsy electrician - clarifies this basis quite definitely.
I think no one will reproach Nikolai Nikolayevich for acting in excess of his authority in this whole episode, so to speak. In any case, it can be understood: watching a young guy “gurgle” from his pocket into a glass is indeed an unpleasant occupation. That is why Nikolai Nikolayevich's attempt to explain something to this pariah about the "problem of free time" does not seem to us some kind of too gross violence against the individual. Many in Nikolai Nikolayevich's place would probably have acted in exactly the same way. And yet the case again ends in a scandal, and what a scandal! The prophet is stoned again.
What happened, however? Why, despite the fact that Nikolai Nikolayevich seems to be right around the corner, did he again get hard? It remains, apparently, only to assume that - his offender is to blame for everything - he did not understand, a stupid person, good morals, he was offended, climbed with his fists ...
But here’s what’s strange: whether it’s because we already know the absurd character of Nikolai Nikolayevich (and therefore we’re not in too much of a hurry to sympathize with him), or the point here is in some special shade of the author’s intonation, but for some reason this offender does not cause us that noble indignation with which Nikolai Nikolaevich reacted to him. Indeed, for what, in fact, should we condemn the young guy?
Within the framework of the general reasoning, Nikolai Nikolayevich, “as always”, is right: thoughtlessness, drunkenness are harmful, a person should strive, etc. But at the same time, we also understand why, listening to these common truths, a young man grits his teeth more and more tightly. No, but because he does not understand these truths, not at all because. He does not agree with another - with the fact that they are trying to convince him that he is the very person who hinders social development. Nikolai Nikolayevich, as you can see, generalizes all the time: since a person went to the zoo just like that, without a well-thought-out intention to “learn something useful for himself”, then he is generally a “tree” floating with the flow; if this person drank on the day off "for the mood" - therefore, he is a drunkard who has no other interests than "to blow fuselage". And if so, then, therefore, this person is an antisocial element, unworthy of being allowed on that “liner” that ... etc. It is this logic, according to which the young man is, as it were, excommunicated from society, that revolts him more Total. The exalted sermon of Nikolai Nikolaevich thus turns into an ordinary, although, of course, not a deliberate provocation.
Moral dogmatism, intolerance... Are we, however, too strict with Nikolai Nikolaevich? Are we not showing him the same excessive intolerance with which we are inclined to accuse him? After all, as many critics quite rightly point out, Nikolai Nikolayevich, for all the obvious absurdity of his behavior, nevertheless evokes in us a feeling much more complex than just hostility. One cannot, for example, disagree with I. Dedkov: “What is happening to us, why does our irritation against Nikolai Nikolayevich Knyazev seem to dissolve? In this annoying and biting, like an autumn fly, creature, little by little, something immensely pitiful and sad, joylessly conscientious and uselessly honest, is revealed to us, and in his street tirades and in quotations from those ill-fated notebooks, sense, and reason, and even logic, almost ironclad. We feel that in the desperately helpless, amusing antics of this man lives a clear consciousness of his right to think, a clear understanding of the tragedy of the role that he so wants to play ... "
Vasily Makarovich Shukshin is known throughout the world not only as an excellent actor, film director and screenwriter, but above all as a talented writer who, in his short works, showed the life of ordinary people. The story "The Freak", according to Wikipedia, was written by him in 1967 and immediately published in the Novy Mir magazine.
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Genre and style features
Vasily Shukshin in his story "Freak", which you can read online at any time, shows a small episode in the life of your hero, which reflects his whole fate. From this small passage, his whole life becomes clear and understandable: both what the main character had in the past, and what awaits him in the future.
If we compare this story by Vasily Shukshin with the rest of his works presented in print media and online, we can see that there are very few dialogues in it. But on the other hand, in the monologue of the protagonist, which he constantly pronounces inside himself, you can see his idea of the world, find out what he lives with, what emotions overcome him. The artless hero of Shukshin "Freak", the brief content that is in this article appears before the reader in such a way that somewhere he wants to sympathize, and somewhere else he can condemn.
Problems of the story
In the story "The Freak" Vasily Shukshin raises a problem that can be traced in many of his works. Relations between the inhabitants of the city and the village have always been and remain an urgent problem. The protagonist notices that the people in the village are simple, hardworking. They want to change their life for another . Among them are heroes that the village can be proud of..
Another important problem is raised in the story "Freak" - family relationships, which should be built on love, trust and understanding. But unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Heroes of the story
Despite the fact that there is one main character in Shukshin's story, there are many minor persons. This allows you to understand the content of the story. Among all the actors, the following can be distinguished:
Plot and composition
The plot of the piece - this is the journey of the Freak from his native village to the city where his brother lives. With Dmitry, who misses village life, the main character has not seen each other for 12 years. On the road, something constantly happens to Chudik: either he loses money, or the plane is forced to land on a potato field.
