Arguments for mercy towards a defeated enemy. The problem of humane and inhumane attitude towards the enemy. Moral Choices in War

Almost every adult, even the kindest and most sympathetic, has an enemy or even several. Man is a social being, and human relationships are very complex. After all, an animal’s enemy is only the one in whose food chain the animal itself is included. For people, everything is much more complicated. Throughout life, we meet different people in different situations, so it often happens that we cannot get along with each other. Because of misunderstandings, disagreements, and conflicts of interests, enemies appear.

Is it possible to respect the enemy? Of course it is possible, and sometimes even necessary. After all, your personal relationship, hostility, does not negate the fact that he can be a smart, intelligent and even noble person worthy of respect. A striking example from life is my sister’s boss. She is an overly harsh boss and is often unfair to her subordinates, so few people have a good relationship with her in the service. But recently, my sister found out that her boss had taken off in her car in the middle of the night to save stray puppies and take them to a veterinary clinic, and later brought them all to her home for foster care. This is a noble act. And he says that a person whom we do not love or even hate, we may simply know very poorly. There are also plenty of examples in history and literature when the enemy was worthy of respect. Here is a striking historical example. On August 5, fierce fighting took place near Smolensk. The onslaught could not be contained. Napoleon's army entered the city. The next day, General Dokhturov's corps left the city. No one knew what fate befell General Skalon, who fought on the front line, in the thick of the battle. There was no way to search for his body; it was necessary to retreat as quickly as possible. It turned out that the Russian general, killed by grapeshot, was discovered by the French the morning after the bloody battle at the Molokhovo Gate. Napoleon was delighted with the feat of his enemy and gave the order to bury the general with full military honors. The Emperor was personally present at the funeral and led the ceremonial salvo of weapons. And even according to Russian custom, he threw a handful of earth into A.A.’s grave. Skalona, ​​buried near the walls of the Royal Bastion of the Smolensk Fortress. This example suggests that even in war, the enemy is worthy of respect if he is brave, honest and noble, fulfills his military duty with dignity, and does not give up in the face of danger.

Thus, we can conclude that the enemy can be respected. The enemy, like any person, is probably endowed with some qualities worthy of respect. We may simply not know this person well, and he may not know us well. After all, a person behaves differently with different people. And he also has close people, friends who love him. But on the other hand, there are people who are truly nasty and vile. People who do very bad things. There are those who betray friends and set up comrades. And also those who hurt children and abuse animals. Those who do not appreciate the care of loved ones, neglect them, and deceive their elders. Such an enemy should not be respected, I think.

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The author tells a story that happened during the Great Patriotic War. At a halt, the soldiers who repelled the attack of the Nazis witnessed a barbaric scene: a Russian soldier, in a fit of anger, decided to take revenge on the captured Germans (“flayers”) for the death of his relatives (“Marishka was burned-and-and! All the villagers... The whole village..."), seizing machine gun and firing several bursts at them. Boris, a soldier from his platoon, rushed to save the captured Germans, shielding them with his body. Some time later, the author shows a military hospital where the wounded, “either ours or strangers,” were bandaged by a Russian doctor. Astafiev, showing that in war the wounded are not divided into friends and foes, uses a detail - a “wooden washing trough” full of “bandages, scraps of clothing, fragments and bullets, in which “the blood of different people mixed and thickened.”

V.P. Astafiev believes that a person, despite everything, even the death of comrades and hatred of the enemy, is able to maintain faith in people, compassion and not lose his human appearance. After all, both the Russian doctor and the German “military medics” together provided assistance to the wounded in this shootout. In the souls of these people at the moment there is no place for a “feeling of revenge,” as L.N. once wrote. Tolstoy, “it gave way to a feeling of pity.” I completely agree with the author's opinion. Of course, war is a terrible and cruel test. But people, despite all the horrors of wartime, for the most part, did not turn into a fierce beast, but retained the ability to compassion, mercy, and retained high moral qualities of a person.

Russian literature “taught” a person to look boldly into the eyes of the enemy, cultivated a feeling of contempt for him, calling on him to smash him everywhere. Reading M. Sholokhov (“The Science of Hate”), K. Simonov (the poem “Kill Him!”, the novel “Soldiers Are Not Born”), we understand the holy feelings of the soldiers who despised the enemy, mercilessly sweeping away everything in their path. But then, when victory was won, the enemy for our soldiers, especially a prisoner, became not a warrior, but a simple person worthy of pity and compassion. Let us recall the scene with the captured French (Rambal and Morel) in the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace". Not enemies, no, - “...people too,” - this is what the author himself writes about them. This “also people” was said by Kutuzov: “We didn’t feel sorry for ourselves, but now we can feel sorry for them too.”

