The topic of interaction, the relationship between man and nature has always attracted the attention of both writers and readers. For Russian people at all times, nature is not only a landscape that forms aesthetic taste, an idea of ​​beauty. As a rule, the writer also reveals a certain version of man’s relationship to nature; in a work of art, the character of a literary hero can be traced through his relationship to the animals living nearby. According to M.A. Epstein, author of the book “Nature, the World, the Secret of the Universe,” “images of animals in literature are a kind of mirror of humanistic self-awareness.” Animals, in his opinion, are the most mysterious thing in existence, in relation to which everything else is an experience of unraveling: after all in the animal there is already that internal, original, dynamically self-willed life that is absent in the rest of nature, but this life does not yet pronounce itself, is not embodied in the creations of culture, like in humans. Man is part of nature.

An analysis of Belov’s “Stories about all living creatures” is given in many books and articles devoted to his work. As a rule, experts analyze the characters, compositional features, and artistic originality of the works. Lipin S.A. in the book “Man Through the Eyes of Nature” he characterized V. Belov as one of those artists who peer into today from the heights of spiritual values ​​accumulated by centuries of folk experience.

The general mood in the family, their mutual love and respect significantly influenced the character and behavior of pets. The relationships between children and animals, as well as some domestic animals with others, were very interesting, sometimes simply inexplicable from the point of view of reason,” writes the author of Lada.

Belov's prose, in which every phrase is a story in literature, reflecting the complexity and beauty of our difficult age. Each literary hero of Belov is unique, with his own character, mentality and surprisingly large figurative speech. The works of V. Belov are instructive and therefore memorable for life.

“Stories about all living creatures” were published by the publishing house “Children's Literature” in 1978.

These are stories for children, but adults can also find a lot of useful and interesting things in them.

The writer E. Nosov compared these stories with sketches that the artist sketches. “Not even all of them are built on some interesting story. Two or three fleeting touches - and, please, here you have the lively and visual horse Faithful, the dog Malka, the pig Kuzya and not just different in appearance, but also endowed with their own characteristics of behavior, so to speak, personal character traits,” writes Nosov.

The action described in this work takes place in a small village. The name of the village is not given. Perhaps because the situations presented in the story could happen in any northern village.

There are few people inhabiting the village, but they live as a big friendly family and help each other whenever possible. There is a store in the village; once there was a stable for 120 horses, but now half of the stable has collapsed, and the horse Faithful lives in the second. The farm and club are in another village. Civilization has little impact on this village; people live here in many ways as several generations of peasants lived, especially with regard to the relationship between people and animals. Cars, bicycles, tractors frighten animals and cause them irritation.

The characters in “Stories about All Living Animals” are village residents - Fedya, Elena Egorovna, the author, children, Dedko Ostakhov, grandmother Marya, Lydia and others not named. And animals - cats, dogs, cows, horses, geese, rabbits, chickens, jackdaws, crows, ferrets, piglets, sheep, goats, bees.

The main means of revealing the central idea in “Stories about All Living Animals” are the author’s descriptions of the animals themselves, their behavior, and people’s attitudes towards them.

The description of the appearance of some animals in the stories is quite detailed. For example, the description of Valdai: a huge dog, dark gray with a patch of gray hair on his thighs. The author introduces the reader to the cat Ryzhko, bright as fire, very red, even orange, with a white belly, and emphasizes that he is very beautiful.

Some animals do not have a detailed description, for example, when talking about a rooster, the author points only to its red beard and luxurious neck: “... proudly raises its head, arches its luxurious neck and selflessly sings to the whole wide world.”

Lidya’s dog Malka has “small legs, like matchsticks, and very crooked.”

About the little dog Valetko it is only said that he is “of unknown breed.”

The emotional and evaluative vocabulary in the speech of the author and characters reflects the attitude of their owners towards animals; Lydia calls the cat Ryzhko a couch potato, a big guy, a lump, a lazy person, a parasite.

Emotionally evaluative words and epithets are used to reveal the character of animals. For example, it is said that the dog Valdai is loyal. About the cat Ryzhko - that he has a “impudent”, “independent character”, and the bull Roma is “restless”, “lonely”.

Animals in the village are called by simple, ordinary names: the horse Faithful, the bull Roma, the cat Zaplatkin, Ryzhko, etc.

The whole village calls Marya’s goat a demon and a devil, and Dedko Ostakhov called him “cosmonaut” when the goat climbed onto the roof because he didn’t want to be locked up.

They address animals not only by nicknames, but also call them with affectionate words: to the piglet Kuza - “father”, to the cow Polyana - “mother”.