Shukshin's story is divided into three parts:
- Chudik's thoughts about going to visit his brother.
- Journey.
- Homecoming.
The wife of the protagonist called differently. Most often a Freak, but sometimes affectionately. It was known that the main character had one peculiarity: something constantly happened to him, and he suffered greatly from this.
Once, having received a vacation, he decided to go to visit his brother, who lived in the Urals and whom they had not seen for a long time. He took a long time to pack his bags. And in the early morning he was already walking with a suitcase through the village, answering everyone's questions about where he was going.
Arriving in the city and taking a ticket, Chudik decided to go shopping to buy gifts for his daughter-in-law and nephews. When he had already bought gingerbread and a chocolate bar, he walked away and suddenly noticed that 50 rubles were left on the floor near the counter. He spoke to the people in the queue, but the owner of the money was not found. They put the money on the counter in the hope that soon the one who lost it himself would appear for them.
Departing from the store, Chudik suddenly remembered that he also had a banknote of 50 rubles. He put his hand in the pocket where it lay, but there was no money there. He did not dare to return and take the money, thinking that he would be accused of deceit. Then the hero had to return home to withdraw money from the passbook and listen to his wife's speeches about what a nonentity he is.
Already sitting in the train, Knyazev began to gradually calm down. In the car, I decided to tell some intelligent comrade a story about a drunken guy from a neighboring village. But his interlocutor decided that Chudik himself came up with this story. Therefore, the hero fell silent before transferring to the plane. The hero was afraid to fly, and his neighbor was taciturn and read the newspaper all the time.
When they began to land, the pilot “missed” and instead of the landing strip they ended up on a potato field. The neighbor, who had decided not to buckle up when boarding, was now looking for his artificial jaw. Knyazev decided to help him and immediately found her. But instead of gratitude, the bald reader began to scold him for clutching his jaw with dirty hands.
When he decided to send a telegram to his wife, the telegraph operator scolded him and demanded that he rewrite the text, because he is an adult, and the content of his message was like in kindergarten. And the girl did not even want to hear that he always wrote letters to his wife like that.
The daughter-in-law immediately disliked Vasily. She ruined his whole vacation. On the first evening when he and his brother drank, and the Freak decided to sing, she immediately demanded that Vasily stop yelling. But even further, the daughter-in-law did not allow them to sit quietly, remembering their childhood. The brothers went out into the street and began to talk about what wonderful and heroic people came out of the village.
Dmitry complained about his wife, how she tortured him, demanding responsibility. Wanting to forget that she, too, grew up in the countryside, tortured the piano, figure skating and children. In the morning, Vasily looked around the apartment and, wanting to do something pleasant for his daughter-in-law, decided to paint the baby carriage. He spent over an hour on art but it turned out very nice. Vasily went shopping, buying gifts for his nephews. And when he returned home again, he heard the daughter-in-law swearing at his brother.
Vasily hid in a shed that stood in the yard. Late in the evening, Dmitry also came there, saying that there was no need to paint the carriage. The weirdo, realizing that his daughter-in-law strongly disliked him, decided to go home. Dmitri did not contradict him.
Arriving home, he walked along a familiar street, and at that time it was raining. Suddenly, the man took off his shoes and ran across the wet ground, which was still warm. He, holding shoes and a suitcase, still jumped up and down and sang loudly. The rain gradually stopped and the sun began to peek through.
In one place, Vasily Yegorovich slipped and almost fell. His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was 39 years old. Chudik worked as a village projectionist. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a spy. Therefore, his hobby all these years was dogs and detectives..
