Chuck and Huck

On New Year's Eve, a letter arrives at the Moscow apartment. The wife with children for the New Year is called by the head of the family, very busy with work. He works as a geologist far in Siberia . During the training camp, children receive a telegram . They immediately lose her as a result of a quarrel, but hide it from their mother. Arriving at the place, the mother and children do not find anyone in the village except a watchman. The entire geological party immediately went to the taiga for a couple of weeks. The notice of this event was in the lost telegram. The watchman leaves his family and, on the pretext of hunting, goes skiing to geologists. He returns with the key to the room and a letter from her husband. Soon, geologists are returning. Together they celebrate the New Year.

The whole work is permeated with a bright positive attitude, in it you can find the features of the classic holy story ^{[3] [4] [5]} , revised on the basis of confidence in the correct structure of Soviet society ^[6] . Boris Kamov believes that Gaidar reproduced those bright moods that he brought out from childhood memories ^[7] .

The story is distinguished by its fantastic style and composition , characteristic of a fairy tale (in particular, the absence of specific dates and addresses), which gives it a special mythological poetic sound ^[8] . The first element of fairy-tale convention awaits the reader already in the title of the story: these are the names of heroes that are absent in modern Russian ^{[9] [K 1]} . This is followed by a typical fairy tale intrigue (“There lived a man in the forest near the Blue Mountains”) ^[11] , where we see working on the ultimate generalization of a person’s lack of a name and the conditional toponym “Blue Mountains”, almost sounding like “the far-away kingdom ”, which Huck and in his reasoning, his mother is described as a place beyond which there are already "a few places left in the world" ^[9] .

Actually the plot of the work is sending the father of Chuck and Huck a letter (and then a telegram) home. The fight of children, due to which this telegram was lost, serves as a ban and its violation , the punishment for which, according to the logic of a fairy tale, is further adventures, presented as fairy tales. A trip to the nameless distant country to the father introduces the motives of the search and travel ^[9] . However, Dmitry Bykov in his lecture “The USSR is the country that Gaidar invented” talks about the inherent value of the travel motive for Arkady Gaidar: “everything that the late <...> mature Gaidar <...> wrote about travels, about a person who does not sit at home who feels bad at home, who doesn't fit into the house. About a man who went on a pilgrimage and somewhere far away found something of his own. "" All these goals of distant endless wanderings, to which Chuk and Huck go ... ... because all these are stories of vagrancy. " ^[12] At the nameless station, where no one meets the heroes, the journey is finally overgrown with folklore and fairy tale details, where the station is the place of transition between the world of children and the world of the father, and the coachman who takes them to the place through the mysterious night forest is a guide between these worlds ^[9] .

Such episodes as a meeting with a goat at the station, spending the night in a hut at the Yamschitsky station, and Huck’s “ fight ” there with a “ bear ” (for which he takes a horse) and Hake’s next terrible dream, which “extinguishes” his mother (acquiring In the story, the role of the folkloric protector ^[13] ), while not being key to the plot, serves to thicken the fairytale atmosphere ^[14] . In this case, the dream itself has a prophetic character, since in it the boy sees the events of the impending war (it was really close in 1939) ^[15] . The artistic techniques used by Gaidar bring the story “Chuck and Huck” closer to the works of Gogol ^[6] . In the differences from the injected atmosphere of mystery to the sometimes mundane explanations of it, one can see the serious-ironic narrative characteristic of Gaidar ^[16] .

The appearance of a watchman in an abandoned geological camp is associated with the return of Baba Yaga to his hut (compare his first question - “What kind of guests did they come here?”) ^[17] . Fears of children, caused by the unusual nature of what is happening to them ^[18] , find their culmination in the episode with the “loss” of Huck and his searches. It was then, in accordance with the Chekhov laws of drama , that the gun left by the watchman was fired ^[19] . The episode mimics the folklore story about a child missing in the forest (unlike the archetypal story, Huck hid in a chest and fell asleep). Huck is "saved" by a guard with a dog, appearing with "thunder and knock" after the third shot of his mother from a gun. The “heavy key” brought by him from his father’s room and a letter in a “crumpled blue envelope” symbolize the imminent completion of the search for heroes, which ends with the return of his father and the celebration of the New Year ^[17] .

