"Vasily Terkin" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.

“Vasily Terkin” is rightfully considered one of the most significant works of literature of the second half of the 20th century.

The poem consists of twenty-nine chapters. Each chapter is an independent work. There are many lyrical digressions in the book. Its content and form are close to folk ones. It is a fusion of the genres of lyric and epic. It has everything: humor and pathos, sketches front-line life and heroic battles, casual jokes and tragedy, high oratory and folk language. This is not a poem, but a folk book. Tvardovsky came up with a universal genre and called it “a book about a fighter.” Subject of this work is war. The author shows it from beginning to end.

Behind the sparse lines the image of the author is visible. We learn about him from lyrical digressions and we understand that he loves his hero very much. The work is high ideological meaning. Proximity to the folk poetic language, simplicity - all this makes the poem truly folk work. Not only the soldiers in the war felt warm from these poems, but now, years later, they radiate the inexhaustible warmth of humanity.

Vasily's character is revealed gradually. Throughout the book, the author shows Terkin from different sides. The hero shows real courage and courage in the chapter “Crossing”.

Describing what is happening in the war, the author emphasizes that soldiers are not heroes from birth, they are young guys. Some are participating in military events for the first time, but there is heroism on their faces. The author emphasizes that the feat of these young soldiers is a continuation of the exploits of their fathers and grandfathers - warriors of past centuries. The author talks about Terkin’s participation in the war in a half-joking manner. He talks about Terkin’s dreams of returning home. Terkin dreams of awards, but shows modesty: “No, I don’t need an order, I agree to a medal.” He wants to impress girls:

...And the girls at the party

Let's forget all the guys

If only the girls would listen,

How the belts squeak on me.

In this scene, Terkin looks cheerful and simple. But the author replaces lines full of humor with lines describing a terrible battle:

A terrible bloody battle is going on,

Mortal combat is not for glory -

For the sake of life on earth.

By this, the author shows that the path to happiness passes through struggle, the unity of the fate of the people with the fate of the country, and that the happiness of an individual is impossible without the happiness of his people. Terkin knows how to lift the spirits of soldiers, he makes sure that they look at the world with different eyes.

Two tankmen give Terkin an accordion in memory of the killed commander. Terkin plays a cheerful melody, and the soldiers begin to dance.

Lose the tobacco pouch,

If there is no one to sew -

I don’t argue - it’s also bitter,

It's hard, but you can live,

Survive the misfortune

Hold tobacco in your fist.

But Russia, the old mother,

There is no way we can lose.

Tvardovsky also talks about love.

The fighters remember with tenderness their mothers, wives, girls who are waiting for their return.

I dreamed of a real miracle:

So that from my invention

Living people at war

It might have been warmer.

The poem "Vasily Terkin" is dated 1941-1945 - the difficult, terrible and heroic years of the struggle of the Soviet people with German fascist invaders. In this work, Alexander Tvardovsky created the immortal image of a simple Soviet soldier, defender of the Fatherland, who became a kind of personification of deep patriotism and love for his Motherland.

History of creation

The poem began to be written in 1941. Selected excerpts were published in newspaper versions between 1942 and 1945. Also in 1942, the still unfinished work was published separately.

Oddly enough, work on the poem was started by Tvardovsky back in 1939. It was then that he already worked as a war correspondent and covered the progress of the Finnish military campaign in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland”. The name was coined in collaboration with members of the newspaper's editorial board. In 1940, a small brochure “Vasya Terkin at the Front” was published, which was considered a great reward among the soldiers.

The newspaper's readers liked the image of the Red Army soldier from the very beginning. Realizing this, Tvardovsky decided that this topic was promising and began to develop it.

From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, being at the front as a war correspondent, he found himself in the hottest battles. He gets surrounded with soldiers, gets out of it, retreats and goes on the attack, experiencing first-hand everything that he would like to write about.