“Images of “freaks” in the stories of V.M. Shukshin
Among Shukshin's characters there is one curious variety of people whose soul is always restless, longing and languishing. These people are necessarily dissatisfied with something, always looking for something and doing funny and incredible eccentricities on their way. In 1968, Shukshin wrote: “The hero of our time is always a “fool”, in which his time lives in the most expressive way, the truth of this time.” It was not by chance that the writer here spoke about the truth, because in Rus' from time immemorial, jesters or holy fools, people not of this world, with a weirdo, fearlessly spoke about it. Shukshin's "freaks" are almost always truth-seekers who go to the limit, to the brink in their search and sometimes remain alone on their way. Such is one of the writer's characters - the Freak, the hero of the story of the same name, the person about whom, without exaggeration, one can say - "22 misfortunes": "The Freak had one feature: something constantly happened to him. He did not want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got into some stories - small ones, but annoying. The reasons for his fatal bad luck are in the constant desire to help and bring joy to people: then he is looking for the owner of the dropped fifty-ruble note, which belongs to him; sometimes he helps his neighbor on the plane find a fallen false jaw, but comes across rudeness and swearing; then he quarrels with his brother's wife, painting a baby carriage with paints. Unfortunately, the ideas of the Chudik about the world around him do not correspond to the real order of things. The hero is unlikely to change: he will still strive for people with helpfulness and joyful willingness to communicate and with sincere surprise that people do not understand him. But his actions are not so ridiculous. It's just that people have forgotten what elementary human sensitivity and kindness are. Human truth is on the side of the hero, who does not get upset because of his misadventures, but continues to enjoy life.
Such is this hero: awkward and benevolent, compliant and proud, unhappy and cheerful. Usually people like him are not taken seriously by others.
A freak is a strange-looking person, not like the others, but possessing a kind soul, drawn to the beautiful, to knowledge, art, and therefore alien and incomprehensible to the layman.
You can identify some manifestations of the features of "cranks":
Discrepancy between the hero's ideas about life and reality;
Active life position;
Striving for something great, if not in life, then at least in your imagination.
Cranks - truth-seekers, people breaking out of the framework of the "normal" consciousness of those around them - Shukshin's artistic discovery.
In his spiritual quest, each hero follows untrodden paths, and on this path he makes one-of-a-kind discoveries, manifests himself as an individual. However, all the heroes together make up a single polyphony, because they see the truth of life in the triumph of morality and the harmony of man with the world.
The story "Crank", according to Shukshin's classification, belongs to the type of "story-fate". A freak is a certain image that aroused the interest of Shukshin the writer. In the plot of the story, in a short episode, a whole life is visible. The reader guesses both the past and the future of the hero.
Issues
In the story, Shukshin raises a favorite problem - the relationship between urban and rural residents. Chudik remarks that "in the village, people are better, more unobtrusive." He cites as an example his fellow villagers who became a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Knight of Glory of three degrees. The weirdo appreciates his village life, even the air, is not going to change it to the city.
Another important problem of the story is family relations, which can be built on love and trust or on mutual discontent (brother's family). Many stories about eccentrics raise the problem of the relationship of an eccentric with a childish outlook on life, living in the heart, and people who are driven by reasonable pragmatism.
Heroes of the story
The main character of the story is called Freak. So called his wife, often in a negative context. The word "freaks" has become the definition of a typical Shukshin hero. The peculiarity of these heroes is that they are simple, unsophisticated, not adapted to life and inconvenient for loved ones. Something happens to them all the time, and it interferes with the lives of others. They harm unintentionally, wishing others well. Freaks are infantile, they live by the heart.
Such is the Weird. His portrait emphasizes simplicity and good-naturedness, he looks like a baby: a round fleshy face, round blue-white eyes. The author immediately reports that Chudik does not know how to joke, pretends that he is not afraid of a long journey, respects city people. All these character traits are also childish, although the hero is 39 years old.
The teenage desire to impress leads Chudik to “cheerfully and wittyly” tell the queue that there is a 50-ruble note (half a month’s salary) at the counter. The freak seems to have succeeded. But the reader already knows that Chudik does not know how to joke. Even when he discovers that it was he who lost the money, Chudik does not dare to take it back. As a teenager, he is not confident in himself and is afraid that he will be judged and the paper will not be returned.
The weirdo is even afraid of his wife, like a child is afraid of a mother's abuse. Indeed, his wife hit him on the head a couple of times with a slotted spoon.
People notice the Chudik's simplicity and teach him to live, make remarks to him, although he tries to please everyone.
When he picks up a passenger's false teeth on the plane, he scolds Freak for picking it up with dirty hands. The strict telegraph operator refuses to send a telegram to his wife in verse, reminding him that he is “an adult. Not in kindergarten. Daughter-in-law Sofya Ivanovna also makes a remark when Chudik sings loudly (from her point of view, yells): “You are not at the station.” Chudik's best thing is decorating a baby stroller. The weirdo is a master of his craft, he has already painted the stove, "that everyone marveled at."
Shukshin leads the reader to the idea that the wonderful and abnormal is not the Freak at all, but those around him who reject the manifestation of feelings and the feelings themselves, calling them kisses and snot.
There is no anger in Chudik, which is why he takes anger in others so hard: “When he was hated, he was very hurt.” Faced with hatred, Chudik loses the meaning of life, does not fight, but leaves.
