Tatyana Tolstaya’s “Night”, as Gabe previously alluded to, seems on its surface a description of Russian life for Alexei, a mentally disabled adult, and his mother. \u00a0However, there is definitely something more significant beneath the surface of Alexei and his mother’ rather mundane life.<\/p>\n
I thought it was interesting how Alexei is depicting as wanting to be a writer and is aware of Pushkin and appears to be inspired by his work. \u00a0Additionally, the comment that “Alexei Petrovich has his world, the real one, in his head. \u00a0There everything is possible. \u00a0And this one, the outer one, is wicked and wrong. \u00a0And it’s very hard to keep in mind what’s good and what’s bad” interested me as well (189). \u00a0The idea between living in two separate worlds, an inner world of multiple possibilities, and an outer world that is oppressive could perhaps give a glimpse into what life and the creative process is like for writers, artists, etc. living in Russia during this time. \u00a0On one hand, Alexei has his inner world in which anything is possible. \u00a0Additionally, his dependence on his mother gives off a sense of innocence–he is still able to dream and imagine despite his rather unfortunate situation. \u00a0On the other hand, his mother is fully aware of his reality and acts as a guide for him. \u00a0In other words, she balances out his imagination that can sometimes run wild. \u00a0Perhaps their relationship shows the inner-workings of how the creative process works in Russia. \u00a0Artists and Alexei, like Alexei, live in two separate worlds in which they are constantly trying to balance. \u00a0In their imagination they are free, but in the contact instability of Russia they are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tatyana Tolstaya’s “Night”, as Gabe previously alluded to, seems on its surface a description of Russian life for Alexei, a mentally disabled adult, and his mother. \u00a0However, there is definitely something more significant beneath the surface of Alexei and his mother’ rather mundane life. I thought it was interesting how Alexei is depicting as wanting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-12-perestroika-and-the-new-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}