Summary of feat 13. The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules (collection). A brief retelling of the work “The Thirteenth Labor”

The story “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules” was written by Fazil Iskander in 1964. Like all the works of this famous writer, it is permeated with humor and subtle irony. Despite its small prose form, the story raises important issues of honor and responsibility for one’s actions. If you don’t have time to read the story in the original, then you can read a brief retelling and analysis of the work. Check out the summary of “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules” by Iskander, who is its main character.

The hero of Iskander's work is a smart and observant boy. And the narrator is an adult who chuckles, remembering himself at school age. As a boy, he did not yet realize how important the lesson that the wise mathematics teacher taught him was.

The schoolboy Iskander only wanted to outwit the teacher, whom he respected and was afraid of..

At the beginning of the year, a new mathematics teacher came to school, who was different from the other, usually absent-minded and sloppy teachers of this exact science. His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. In an incomprehensible way, he influenced his students so much that there was always silence in his lessons and absolute discipline was maintained. If earlier the director was afraid that schoolchildren might run away from classes to a nearby stadium, then with the arrival of a new mathematician, the children did not even think about it.

Kharlampy Diogenovich never raised his voice, did not threaten to call parents to school and did not intimidate students in any way. His method, oddly enough, was the humor with which he ridiculed the guilty student. The teacher could, by skillfully using inconsistencies, make a person look ridiculous. At the same time, the entire mutual responsibility of the students fell apart and the culprit found himself without support, alone with his offense.

For example, a mathematician who was late for a lesson, entering the classroom, let him go ahead of him as a “dear guest”, watched him walk shyly to his desk and uttered an ironic comparison: “Prince of Wales.” The class laughed, and the student, after such a shame, involuntarily repented and tried not to find himself in such a stupid position again.

But then Kharlampy Diogenovich goes to his desk, sits down, and the class immediately falls silent. The lesson begins. All children are collected, preparing to receive knowledge or answer homework. Nobody wants to be ridiculed.

It’s the same on tests - the mathematician does not walk between desks, intensely peering at the children’s notebooks and does not listen to every rustle.

He sits calmly in his place, fingering his rosary. But no one even thinks about copying, because Kharlampy Diogenovich will recognize the copied work from the first line and laugh at it in front of the whole class.

So, for example, student Avdeenko, on the next test, in order to cheat, sat in a strange position, stretching his neck. He looked funny and ridiculous. The mathematician immediately compared him to a swan that could break its neck, and jokingly asked the excellent student Sakharov to move to Avdeenko so that the latter’s neck would not be damaged.

Important! By this method the teacher wanted to awaken self-esteem in the student. Being funny is much more offensive than even being called a hooligan or a loafer.

Useful video: a brief retelling of F. Iskander “The 13th Labor of Hercules”

Vaccination won't help

WITH Following his method, Kharlampy Diogenovich was fair to everyone, and made no exception for anyone. And one day the main character of the story also could not escape punishment with laughter. The boy could not solve the problem assigned for home.

Instead of thinking logically, he began to compare his result with the ready-made answer, but the numbers did not add up, and he gave up on the problem, hoping that before the lesson he would copy the solution from someone.

He came to school two hours early and, having learned that his classmate also hadn’t done his homework, calmly ran off to play football. But then the time for class came and it turned out that for the most part the guys coped with the task, even the weak Komarov, our hero’s neighbor at his desk. Making excuses, the boy began to argue with the excellent student Sakharov about the correctness of the decision. Kharlampy Diogenovich saw this by chance.

The lesson began, and the hero waited in horror for the teacher to call him to the blackboard. But the mathematician was in no hurry. Suddenly the door opened and a doctor and a nurse entered the classroom. The school was just vaccinating children against typhus. Our hero was already happy, but the doctors needed, first of all, not their class, but 5 “A”. Then the boy, surprised at his impudence, offered to take the doctors to the outbuilding where a parallel class was studying. After all, this would have delayed his shame with an unlearned lesson for a few more minutes. Kharlampy Diogenovich, raising his eyebrows, released the hero to help the medical workers.