Chudik's brother Dmitry and his daughter-in-law Sofya Ivanovna- people from the countryside, but live in the city. Dmitry yearns for his homeland, asks his brother about the house and dreams of coming to visit with his family. Sofya Ivanovna strives to break all old ties and dreams of a career, as she understands it. Sophia considers her husband and his brother losers because they are from the village. Her career is that she works as a barmaid in some department. She also prepares children for a successful city life, according to her father, she torments them on the “pianos” and figure skating. According to Shukshin's plan, she is made by an evil break with her native village, with nature. Although it's hard not to get angry if the stroller (expensive thing) was decorated with children's paints, which are washed off with water at the first rain. So Shukshin does not take sides in the conflict.
Plot and composition
The plot of the story is Chudik's journey to his brother, whom he had not seen for 12 years, to a city in the Urals. The journey is fraught with many dangers, the hero experiences adventures: he loses money and is forced to return back for new ones, the plane lands on a potato field with the risk to the lives of passengers. Fate seems to oppose the Chudik, and not by chance. The whole journey Chudik feels like a nonentity, several times aloud he asks himself the question: “Why am I like this?” This is a question about the meaning of life: why is the hero different from others and how can he live in peace with other people?
The story consists of three parts. In the first, the hero comes up with the idea to visit his brother. The second part is the journey itself (bus - train - plane - brother's house).
The third part is the decision to return home and the return itself. The hero experiences great happiness from the fact that he arrives in a familiar environment, where he feels himself not a weirdo, but a useful and necessary person who knows how to work: he blocked the roof in the house and built a veranda, works in the village as a projectionist.
The name of the protagonist and his profession arise in the last paragraph of the story, after describing a particularly "village" and "childish" act: Freak came home and ran barefoot, taking off his boots in the rain.
The plot of the story, if we omit everyday details, corresponds to the folklore plot of the fairy tale "Whatever the husband does, it's good." A man changes property at a loss for himself, leaving with nothing, but his wife is glad that he came home safe and sound. The reader leaves the hero just as he approaches the house. It can be assumed that the wife will meet him like a wife from a fairy tale, but the ending of the story is open. But the wife of brother Dmitry is not like a fairy tale.
Stylistic features
The story has few dialogues compared to Shukshin's other stories. The character of the hero is revealed through his actions and through an internal monologue. The reader sees the world through the eyes of the Chudik, from his point of view evaluates the words and deeds of other people. That is why the reader perceives ironically Chudik's remark that his wife and daughter-in-law "are not evil, but psychos."
Having shifted the point of view towards the perception of the childish or wonderful, Shukshin encourages the reader to ask himself the question whether he himself does not miss anything in life.
In Shukshin's story "The Freak", which we will analyze, the conflict between the city and the village is presented, as in many other stories of this author. In essence, the internal conflict of the village world is revealed here: all three characters of the story (Chudik himself, whose real name the reader learns only at the end - Vasily Egorovich Knyazev, his brother Dmitry and wife Sofya Ivanovna) come from the village.
The plot of Shukshin's story "Freak" is found many times in literature and folklore: these are the unsuccessful adventures of a village eccentric in the city. All comic situations and misunderstandings are due to his ignorance of the standards, conventions, orders of city life. But it is he who turns out to be the bearer of true ideas about the values of life, which are not understood and rejected by the evil presumptuous city. Most often in works with a similar plot, the bearer of true ideas about the values of life, the bearer of the true mind is a village person. Shukshin is close to the same interpretation.
The most serious conflict awaits Chudik in the house of his brother Dmitry. It is due to the unmotivated, as it seems to him, hatred of the daughter-in-law, Sofia Ivanovna, to which neither Chudik himself nor his brother Dmitry can oppose anything.
The reason for the rejection is, according to Dmitry, that Chudik is “not responsible, not a leader. I know her, stupid. Obsessed with their responsible. And who is she! Barmaid in control, bump out of the blue. She looks at it and starts ... She hates me too - that I'm not responsible, from the village. These words clarify the cause of the conflict between the brothers and Sofya Ivanovna: from her point of view, the measure of success in life becomes a leading position in the administration, the name of which Dmitry cannot remember. This is what pushes the brothers, forced out by Sofya Ivanovna into the street, to try to identify the origins of the confrontation that has emerged and compare the rural and urban ways of life.
