Matryona’s House (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- First Published: 1963
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: 1953
- Setting: Tal’novo, a village “somewhere in central Russia”
- Principal Characters: Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, The narrator, Ilya Mironich Grigoriev, Kira
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Values, Rural or country life, Death or dying, Widows or widowers, Old age or elderly people, Russia or Russian people, Peasantry or peasants
- Locales: Russia
The Story
The story of Matryona Grigorieva's life and death is told—and remarked on—by a narrator whose full name is not given, but whom one may take to be a spokesperson for the author. That is, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the narrator has served time in labor camps and has now taken up residence in a village where he will teach mathematics in high school. As the author taught in several places during his exile from 1953 to 1957, following his release from prison, the setting of “Matryona's House” is a composite of villages in Uzbekistan and in the Ryazan and Vladimir...
[The entire page is 1935 words long]
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