In the spring of 1942, Tvardovsky arrived in Moscow, where he wrote the first chapters “From the Author” and “At a Rest”, and they were immediately published in the newspaper “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda”.

Tvardovsky could not have imagined such an explosion of popularity even in his wildest dreams. The central publications “Pravda”, “Izvestia”, “Znamya” reprint excerpts from the poem. On the radio, texts are read by Orlov and Levitan. The artist Orest Vereisky creates illustrations that finally formulate the image of a fighter. Tvardovsky spends in hospitals creative evenings, and also meets with labor collectives in the rear, raising morale.

As always, what the common people liked did not receive the support of the party. Tvardovsky was criticized for pessimism, for not mentioning that the party is in charge of all accomplishments and achievements. In this regard, the author wanted to finish the poem in 1943, but grateful readers did not allow him to do this. Tvardovsky had to agree to censorship edits, in return he was awarded the Stalin Prize for his now immortal work. The poem was completed in March 1945 - it was then that the author wrote the chapter “In the Bath”.

Description of the work

The poem has 30 chapters, which can be roughly divided into 3 parts. In four chapters, Tvardovsky does not talk about the hero, but simply talks about the war, about how much ordinary Soviet men who stood up to defend their Motherland had to endure, and hints at the progress of work on the book. The role of these digressions cannot be downplayed - this is a dialogue between the author and the readers, which he conducts directly, even bypassing his hero.

There is no clear chronological sequence in the course of the story. Moreover, the author does not name specific battles and battles, however, individual battles and operations highlighted in the history of the Great Patriotic War are discernible in the poem: retreats Soviet troops, so common in 1941 and 1942, the Battle of the Volga, and, of course, the capture of Berlin.

There is no strict plot in the poem - and the author did not have the task of conveying the course of the war. The central chapter is “Crossing”. The main idea of ​​the work is clearly visible there - a military road. It is along this path that Terkin and his comrades move towards achieving their goal - complete victory over the Nazi invaders, and therefore, towards a new, better and free life.

Hero of the work

Main character- Vasily Terkin. Fictional character, cheerful, cheerful, straightforward, despite the difficult circumstances in which he lives during the war.

We are watching Vasily in different situations- and we can celebrate it everywhere positive traits. Among his brothers-in-arms, he is the life of the party, a jokester who always finds an opportunity to joke and make others laugh. When he goes on the attack, he is an example for other fighters, showing his qualities such as resourcefulness, courage, and endurance. When he rests after a fight, he can sing, he plays the accordion, but at the same time he can answer quite harshly and with humor. When soldiers meet civilians, Vasily is all charm and modesty.

Courage and dignity, shown in all, even the most hopeless situations, are the main features that distinguish the main character of the work and form his image.

All the other characters in the poem are abstract - they don’t even have names. The brothers-in-arms, the general, the old man and the old woman - they all just play along, helping to reveal the image of the main character - Vasily Terkin.

Analysis of the work

Since Vasily Terkin does not have real prototype, then we can safely say that this is a certain collective image, which was created by the author based on his real-life observations of soldiers.

The work has one distinctive feature, which distinguishes it from similar works of that time, is the absence of an ideological principle. The poem contains no praise for the party or Comrade Stalin personally. This, according to the author, “would destroy the idea and figurative structure of the poem.”

The work uses two poetic meters: tetrameter and trimeter trochee. The first dimension occurs much more often, the second - only in certain chapters. The language of the poem became a kind of Tvardovsky card. Some moments that look like sayings and lines from funny songs, as they say, “went among the people” and began to be used in everyday speech. For example, the phrase “No, guys, I’m not proud, I agree to a medal” or “Soldiers surrender cities, generals take them from them” are used by many today.

It was on people like the main character of this poem in verse that all the hardships of the war fell. And only them human qualities- fortitude, optimism, humor, the ability to laugh at others and at themselves, to defuse a situation tense to the limit in time - helped them not only win, but also survive in this terrible and merciless war.

