Childhood Summary of Each Chapter:
Chapter 1:
My father died of cholera, and at that time my mother gave birth to a younger brother, and after my brother was born, my grandfather, my mother, and I went to bury my father, but I didn't feel a little bit sad about my father's death, and instead, I felt sad about the two frogs that had been buried with him. Then my brother also died, and on the way back to my grandfather's house again, my mother and grandmother buried my brother, and I thought they did not want me anymore, so I fell asleep sadly.
Chapter 2:
The two uncles fought over the division of the family. Uncle Mikhail was so bored that his young nephew took a thimble, baked it red, and put it into the hands of Grigori, an old worker, with the intention of burning the old worker, but he accidentally scalded Grandfather, and Sasha, the son of Uncle Yakov, although he was young, learned to do bad things: he encouraged me to take a piece of white cloth and turn it into blue in the dye pot. and as a result I was beaten by my grandfather.
Chapter 3
From Grigori's words, I know that noise, threats, and whispers are the way of speaking here. Every time he got a beating, Tzigane Jr. would block it with his arm, and later hold out his swollen beatings for me to see. Every Friday, Kotsoka went to the market to buy something, and Grandmother told me that Kotsoka had a habit of stealing.
One day just after winter, two of my uncles picked up the cross and put the thick end of it on Tzigane Jr.'s shoulders, and Tzigane Jr. accidentally fell and was crushed to death by the cross. Then he was buried without a word, and people gradually forgot about him. (The indifference of human feelings at that time)
Chapter 4
After the death of Little Tzigane, my grandmother and I continued to live a quiet life full of affection. One night, just as Grandmother was saying her prayers Grandfather barged in - the dye house was on fire. Grandmother immediately dashed off, directing people to put out the fire.
While Grandfather, Uncle, and Gregory were in disarray, Grandmother rushed into the fire to remove the sulfuric acid that was about to explode from the blaze, and held her frightened horse. But soon after the fire is extinguished, Aunt Natalia dies in childbirth, and Alyosha is severely beaten by a grieving Uncle Mikhail.
Chapter 5
At the beginning of spring, the two uncles split up; Uncle Yakov stayed in town, Uncle Mikhail moved across the river, and Grandfather bought a big, beautiful building.
Alyosha and his grandmother spent every day together, listening to her talk about her own experiences, and with his grandfather, who made Alyosha read the alphabet and hymns and told him stories, and his grandfather and grandmother reminisced about the past. But once, when Grandma and Grandpa were talking, Grandpa hit Grandma and this incident made Alyosha feel sad.
Chapter 6
Another period of relative peace came to an end. One night, Uncle Yakov broke into the house and said that Uncle Mikhail was going to kill Grandfather, but Grandfather didn't believe him. Grandmother told Alyosha to wait there in the small window in the attic until Uncle Mikhail showed up and tell them.
Alyosha saw Uncle Mikhail enter the tavern, but was soon thrown out into the street by someone else. Uncle Mikhail hit Grandfather with a stick, and Grandfather, the two tenants, and the owner's wife, each armed, waited for him to rush in. Grandmother held out an arm and waved her hand, telling him to get out of the way, but the uncle struck Grandmother's arm, and Grandmother to fell to the ground while Uncle Mikhail was thrown out again.
Chapter 7
I learned early on that Grandfather had one God and Grandmother had another. Almost every morning, Grandmother was given new words of praise, fervently, movingly, reverently prayed. Her prayers were never songs of praise, they were sincere and forthright tributes. Once, the tavern hostess scolded Grandmother.
I took a chance and shut her in the cellar, locked it, did the Avenger's Dance on it, and threw the key on the roof. Instead, Grandmother taught me a few words that I will never forget. Grandfather's prayers were often filled with pain and hopelessness. When he spoke to me of God's infinite power, he always began by emphasizing the cruelty of that power.?
Grandmother's God was a lovely friend to all creatures. Grandfather's God made me fearful and hostile.? My family didn't want me to play in the streets because the street kids were always bullying me, and to add to my sadness, Grigori, the old laborer, had gone completely blind and was begging along the streets. Grandfather had stopped hiring people a long time ago.
Chapter 8
Grandfather sold his house to the tavern owner and bought another. It was full of people, but the one who attracted me the most was a tenant named "Good Thing". His room was almost overflowing with boxes and books, bottles of liquids of every color, pieces of steel, and strips of lead.
From morning to night, he was covered in some kind of paint, his hair was disheveled, and he was always there, clumsily, melting lead and soldering some kind of copper gadget. The whole house disliked this good-for-nothing, and thought him an apothecary, a sorcerer, and a dangerous man. But I was very much interested in him. So, one day, I plucked up enough courage to snap open the door to his room.?
From then on, I spent a lot of time with him. Soon I became firmly attached to good things, both in days of bitter humiliation and in moments of joy.? My visits to the tenant's place gradually became known to my grandfather. Every time I went there, he beat me severely. Then the good things were finally whisked away by Grandfather.? That was the end of my friendship with the first of countless good people.
Chapter 9
After the good thing left, Uncle Peter and I were better friends. On our street, a lord moved in who had a very strange habit: every day off, he sat at the window and shot dogs, cats, chickens, and crows with a birdshot, and at pedestrians he didn't like. Whenever he heard a gunshot in the street, Uncle Peter ran down the street, and sometimes he strolled for half a day without result.
Uncle Peter was very affectionate with me, and when he invited everyone to eat jam, my slices of bread were smeared with jam extra thick. He also told me many stories, but they were all strangely similar: in every one of them there was something tormenting, Sneggy, and oppressive.? After a while I made the acquaintance of three more children from Colonel Ovsenikov's yard. We were friendly and had quite a good time.
