Mother by Maxim Gorky Nine out of 10

 Mother by Maxim Gorky

Nine out of 10

If we are cynical, we might say that this is the perfect novel for the supporters of Bernie Sanders, now that their favorite candidate seems to be finally running out of steam, Alhamdulillah, and therefore they can send time reading a – socialist, evidently! – book, about the misgivings of capitalism, the awful factory managers, the brave Socialists, the Sublime Mother that understands the Noble fight, though quite late in life and in spite of being illiterate – at least for a long time, because of the monstrous oppressors – a work that has been included on The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction -in the State of the Nation section…

Notwithstanding the misguided attempt to deflect self-criticism, this novel definitely deserves praise, for on most levels, it has so much to offer and to dismiss it just shows a superficiality, a lack of purpose and wrong sense of values that this reader may have to admit to, given that although aware of what moral, ethical, character strengths are there in the pages of this work, he was still turned off by the named Socialism that ventures into the plot and somehow becomes obsessive, alas, for the undersigned who has  more than an allergy to it…admittedly, there is room for self-defense, for I have had the chance to experience the results of the efforts of the descendants of Mother, son and company, as they brought over, after World War II, the heavenly, superb results of Marxism, power to the workers and all that shit…excuse my French

So this becomes difficult when you see that the tragedy of the Mother, perhaps even her apparently vicious husband, who beats her harshly on a regular basis, just like all the other men in the village, throughout Russia and the world at that stage – well, most, not all – husband that would be understood to some degree by his son, who would see that his father and the others endure so much torment that they have to let steam out and the only outlet they have is at home, spouse and children – even if, at the age of fifteen – I guess – Pavel would stand up to his father and show clearly that he would not stand about idly and get another beating…

Indeed, one of the main reasons that this novel has proved difficult to continue for this reader – apart from the atrocious insensitivity, aversion for Russians which should be analyzed at some point, compensated only in part for the admiration for Chekhov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and some sublime film makers, those responsible for Leviathan for instance – is the more than dark atmosphere, hellish in fact that dominates many, if not most of the tableaux…which is again a double eagle – they have that on some of their flags, don’t they – for we could look at the plight of the characters of the book and…experience Joy in the midst of this plague that is upon our houses these days, with the Covid 19 hitting hard, ever more countries…

Some positive psychology experts prompt us to compare with those who have much less, are in a more challenging position than us, for one of the principal reasons for chagrin is that we tend to compare with those who have more and then envy that…one famous quote is that of wealth…“Wealth - any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.” By H.L Mencken

Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova is the remarkable, brave, resilient, for many glorious, Wonder Woman, that lives with a man that she has not loved, whom she met when a girl, who pushed her into a corner and then said that he would send the matchmakers the following day – which he did – and then became one of the multitude of violent, abusive, hard drinking husbands that come home intoxicated, waiting for food, which she had always been in a panic to make as tasty as possible and place in front of him in a second, without thinking about anything else, not even aware of the son that she would later come to know more and appreciate, have feelings for…while the drunkard was alive, terror was the dominant emotion she felt and living in permanent fear has not given her the chance for any other feeling…

This would change with the death of the spouse, when her son, Pavel Vlasov, after a short period of confusion, his first inebriation that fortunately makes him very sick, surely helping him decide that he would not follow the path of all the other youngsters, adults and old men, into daily immersion in alcohol, he starts reading more and more, becomes a recluse to the point of worrying his mother, who is unsure what to think, on one hand happy that he is not the same as the rest of the drunkards, but also apprehensive of the isolation in which he lives, his disinterest for the communities of cursing, common men…

Gradually, Mother would find out more about the son that becomes more and more involved in some mysterious activities, with people coming to visit him, surprising the older woman with their incomprehensible, educated and thus inaccessible to her talk, planning different manners of standing up to the ‘gentlefolk’ the rich ones who are by that the vile ones, supporting the workers, the poor and the needy, preparing the Sublime – isn’t that the word?- fight against the malign forces of capitalism – though Russia is supposed to have exited Feudalism and jumped right into the Heaven of Socialism…a paradise explained, exposed by a magnum opus that this reader appreciates much more, since it seems to represent what the Hades of the Mother book has been replaced with when the Bolsheviks took power…Animal Farm

Yes, the personages of Mother – the good fellows evidently – do have  appoint when they expose the viciousness, selfishness, brutality, vileness, monstrosity of most of the factory owners, the rich people – at one point, the manager of the local factory imposes a one Kopeck out of every ruble tax, in order to execute some works that we would probably call environmental today, but the rich ones are exempt and besides, Pavel and others are correct in emphasizing that this was not the honest, correct manner of doing it and furthermore, the rich ones use the corrupt police to take revenge on the ‘agitators’, just because they had dared to speak their mind.

Only what the descendants of those Goodfellas of the socialist committees have brought to replace the unequal, oppressive, calamitous regime of the landowners is the society where ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…’ just like in the farm where the pigs aka the soviets took control and acted as in 1984, where big Brother as in North Korea right now is watching all and imposing his vile ideas on everyone…

Alas, for me that was always in the back of my mind, when reading about Super Mother and her Extraordinary exploits, getting the propaganda into the factory, facing great danger, helping the (fucking) comrades and all that…they just paved the way for Great Lenin, Stalin and more recently Bernie I am so elated that Joe Biden looks like winning the primaries and then throwing Trump into the dustbin of vile history…Insha’Allah!