Literature
Mother
CevvelaLiterature
Mother
Maksim Gorki · İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları · 1906
9
Cevvela Score
8.9 (2.569 oy)
Reader Score
Summary
In the crushing poverty of Tsarist Russia, Pelageya is an illiterate peasant woman — beaten by her husband, shrunk by fear. Then her son Pavel brings home revolutionary ideas, and something in her begins to stir. This is the story of how a woman the world had written off became the Mother of an entire working class.
Quotes from Cevvela
“Fear is the heaviest chain a person ever places on their own soul.”
“To push someone toward awakening is the greatest kindness you can offer another human being.”
“A heart that stays silent in the face of injustice has already gone quiet for good.”
“You can imprison a body — but no cell ever built can hold a consciousness that has truly woken up.”
“A person only begins to live in the fullest sense the moment they realize their life was never meant for themselves alone.”
Reader Quotes
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Reader Comments
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Gorky shows us how an unbreakable will can be born from the depths of ignorance and fear — and he does it with the kind of writing that doesn't just move you, it unsettles you.
At the start, Pelageya is the face of every person who has ever accepted injustice as fate. Who never questioned the system, because questioning felt like a luxury she couldn't afford. Cevvela says it plainly: the ore doesn't care about your address. It's the same in the broken-down and the written-off as it is in anyone else.
This book is proof of that. When the ore inside that broken-down woman finally wakes up, she goes on to defy the armies of an empire.
You watch the most seemingly powerless person imaginable walk straight toward death for something she believes in. And you understand, in your bones, what Cevvela means: once a person has conquered their own fear, no law, no force, no empire can stop them.