The problem of moral choice of modern youth. Moral choice - what determines a person’s moral choice? The problem of moral choice between personal and public

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When it comes to morality, our society tends to go to two extremes: either truisms are arrogantly imposed on the listener, or people are afraid to use the very phrase “moral choice.” The arguments of the moralists clash with those of the nihilists, but the result is that the average person feels antipathy towards both the “good” guys and the “bad” guys.

Where do the sacrifices begin?

Moral choice is a situation in which a person has to make or not make difficult decisions for himself for the benefit of another person or in accordance with his own views and beliefs. Most often, the question is stark: is a person ready to sacrifice his comfort and pleasure for the sake of another? Simple everyday questions can also include a moral choice: the husband and wife are tired, she goes to wash the dishes, will he take the initiative or leave him to fight with the dirt, going to his favorite sofa?

How to devalue goodness

If you think the above example is too petty, you are mistaken. Only people who know how to control their moral will in small things can make serious sacrifices. A one-time nice gesture does not prove that a person is capable of consciously and long-term commitment to the values ​​of kindness. Most likely, the person will soon regret his decision. By the way, in the Orthodox Christian tradition, repentance destroys in the moral sense not only bad, but also good deeds. That is, if a person did a good deed and then regretted it, then the good deed does not count. So morality is not isolated gestures, but a lifestyle.

If an action does not give a person a visible reward, what makes him choose an option that is inconvenient for himself? Psychologists have discovered that each of us naturally needs to feel good. Therefore, people tend to cheat - but on average, not much. Many people will pocket a small amount of money they find, but if the amount is large, they will most likely return it to the owner. That is, inside each person there is something like a counter, a radar that does not allow him to fall below the bar he has set for himself. Self-deception occurs in small ways, but serious deception occurs only in mentally ill people. So people want to feel “correct,” at least in their own eyes, and are willing to pay for this with unreceived rewards.

Success and morality

The problem of a person’s moral choice, so popular among philosophers and religious leaders, turned out to be connected with a person’s overall success in life. It turns out that moral choice is associated with a person’s ability to wait for a delayed reward instead of receiving it immediately. It turns out that moral people have higher self-control and the ability to achieve goals. So success and morality often go hand in hand. Many very rich people abroad, who earned their money honestly, give colossal sums to charity.

A person makes moral choices every day. To be faithful in big things, you need to learn to be faithful in small things. I think you just need to believe this biblical thesis.

When using the phrase “real man” in conversation, as a rule, both women and representatives of the stronger sex are talking about the same type.

“Normal men,” as they call themselves, behave in accordance with the ethical standards of society, value marriage and their family, love loved ones, and live “correctly.” There is no clear definition of what a man should be who is an example of morality.

But usually such people have the following traits: a strong, tough character, wisdom, loyalty to their loved ones, physical strength, strength, the ability to make decisions, responsibility and a worthy life partner. Today we invite you to talk about moral freedom of choice, because every man should know how to act better and more correctly in various life situations.

The problem of human moral choice

Interest in this problem is caused by the fact that sooner or later every person faces a situation of moral choice. Moral choice is a person's choice in favor of good or evil, the choice of an ethical alternative. Aristotle also said that it must be different from desires, be known and relevant to a person, and the choice must be conscious. We live in a free society, therefore freedom is the determining factor in the moral position of any person. How does it manifest itself?

The concepts of “good” or “bad” are abstract for every person, despite generally accepted norms. But in any society, a person’s morality is considered through his behavior, actions, attitude towards certain things, towards his freedom of choice. It is in these areas that a person shows himself, while manifesting himself as a creative and independent person.

Finding himself in a difficult life situation or in any extreme situation, a person is able to express himself in a way that he would never have done at any other time. Or, on the contrary, his behavior will be as follows: as usual, and this will also be an indicator of his morality.

Also, a huge indicator of morality is a person’s willpower; not everyone has it. When we fight for the freedom of our own choice, we often forget that it is better not to be able to purchase anything at all, for example, if you are addicted to alcohol, buy vodka, spend all your free time, capabilities and health on it. If a person has strong free will, which in fact turns out to be much more expensive and more important than many factors, then he is unlikely to face the problem of moral choice.

The problem of moral choice (based on works of the war period)

How it was! How did it coincide-

War, trouble, dream and youth!

And it all sunk into me

And only then did I wake up!

