What kind of dream did Grinev have? He dreamed that he returned home: “...Mother meets me on the porch with an air of deep grief. “Hush,” she tells me, “your father is dying and wants to say goodbye to you.” Struck by fear, I follow her into the bedroom. I see the room is dimly lit; there are people with sad faces standing by the bed. I quietly approach the bed; Mother lifts the curtain and says: “Andrei Petrovich, Petrusha has arrived; he returned after learning about your illness; bless him.” I knelt down and fixed my eyes on the patient. Well?.. Instead of my father, I see a man with a black beard lying in bed, looking at me cheerfully. I turned to my mother in bewilderment, telling her: “What does this mean?” This is not father. And why should I ask a man for his blessing? “It doesn’t matter, Petrusha,” my mother answered me, “this is your imprisoned father; kiss his hand and may he bless you...”
The real scene of Pugachev's execution cannot but bring to mind the image of a black-bearded man with an ax. And, strangely enough, execution is not perceived as retribution; on the contrary, it fills the image from Grinev’s dream with a special exciting meaning - the Kalmyk fairy tale helps! Pugachev knew what awaited him and walked fearlessly along his chosen road. The correlation with Pugachev explains the appearance of an oxymoron that is piercing in its ideological surprise - a gentle man with an ax! The reader fills this image with content acquired in the process of getting to know Pugachev. Pugachev’s “affection” towards Grinev and Masha Mironova creates a special aura for him. That is why the “affection” of the man with the ax does not seem scary and strange to the reader.
Grinev first calls the unknown “road”, “peasant”, and the driver calls him “a good man”. Upon arrival at the inn, Grinev asks Savelich: “Where is the counselor?” When parting, Grinev, thanking for the help provided, calls his savior “counselor.” The real content of the word “counselor” is unambiguous: guide. The writer's intention to give Pugachev the symbolic meaning of the image of a counselor was realized in the title of the chapter. In it, as if in focus, the secret, deep meaning of the images of a blizzard and a person who knows the way was collected. The title emphasized the possibility of transforming a single-valued word into a polysemantic image. The unknown person was the counselor because he led Grinev out of the snowstorm to the housing. But the unknown person will turn out to be Pugachev, and circumstances will be such that he will become the leader of the same Grinev in the menacing blizzard of the uprising. Through the multi-valued image, the hidden, secret and enormous significance of a person who could be a Counselor with a capital letter began to shine through.
Let us pay attention to the emphasized reality of the events of the dream and the characters - everything is everyday, there is nothing symbolic in the described picture. It is rather absurd and fantastic, as often happens in dreams: a man lies in his father’s bed, from whom he must ask for blessings and “kiss his hand”... The symbolic in it will appear as the reader becomes acquainted with the plot development of the novel - then the guess will be born that a man with a black beard looks like Pugachev, that Pugachev was just as affectionate with Grinev, that it was he who arranged his happiness with Masha Mironova... The more the reader learned about the uprising and Pugachev, the more rapidly the versatility of the image of the man from the dream grew, the more clearly his symbolic nature.
The colossal image of a black-bearded man with an ax is a generalized poetic image of a powerful folk character. Generalized - although it is given at the beginning of the novel, before we met Pugachev. This is explained by the special nature of the symbolic image - it is devoid of statics, Pushkin endowed it with the ability to “independently” live in time, develop, and appear in its polysemy. It is significant that the novel ended with a bloody scene written by Pushkin himself, the publisher of Grinev’s memoirs. Based on “family legends,” he wrote that Grinev “was present at the execution of Pugachev, who recognized him in the crowd and nodded his head to him, which a minute later, dead and bloody, was shown to the people.”
