Childhood
About This Novel
When Alyosha was three years old, his father died of cholera, and his mother took him to live with his maternal grandfather. In this family, fathers and sons, brothers, and husbands and wives often quarrel and fight over property and even over trivial matters. My grandfather was moody and had a bad temper. He beat my grandmother fiercely and beat Alyosha unconscious. My grandmother was very kind to Alyosha, telling him legends, fairy tales and folk stories, and she endured all the pressures of life without complaining. The mother was forced to remarry and died of tuberculosis a few years later. After his grandfather went bankrupt, Alyosha was forced to live in the world and began to make a living independently. This book truly describes Alyosha's miserable childhood, and profoundly outlines a true and vivid picture of the vulgarity, selfishness, emptiness and boredom of the Russian petty bourgeoisie in the 19th century. At the same time, it also shows the integrity, simplicity, and diligence of the lower class working people. The image of the grandmother created in the book is one of the glorious and poetic images in Russian literature. This book is the first of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy, and it is also a work written by Gorky with great devotion and charm.
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