The Image of Foma Gordeev in the System of Ideological and Aesthetic Searching of Early Gorky

Abstract

The story of Foma Gordeev summed up the period of Gorky's ideological and aesthetic search at the end 19th - early 20th centuries, associated with the searching for a new hero in literature. The writer did not see in the representatives of the merchant dynasties people capable of building a worthy future for Russia. Even the presented image of the “atypical”, “broken out” from the class of his own kind, Foma Gordeev, became similar to Gorky's “superfluous person”, unable to become an active fighter for the reorganization of the world. In this work, Gorky depicted the collapse of the era of capitalist relations and marked a new upsurge in the labor movement for Russia and the growth of the ideas of socialism.