In the first part of his autobiographical trilogywriter M. Gorky impartially portrayed the "lead abominations" of life surrounding the main character, Alesha Peshkov, in his childhood years. The boy was lucky that in this difficult time people were sympathetic and kind, like Akulina Ivanovna and the Gypsy woman who never desponded, were next to him.
In the Gorky story "Childhood" Akulina IvanovnaKashirina undoubtedly occupies a central place. She, as a guardian angel, protects her grandson, who has fallen from a close-knit family to a completely different world, filled with envy, cruelty, and mutual hostility. Reading the work, one involuntarily wonders how a grandmother, who spent many years in the setting of the Kashirins' house, was able to preserve in herself those best human qualities that were given to her at birth? Fate never indulged this woman, but every time she found the strength not only to live by the laws of God, but also to alleviate the people around her.
The image of the grandmother in the Gorky story "Childhood"emerges gradually. We learn about Akulina Ivanovna’s life mainly from her conversations with Alyosha: how she, together with her disabled mother, begged for alms up to the age of nine, how she learned the wonderful art of weaving lace from her, how she was married to Kashirin at fourteen. Bitter was her future life. She gave birth to eighteen children, and only three of them survived. Yes, and they never got along with each other. It was painful to see my grandmother how her two sons were fighting to the death because of the inheritance. My grandfather didn’t spare his wife: even in old age he often beat her. And although the heroine was much higher and stronger than him, she screamed and beaten up silently. She considered: everything that happens to a person is prescribed by God's will. A significant test was the fact that, before dying, my grandmother had to earn money for herself: the grandfather sold off all the property and left it with nothing.
The image of the grandmother in the Gorky story "Childhood" is giventhrough the perception of her Alesha. When she first met, she seemed to the boy "round, big-headed, with huge eyes and ... a loose nose." Despite high growth and stoop, Akulina Ivanovna moved gently and smoothly, what resembled a cat. She was especially transformed during the dance: she was younger and more beautiful.
Grandma had thick black hair that shelong combed. Maybe that's why it all seemed outwardly dark. But with a close look at her there was a feeling that the heroine was glowing from the inside. This cheerful, warm, inextinguishable light came from her large eyes.
А еще бабушка была прекрасной рассказчицей и She knew an innumerable number of interesting stories and folk legends — some of them were introduced into her story “Childhood” by Gorky. And in general, wherever Akulina Ivanovna appeared, she seemed to attract people to herself like a magnet.
Alyosha did not remember that grandmother evercomplained. On the contrary, she often tried to take on someone else's guilt, could expose herself to the shock, to get rid of the pain of others. So it was that evening when the grandfather subjected Alyosha to the first punishment. And even when the brutalized Michael began to break into his father's house: the grandmother tried to calm her son, and he broke her arm. And I really did not think Akulina Ivanovna about myself when I rushed into the burning workshop to protect everyone from the blast of vitriol. Even a horse agitated by fire, who did not obey his grandfather, behaved like a little mouse next to this fearless woman. It was not by chance that the heroes of the story “The Childhood” of Gorky in the difficult moment of life went to her.
А еще Алеша очень любил смотреть и слушать, как grandmother prayed to god. Every evening she told him about what had happened in the house. And I certainly asked someone to help, to reason with someone. This prayer, coming from the heart, was close and clear to the boy, unlike the words he had memorized, which his grandfather said.
So, episode by episode, the image is formedgrandmothers in the Gorky story "Childhood". This is a portrait of a kind, sympathetic, sincere, morally clean, courageous, resolute woman. She experienced much in the course of many years, but remained unchanged, “precisely from copper and litta,” just like our uneasy life itself.
