A prominent feature of the Village Prose movement was the focus on the countryside and the peasantry as worth preserving. Thus, the hero of Valentin Rasputin’s Live and Remember is a peasant woman, Nastyona. Nastyona is a complex character with complicated motivations who is definitely admirable and does not deserve the ending she gets. Nevertheless, she could only have that ending. A huge part of Nastyona’s character, and the mentality of almost all Russians—peasant or not, is her fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that a person has no control over their life and can change nothing. This mentality is prevalent throughout Russian history and culture due to years of oppression under autocratic leaders with no choice or freedom. It leads
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When her in-laws discover Nastyona is pregnant and kick her out, Nastyona turns onto a dark path. She feels hopeless: “She was tired, tired of everything. Worn out. She wished the end would come; any end was better than this kind of life” (209). It is no surprise that Nastyona feels she has to end her life. Especially after the people in her village, begin to suspect that Andrei is the father of her child. It would have been better for her to cheat on Andrei, because then her child would not have the more serious stigma of having a father who deserted the army. In addition, because of Nastyona’s fatalism, she blames herself, telling herself that she deserves this fate (212). Nastyona’s places none of the blame on Andrei, because that is not her mentality. When Nastyona kills herself, Rasputin’s description of the act is quite interesting: “Nastyona felt sleep coming over her. On her knees in the stern, she leaned over lower and lower, staring intently with all the vision that had been allotted her for many years to come into the depths, and she saw: a match flare up at the very bottom” (216). Death for Nastyona is not the end. It is relief from a cruel life. Fire is warmth and comfort and the match at the bottom of the Angara is a sign to Nastyona that she will finally be at peace in …show more content…
In order to have his story published, Rasputin had to punish Nastyona for helping her deserter husband, but also because of Nastyona’s fatalism, she had to commit suicide to escape a worse fate for her and an even worse fate for her child. One quote succinctly describes the mentality of fatalism that is so central to Nastyona’s, and Russia’s character: “I might have wanted another destiny for myself, but others have theirs, and I have mine. And I’m not sorry about it. It’s mine” (102). Fatalism informs everything about Nastyona and that was the case for most Russians, especially under the Soviet Regime. Rasputin chose to focus on Nastyona’s fatalism and make it her main motivation because it is an accurate depiction of the peasant mentality in Soviet Russia. Rasputin was the prototype for Village Prose and wanted to preserve the culture of the peasantry. Fatalism was part of that culture. Some might see fatalism as backwards, but fatalism was the only practical response the peasantry had to a world where they had no control or choice over what happened to them. Rasputin’s portrayal of Nastyona shows this aspect of peasant culture extremely accurately and enables the reader to understand her motivation, even if the reader is not fatalistic. Fatalism is extremely important in Live and Remember; in order to understand Nastyona as a character, it is
When her in-laws discover Nastyona is pregnant and kick her out, Nastyona turns onto a dark path. She feels hopeless: “She was tired, tired of everything. Worn out. She wished the end would come; any end was better than this kind of life” (209). It is no surprise that Nastyona feels she has to end her life. Especially after the people in her village, begin to suspect that Andrei is the father of her child. It would have been better for her to cheat on Andrei, because then her child would not have the more serious stigma of having a father who deserted the army. In addition, because of Nastyona’s fatalism, she blames herself, telling herself that she deserves this fate (212). Nastyona’s places none of the blame on Andrei, because that is not her mentality. When Nastyona kills herself, Rasputin’s description of the act is quite interesting: “Nastyona felt sleep coming over her. On her knees in the stern, she leaned over lower and lower, staring intently with all the vision that had been allotted her for many years to come into the depths, and she saw: a match flare up at the very bottom” (216). Death for Nastyona is not the end. It is relief from a cruel life. Fire is warmth and comfort and the match at the bottom of the Angara is a sign to Nastyona that she will finally be at peace in …show more content…
In order to have his story published, Rasputin had to punish Nastyona for helping her deserter husband, but also because of Nastyona’s fatalism, she had to commit suicide to escape a worse fate for her and an even worse fate for her child. One quote succinctly describes the mentality of fatalism that is so central to Nastyona’s, and Russia’s character: “I might have wanted another destiny for myself, but others have theirs, and I have mine. And I’m not sorry about it. It’s mine” (102). Fatalism informs everything about Nastyona and that was the case for most Russians, especially under the Soviet Regime. Rasputin chose to focus on Nastyona’s fatalism and make it her main motivation because it is an accurate depiction of the peasant mentality in Soviet Russia. Rasputin was the prototype for Village Prose and wanted to preserve the culture of the peasantry. Fatalism was part of that culture. Some might see fatalism as backwards, but fatalism was the only practical response the peasantry had to a world where they had no control or choice over what happened to them. Rasputin’s portrayal of Nastyona shows this aspect of peasant culture extremely accurately and enables the reader to understand her motivation, even if the reader is not fatalistic. Fatalism is extremely important in Live and Remember; in order to understand Nastyona as a character, it is