A very special role in the novel is played by Grinev’s dream, which he sees immediately after his first meeting with his counselor, Pugachev. The lack of study of Pushkin’s realism of the 1830s leads to the fact that the symbolic principle in him is ignored and not taken into account when analyzing his works, in particular “The Captain’s Daughter”. The introduction of Grinev’s dream is explained as information preceding the events: Pushkin warns the reader what will happen to Grinev next, how his relationship with Pugachev will develop.
Pugachev entered the novel poetically - from a “secret place”, from a snowstorm. His prosaic conversation with the coachman takes on a prophetic meaning. The stranger from the snowstorm turns into a man who knows the way and is able to help him out of trouble. The reader does not yet know that this is Pugachev. And when he finds out, he will return to this scene, and then the deep meaning of Grinev’s night conversation with Pugachev will be revealed to him.
This becomes especially clear in the final scene of the dream. Grinev does not want to fulfill his mother’s request - to come under the man’s blessing. “I didn't agree. Then the man jumped out of bed, grabbed the ax from behind his back, and began swinging it in all directions. I wanted to run... and couldn’t; the room was filled with dead bodies; I stumbled over bodies and slid in bloody puddles... The scary man called me affectionately, saying: “Don’t be afraid, come under my blessing...”
A man with an axe, dead bodies in the room and bloody puddles - all this is already openly symbolic. But the symbolic ambiguity is manifested from our knowledge of the victims of Pugachev’s uprising, of the many dead bodies and pools of blood that Grinev saw later - no longer in a dream, but in reality.
Such an interpretation contradicts the very principle of Pushkin’s narration - with its brevity, with the laconicism of a dynamically developing plot. And why, one might ask, repeat the same thing twice: first in a dream, and then in real life? True, sleep is to a certain extent endowed with the function of predicting subsequent events. But this “prediction” is needed for completely special purposes: Pushkin needs to force the reader, when encountering familiar facts, to return to the dream scene. This special role of returns will be discussed later. It is important to remember that the dream seen is prophetic: Grinev himself warns the reader about this: “I had a dream that I could never forget and in which I still see something prophetic when I consider the strange circumstances of my life with it.” . Grinev remembered his old dream all his life. And the reader should have remembered him like this all the time. like Grinev, to “consider” with him everything that happened to the memoirist during the uprising.
A person remembers prophetic dreams all his life, and his memory is especially sharp during the period of waiting for the fulfillment of this dream. The attractive, hypnotizing power of a symbolic dream is such that the reader cannot forget it. The image of a man with an ax, merging with the poetic image of Pugachev, becomes a deeply meaningful symbol of the novel - in it, like in a tightly compressed spring, the ideological meaning of “The Captain's Daughter” is concentrated.
Such a perception of the symbolic meaning of a dream is determined by a centuries-old folk tradition. A researcher of dreams in folk beliefs rightly wrote: “From the most ancient times, the human mind has seen in dreams one of the most effective means for lifting the mysterious veil of the future.” Prophetic dreams, writes the same researcher, relying on the richest observational material, “are never forgotten by a person until they come true”! Pushkin knew these beliefs. That is why Grinev did not forget his prophetic dream. The reader should not have forgotten him either.
And finally, these words of the man - “don’t be afraid! “, striking at first with their seemingly absurdity: how can one not be afraid of a man with an ax, which he waves, filling the room with corpses? You can't help but be afraid of such a guy! But the reader’s return to the dream scene, fully armed with Pugachev’s knowledge, radically updates the meaning of this word. After all, Pugachev’s entire relationship with Grinev is based on the fact that he affectionately convinced him not to be afraid of the uprising - then he told him a Kalmyk fairy tale and persuaded him to come over to him.