On the way to the outbuilding, the boy, having acquired a taste for lying with impunity, told the doctors that it was better for his class to get injections immediately, because the next lesson was planned to go to the museum. The doctors listened to his advice and returned to the classroom, where Shurik Avdeenko, a C student, stood at the blackboard and agonized over the problem.

Interesting! Our hero, having brought the doctors, felt like a real savior of the unfortunate Shurik.

The teacher, shrugging his shoulders, gave up his seat to the doctors, and sat down at his desk with a sad and slightly offended face. The first on the list to receive the injection was the gloomy Avdeenko, and the hero’s neighbor at his desk, thin Alik Komarov, began to worry and shake with fear. The boy tried to calm him down in every possible way, boasting that, as a chronic malaria patient, he was given “a thousand” injections - and nothing. But the phrase that injections are not scary, the main thing is that they don’t hit the bone, it seems, only aggravated the situation.

When Alik became ill during the vaccination and was seated on a chair, our hero decided not to miss the opportunity and shouted that he urgently needed to call an ambulance, hoping, apparently, to hold out the time until the end of the lesson. The teacher looked at him angrily, and the nurse simply gave Komarov ammonia to sniff, and he immediately came to his senses.

Everything secret becomes clear

When the doctors vaccinated all the children and left, there were still a few minutes left before the end of the lesson. Usually in such a situation, Kharlampy Diogenovich, fingering his rosary, told the children something instructive from Greek mythology.

This time he turned to the exploits of the famous strongman Hercules. As you know, he had 12 legendary feats. But today, according to the teacher, a certain young man decided to add a thirteenth to the mythology.

This may be commendable, but only Hercules was a real hero and performed feats for the sake of people. And this young man accomplished his feat out of cowardice,” said the teacher. “Let’s find out in the name of what this feat was accomplished...” Then our hero of the story, who had no idea what the teacher was getting at, suddenly realized that the hour of reckoning had come.

Kharlampy Diogenovich called the boy to the board and began to ask the solution to the problem. But he, of course, could not say anything except the first two words from her condition: “An artillery shell...” The hero repeated these words three times, praying to God that the bell from the lesson would ring soon, but there was still no ringing and the boy’s position became increasingly worse. funnier. “Did you accidentally swallow an artillery shell? – asked Kharlampy Diogenovich with sincere curiosity.” The class burst into laughter, and the bell from the hero's lesson rang through this laughter like a funeral bell.

Important! After this incident, the boy began to take his homework more seriously. He was not offended or angry with the teacher, but, on the contrary, was grateful to him for the lesson, for the fact that the mathematician could heal children's souls with laughter, while developing in the children the skills of healthy self-criticism and adequate self-esteem.

Useful video: “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules” - in 5 minutes!

Conclusion

This material will help you compile a summary of the story about the 13th Labor of Hercules, if there was such an assignment in a literature lesson. You can easily cope with the retelling of the work, since the main plot line is presented in quite detail. From the story, every student can learn a useful lesson, namely that homework must always be completed and treated responsibly.

In contact with

All the mathematicians I met at school and after school were sloppy people, weak-willed and quite brilliant. So the statement that Pythagorean pants are supposedly equal in all directions is unlikely to be absolutely accurate.

Perhaps this was the case with Pythagoras himself, but his followers probably forgot about it and paid little attention to their appearance.

And yet there was one mathematician in our school who was different from all the others. He could not be called weak-willed, much less sloppy. I don’t know whether he was a genius - it’s difficult to establish now. I think most likely it was.

His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. Like Pythagoras, he was Greek by birth. He appeared in our class from the new school year. Before this, we had not heard of him and did not even know that such mathematicians could exist.

He immediately established exemplary silence in our class. The silence was so eerie that sometimes the director opened the door in fright, because he could not understand whether we were there or had fled to the stadium.

The stadium was located next to the school yard and constantly, especially during big competitions, interfered with the pedagogical process. The director even wrote somewhere to be moved to another place. He said that the stadium made schoolchildren nervous. In fact, it was not the stadium that made us nervous, but the stadium commandant, Uncle Vasya, who unmistakably recognized us, even if we were without books, and drove us out of there with anger that did not fade over the years.