All the names of animals are nicknames, create some kind of comfort in the village, and also show the attitude of the owners towards their animals, love, respect, equality of status of people and animals. Indeed, humans and animals are creatures of nature, and everyone is equal before nature. The author encourages people not to rise above nature, to take care of their “little brothers.”

V. Belov in “Stories about All Living Animals” tells how humans and animals live together. Every village family has animals.

Fedya and Elena Egorovna have so many people! Two cats, a Polyana cow, a calf, two geese and a goose, five chickens and a rooster, Kuzya the pig, Valdai the dog.

All her life, Grandma Marya, another resident of the village, kept a cow, when the “private sector” was liquidated - the cow was handed over to the collective farm, the grandmother got a sheep and a goat, because, as the author writes, “a person who has been associated with cattle all his life , it’s very difficult to get used to living alone.”

People and animals help each other.

All the villagers love animals, although sometimes they toil with them. Grandmother Marya, when she could not support the sheep and goats, sold them, but there was no buyer for the goat. And although he was “smelly and so pestering,” the owner felt sorry for the goat and talked to him as to a person: “What a rogue you are, how did you get on my head?” And when the goat, who did not want to be locked up, climbed onto the roof, the whole village rescued him.

When the horse Faithful was starving, there was not enough hay, Fedya put the frame in the stable, the village children fed the horse all their school lunches stored at home, only one boy named Lenka almost cried because he felt sorry for two sweets, although and they were then eaten by a horse.

The author, and then the reader, is surprised that the animals seem to understand what is required of them. Thus, Valdai mastered his duties well: he carefully monitored the behavior of the piglet Kuzi, who was trying to get dirty in a puddle of manure. Helping his owner Fedya with these actions, “after all, you can’t keep track of the pig, but you need to walk with him.”

You can’t do without animals in the village: “... Fedya travels seven kilometers through the forest every day to bring letters, newspapers and translations to these parts. For this purpose, the collective farm gave him a horse named Verny.” But Verny is not only Fedya’s assistant, the postman, he also takes Yegorovna to the farm.

When his wife was not at home, Fedya “often had to milk the cow,” as he said to himself: “they found a chef,” the author laments how times change. What do you mean?

Egorovna did not have to put on Fedya’s cap in order to saddle the gelding. Why did Fedya have to wear Yegorovna’s scarf when he milked the cow? Why, in fact, should the man Fedya milk the cow, and the woman Yegorovna ride in the saddle? In these places, from time immemorial, everything was the other way around: men did men’s work, women did women’s work. That's how times change!”

Animals are friends, quarrel, make peace with each other and people. For example, Valdai and the cat Zaplatkin, who “grew up, completely abandoned his mother and became very friendly with Valdai,” and when the cat was found dead, then “Valdai alone felt sorry for his friend and more than once began to howl, apparently remembering the cat.” Valdai even managed to reconcile grandfather Ostakhov and Fedya when he saved Valetka from the mouth of a large dog. Although Fedya “very rarely feeds Valdai,” this did not in the least interfere with the dog’s greatest devotion to his master, as well as their mutual love. The narrator, living in the village, watched as Valdai and Fedya quarreled, and all because the owner ordered the dog Valdai to leave the house when he was not treating him to pieces of sausage. But then they made peace, they even became somehow closer to each other.

The chapter “Conflict” tells how a drunken Fedya “out of the blue” kicked Valdai, and the dog growled at his owner - “after all, he was innocent of anything” - and grabbed his hand, when he hit him a second time. And in the morning Fedya woke up to Valdai carefully licking his wound. This was the last conflict between them; Fedya never hit the dog again. All animals loved Fedya, even birds. He “did not like and scolded terribly” his geese because they were killing everyone. But the birds sold to a distant village returned to him.

Living with people, animals become like their owners: “I am convinced that some cows, dogs and cats take on the character of their owners. Many become like the people they live with. Malka the dog, for example. She definitely imitates her owner, Lydia. Both are cursing and not very friendly.”

The author is surprised by the human preferences of living creatures, the different behavior of animals.

The dog Valdai ignored movies, he “simply despised television shows, pop music especially irritated him,” the author suggests that the dog was “jealous of the owner of this terrible car”

Unlike Valdai, the cat Muska “attentively followed what was happening on the screen”

Vasily Ivanovich Belov admires Valdai’s devotion to Feda, the maternal feeling of Malka, who “every day ran two kilometers to a strange village to feed her “son”, despite any dangers.” The author is surprised by the chicken “house-building”: “as soon as two laying hens quarrel, the rooster is right there,” and the bees’ intelligence: they stole from Grandfather Ostakhov their own honey, which was harvested at the wrong time, ahead of schedule. Dedko Ostakhov talks about bees: “When August comes, they will begin to evict the drones. Get all the loafers out of the house. The drones are crawling back, but the bees won’t let them in, it’s a sabbath! Enough, they say, to feed these parasites. I wish people could do this too!”

