Enemies

by Maxim Gorky

Book Overview

"Enemies" is a play by Maxim Gorky produced in Moscow in 1935. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670003735
• ISBN13: 9780670003730
• Release Date: October 1972
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"It's a question of who are the masters---you and I, or the workers."

Set in an elegant Russian country estate in 1905, Enemies, a political drama, begins by showcasing the aristocratic lifestyle of factory owners, some of them bored, drunk, and so self-serving as to be blind to the humanity of their servants and their factory workers. The owners are primarily investors, and they regard the growing socialist unrest within their nearby factory as a temporary threat they can control by force, not as a large-scale movement which will soon sweep the country and change their way of life. When the workers decide to strike to protest their conditions, the factory owners simply close the factory, leaving the workers to starve. The shooting death of one of the owners is the catalyst for the action of the play. Playwright Maxim Gorky conveys political arguments through the variety of his characters--the hard-nosed factory owner who believes in pure power; an owner who sees the humanity of the workers but who is persuaded, for business reasons, to agree to the strike; an owner who regards the factory as "a state in miniature" and who therefore regards the shutdown as a patriotic act; and an owner who is so drunk and bored that he withdraws from all responsibility. Their wives and family also have opinions--one supports her husband's extreme views, one wants to avoid the conflict by keeping the factory open and making some concessions, and one is an actress who shares the socialist leanings of some of the workers. The most extreme points of view are represented by a teenage niece who is filled with reformist ideals, and the family patriarch, a retired general, who enjoys exerting power and subjecting servants to humiliation. Minor subplots involve love stories and individual personal dramas, but the primary focus is political. Written in 1906, the year after "Bloody Sunday" and the unorganized and unsuccessful "Revolution of 1905," the play reflects Gorky's own socialism and his belief in writing as a political act. The large cast, with each member having individual motivations, keeps the viewer from identifying an individual "hero" with whom to identify, and the extreme behaviors of both the owners and the workers create a drama in which competing ideas are the focus, rather than the characters. Illustrating the socialist ideals which will, a dozen years later, overthrow the czar, the play reflects Gorky's response to Bloody Sunday and the tumult of 1905 and his optimism regarding the ultimate triumph of a new, more democratic way of life. n Mary Whipple