Fortunately, our director was not listened to and the stadium was left in place, only the wooden fence was replaced with a stone one. So now those who had previously looked at the stadium through the cracks in the wooden fence had to climb over.

Nevertheless, our director was in vain afraid that we might run away from the mathematics lesson. It was unthinkable. It was like going up to the director at recess and silently throwing off his hat, although everyone was pretty tired of it. He always, in winter and summer, wore the same hat, evergreen, like a magnolia. And I was always afraid of something.

From the outside it might seem that he was most afraid of the commission from the city administration; in fact, he was most afraid of our head teacher. It was a demonic woman. Someday I will write a poem about her in the Byronian spirit, but now I am talking about something else.

Of course, there was no way we could escape from math class. If we ever ran away from a lesson, it was usually a singing lesson.

It used to be that as soon as our Kharlampy Diogenovich entered the class, everyone immediately became quiet, and so on until the very end of the lesson. True, sometimes he made us laugh, but it was not spontaneous laughter, but fun organized from above by the teacher himself. It did not violate discipline, but served it, like a proof from the opposite in geometry.

It went something like this. Let's say another student is a little late for class, about half a second after the bell rings, and Kharlampy Diogenovich is already walking through the door. The poor student is ready to fall through the floor. Maybe I would have failed if there hadn’t been a teacher’s room right under our classroom.

Some teachers will not pay attention to such a trifle, others will rashly scold, but not Kharlampy Diogenovich. In such cases, he stopped at the door, transferred the magazine from hand to hand and, with a gesture filled with respect for the student’s personality, pointed to the passage.

The student hesitates, his confused face expresses a desire to somehow slip through the door after the teacher. But the face of Kharlampy Diogenovich expresses joyful hospitality, restrained by decency and understanding of the unusualness of this moment. He makes it known that the very appearance of such a student is a rare holiday for our class and for him personally, Kharlampy Diogenovich, that no one expected him, and since he came, no one will dare to reproach him for this little tardiness, especially since he is modest a teacher who, of course, will go into the classroom after such a wonderful student and will close the door behind him as a sign that the dear guest will not be released soon.

All this lasts for several seconds, and in the end the student, awkwardly squeezing through the door, staggers to his place.

Kharlampy Diogenovich looks after him and says something magnificent. For example:

Prince of Wales.

The class laughs. And although we do not know who the Prince of Wales is, we understand that he cannot possibly appear in our class. He simply has nothing to do here, because the princes mainly engage in deer hunting. And if he gets tired of hunting for his deer and wants to visit some school, then he will definitely be taken to the first school, which is near the power plant. Because she is exemplary. At the very least, if he had decided to come to us, we would have been warned long ago and prepared the class for his arrival.

That’s why we laughed, realizing that our student could not possibly be a prince, especially some kind of Welsh one.

But then Kharlampy Diogenovich sits down. The class instantly falls silent. The lesson begins.

Big-headed, short, neatly dressed, carefully shaven, he held the class in his hands with authority and calm. In addition to the journal, he had a notebook where he wrote something down after the interview. I don’t remember him yelling at anyone, or trying to persuade them to study, or threatening to call their parents to school. All these things were of no use to him.

During tests, he did not even think about running between the rows, looking into desks, or vigilantly raising his head at every rustle, as others did. No, he was calmly reading something to himself or fingering a rosary with beads as yellow as a cat’s eyes.

It was almost useless to copy from him, because he immediately recognized the work he had copied and began to ridicule it. So we wrote it off only as a last resort, if there was no other way out.

It happened that during a test he would look up from his rosary or book and say:

Sakharov, please change seats with Avdeenko.

Sakharov stands up and looks at Kharlampy Diogenovich questioningly. He does not understand why he, an excellent student, should change seats with Avdeenko, who is a poor student.

Have pity on Avdeenko, he can break his neck.

Avdeenko looks blankly at Kharlampy Diogenovich, as if not understanding, and perhaps not really understanding, why he could break his neck.

Avdeenko thinks he is a swan,” explains Kharlampy Diogenovich. “Black swan,” he adds after a moment, hinting at Avdeenko’s tanned, gloomy face. “Sakharov, you can continue,” says Kharlampy Diogenovich.