(David Samoilov)

The world of literature is a complex, amazing world, and at the same time very contradictory. Especially at the turn of the century, where those who join again, the new encounters what sometimes sees or becomes exemplary, classic. Either one formation is replaced by another: accordingly, views, ideology, sometimes even morality change, foundations collapse (which happened at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries). Everything changes. And today, on the threshold of the 21st century, we feel it ourselves. Only one thing remains unchanged: memory. We should be grateful to those writers who left behind once recognized, and sometimes unrecognized, work. These works make us think about the meaning of life, return to that time, look at it through the eyes of writers of different movements, and compare conflicting points of view. These works are a living memory of those artists who did not remain ordinary contemplatives of what was happening. “As much memory as there is in a person, so much is the person in him,” writes V. Rasputin. And let our grateful memory be our caring attitude towards their creations.

We have experienced a terrible war, perhaps the most terrible and severe in terms of casualties and destruction in the entire history of mankind. A war that brought with it millions of innocent lives of mothers and children who tried to somehow resist this wedge of fascism, going deeper and deeper into the consciousness of every person on the planet. But after more than half a century, we are beginning to forget the horror and fear that our fathers and grandfathers experienced while defending their Motherland. We are no longer surprised by the slightly disguised swastika of Hitler's Nazism. It’s strange why the country and people who stopped fascism, seemingly once and for all, now receive people like Ilyukhin and Barkashov. Why, hiding behind the holy ideals of the unity and well-being of Mother Russia, at the same time they walk around with Nazi swastikas on their sleeves and images of Hitler on their chests.

And again, Russia faces a choice - a choice so complex and ambiguous that it makes us think about the meaning of worldly existence and the purpose of our existence on this planet.

In this work, I tried, as they say, to delve into the very essence of these two words - choice and morality. What do they mean for each of us and how will we behave in a situation that pushes us to commit an immoral crime, pushes us to commit a crime against ourselves, against the established opinion about the purity of the human soul and about morality, against the laws of God.

Choice is nothing more than an option for the further path of human development. The only difference between choice and fortune is that choice is deliberate, conscious and thoughtful behavior of a person, directed or better said, emanating from human needs and the main sense of self-preservation.

What is good and beautiful, in my opinion, are writers of the war period, if only because they are a mirror of the human soul. As if approaching a person, they turn to a certain angle, thereby showing the person’s soul from all sides. Vyacheslav Kondratyev, in my opinion, is no exception.

Kondratiev’s novels and short stories take us to the Far East (where the heroes served in the army, the war found them there), and to the warily harsh, but calm Moscow of forty-two. But in the center of Kondratiev’s artistic universe is the Ovsyannikovsky field - in craters from mines, shells and bombs, with uncleaned corpses, with bullet-ridden helmets lying around, with a tank knocked out in one of the first battles.

The Ovsyannikovskoe field is not remarkable in any way. A field is like a field. But for Kondratiev’s heroes, everything important in their lives happens here, and many are not destined to cross it; they will remain here forever. And those who are lucky enough to return from here alive will remember it forever in every detail. - every hollow, every hillock, every path. For those who fight here, even the smallest things are filled with considerable significance: huts, and small trenches, and the last pinch of terry, and felt boots that cannot be dried, and half a pot of thin millet porridge a day for two. All this made up the life of a soldier on the front line, this is what it consisted of, what it was filled with. Even death was commonplace here, although the hope did not fade away that it was unlikely to get out of here alive and uninjured.

Now, from the distance of peaceful times, it may seem that Kondratiev’s details alone are not so significant - you can do without them: the date with which a pack of concentrate is marked, cakes made from rotten, soggy potatoes. But it’s all true, it happened. Is it possible, turning away from the dirt, blood, suffering, to appreciate the courage of a soldier, to truly understand what the war cost the people? This is where the hero’s moral choice begins - between spoiled food, between corpses, between fear. A piece of war-torn land, a handful of people - the most ordinary, but at the same time unique in their own way on the entire planet. These people were able to withstand, were able to carry through the entire war a human being and a human soul, never once tainted in this mess of a dirty war. Kondratiev completely depicted folk life in a small space. In the small world of Ovsyannikov’s field, the essential features and patterns of the big world are revealed, the fate of the people appears at a time of great historical upheavals. In the small things, the big things always appear in him. The same date on a pack of concentrate, indicating that it was not from the reserve, but immediately, without delay or delay, went to the front, without further ado, indicates the extreme limit of the tension of the forces of the entire country.

Front life - reality of a special kind: meetings here are fleeting - at any moment an order or a bullet could separate them for a long time, often forever. But under fire, in a few days and hours, and sometimes in just one action, a person’s character was revealed with such exhaustive completeness, with such extreme clarity and certainty, which are sometimes unattainable under normal conditions even with many years of friendly relations.