Essay on literature on the topic: What kind of dream did Grinev have in the novel “The Captain’s Daughter”

Other writings:

1. The colossal image of a black-bearded man with an ax is a generalized poetic image of a powerful folk character. Generalized - although it was given at the beginning of the novel, before we met Pugachev. This is explained by the special nature of the symbolic image - it is devoid of statics, Pushkin endowed Read More ......
2. Take care of your dress again, and take care of your honor from a young age. “Take care of your honor from a young age” - this moral covenant is the leitmotif of A. S. Pushkin’s novel “The Captain’s Daughter”. It is through the attitude to this covenant that the characters of the two heroes of the work are revealed - Pyotr Grinev and Alexei Shvabrin. It would seem Read More......
3. Pyotr Andreich Grinev and Alexey Ivanovich Shvabrin first encountered each other while serving in the Belgorod fortress. Grinev was assigned there by order of the priest, since “Petrusha was seventeen years old.” Shvabrin “has been transferred for murder for five years now.” Both of them are young Read More ......
4. The main character of A. S. Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter” is Pyotr Andreevich Grinev. The son of a landowner, Grinev received home education according to the custom of that time - first under the leadership of Savelich, then Beaupré (a hairdresser by profession). Grinev's father, domineering to the point of tyranny, but honest, but Read More......
5. Grinev and Shvabrin are two different personalities. But there is something in common between them. Both are young, both officers, both nobles. As a child, Grinev played leapfrog with the yard boys. The father refused to send his young son to serve in St. Petersburg, but wrote a letter to his Read More......
6. The heroes of Pushkin's story, Pyotr Grinev and Alexey Shvabrin, immediately attract the reader's attention. From the very beginning of meeting them, it becomes clear that these people have very, very little in common. However, they are both young, daring, hot, smart and, on top of that, Read More......
7. The story “The Captain's Daughter” is based on real events: the Peasant War of 1773-1775. under the leadership of Emelyan Pugachev. But this work cannot be called historical in the full sense. The facts here are artistically reworked by the author. Despite this, Pushkin objectively describes the reasons and scope of Pugachev’s Read More......
8. PROBABLY THERE IS NO PERSON WHO DOESN'T KNOW THE NAME OF ALEXANDER S. PUSHKIN. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT PUSHKIN WAS A MOST FAMOUS OUTSTANDING WRITER, A GREAT MAN. WORKS THAT HAVE BEEN READ, ARE READING, AND WILL BE READ. A. S. PUSHKIN WAS PASSIONATE IN STUDYING RUSSIAN HISTORY. HE WAS ESPECIALLY ATTRACTED TO STORIES Read More......

Everyone knows the simple plot of the story by A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter". The main storyline is connected with the fate of the noble son Petrusha Grinev, who was ordered by his father to “Take care of honor from a young age.”

Approaching Orenburg, where he has to serve faithfully the sovereign-emperor, Pyotr Andreevich Grinev finds himself in a snowstorm. While his wagon was “quietly moving” towards housing, Grinev had a terrible dream.

A man with a black beard lies in the bed of Father Pyotr Andreevich, and mother, calling him Andrei Petrovich and “the imprisoned father,” wants Petrusha to “kiss his hand” and ask for a blessing. A man swings an ax and the room fills with dead bodies. The “scary man” “kindly calls” him, saying: “Don’t be afraid, come under my blessing.” At the very climax of the dream, Peter wakes up.

The dream is saturated with the hero’s emotional experiences. Pyotr Andreevich is worried, he is scared, horror and bewilderment cover him. Grinev himself admits that this is “a dream in which I still see something prophetic when I consider the strange circumstances of my life with it.”

Soon the next, very real scene appears before us. The man with the beard turns out to be Emelyan Pugachev. Now it is no longer the “impostor father”, but the “impostor king” who comes to the fortress where Peter, Masha and her parents live. At the first attack, the fortress surrenders, and the inhabitants greet the rebels with bread and salt. The prisoners, among whom is Petrusha Grinev, are led to the square to swear allegiance to Pugachev. The first to die on the gallows is the commandant, who refused to swear allegiance to the “thief and impostor.” Vasilisa Egorovna falls dead under the blow of a saber. Death on the gallows awaits our hero too . Peter, as in the dream, does not want to swear allegiance to the bandit and deceiver, but Pugachev has mercy on him. A little later, Grinev learns from Savelich “the reason for mercy” - the chieftain of the robbers turned out to be the tramp who received from him, Grinev, a hare sheepskin coat.