Sakharov sits down.

And you too,” he turns to Avdeenko, but something in his voice barely noticeably shifted. A precisely dosed dose of ridicule poured into him. - ...Unless, of course, you break your neck... black swan! - he firmly concludes, as if expressing courageous hope that Alexander Avdeenko will find the strength to work independently.

Shurik Avdeenko sits, furiously bending over his notebook, showing the powerful efforts of mind and will thrown into solving the problem.

Kharlampy Diogenovich's main weapon is to make a person funny. A student who deviates from school rules is not a lazy person, not a loafer, not a bully, but simply a funny person. Or rather, not just funny, as many would probably agree, but somehow offensively funny. Funny, not realizing that he is funny, or being the last to realize it.

And when the teacher makes you look funny, the mutual responsibility of the students immediately breaks down, and the whole class laughs at you. Everyone laughs against one another. If one person is laughing at you, you can still deal with it somehow. But it is impossible to make the whole class laugh. And if you turned out to be funny, you wanted to prove at all costs that, although you were funny, you were not so completely ridiculous.

It must be said that Kharlampy Diogenovich did not give anyone privileges. Anyone could be funny. Of course, I also did not escape the common fate.

That day I did not solve the problem assigned for homework. There was something about an artillery shell flying somewhere at a certain speed and over a certain period of time. It was necessary to find out how many kilometers he would have flown if he had flown at a different speed and almost in a different direction.

In general, the task was somewhat confusing and stupid. My solution didn't match the answer. And by the way, in the problem books of those years, probably because of pests, the answers were sometimes incorrect. True, very rarely, because by that time almost all of them had been caught. But, apparently, someone was still operating in the wild.

But I still had some doubts. Pests are pests, but, as they say, don’t be a bad person either.

So the next day I came to school an hour before class. We studied in the second shift. The most avid football players were already there. I asked one of them about the problem, and it turned out that he didn’t solve it either. My conscience finally calmed down. We divided into two teams and played until the bell.

And now we enter the class. Having barely caught my breath, just in case I ask the excellent student Sakharov:

Well, how's the task?

Nothing, he says, he decided. At the same time, he briefly and significantly nodded his head in the sense that there were difficulties, but we overcame them.

How did you decide, because the answer is wrong?

Correct,” he nods his head at me with such disgusting confidence on his smart, conscientious face that I immediately hated him for his well-being, although well-deserved, it was all the more unpleasant. I still wanted to doubt it, but he turned away, depriving me of the last consolation of those falling: to grab the air with my hands.

It turns out that at that time Kharlampy Diogenovich appeared at the door, but I did not notice him and continued to gesticulate, although he was standing almost next to me. Finally, I guessed what was going on, scared and slammed the book and froze.

Kharlampy Diogenovich walked to the place.

I was scared and scolded myself for first agreeing with the football player that the task was wrong, and then disagreeing with the excellent student that it was correct. And now Kharlampy Diogenovich probably noticed my excitement and will be the first to call me.

The famous writer Fazil Abdulovich Iskander wrote a funny story “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules” in 1964. The readers of this work were children who became acquainted with such concepts as honor and dishonor, cowardice and dignity, deceit and betrayal.

In contact with

Story idea

Fazil Iskander shows that the hero gradually comes to the conclusion that it is possible to fight lies and the main weapon in this can be laughter. After what happened to him, the boy began to diligently complete his homework.

The main character sincerely trusts his math teacher and is not at all offended by him for the fact that with humor and laughter he tried to teach them not to offend each other, not to lie, but to treat themselves and others with dignity.

Heroes of the work “The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules”

In Fazil Iskander’s story “The 13th Labor of Hercules,” which is easy and accessible to read online, there is only one hero. But in order to better understand his action, in order to correctly evaluate what he did and how the teacher behaved, The author also shows several of the boy’s classmates:

  1. Adolf Komarov. He sits at the same desk with the main character, and the guys just call him Alik.
  2. Sakharov, excellent student.
  3. Shurik Avdeenko. He always cheats on his homework.