But Uncle Peter considered them young masters and vipers. This was very offensive to me. Later, I realized that Uncle Peter's depression and dementia were becoming more and more frequent. One day, the police came looking for Uncle Peter, but he had disappeared.
A few days later, Uncle Peter committed suicide in my backyard. To hear my grandmother's guests tell it, Uncle Peter, whose real name is not known, was connected to a case. He and his accomplices robbed churches long ago.
Chapter 10
Alyosha's mother returns. They talk in the house about about the fact that the mother had a baby without the permission of her grandfather, and the mother gave the baby away. Soon after, her mother began to teach Alyosha "secular" writing and to memorize poems, which Alyosha often mispronounced, and they were not happy with each other.
Grandfather often went to his mother's room to complain, and beat his grandmother, sticking pins in her hair. Alyosha, to get back at Grandfather, cut his icon and cut off a row of heads. Before he could make a second cut, his grandfather found out and was beaten.
At the festival guests came, Uncle Yakov played the guitar and sang, accompanied by a one-eyed, bald watchmaker, whom Grandfather wanted his mother to marry, and against whom she strongly resisted. The marriage failed.
Chapter 11
Since this incident, Mother has become stronger and the master of the house, while Grandfather has become preoccupied and silent, spending his days in the attic reading a copy of My Father's Journal. The conversation with his mother became softer and less frequent. After Christmas, my mother sent Alyosha and Uncle Mikhail's Sasha to school.
One day, Sasha was teased by his classmates for sleeping and talking in his sleep, and the next day when he walked down a ravine to Hay Square, he buried his school bag in the snow and left. When his grandfather found out about this, he hired an old man as an escort for Alyosha and Sasha. The next day when they were walking down the gully, Sasha took off his two felt boots and threw them in different directions and ran away barefoot.
On the second day, he was not found until late in the evening at the bar next to the monastery, where he was dancing to make the audience laugh. Sasha wanted Alyosha to run away with him, but Alyosha decided to be an officer with a light-colored beard, an idea he told his cousin, who agreed. Alyosha wakes up the next day with smallpox and is placed in the back attic. Grandmother came often, and for several nights at a time told him about his father and mother when they were married. His mother came infrequently, and when she did she did not stay long; she became more and more beautiful and better dressed.
Chapter XII
One day Alyosha woke up and climbed down the stairs into his mother's room and saw his grandmother as well as his stepfather, Evgeny Maximov. Stepfather gave him colored paints. His mother and he were married peacefully and left early the next morning. Alyosha was busy in the garden with his maternal grandfather from morning till night.
Grandfather told her that her grandmother had begun to drink for the second time, and that she had been drinking when Mikhail was due for military service. In the fall Grandfather sold the house, and over morning tea shortly before the sale she announced to Grandmother that she would let her earn her own food. Grandfather rented two very dark rooms in the basement of an old house at the foot of the hill.
Soon after he moved to the basement, his mother returned, pale, wasted and pregnant. The stepfather said their home had burned down, while the grandfather heard that there had been no fire, but that the stepfather had lost all his money gambling, and the four men got into an argument. The stepfather was harsh with Alyosha, ignoring her mother and even scolding her. Alyosha moved in with his mother, who sent him to school. His classmates nicknamed him "Ace of Squares" because he wore a yellow shirt.
Alyosha hated his teachers, once tying half a frozen watermelon to the pulley of a half-darkened aisle door, so that when the teacher closed the door, the rind of the watermelon fell like a hat on his bald head. Another time, Alyosha spilled snuff in a drawer in his desk and he sneezed one after another. Although Alyosha's studies were passable, he was to be expelled from school because of his behavior. But Bishop Hrisanov saved him.
After things quieted down at school, there was another incident at home. He stole a ruble from his mother. He bought Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. When his mother found out, she beat him up. She confiscated his books. One day Alyosha saw his stepfather beating his mother. Alyosha grabbed a silver knife with a bone handle from the table - the only thing his mother kept after his father's death - and stabbed his stepfather in the lower back, who was pushed away by his mother. a bit of flesh.
Chapter Thirteen
Alyosha went back to her maternal grandfather's house. Grandmother hadn't changed much, while Grandfather was drier and thinner. He sold all of his grandmother's clothes, belongings, and fox-skin coat for seven hundred rubles and lent them to a Jew for interest, and went to visit all his old acquaintances to cry to them for money. Everything in the house was separated, and the lunch prepared by Grandfather was always worse.
Alyosha also began to earn money, he traveled all over the streets picking up rags and giving the money to his grandmother, and once he saw her crying with the five kopecks he had given her. A more profitable trade than rag-picking was stealing lumber and planks from the lumber mills on the banks of the Oka River or on the island of Poski. He and a few of his mates sold what they had stolen and divided the money into six parts, getting five or seven kopecks each. Alyosha's life at school was bad again; his classmates teased him, calling him a rag-picker and a beggar.
But he finally passed his third-grade exams and won prizes for a gospel, Krylov's fables with dust jackets, and a small book, "Fata Morgaye," which had no dust jacket and which he could not read, as well as a certificate of merit. He took these books to a small store and sold them for fifty-five kopecks, giving the money to his grandmother. After leaving school, Alyosha began to live on the streets again. His stepfather was fired and disappeared again.
Mother and little brother Nikolai moved in with Grandfather, and Grandmother went to the city to embroider a coffin cover at the house of a rich merchant. The mother's health was weakening day by day and she became mute. One day mother asked Alyosha to give her water, she drank only a little and died. A few days after burying her mother. Grandfather all over said to Alyosha: Hey, Lekosha, you - not a medal, my neck is not the place to hang you, you go to the earth to earn a living ...... So Alyosha went to the earth.