The culmination of the conflict in Shukshin's story "The Freak" is just the attempt of the Freak to repay it - to somehow appease the daughter-in-law, an attempt, as always, is completely ridiculous. He decided to paint with children's paints, probably watercolors, the carriage of his youngest nephew. This leads to a new outburst of anger on the part of Sofya Ivanovna, this time, I think, quite justified: it is unlikely that the carriage could have been decorated with Chudik’s drawings (“At the top of the carriage, Chudik sent cranes - a flock in a corner, along the bottom - different flowers, grass-ant, a couple roosters, chickens...”), quite appropriate, for example, on a stove, but not on a standard factory-made item that has a fundamentally different aesthetic nature, which the hero is not at all aware of: “And you say - a village. Eccentric. He wanted peace with his daughter-in-law. “The child will be like in a basket.” However, the daughter-in-law of “folk art”, as Chudik comprehends his deeds, did not understand, which led to the speedy resolution of the conflict - the Chudik’s expulsion with the helpless bitter silence of his brother Dmitry, who, apparently, does not have the right to vote in his own house.
What is the meaning of Sofya Ivanovna's dissatisfaction with her husband's brother? Yes, in the fact that she has lost the ability to appreciate a person who is in the traditional system of values, living in the countryside, satisfied with this life, not wanting to accept urban standards due to the fact that he is satisfied with his own - as he understands them. He does not aspire to be “responsible”, he is satisfied with the work of the village projectionist, he is at peace with himself, with the rural world that gave birth to and raised him, and therefore causes Sofia Ivanovna not just indifference, but active rejection, irritation. Why?
Shukshin, thinking about what happens if a person leaves for a city (even worse - to an urban-type settlement), came to the most disappointing conclusions, believing that the village loses its mistress of the house, mother, wife, and the city acquires another boorish saleswoman. This is exactly what we see in the image of Chudik's daughter-in-law, Sofia Ivanovna, in the past a village girl, in the present - a barmaid in a certain department. The point, probably, is that she just lost those qualities that Chudik did not lose: harmony with the village, satisfaction with her world, harmony with herself. Leaving the countryside and rejecting its moral values, not satisfied with the criteria for success in life that the rural world offers, she rushed to the city, perceiving the "department" in which she works as a barmaid, "responsible" in this department as people who have achieved the highest success in life, fulfilled their life potential. Any other scenario of the life path - whether Chudikov, Dmitry's husband - is interpreted by her as a loss, failure, a manifestation of human insolvency. Therefore, those charms of village life that the brothers think about are perceived by her as a pitiful attempt to justify their own inadequacy to themselves and cause a sharp rejection, almost hatred in relation to the "losers" who have almost suffered a collapse in life - their own husband and his village brother. But the bottom line is that Sofya Ivanovna herself suffers a collapse: having abandoned the old values, such a person does not acquire new ones, but does not realize this, believing that “responsible” work in “management” is the highest goal of a person’s life path. This is the very moral vacuum in which the village man finds himself, having lost touch with his world and not gaining new social ties.
If Dmitry’s life can really be perceived as a failure (“Here it is, my life! Have you seen it? How much anger is in a person! .. How much anger!” He complains about his wife to his brother), then this cannot be said about Chudik. Despite the difficult relationship already with his own wife, who from time to time explains to her husband his insignificance with the help of a skimmer, which hits him on the head, the hero is in complete inner harmony with the world of the village that gave birth to him, with the world in which he lives and will live . Show this by referring to the episode of the return of the Freak after his unsuccessful city trip to his village. Why is it at this moment that the hero ceases to be a "freak" and finds his true name?
The confrontation between the city and the countryside is most often given in Shukshin's stories from the point of view of a village dweller - it is he who carries hidden aggression against the city. The townspeople (those for whom the culture of the city is natural, native), on the contrary, are peaceful, most often described either neutrally or with sympathy, as the “candidates” of the Zhuravlevs. Sometimes the opposition of the village to the city is reflected in the desire of the villager to assert his significance, his wealth and superiority over the city dweller, as in the story "Cut off", sometimes - in hatred for a fellow villager who has lost his former roots and has not found new ones, as in "The Freak", sometimes - in the desire to surprise the townspeople with something incredible, impossible, exceptional, as in the story "Mil pardon, madam!". All these attempts, however, turn out to be completely absurd and reveal only one thing: the peasant’s discord with himself and the world of the village, dissatisfaction with his own life, an indistinct desire for something exceptional, which is based on the destruction of the village, tragic for the national fate, as one of the forms of social life and national existence. Shukshin captures a tragic stage in the development of Russian destiny: in the middle of the 20th century, the rural world lost harmony with itself and ceased to satisfy the person who grew up and was brought up in it. At the same time, new ideals, surrogates for city life, of course, could not fill the cultural and moral vacuum formed as a result of the peasant leaving the countryside. This concludes the analysis of Shukshin's story "Freak".