The poem is still alive and loved by the people. In 2015, the Russian Reporter magazine conducted sociological research regarding hundreds of the most popular poems in Russia. Lines from “Vasily Terkin” took 28th place, which suggests that the memory of the events of 70 years ago and the feat of those heroes is still alive in our memory.

"Vasily Terkin"

This is how the image appears in the poem simple soldier Vasily Terkin, a warm-hearted, easy-going, funny man and a good storyteller who knows how to brighten up the hardships of military trials with his optimistic attitude towards life.

After a short introduction “From the author”, the poem is followed by the chapter “At a halt”. It is also devoid of battle scenes, and this feature once again emphasizes that A.T. Tvardovsky is primarily interested not in the course of military operations, but in the description of a person’s life in war, his problems and experiences, his ability to remain human in borderline, seemingly hopeless situations.

War in the poem becomes a measure of decency, nobility, responsibility for the future of other people (relatives, friends, compatriots). In the era of consolidation of popular forces, these qualities become necessary for every fighter.

The chapter “At a Rest” opens and is interspersed with conversations of soldiers. Such dialogue gives the plot a relaxed character and shows trust in the relationship between the fighters. However, from individual parts in the conversation a generalized image of the military generation emerges. “I’m fighting a second war, brother, forever,” says one of the soldiers, asking for more porridge. And thanks to this phrase, the reader literally imagines this fighter, a man no longer young, who has gone through a harsh school of life. One war knocked on his door in his youth, and now he had to take up arms a second time.

Artistic style of A.T. Tvardovsky is distinguished by its aphorism, capacity, and laconicism. The image of the “second war of the century” has philosophical depth: already short life of man, which in comparison with eternity, with our history, is insignificantly small, tragically irreversible, turns out to be overshadowed by a series of tragic events and, in fact, consists of practically nothing but difficulties and deprivations. And in such a difficult atmosphere of general fatigue and anxiety, the merry fellow and joker Vasily Terkin begins a story about “Sabantuy”. This is a kind of holiday of the soul, when a soldier rejoices that he did not die under bombing, and a spiritual uplift that helps the hero not to flee from the battlefield after seeing fascist tanks. A.T. Tvardovsky emphasizes that the hero of his poem

The most ordinary person with an unremarkable appearance. He does not seek fame, but is distinguished by an enviable love of life: “He smokes, eats and drinks with gusto in any position.”

In the chapter “Before the battle” A.T. Tvardovsky paints a picture of the retreat to the east, when our troops were leaving the encirclement, “leaving the captive region.” On the way, the commander of a detachment that was surrounded decides to look into his native village. Thanks to this plot device, the theme of the retreat is concretized and perceived not in general, but through the prism of the experiences of an individual person. The commander, together with the detachment, is forced to secretly make his way to his home hut in enemy-occupied territory. With a bitter feeling, he sits down at the table, chops firewood for his family at night, and at dawn leaves the house, realizing that the Nazis may soon enter it.

One of the most striking and memorable in the poem is the chapter “Crossing”. A.T. Tvardovsky depicts one of the episodes of the war in it, emphasizing the rich traditions of the glorious exploits of Russian soldiers - defenders of their native land: “They walk the same harsh path that two hundred years ago the Russian toiling soldier walked with a flintlock gun.”

The crossing is a difficult test of strength and endurance. Courage. The symbols of this test are the roar of water and the rotting ice. And an alien night, and an inaccessible forest, “the right bank is like a wall.” All these images of the natural world turn out to be hostile towards humans. A.T. Tvardovsky in the poem does not embellish reality, does not hide victims and failures, but depicts military actions and losses in all the terrifying and tragic truth: “Warm, living people went to the bottom, to the bottom, to the bottom...”. The repetition enhances the depth of the tragedy experienced by the author and shows the scale of the “blood trail.” The bitterness of the losses is enhanced by the picture depicting dead faces, on which the snow does not melt. This fragment of the poem is not devoid of naturalism. Further, the author mentions that rations are still issued to the dead, and old letters written by them are sent home by mail. These details also emphasize the irreplaceability of the loss. The scale of the tragedy is enlarged with the help of toponymy: “From Ryazan, from Kazan, From Siberia, from Moscow - The soldiers are sleeping. They said theirs and are forever right.”