Animals in the stories of V.I. Belova are smart. The dominant place in the gallery of animal images is occupied by the dog. In fiction, it becomes a kind of symbol that focuses on the diversity of relationships between man and nature.

In “Stories about All Living Animals,” the smartest dog is Valdai: “He was not kind to anyone or curried favor, like Valetko. I didn’t throw myself at anyone in vain, I didn’t tear the throat like Lidina Malka”

But he is not only smart, but also brave. Valdai stood up for the bully Valetko, saving him from a huge strange dog. “He simply respected himself and others and was not afraid of anyone,” says the author.

In the chapter “Courier” V. Belov admires Verny. The horse delivers mail without Fedya, and “he never made a mistake the whole way.”

The author talks about his observations of birds, talks about smart “cunning and restless” crows, who, as if jokingly, more than once deceived him and other village residents. Crows - these intelligent birds - divided their spheres of influence. If strangers arrived from another locality, the locals raised a riot and noisily drove them away. “Crows are very good at understanding what’s what – when I went out with a real gun, the crows, after one of them screamed twice in warning, flew far into the field. As an experiment, I once took Fedin’s model and went out into the street. Not one of them even thought about flying away!”

The author talks about “brisk, unpleasant, grumpy jackdaws” who ask him a riddle, he doesn’t understand why jackdaws “poke their noses right into the wool” of sheep, he thought that “they are pulling the fluff onto the nest,” but was surprised: “everyone is normal.” birds build nests in the spring.” The author further writes: “Later, a local veterinarian told me that jackdaws catch larvae in sheep’s wool.” This means that he did not leave this mystery unsolved, apparently he specifically asked the veterinarian - he did not just show curiosity, he wants to understand what he observes.

The author poetically describes the “last titmouse” - the harbinger of autumn.

In “Stories about all living creatures” V.A. Belov showed not only his own powers of observation, but also his subtle knowledge of nature and animals. “The most evil lies about nature come from the conceit of a poorly educated person. He puts himself too high to take into account some little animals, and therefore he rushes to explain their life in terms of himself - to man...” - rightly noted the Russian baiter M.M. Prishvin.

The animals in the stories are smart, which they really are. And there is a scientific explanation for smart actions, Academician N.P. Bekhterev believed: “Undoubtedly, animals think, but they cannot tell us their thoughts in our language. They generally do not master the highest form of thinking - speech...” Evidence that animals think has been obtained by modern research. The famous German zoologist A.E. Brehm believed that among other mammals (excluding monkeys), cats have the highest degree of intelligence. They are patient, smart, extremely attentive and have lightning-fast reactions. Interesting information about the selectivity of cat hearing was published in the Parisian newspaper Matin. It turns out that the cat tribe is attracted to classical music. Four-legged music lovers especially like the works of Mozart and Vivaldi.

But horses, it turns out, have a truly amazing memory for places and objects; they may well be a “courier.”

Why do pigs like to wallow in muddy puddles? This does not depend on their “natural uncleanliness or stupidity,” they are distinguished by rare “smartness.” After all, from the layer of liquid mud that covers the pig’s body, water evaporates very slowly, and this provides the pig with long-term cooling. In addition, mud baths and drying mud crusts help her fight parasites.

Why didn’t Grandma Marya’s goat want to be locked up? The fact is that goats cannot stand life indoors, without walks. Scientists have proven that animals get sick when kept in such a “punishment cell.”

A bee is able to detect the finest odors. Its antennae contain a huge number of olfactory pits - locators and numerous sensitive hairs. That’s why the bees stole honey from Grandfather Ostakhov - “they took theirs.”

Bees are smart animals. For example, they keep drones only in the spring and summer, and in the fall the bees expel the drones from the hives, and they all die from hunger and cold.

In the description of animals, the life of the village where he spent the summer, we see the author - a storyteller who loves rural life, the usual way of peasant life, who loves “all living creatures” or is not indifferent to it.

Readers of his stories not only get to know the villagers, learn the habits of domestic and wild animals and birds, but also observe, empathize, and study animals with him. Nature and animals are inseparable, and the writer is sure that being around animals makes a person kinder and wiser.

“Love for animals is an absolutely special love: it has its own sorrows, joys, its own needs, and it requires its own special conditions,” wrote Emile Zola.

It is natural for rural residents to love animals, since they are closer to nature, and this is their special happiness, so natural that, most likely, it is not perceived as such by the people themselves, but necessary, given by nature itself - affirms its stories by V.A. Belov.

The Japanese sage said: “Happiness is being with nature, seeing it, talking to it.” And the heroes of Vasily Ivanovich Belov’s stories are happy.

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