Let’s imagine that the war spared both Sasha and that seriously wounded soldier from the “dads”, whom the hero, himself wounded, bandaged and to whom, having reached the medical platoon, he brought the orderlies. Would Sashka remember this incident? Most likely, nothing at all, for him there is nothing special in it, he did what he took for granted, without attaching any importance to it. But the wounded soldier whose life Sashka saved will probably never forget him. What does it matter if he doesn’t know anything about Sashka, not even his name. The act itself revealed to him the most important thing in Sashka. And if their acquaintance had continued, it would not have added much to what he learned about Sashka in those few minutes when a shell fragment felled him, and he lay in the grove, bleeding. And not one event can characterize a person’s morality - than this one. And Sashka gave preference to the right choice - the choice of human conscience and human mercy.

It is often said, referring to the fate of a person, - river of life. At the front, its current became catastrophically rapid, it imperiously carried a person along with it and carried him from one bloody whirlpool to another. How little opportunity he had for free choice! But when choosing, every time he puts his life or the lives of his subordinates on the line. The price of choice here is always life, although usually you have to choose seemingly ordinary things - position with a wider view, cover on the battlefield.

Kondratiev is trying to convey this unstoppable movement of the flow of life, subjugating a person; sometimes the hero comes to the fore - Sashka. And although he tries to use all the opportunities for choice that arise, he does not miss situations the outcome of which may depend on his ingenuity, endurance, he still - still at the mercy of this indomitable flow of military reality - While he is alive and well, he can go on the attack again, press himself into the ground under fire, eat whatever he has to, sleep wherever he has to...

The story “Sashka” was immediately noticed and appreciated. Readers and critics, this time showing rare unanimity, determined its place among the greatest successes of our military literature. This story, which made the name of Vyacheslav Kondratiev, still reminds us of the horrors of that war.

But Kondratiev was not alone; the problems of moral choice fell on the shoulders of other writers of that time. Yuri Bondarev wrote a lot about the war, "Hot Snow" occupies a special place, opening up new approaches to solving moral and psychological problems posed in his first stories - "Battalions Ask for Fire" and "The Last Salvos". These three books about the war are holistic and the developing world, which reached its greatest completeness and figurative power in “Hot Snow.” The first stories, independent in all respects, were at the same time a kind of preparation for a novel, perhaps not yet conceived, but living in the depths of the writer’s memory.

The events of the novel “Hot Snow” unfold near Stalingrad, south of the 6th Army of General Paulus, blocked by Soviet troops, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies withstood in the Volga steppe the attack of the tank divisions of Field Marshal Manstein, who sought to break through a corridor to Paulus’s army and get her out of the encirclement. The outcome of the Battle of the Volga and maybe even the timing of the end of the war itself largely depended on the success or failure of this operation. The duration of the novel is limited to just a few days, during which Yuri Bondarev’s heroes selflessly defend a tiny patch of land from German tanks. Thus showing the height of human heroism and the boundlessness of Russian patriotism.

In “Hot Snow” the image of a people who have risen to war appears before us in a completeness of expression previously unknown in Yuri Bondarev, in the richness and diversity of characters, and at the same time in integrity. This image is not limited to the figures of young lieutenants - commanders of artillery platoons, nor the colorful figures of those who are traditionally considered to be people from the people - like the slightly cowardly Chibisov, the calm and experienced gunner Evstigneev or the straightforward and rude driver Rubin; nor by senior officers, such as the division commander, Colonel Deev, or the army commander, General Bessonov. Only collectively understood and accepted emotionally as something unified, despite all the differences in ranks and titles, do they form the image of a fighting people. The strength and novelty of the novel lies in the fact that this unity is achieved as if by itself, captured without much effort by the author - with living, moving life. The image of the people, as the result of the entire book, perhaps most of all feeds the epic, novelistic beginning of the story.

The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death contains a high tragedy and provokes a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of “Hot Snow” die - battery medical instructor Zoya Elagina, shy rider Sergunenkov, member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others die... And the war is to blame for all these deaths. Even if the callousness of Lieutenant Drozdovsky is to blame for the death of Sergunenkov, even if the blame for Zoya’s death falls partly on him, but no matter how great Drozdovsky’s guilt, they are, first of all, victims of war. A war that, by its very essence, kills everything moral, peace-loving in a person, and the main task for any person in this war is not to break down, not to succumb to this horror and chaos of destruction, no matter how difficult it is.

