(303 words) In his work, Maxim Gorky touched on the meaning of life, showing various concepts of understanding life: Chelkash’s free vagrancy and Gavrila’s settled existence in contentment and satiety. Which of them is right?
The main character, a thief and a tramp, lives for the very feeling of a free life. He steals exactly as much as necessary for food and a fun evening in a tavern. He does not seek enrichment, hoarding, greed is generally alien to him. All his activities are carried out with the expectation of today, no further. Tomorrow he will get up again and go to get what he needs for the next ten to fifteen hours. Thus, Chelkash has nothing, he is poor, but independent of the will of higher people, of circumstances and productivity of the year, of state reforms, of the vagaries of his wife and the needs of children. He's free. For him, only this is a significant reason for life, for which it is worth opening your eyes daily, looking at the world around and interacting with it.
His value system is opposed to the position of the peasant Gavrila, who came to the city to earn money for his farm. This hero is oppressed by the plight of the village, so he runs away from there, but not for freedom, but for profit. His goal is to organize a profitable and prosperous peasant land where he and his large family will work and feed. For him, independence is a certain amount of material goods that make you feel like a master of life. For the sake of achieving this success, he lives. For example, he says without a shadow of embarrassment: “I will go to my son-in-law to a good house” - he is ready to sell himself, if only to live in contentment. For him, he is ready to betray, steal, and even kill a man. Why? After all, even a thief who despises traditional moral values has not gone to such a baseness. And because greed and greed corrupts the soul, no matter what they justify.
Thus, the author showed that what we strive for is a personality. Therefore, the meaning of the life of Chelkash exalts him, and the meaning of the life of Gabriel makes him fall lower and lower.