At the end of the story, the author gives one of the textbook definitions of happiness : “ What is happiness - everyone understood this in their own way. But all together, people knew and understood that it was necessary to live honestly, work hard and love and cherish this huge happy land, which is called the Soviet country ” ^[20] .

However, despite the seemingly happy ending and the bright mood of the story, family reunification is only a date : after the holiday, the mother and children should return to Moscow without a husband, the harmony of the world that children feel through harmony in the family is only a temporary phenomenon ^[11] .

The character of Chuka Gaidar depicts through details, little things in behavior. You may notice that he is thrifty, stingy ^[19] . His character, in addition to his love of collecting and hoarding, is distinguished by expansiveness , an active reaction to the external side of life ^[21] .

The author characterizes Huck directly - he is “confused and open,” but he knows how to sing songs. This is a sensitive boy, subtly feeling the surrounding "fabulous" nature ^[19] . He is thoughtful and indifferent to the little things that are important for Chuk - the surrounding landscapes and dreams excite him more. But for all his reverie, he is a very active child, he has a masculine character, he is not afraid of a fight and is attracted to boyish games ^[21] .

Their mother is a gentle woman, devoid of any authority. “This mom had a weird character. She didn’t swear at the fight, didn’t scream, but simply kept the brawlers in different rooms ... ”She is distinguished by a combination of a certain“ childishness ”of character with respect for the feelings of her children. Those reciprocate with her, helping her in every way, fearing to upset or offend her ^[22] .

The father is practically not directly present in the book; we see him only in the finale, through the eyes of his sons idealizing him ^[22] . It is almost devoid of individual traits, representing a distant, almost inaccessible ideal of masculinity and citizenship ^[19] .

The story was the only work of Gaidar, published after 1935, which was not subjected to sharp criticism in the Soviet press ^[23] . In the article “A new story by A. Gaidar”, V. B. Shklovsky called the story the writer’s luck, the development of his “new voice”, a lyrical understanding of life, which first appeared in the story “The Blue Cup ” ^[24] .

In 2010, Denis Dragunsky , on the contrary, reproached this story for its non-conflict nature, in that the author ignored the mass repressions that took place in 1937-1939 ^[25] . However, the writer’s son, Timur Gaidar , says in a note to his father’s collected works that although “there is no echo of those events in Chuk and Hek,” he “bears their peculiar reflection” ^{[2] [K 2]} . Natalya Kamyshnikova-Pervukhina recalling how they went to his father, who was forced to get into the camp village of Abez (he was fired from work in Moscow), writes: “I find it difficult to separate the memory of this road from the description of the night train ...” ^{[ 26]} .

In post-Soviet times, the story is classified as a classic of children's literature, which retains its charm for readers of different ages ^[27] . In 2013, he was included in the list of “ 100 books ” - a list of books on history, culture and literature, recommended for students by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for independent reading.

In 1953, based on the story, the film " Chuck and Huck " was shot (director - I. Lukinsky , screenwriter - V. Shklovsky ). The fairy-tale atmosphere of Gaidar’s story was saved in the film adaptation ^[28] .

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• Gileeva N. S. About A. Gaidar's story “Chuck and Huck” // Children's Readings. - 2015. - T. 7 , No. 1 . - S. 168-175 .
• Pleshkova O. I. Folklore and mythological elements in the story of A. P. Gaidar “Chuck and Huck” // Culture and text. - 2005. - Issue. 8 . - S. 70-76 .
• Pleshkova O. I. Experience of philological-historical and methodological commentary of the story of A. P. Gaidar “Chuk and Hek” // Elementary school. - 2007. - No. 6 . - S. 47-52 .
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