In this work, the dream not only reveals the emotions and experiences of Pyotr Andreevich Grinev, but predicts future events, that is, it is prophetic. Why does Pushkin tell us a prophetic dream? Is he really preparing us for the terrible ending of one of the plot lines of the story connected with the fate of Pugachev? Of course, this is so, but the dream also reveals the dual character of Emelyan Pugachev: on the one hand, before us is a “terrible man” who kills people, and even so scary, with an ax, shedding a lot of blood, and on the other hand, he “kindly calls "and wants to bless Petrusha, like his own father!

In the time of Pushkin, when Pugachev was considered a state criminal, such a point of view on the “people's king” was very unusual. Pushkin is trying to tell us about Pugachev as a person who is not devoid of attractiveness. Yes, he is a robber, but Pushkin endows the hero with such qualities of character and philosophy that endear him to readers: it is better to live life brightly and burn out, Pugachev believes, than to lead the miserable existence of a slave.

Thus, the dream in the story becomes a means of revealing the character of one of the main characters of the historical story by A.S. Pushkin.

In the second chapter, when Pyotr Grinev escaped from a snowstorm, he ended up in a village. There he spent the night in the counselor's house. He is having a dream. He leaves the wagon and recognizes his home. His mother is standing there. She's worried about something. Peter wonders what happened. The mother says that his father is dying and asks him to kiss his hand and ask for blessings. Peter approaches the bed and sees a man with a black beard.

The man forces him to bow, but Peter refuses, since this is not his own father. Then the man pulls out an ax and Peter is surrounded by pools of blood and dead bodies. Peter wakes up. A few months later, Pugachev attacks the Belogorsk fortress, where Peter is on duty. Peter recognizes the man from the dream. The fact that in a dream a man with a black beard affectionately calls Peter, describes the relationship between Puchachev and Grinev when Pugachev attacks the Belogorsk fortress. Also, the fact that in a dream his mother says that this is his imprisoned father describes the fact that Pugachev wants to be imprisoned by his father at the wedding of Pyotr Grinev and Maria Ivanovna.

Updated: 2017-10-09

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3.2 Dream-prediction of Petrusha Grinev in the story "The Captain's Daughter"

It is interesting to compare the dreams of Grigory and Pyotr Andreevich Grinev (the story "The Captain's Daughter").

“It seemed to me that the storm was still raging, and we were still wandering through the snowy desert... Suddenly I saw a gate and drove into the manor’s courtyard of our estate<…>. With anxiety, I jumped out of the wagon and saw: mother was meeting me on the porch...” “Hush,” she tells me, “father is sick, near death, and wants to say goodbye to you. Struck by fear, I follow her into the bedroom<…>Well? Do I see my father instead? A man with a black beard is lying in bed, looking at me cheerfully. I turned to my mother in bewilderment. “What does this mean? This is not a priest. And why should I ask for a blessing from a man?<…>Then the man jumped out of bed, grabbed the ax from behind his back and began swinging it in all directions. I wanted to run... and couldn’t... Horror and bewilderment took possession of me. And at that moment I woke up...” The obvious absurdity of the dreams is striking: the father turns out to be real, and, despite his serious illness, he “looks” cheerfully, and even jumps out of bed and waves an ax.

The dream is filled with increasing emotional experiences of the hero: anxiety, fear, horror and bewilderment.

The ending of Grinev’s dream is similar to the ending of Gregory’s dream: awakening at the moment of highest psychological stress. It is interesting that the hero’s experiences are reflected in natural phenomena (“the storm was still raging”). “Buran” in the context of the story is a very significant image, associated not only with the feelings of the hero, but also with the historical events of that time.