There are other characters in the story who can be attributed to the world of adults. This is, first of all, mathematics teacher Kharlampiy Diogenovich, the school director, head teacher, doctor and nurse Galya.

Story plan

Often at school, when studying a story, students are given notes to make at home or in class, writing down only the main ideas. Theses can also become points of a plan that can be used to write an essay on this work.

Plan of the work:

Every reader, whose notes are not difficult to compile, will be able to understand and appreciate the method of a mathematics teacher who tried to raise children correctly and with dignity.

A brief retelling of the work “The Thirteenth Labor”

All mathematics teachers are usually sloppy people and, despite their genius, weak-willed. But at the school where the hero studied, the math teacher was the opposite. His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. By origin, like Pythagoras, he was a Greek. After his appearance, there was always silence in the classroom. Sometimes this silence was broken by laughter, which was organized by the teacher himself.

It happened that a student was half a minute late, and the teacher was already standing at the door of the class, then Kharlampy Diogenovich tried to let such a student through. At the same time, his face began to express joyful hospitality, as if it was such a big holiday that the child still decided to attend this lesson. And when a late student begins to move around the class with an uncertain gait to sit down in his seat, the mathematics teacher will definitely call him some name from history. For example, the Prince of Wales.

The class started laughing at this. And after that, Kharlampy Diogenovich sits down and immediately there is silence. Lesson begins. In addition to the journal, the teacher also had a notebook, where he constantly wrote something down during the survey. He never shouted or called his parents to school. During tests he was calm and always gave me the opportunity to cheat. But the guys were afraid to do this, because he always recognized the work that had been written off, and made fun of this student in front of the whole class. Nobody wanted to be ridiculed, so they tried not to copy.

The teacher's main weapon was to make a person funny, and he did it in such a way that it even became offensive. For example, he called Shurik Avdeenko a black swan who was about to break his neck for his desire to cheat on tests from the excellent student Sakharov.

One day, the main character of the story, on whose behalf the story is told, also became funny. He did not solve the problem that was assigned to him at home. The boy sat for a long time over her decision, but his decision did not want to converge with the answer. So the next day he came to school early. Since they studied on the second shift, this was not difficult to do. But, having learned that one of the guys didn’t do it either, he calmed down and began to play football.

When the bell rang, it turned out that all the guys did this task. The hero waited in horror for the moment when the teacher would ask him. But Kharlampy Diogenovich was in no hurry. Suddenly the door opened and a doctor and a nurse entered the office. But they were looking for 5 “A” class, and the boy studied in “B”.

Then the main character offered his help to lead medical workers to the outbuilding where a parallel class was studying. But suddenly, unexpectedly for himself, the boy informed the adults that they now needed to get injections, since at the next lesson they were going to the local history museum in an organized manner. So the doctor and nurse went back to class.

At this time, Shurik Avdeenko was standing at the blackboard and could not explain the homework problem. The teacher gave the doctors the opportunity to do their job, and he sat down at his desk. His whole appearance showed that he was sad and a little offended. Avdeenko was the first to be vaccinated, and then his desk neighbor began to worry a lot. The main character tried to calm him down and cheer him up a little, but nothing worked. He even said that he suffers from chronic malaria.

When Alik became ill during the injection and they sat him on a chair, the boy decided that he needed to call an ambulance. Kharlampy Diogenovich looked angrily at the main character, and the nurse thrust a bottle under Alik’s nose, and he immediately jumped up and went to his place. The boy was also given an injection.

When the doctors left, there was still time until the end of the lesson. Kharlampy Diogenovich began to finger his rosary and began to talk about the fact that in ancient Greek mythology Hercules had 12 labors. But today, according to the teacher, the main character decided to change the story. But only the ancient Greek hero performed his feats bravely and courageously, but the thirteenth feat was accomplished out of cowardice. And when he called the main character to the board to ask for a solution to the problem, the whole class froze. But there was no answer, but the whole class began to laugh. The bell from class sounded like it was a funeral bell.

Since then, the boy began to take his homework more seriously.. He never regretted what happened to him and was grateful to his teacher for tempering children’s souls with laughter and teaching them to treat themselves correctly.