In the chapter “Crossing” Vasily Terkin miraculously remains alive and also brings the good news that the first platoon that managed to cross to the right bank is alive.

The chapter ends with a succinct and laconic summary: “The battle is holy and just. Mortal combat is not for the sake of glory, for the sake of life on earth.”

The theme of responsibility for the fate of Russia is also developed in the next chapter, “On War.” A.T. Tvardovsky emphasizes that sacrifices during war are inevitable, but they are made for the sake of common victory, so the soldier must forget about himself for a while: the main thing is to solve the combat mission, to fulfill his duty to his homeland, to his children.

The anti-humanistic nature of the war is emphasized by the writer in the chapter “Terkin is wounded,” which opens with a picture of a “mutilated land” that smells not of human smoke from housing, but of gun smoke. But the merciless cold of military winters is perceived by the author as help: the Russian peasant is accustomed to snow and cold, because he fights in native land, but for the invaders the frost becomes a difficult test. If the plot of this chapter, in which the hero is injured, is dynamic, intense artistic details and constantly keeps the reader in suspense, the chapter “On the Reward” opens with an optimistic monologue contrasting in mood: Vasily Terkin dreams of a vacation, wants to find himself in his native village, but the Smolensk region is occupied by the enemy. At the end of the chapter, the repetition of “Mortal combat not for the sake of glory, but for the sake of life on earth” returns the hero from a dream to harsh reality.

The chapter “Two Soldiers” reinterprets the famous fairy-tale story about how a soldier made soup from an ax. Vasily Terkin spends the night in peasant hut, sharpens the old owner's saw, repairs his watch, and then persuades the owner to make scrambled eggs with lard.

Calm, humorous chapters alternate in the poem with recreations of the most difficult, tragic pages of the military chronicle.

The chapter "Duel" describes hand-to-hand combat. First, the reader sees that the German is physically stronger than Terkin. However, resourceful Vasily does not lose heart. And now “the German is decorated with a red yushka like an egg.” This comparison in the poem conveys the spirit of Russian folk Easter traditions. The author thereby shows that Terkin has holy truth on his side and therefore he will win. A.T. Tvardovsky again turns to the distant but unforgettable pages of history (“Like on an ancient battlefield, Chest against chest, like a shield against a shield, - Instead of thousands, two fight, As if the fight will decide everything”). The contrast between the plural and the singular in this chapter shows that the fate of victory in times of military trials depends on the actions of each soldier.

In war, the most ordinary scenes of peaceful life seem fabulous and overgrown with dreams. The lines of the chapter “About Myself” are permeated with nostalgia for our small homeland. The hero sacredly keeps in his soul the world of his lost childhood: the forest where he went with friends to buy nuts, the globe at school, conversations with fellow countrymen and, of course, the image of his mother.

The poem ends with the chapter “From the Author,” in which the poet says that he dedicates the book to the memory of fallen soldiers and all his friends during the war. A.T. Tvardovsky admits that “Vasily Terkin” in times of difficult trials helped not only readers, but also the author himself, giving his life meaning and joy.

Composition

The chapter “Crossing”, discussed in the first lesson, allows you to see this ideological and artistic versatility of the poem. To identify the uniqueness of a chapter, you can ask students to compare two versions of its beginning: a draft and a final one. One of the draft versions of “The Crossing,” according to the poet himself, began like this:
To whom death, to whom life, to whom glory,
At dawn the crossing began.
The bank was steep, like an oven.
And, sullen, jagged,
The forest turned black high above the water,
The forest is alien, untouched.
And below us lay the right bank,
Rolled snow, trampled into the mud
Level with the edge of the ice.
Crossing
At six o'clock it started...