Here, just as in Gregory’s dream, the behavior of the “dreamer” is passive: a random arrival home (in fact, Grinev is driving from home), submission to circumstances, the inability to escape from a man with a black beard, whose image, by the way, does not arise by chance: in a dream was preceded by a meeting with a counselor, who would later turn out to be Emelyan Pugachev - an impostor tsar (in a dream he appears as an impostor father). Grinev’s mother calls the man “a jailed father” and this, again, is not accidental - just remember what role Pugachev will play in the fate of Masha and Grinev. Grinev admits that this is “a dream in which I still see something prophetic when I relate to it the various circumstances of my life.”

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Peter Grinev. Rare amateur drawing from a private site

Grinev’s prophetic dream is inspired by a blizzard (“... I dozed off, lulled by the singing of the storm and the rolling of the quiet ride...”), the dream seems to continue the description of the storm. Grinev's dream is endowed with the function of predicting subsequent events. But this “prediction” is needed for very special purposes: Pushkin it is necessary to force the reader, when encountering familiar facts, to return to the dream scene. It is important to remember that the dream seen is prophetic: Grinev himself warns the reader about this: “I had a dream that I could never forget and in which I still see something prophetic when I consider the strange circumstances of my life with it.” . Grinev remembered his old dream all his life. And the reader had to remember him all the time, just like Grinev, to “reflect” with him everything that happened to the memoirist during the Pugachev uprising.

Grinev and Masha Mironova

Such a perception of symbolic meaning is determined by a centuries-old folk tradition. A researcher of dreams in folk beliefs rightly wrote: “From the most ancient times, the human mind has seen in dreams one of the most effective means for lifting the mysterious veil of the future.” Prophetic dreams are never forgotten by a person until they come true. Pushkin knew these beliefs. That is why Grinev did not forget his prophetic dream. The reader should not have forgotten him either.

Grinev in front of Emelyan Pugachev

What kind of dream did Grinev have? He dreamed that he returned home:

“Mother meets me on the porch with an air of deep grief. “Hush,” she tells me, “your father is dying and wants to say goodbye to you.” - Struck by fear, I follow her into the bedroom. I see the room is dimly lit; there are people with sad faces standing by the bed. I quietly approach the bed; Mother lifts the curtain and says: “Andrei Petrovich, Petrusha has arrived; he returned after learning about your illness; bless him. I knelt down and fixed my eyes on the patient. Well?.. Instead of my father, I see a man with a black beard lying in bed, looking at me cheerfully. I turned to my mother in bewilderment, telling her: “What does this mean?” This is not father. And why should I ask for a blessing from a man? - “It’s all the same, Petrushka,” my mother answered me, “it’s your imprisoned father; kiss his hand and may he bless you..."

Grinev's fight with Shvabrin

Let us pay attention to the emphasized reality of the events of the dream and the characters - everything is everyday, there is nothing symbolic in the described picture. It is rather absurd and fantastic, as often happens in dreams: a man lies in his father’s bed, from whom one must ask for a blessing and “kiss his hand”... The symbolic content in it will appear as the reader becomes acquainted with the plot development of the novel - then the guess will be born that a man with a black beard looks like Pugachev, that Pugachev was just as affectionate with Grinev, that it was he who arranged his happiness with Masha Mironova... The more the reader learned about the uprising and Pugachev, the more rapidly the versatility of the image of the man from the dream grew, the more clearly his symbolic nature.

Grinev's dream is studied at school

This becomes especially clear in the final scene of the dream. Grinev does not want to fulfill his mother’s request - to come under the man’s blessing. “I didn’t agree. Then the man jumped out of bed, grabbed the ax from behind his back and began swinging it in all directions. I wanted to run... and couldn’t; the room was filled with dead bodies; I tripped over bodies and slid in bloody puddles... The scary man called me affectionately, saying: “Don’t be afraid, come!” with my blessing..."

A man with an ax, dead bodies in the room and bloody puddles - all this is already openly symbolic.

An ax in the hands of a villain... What Grinev dreamed about was not the same ax that Raskolnikov later picked up?