Wars have always been a measure not only of a person’s courage, but above all a measure of his humanity. We see an image of this sense of humanity in works of the 20th century dedicated to the war of 1941 - 1945. V. Nekrasov (“In the Trenches of Stalingrad”) spoke about how Russian soldiers pulled German wounded from a burning German hospital out of the fire. V. Kondratyev (“Sashka”) tells about the complex feelings of a young soldier who has to escort a German prisoner alone. These are complex feelings: hatred for the fascist, and interest in the German soldier and his service, and pity for the prisoner, similar to his classmate, and the understanding that in front of him is not an enemy, but an ordinary prisoner. And yet the feeling of mercy prevails (“terrible non-humans are those who stood up in the attack from behind the hill, those he mercilessly and mercilessly killed - enemies, and this one ... is the same as me. Only deceived ...”). Of course, for Russian writers There has always been the main thing, the best quality of a person - humanity.

It seems to me that it was precisely the sense of humanity that helped us win more than one war, to triumph over barbarism, savagery and cruelty.

Prepared by teacher of Russian language and literature N.V. Parfenova.

Mercy
2. The problem of mercy towards a defeated enemy was shown by Sholokhov in his work “Quiet Don”. This happened in 1914, where the author shows the perception of people in the first days of the war. We will consider only the episode where each Cossack treated the prisoner differently. Chubaty was the first to notice him and led him to a pine tree. The prisoner fussed, trembled, unfastening the buckle. His life was on the brink of death, and this hair could have been torn off by the Cossack Grigory, but, strangely, he “carefully helped him.” Grigory showed mercy to the prisoner, unlike Chubaty, who perceived people “like dough.” The prisoner felt fear, he tried in every possible way to dissuade Grigory and the other Cossacks from having Chubaty lead him to headquarters. The horror in his eyes, “raised curls and a confident, brave gait” remained in Gregory’s memory. He did not wish death to someone who could calmly kill him. But he could not calmly react to the fact that Chubaty “cut down” the prisoner. That is why he tried to shoot the one who shot at the unarmed hussar. Thus, showing mercy towards a defeated enemy should be inherent in every warrior, since this trait is an integral part of a truly good human essence.
People's need for consolation
2. KROTOV V. G. The Worm Ignatius and his dreams. but he sobbed very sadly.
Worm Ignatius knew that the moth had something to worry about. Something happened to Micah’s left wing. It became more and more difficult to wave them, the doctors shrugged their paws and did not know what to advise. Now it was no longer possible to fly at all.
How to console him? Maybe consolations will only make things worse for him? But little worm Ignatius could not leave him to grieve alone.
“I once dreamed of being a wizard,” he said thoughtfully, not even addressing Micah, just to himself. “If someone is feeling bad, cast a special spell just for that occasion, and everything will be fine.”
“Yeah,” Mikha said in a trembling voice, but without sobs, “I dreamed and dreamed, but I didn’t dream.”
“And then I little by little realized one amazing thing,” continued the little worm Ignatius. – It’s not just about WHAT happened to you, but WHY. If you think about it, it turns out better than any spell. For example, what do you say about becoming a wizard?
- Like this? – the moth was surprised.
“Oh, this is a business conversation,” the worm rejoiced. - Let's discuss everything in detail.
They started talking, and the conversation dragged on for a long time...”

1. The internal enemy - breast cancer with a probability of 87 percent frightened actress Angelina Jolie so much that she decided to have a bilateral amputation. According to the actress, she deliberately brought her own story to the public to try to save other women. Many people realize the threat of breast cancer, which forced Jolie to go under the surgeon’s knife, too late. Angelina Jolie: “I am lucky to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who gives me love and support. So anyone whose wife or girlfriend is going through this should know that you are a very important support. During each operation, Brad was at the Pink Lotus Center, where I was treated. Together we managed to find reasons to laugh. We knew that treatment was a necessary thing for our family and that it would bring us closer together. That’s what happened.”