The title of the story already indicates on the connection of the work with Ancient Greece. I immediately remember the myths that tell about the 12 labors of Hercules. But the act of the boy, whom the teacher jokingly calls Hercules, does not at all resemble a feat. After all, it was committed out of cowardice and weakness.

The teacher, who knew ancient Greek mythology very well, constantly told some episodes and taught the children in such a way that his main weapon was laughter and humor. None of the guys wanted to look funny, so they tried to complete all tasks on time and not act out.

a5bfc9e07964f8dddeb95fc584cd965d

The mathematician Kharlampiy Diogenovich was noticeably different from his sloppy colleagues. With his appearance, strict discipline was established in the class. The lessons were so quiet that the school principal could not believe that the students were in their places and not in the stadium. Silence reigned as soon as the teacher entered the classroom and lasted until the end of the lesson. Sometimes laughter was heard. Kharlampy Diogenovich allowed himself to joke, and the guys had fun laughing. For example, he could show the greatest respect to a late student by giving him way to class and calling him after him the Prince of Wales. The teacher never swore or called parents to school. The guys didn’t cheat on the tests because they knew that Kharlampy Diogenovich would immediately recognize such work and make fun of the careless student. The narrator did not escape the fate of being funny in front of the whole class.

One day he couldn't solve a problem. Having not completed his homework, he came to school. After making sure that the other guys also didn’t agree with the answer, the boy ran off to play football. Just before the start of the lesson, he learned that the excellent student Sakharov had completed the task. And Adolf Komarov’s desk neighbor also had his problem solved. The narrator froze in anticipation of being asked. A doctor and a nurse came into the classroom. They were looking for the fifth "A" class to vaccinate. Out of fear, the boy volunteered to show where this class was and the teacher gave him permission. On the way, he learns that their class is scheduled to be vaccinated at the next lesson and informs the doctors that the class will go to the museum. Running into the classroom in front of the doctor, the narrator saw that Shurik Avdeenko was solving the problem at the blackboard, but he could not explain the solution. The teacher sent him to his place, and praised Adolf for the solved problem.

The doctors returned and said that the children needed to be vaccinated and the teacher allowed them to take the lesson. Avdeenko was the first to be called for vaccination. He did it without fear, because the vaccination saved him from a possible failure. Adolf Komarov was pale. His desk neighbor consoled him, but it had no effect. The injection made Alik even paler, and the doctor had to give him ammonia. The narrator was proud to Alik that he did not feel the injection, although this was not true. The doctors left.

There was little time left until the end of the lesson. Kharlampy Diogenovich, thoughtfully, began a story about the twelve labors of Hercules and about a certain young man who decided to correct Greek mythology with his thirteenth labor. The teacher said that this feat was accomplished out of cowardice, and why it was done, he asked the narrator to explain, calling him to the board. Kharlampy Diogenovich asked the boy to tell how he solved a homework problem. The student tried to stall for time, but he looked more and more ridiculous. Since then, the boy began to take his homework more seriously. Reasoning, he came to the conclusion that the worst thing is that a person ceases to be afraid of being funny. This could bring him bad luck. The arrogant Roman emperors did not see in time how ridiculous they really were, and that is why the great empire perished.

Year of writing: 1966

Genre: story

Main characters: mathematics teacher, 5th grade student

Plot

The new math teacher did not scold or punish the students who had done wrong, he simply ridiculed them.

One day the main characters did not learn their homework and were very afraid of ridicule from the teacher and classmates. Therefore, when doctors came to school to give vaccinations against typhus, he convinced them to start not with 5 "A" class, but with 5 "B", in which he himself studied. The doctors agreed, and vaccinations were carried out throughout the entire lesson.

After the doctors left, there was still time until the end of the lesson, and the teacher called the “hero” to the board, where everyone was convinced that the boy was not ready for the lesson. Then the teacher spoke about the exploits of Hercules, which he performed out of noble motives. And our student accomplished his “feat” out of laziness and cowardice.

Conclusion (my opinion)

This lesson left a deep imprint on the boy’s soul; he realized that the teacher raised them better with laughter than with any lectures and teachings. The author remembered this lesson for the rest of his life and wrote his story to teach others by his example.

Related publications