This almost sketchy beginning was discarded by Tvardovsky and replaced by lines imbued with deep lyricism. “The first line of “Crossing,” the poet said, “the line that developed into its, so to speak, “leitmotif”, penetrating the entire chapter, was this word itself - crossing, repeated in intonation, as if anticipating what stands behind it in a word:

Crossing, crossing...

I thought about it for so long, imagined in all its naturalness the episode of the crossing, which cost many victims, enormous moral and physical stress of people and must have been remembered forever by all its participants, so “get used to” it all that suddenly I seemed to say to myself this sigh-exclamation:

Crossing, crossing...

And he “believed” in him. I felt that this word could not be pronounced differently than I pronounced it, having in my mind everything that it means: battle, blood, losses, the fatal cold of the night and the great courage of people going to death for their Motherland.” About one of the episodes of the Great Patriotic War Tvardovsky writes like a lyricist, rearranging the material of reality in accordance with his perception, interrupting the narrative with lyrical reflections and illuminating it with the light of his personal attitude. The words “Crossing, crossing...”, pronounced in different tones depending on the meaning contained in them, appear repeatedly in the chapter. We pose the questions: into what parts do these words, like a refrain, divide the chapter? What feelings does the poet express in each such part of the chapter?

Answering questions, thinking about the ideological content and artistic originality chapters, Readers prepare for expressive reading(the chapter can be read expressively by several students in the next lesson, after careful preparation at home - in parts). At first, the words “Crossing, crossing” sound like a “sigh-exclamation” of a person immersed in memories. The scattered, most impressive details of his experience emerge in his mind:

Left bank, right bank.
The snow is rough, the edge of ice...

The picture associated with dramatic experiences is painted in sad, mournful tones:
To whom is memory, to whom is glory,
To whom dark water,
No sign, no trace.

And only from the further narration we learn how the events began and unfolded. The leap into the unknown that the soldiers make is rhythmically conveyed by the short, “torn off” fourth line of the stanza, which sounds like a command:
At night, the first of the column,
Having broken off the ice at the edge,

Loaded onto the pontoons
First platoon.

How are young Russian soldiers depicted? Why does the poet compare young soldiers with their fathers - heroes civil war and with Russian warriors of past centuries? These questions can become the basis for a conversation about the chapter “The Crossing.” Those who set out for the feat are by no means titans, not heroes from birth, they are simple “us” with “twirly temples” and “boyish eyes”:

Look - indeed - we are!
How, in truth, yellowmouth,
Is he single, married,
These shorn people.

At first, the details of the combat situation are also perceived in a completely “homely” way.
Like rafts, the pontoons began to move, one and the other thundered in a bass, iron tone, JUST like a roof under one’s foot. It is not in the trials of fierce battle that are shown at the beginning of the chapter of “us”, but in hard work that requires the exertion of all physical strength:
They lay down, rowed, sweating,
Operated with a pole.

Victory is not easy. And the first part of the chapter ends with lines full of anxiety and forebodings:
And the jagged one turns black there,
Beyond the cold line
Inaccessible, untouched
Forest over black water.
The words sound again: “Crossing, crossing”

But now they take on a tragic expression:
This night a bloody trail was carried out to the sea by a wave.
The simpler and more restrained the poet speaks about the death of “our shorn us,” the more shocking the picture he creates:
And I saw you for the first time,
It will not be forgotten:
People are warm and alive
We went to the bottom, to the bottom, to the bottom...

The loss is inexpressibly bitter, but it does not weaken the survivors, does not paralyze their will, or gives rise to a feeling of hopelessness. In the third part of the chapter, which opens with the same refrain: “Crossing, crossing...”, the motives of tragedy are opposed and intertwined with the motives of affirmation of life and faith in victory:
Crossing, crossing...
Dark, cold. The night is like a year.
But he grabbed the right bank,
The first platoon remained there.