Cooperative activity.
1. in social psychology - an organized system of activity of interacting individuals, aimed at the purposeful production and reproduction of objects of material and spiritual culture. Distinctive features of joint activities:
1) spatial and temporal co-presence of participants, creating the possibility of direct personal contact between them - exchange of actions, information, as well as mutual perception;
2) the presence of a single goal - an anticipated result of activity that meets common interests and contributes to the realization of the needs of each of the participants; as a prototype of the result and at the same time the initial moment of activity, the goal also refers to the constitutive features;
3) the presence of organizational and management bodies, embodied either in the person of one of the participants vested with special powers, or distributed;
4) division of the activity process between participants, due to the nature of the goal, means and conditions for achieving it, the composition and level of qualifications of the performers; this presupposes the interdependence of individuals, manifested: a) either in the final product of activity - in this case, individual operations are performed in parallel and do not depend on the sequence of actions of others; b) either in the process of its production - in this case, individual operations are interdependent (specialized and hierarchized), because they must be performed simultaneously as functionally different components of a complex operation, or - in strict sequence, when the result of one operation serves as a condition for the beginning of another;
5) the emergence of interpersonal relationships in the course of activity - on the basis of objectively defined functional-role interactions and acquiring a relatively independent character over time; conditioned initially by the content of the activity, they themselves influence its process and results. S.Yu. Golovin. Dictionary of a practical psychologist

(1) The meeting happened unexpectedly. (2) Two Germans, talking peacefully, came out to Pluzhnikov from behind the surviving wall. (3) The carbines hung over their shoulders, but even if they were holding them in their hands, Pluzhnikov would have managed to shoot first.

Composition

In the most desperate and difficult times, each person reveals himself to the fullest extent. War is an event that affects the character and worldview of each participant. In the text given to us, B.L. discusses the problem of showing humanity and mercy in war. Vasiliev.

Describing one of the wartime periods, the author of the text introduces us to a situation in which one of the heroes had to make a serious moral choice. The meeting between the Pluzhnikov and the German “happened unexpectedly,” and just as unexpectedly came to a logical conclusion: one of them had to die, and now the German was on his knees and shouting something pitiful, “choking and swallowing words.” In this cry there was something about family, children and mercy, the writer emphasizes that the German “didn’t want to fight, of course, he didn’t wander into these terrible ruins of his own accord,” and the Soviet soldier understood this. He had to commit murder, and there could be no talk of pity for the Germans at that time - however, B.L. Vasiliev brings us to the idea that there are exceptions to everything, especially in the case when a soldier strives to maintain the purity of his conscience no matter what.

The writer’s thought is clear to me: he believes that even in the most terrible times of war, someone who has a clear conscience and who understands the value of human life is able to spare a captured enemy and show him compassion and mercy.

It's hard to disagree with B.L. Vasiliev, because he knows firsthand how important it was to remain human during the Great Patriotic War. I also believe that for a soldier, for his moral and mental health, it is very important, despite physical exhaustion and anger, to be able to maintain humanity and mercy, because not every German could deserve the most brutal retribution.

In the story by V.A. Zakrutkin’s “Mother of Man”, the main character carries her humanity and mercy through all trials. She, feeling a burning hatred for the Nazis who killed her family, having met a German boy on her way, denies herself revenge. Hearing the boy's cry, Maria was filled with pity for the child, and, thanks to her humanism and kindness, she left him alive.

The hero of the story M.A. Sholokhov’s “The Fate of Man” lost all his relatives in the war. He was forced to go through many trials, but even being tired and embittered, Andrei Sokolov found a place in his heart for love and mercy. Having met a little boy, left alone on the street by the will of fate, our soldier takes control of him, thereby giving the boy a chance for a happy life.

More than a dozen books have been written about how difficult it is to remain human during war. Each of those soldiers who fought for our future experienced an amount of shock that modern man cannot even fully comprehend. However, most of all has been written about those who, even in that inhumanity and filth, managed to preserve themselves, their pure thoughts and kind hearts.

Text from the Unified State Examination

(1) I walk through the underground passage near the Sovetskaya Hotel. (2) Ahead, a poor musician in black glasses sits on a bench and sings, playing along with himself on the guitar. (3) For some reason the passage was empty at that time. (4) He caught up with the musician, scooped up some change from his coat and poured it into an iron box for him. (5) I move on. (6) I accidentally put my hand in my pocket and feel that there are still a lot of coins there. (7) What the hell! (8) I was sure that when I gave money to the musician, I emptied everything that was in my pocket. (9) He returned to the musician and, already glad that he was wearing black glasses and he most likely did not notice the stupid complexity of the entire procedure, again scooped up a lot of small change from his coat and poured it into an iron box for him. (10) I went further. (11) He walked away ten steps and, again putting his hand in his pocket, suddenly discovered that there were still a lot of coins there. (12) At the first moment I was so amazed that it was time to shout: (13) “Miracle! (14) Miracle! (15) The Lord fills my pocket, which was emptied for the beggar!” (16) But after a moment it cooled down.

