Synthesized answer
Gorky creates an initial impression of the world as a harsh and unpleasant place through the protagonist's eyes. This is conveyed through the descriptions of the people and their surroundings. The protagonist's master is depicted with "green teeth, and watery, mud-colored eyes," and his stern admonishments suggest a lack of kindness [1]. Another character is described as "barking," with a face covered in red veins and a "swollen, purple nose," who speaks of theft as commonplace [2]. The people of the house are compared to animals and birds, such as a "surly drunkard" who grunts like a bear, and the protagonist feels that "human creatures always spoil a bright day" [3].
Specific details that contribute to this feeling include the unpleasant physical descriptions of people and the implied moral corruption. The environment is also depicted as grim: a narrow gallery is "dark and dull," packed with goods and surrounded by "clumsily thick, weather-beaten" brick pillars [4]. The marketplace is described as "littered with cases, straw, crumpled paper, covered with dirt and trampled snow" [4]. This all leads to a feeling of stagnation, where everything seems "motionless, or lazily moving…
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
IN THE WORLD BY MAXIM GORKY _Author of "My Childhood," etc._ TRANSLATED BY MRS. GERTRUDE M. FOAKES NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 IN THE WORLD CHAPTER I I went out into the world as "shop-boy" at a fashionable boot-shop in the main street of the town. My master was a small, round man. He had a brown, rugged face, green teeth, and watery, mud-colored eyes. At first I thought he was blind, and to see if my supposition was correct, I made a grimace. "Don't pull your face about!" he said to me gently, but sternly. The thought that those dull eyes…
sausage toward me. "Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you steal? You needn't be afraid; they are all thieves here. You will soon learn." He talked as if he were barking. His enormous, blue, clean-shaven face was covered all round the nose with red veins closely set together, his swollen, purple nose hung over his mustache. His lower lip was disfiguringly pendulous. In the corner of his mouth was stuck a smoking cigarette. Apparently he had only just come from the bath. He smelt of birch twigs, and a profuse sweat glistened on his temples and neck. After I had drunk my tea, he…
o me just like the words in a fairy-tale. Mice had gnawed the planks, and red beetles with black spots ran about there. Sometimes, to escape from the stifling fumes which arose from the soil in the fowl-house, I crept out of the wooden hut, climbed to the roof, and watched the people of the house waking up, eyeless, large, and swollen with sleep. Here appeared the hairy noddle of the boatman Phermanov, a surly drunkard, who gazed at the sun with blear, running eyes and grunted like a bear. Then grandfather came hurrying out into the yard and hastened to the wash-house to wash himself…
e heavy, iron-hearted people that they should gather round the poor fellow because his unhealthy gluttony amused them. It was dark and dull in that narrow gallery closely packed with wool, sheepskins, hemp, ropes, felt, boots, and saddlery. It was cut off. from the pavement by pillars of brick, clumsily thick, weather-beaten, and spattered with mud from the road. All the bricks and all the chinks between them, all the holes made by the fallen-away mortar, had been mentally counted by me a thousand times, and their hideous designs were forever heavily imprinted on my memory. The…
oped wonderfully for me. The earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abounding in towns and all kinds of things. Now when I gazed into the distance beyond the Volga, I knew that it was not space which lay beyond, but before that, when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly miserable. The meadows lay flat, bushes grew in clumps, and where the meadows ended, rose the indented black wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull, cold blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place. And my heart also was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped it; all desires had departed, and…
More questions about this book
- How does the master's seemingly contradictory response to the narrator's admission of past stealing versus the threat of future theft reveal the underlying values or hypocrisies of his "first-class shop"?
- The narrator initially makes a grimace and scratches his hands with defiance. How does the master's subsequent calm threat of "prison" reshape the narrator's understanding of the "world" he has just entered?
- What is the significance of the master's command to stand "like a statue" when contrasted with the narrator's hands being "devoured by vermin"? Explain what this stark imagery communicates about the narrator's new reality.
- Analyze the immediate establishment of power dynamics between the narrator and his master, and then between the narrator and Sascha. What do these initial interactions suggest about the social hierarchy and expectations for the protagonist?