We see pictures of life at the front. The war is depicted by Tvardovsky in blood, labor and hardship. Endless night, frost. But a bit of a soldier’s sleep, not even a dream, but a heavy oblivion, bizarrely mixed with reality. In the minds of those who remained on this left bank, pictures of the death of their comrades arise. Their possible death is depicted in mundane - but even more terrible - details. The poet momentarily changes the stanza (girdled rhyme) and the meter of the verse (interrupting the tetrameter trochee with trimeter) - and the lines begin to sound like an inescapable sadness, a sad song. The poet ends his thoughts about the soldiers who died at the crossing, and not only about these soldiers, with pathetic lines.

The dead are immortal, and the land where “their traces are frozen forever” becomes a monument to soldier’s glory.

Other works on this work

"Vasily Terkin"

This is how the image of a simple soldier Vasily Terkin appears in the poem, a warm-hearted, easy-going, cheerful person and a good storyteller who knows how to brighten up the hardships of military trials with his optimistic attitude towards life.

After a short introduction “From the author”, the poem is followed by the chapter “At a halt”. It is also devoid of battle scenes, and this feature once again emphasizes that A.T. Tvardovsky is primarily interested not in the course of military operations, but in the description of a person’s life in war, his problems and experiences, his ability to remain human in borderline, seemingly hopeless situations.

War in the poem becomes a measure of decency, nobility, responsibility for the future of other people (relatives, friends, compatriots). In the era of consolidation of popular forces, these qualities become necessary for every fighter.

The chapter “At a Rest” opens and is interspersed with conversations of soldiers. Such dialogue gives the plot a relaxed character and shows trust in the relationship between the fighters. However, from individual details in the conversation a generalized image of the military generation emerges. “I’m fighting a second war, brother, forever,” says one of the soldiers, asking for more porridge. And thanks to this phrase, the reader literally imagines this fighter, a man no longer young, who has gone through a harsh school of life. One war knocked on his door in his youth, and now he had to take up arms a second time.

Artistic style of A.T. Tvardovsky is distinguished by its aphorism, capacity, and laconicism. The image of the “second war of the century” has philosophical depth: the already short life of a person, which in comparison with eternity, with our history, is negligible, tragically irreversible, turns out to be overshadowed by a series of tragic events and, in fact, consists of practically nothing but difficulties and deprivation. And in such a difficult atmosphere of general fatigue and anxiety, the merry fellow and joker Vasily Terkin begins a story about “Sabantuy”. This is a kind of holiday of the soul, when a soldier rejoices that he did not die under bombing, and a spiritual uplift that helps the hero not to flee from the battlefield after seeing fascist tanks. A.T. Tvardovsky emphasizes that the hero of his poem

The most ordinary person with an unremarkable appearance. He does not seek fame, but is distinguished by an enviable love of life: “He smokes, eats and drinks with gusto in any position.”

In the chapter “Before the battle” A.T. Tvardovsky paints a picture of the retreat to the east, when our troops were leaving the encirclement, “leaving the captive region.” On the way, the commander of a detachment that was surrounded decides to look into his native village. Thanks to this plot device, the theme of the retreat is concretized and perceived not in general, but through the prism of the experiences of an individual person. The commander, together with the detachment, is forced to secretly make his way to his home hut in enemy-occupied territory. With a bitter feeling, he sits down at the table, chops firewood for his family at night, and at dawn leaves the house, realizing that the Nazis may soon enter it.

One of the most striking and memorable in the poem is the chapter “Crossing”. A.T. Tvardovsky depicts one of the episodes of the war in it, emphasizing the rich traditions of the glorious exploits of Russian soldiers - defenders of their native land: “They walk the same harsh path that two hundred years ago the Russian toiling soldier walked with a flintlock gun.”