(17) I realized that the coins were simply stuck in the deep folds of my coat. (18) There were a lot of them accumulated there. (19) Change is often given in small change, but there seems to be nothing to buy with it. (20) Why did I not get enough coins the first and second time? (21) Because he did it carelessly and automatically. (22) Why carelessly and automatically? (23) Because, alas, he was indifferent to the musician. (24) Then why did you still take some change out of your pocket? (25) Most likely because he crossed underground passages many times, where beggars sat with outstretched hands, and quite often, out of haste and laziness, passed by. (26) I passed, but there was a scratch on my conscience: I had to stop and give them something. (27) Perhaps unconsciously this small act of mercy was transferred to others. (28) Usually a lot of people scurry along these passages. (29) And now there was no one, and it was as if he was playing for me alone.

(Z0) However, there is something in all this. (31) Perhaps, in a greater sense, good should be done indifferently, so that vanity does not arise, so as not to expect any gratitude, so as not to become angry because no one thanks you. (32) And what kind of good is it if in response to it a person gives you something good? (ZZ) So, you are in the calculation and there was no disinterested good. (34) By the way, as soon as we realized the selflessness of our act, we received a secret reward for our selflessness. (35) Give indifferently what you can give to someone in need, and move on without thinking about it. (36) But you can pose the question this way. (37) Kindness and gratitude are necessary for man and serve the development of humanity in the spiritual realm, just as trade does in the material realm. (38) The exchange of spiritual values ​​(gratitude in response to goodness) is perhaps even more necessary for a person than trade.

(According to F. Iskander)

Introduction

Mercy is a feeling that distinguishes a person from an animal. Thanks to this feeling, we build relationships with others, become capable of compassion and empathy.

Mercy is love for the world, for people, for oneself. It includes many aspects.

Problem

What is true mercy? Should we expect gratitude for a good deed to a random person? Do people need this gratitude?

F. Iskander reflects on these questions in his text. The problem of mercy is one of the main ones in his work.

A comment

The author recalls an incident from his own life when, in an underground passage, he saw a poor blind musician begging for alms. There was no one around. Finding himself next to the musician, Iskander’s lyrical hero mechanically took the change out of his pocket and put it in an iron jar standing in front of the musician.

The hero was ready to shout about a miracle, when he suddenly realized that the change was simply stuck in the folds of his pocket. His actions were so filled with automatism and indifference that he simply did not notice the remaining money.

The author reflects on what made him give alms to a beggar? After all, many times he passed by and, out of haste or laziness, did not give anything. Perhaps because there were a lot of people around, and this time the musician sang and played only for him.

The author assumes that good must be done indifferently, so that not even a shadow of vanity arises. Only then will mercy be selfless: “Give indifferently what you can give to the needy, and move on without thinking about it.”

Kindness and gratitude are compared in the text with trade.

Author's position

F. Iskander is confident that the exchange of spiritual values ​​- mercy, compassion and gratitude is no less necessary for human development than material values.

Your position

I completely share the author's point of view. Spirituality in our time is much more valuable than material well-being. Mercy is sometimes hidden by us in the most secret corners of the soul and taken out from there only under the influence of some special circumstances. For example, when we find ourselves face to face with a person in a false life situation.

Having shown generosity, we involuntarily expect some kind of gratitude from the person to whom this very generosity was directed.

And even hearing the simple: “God bless you!” - we rejoice at this like children. We must always remain human, so as not to give our conscience a reason to remind us of ourselves.

Argument No. 1

There are many examples in literature where heroes show mercy while in situations similar to those presented by F. Iskander.

At I.S. Turgenev has a number of works united under the title “Poems in Prose”. Among them, the miniature “Beggar” especially stands out.

The author describes his meeting with a beggar old man, powerlessly extending his hand asking for alms. Turgenev's lyrical hero began to rummage through his pockets in search of at least something that could help the old man. But I didn’t find anything: not a watch, not even a scarf.

Embarrassed that he could not help the poor man, he shook the withered hand of the beggar and called him brother, apologizing for not being able to somehow alleviate his suffering.

He smiled back and said that this was also alms.

Even without having anything to your name, you can enrich a person by showing a little mercy and compassion.

Argument No. 2

In the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's “Crime and Punishment” presents the image of Sonya Marmeladova, who is the embodiment of mercy for millions of readers and the author himself.

Sonya voluntarily went to the panel to save her little brother and sister, her stepmother, who was sick with consumption, and her drunkard father.

She sacrifices herself in the name of saving her family, without reproaching them for anything or reproaching them with a word.

Living on a “yellow ticket” is not a whim, not a thirst for an easy and beautiful life, not a manifestation of stupidity, but an act of mercy towards those in need.

Sonya behaved this way only because she could not do otherwise - her conscience did not allow it.

Conclusion

Mercy is directly related to conscience, humanity, compassion and self-sacrifice.