The crossing is a difficult test of strength and endurance. Courage. The symbols of this test are the roar of water and the rotting ice. And an alien night, and an inaccessible forest, “the right bank is like a wall.” All these images of the natural world turn out to be hostile towards humans. A.T. Tvardovsky in the poem does not embellish reality, does not hide victims and failures, but depicts military actions and losses in all the terrifying and tragic truth: “Warm, living people went to the bottom, to the bottom, to the bottom...”. The repetition enhances the depth of the tragedy experienced by the author and shows the scale of the “blood trail.” The bitterness of the losses is enhanced by the picture depicting dead faces on which the snow does not melt. This fragment of the poem is not devoid of naturalism. Further, the author mentions that rations are still issued to the dead, and old letters written by them are sent home by mail. These details also emphasize the irreplaceability of the loss. The scale of the tragedy is enlarged with the help of toponymy: “From Ryazan, from Kazan, From Siberia, from Moscow - The soldiers are sleeping. They said theirs and are forever right.”

In the chapter “Crossing” Vasily Terkin miraculously remains alive and also brings the good news that the first platoon that managed to cross to the right bank is alive.

The chapter ends with a succinct and laconic summary: “The battle is holy and just. Mortal combat is not for the sake of glory, for the sake of life on earth.”

The theme of responsibility for the fate of Russia is also developed in the next chapter, “On War.” A.T. Tvardovsky emphasizes that sacrifices during war are inevitable, but they are made for the sake of common victory, so the soldier must forget about himself for a while: the main thing is to solve the combat mission, to fulfill his duty to his homeland, to his children.

The anti-humanistic nature of the war is emphasized by the writer in the chapter “Terkin is wounded,” which opens with a picture of a “mutilated land” that smells not of human smoke from housing, but of gun smoke. But the merciless cold of military winters is perceived by the author as help: the Russian peasant is accustomed to snow and cold, because he is fighting on his native land, but for the invaders the frost becomes a difficult test. If the plot of this chapter, in which the hero is wounded, is dynamic, full of artistic details and constantly keeps the reader in suspense, then the chapter “On the Reward” opens with an optimistic monologue contrasting in mood: Vasily Terkin dreams of a vacation, wants to find himself in his native village, but the Smolensk region occupied by the enemy. At the end of the chapter, the repetition of “Mortal combat not for the sake of glory, but for the sake of life on earth” returns the hero from a dream to harsh reality.

The chapter “Two Soldiers” reinterprets the famous fairy-tale story about how a soldier made soup from an ax. Vasily Terkin spends the night in a peasant's hut, sharpens the old owner's saw, repairs his watch, and then persuades the hostess to make scrambled eggs with lard.

Calm, humorous chapters alternate in the poem with recreations of the most difficult, tragic pages of the military chronicle.

The chapter "Duel" describes hand-to-hand combat. First, the reader sees that the German is physically stronger than Terkin. However, resourceful Vasily does not lose heart. And now “the German is decorated with a red yushka like an egg.” This comparison in the poem conveys the spirit of Russian folk Easter traditions. The author thereby shows that Terkin has holy truth on his side and therefore he will win. A.T. Tvardovsky again turns to the distant but unforgettable pages of history (“Like on an ancient battlefield, Chest against chest, like a shield against a shield, - Instead of thousands, two fight, As if the fight will decide everything”). The contrast between the plural and the singular in this chapter shows that the fate of victory in times of military trials depends on the actions of each soldier.

In war, the most ordinary scenes of peaceful life seem fabulous and overgrown with dreams. The lines of the chapter “About Myself” are permeated with nostalgia for our small homeland. The hero sacredly keeps in his soul the world of his lost childhood: the forest where he went with friends to buy nuts, the globe at school, conversations with fellow countrymen and, of course, the image of his mother.

The poem ends with the chapter “From the Author,” in which the poet says that he dedicates the book to the memory of fallen soldiers and all his friends during the war. A.T. Tvardovsky admits that “Vasily Terkin” in times of difficult trials helped not only readers, but also the author himself, giving his life meaning and joy.