The novel expresses the understanding of death as a violation of the highest justice and harmony. Let us remember how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “now a shell box lay under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, mustacheless face, recently alive, dark, had become deathly white, thinned by the eerie beauty of death, looked in surprise with damp cherry half-open eyes at his chest , on the torn into shreds, dissected padded jacket, even after death he did not understand how it killed him and why he could not stand up to the gun sight. In this unseeing squint of Kasymov there was a quiet curiosity about his unlived life on this earth and at the same time. the calm mystery of death, into which the red-hot pain of the fragments threw him as he tried to rise to the sight."

Probably the most mysterious thing in the world of human relationships in the novel is the love that arises between Kuznetsov and Zoya. The war, its cruelty and blood, its timing, overturning the usual ideas about time - it was precisely this that contributed to such a rapid development of this love. After all, this feeling developed in those short periods of march and battle when there is no time to think and analyze one’s feelings. And it all begins with Kuznetsov’s quiet, incomprehensible jealousy of the relationship between Zoya and Drozdovsky. And soon - so little time passes - Kuznetsov is already bitterly mourning the deceased Zoya, and it is from these lines that the title of the novel is taken, when Kuznetsov wiped his face wet from tears, “the snow on the sleeve of his quilted jacket was hot from his tears.”

Having initially been deceived by Lieutenant Drozdovsky, the best cadet at that time, Zoya throughout the novel reveals herself to us as a moral, integral person, ready for self-sacrifice, capable of embracing with her heart the pain and suffering of many. Zoya's personality is learned in the tense, as if electrified, space that almost inevitably arises in the trench with the appearance of

women. She seems to go through many tests, from annoying interest to rude rejection. But her kindness, her patience and compassion reach everyone; she is truly a sister to the soldiers.

The image of Zoya somehow imperceptibly filled the atmosphere of the book, its main events, its harsh, cruel reality with the feminine principle, affection and tenderness.

And concluding my essay, I would like to note that our literature has done a lot to awaken in people, in dire, catastrophic circumstances, a sense of responsibility, an understanding that the fate of the country depends on them, and no one else. The Patriotic War was not a “showdown” between two bloody dictators - Hitler and Stalin, as some writers who are prone to inventing sensations now suggest. Whatever goals Stalin pursued, the Soviet people defended their land, their freedom, their lives - the fascists encroached on this. “...Rightness was such a fence to which any armor was inferior,” Boris Pasternak wrote at that time. And even those who did not have the slightest sympathy for the Bolsheviks and the Soviet regime - the majority of them - took an unconditionally patriotic, defencist position after the Nazi invasion. “We know what is on the scales today, and what is happening now,” this is Anna Akhmatova, who had a very big score against the Soviet regime.

The level of truth in the literature of the war years, compared with the second half of the thirties, a time of devastating mass repressions of spiritual torpor and darkness, official unification in art, has increased sharply. The cruel, bloody war demanded spiritual emancipation and was accompanied by a spontaneous liberation from the Stalinist dogmas that stifled living life and art, from fear and suspicion. Lyric poetry also testifies to this. In a hungry, dying besieged Leningrad in the terrible winter of one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, Olga Berggolts wrote:

In the dirt, in the darkness, in hunger,

in sadness,

Where death lingered like a shadow

on the heels

We used to be so happy

We breathed such wild freedom,

That our grandchildren would envy us.

Bergholz felt the happiness of freedom with such acuteness, probably also because before the war she had to experience the gendarmes of courtesy to the fullest extent. But this feeling of newfound, expanded freedom arose among many, many people. Remembering his youth at the front many years later, Vasily Bykov wrote that during the war we “realized our strength and realized what we ourselves were capable of. We taught history and ourselves a great lesson in human dignity.”

Bergholz felt the happiness of freedom with such acuteness, probably also because before the war she had to experience the “Gendarmes of Courtesies” to the fullest extent. But this feeling of newfound, expanded freedom arose among many, many people. Remembering his youth at the front many years later, Vasily Bykov wrote that during the war we “realized our strength and realized what we ourselves were capable of. We taught history and ourselves a great lesson in human dignity.”

The war subjugated everything; the people had no more important task than to defeat the invaders. And literature, with all the urgency and certainty, faced the tasks of depicting and promoting the war of liberation; they served them out of good will, out of internal need, honestly, sincerely, these tasks were not imposed from the outside - then they become destructive for creativity. For writers, the war against fascism was not material for books, but the fate of the people and their own. Their life then differed little from the life of their heroes. And they fulfilled this duty to the end.

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Lyudmila Nikolaevna, I will take advantage of your permission to supplement the material you presented. I would like to offer another option for viewing the problem of choice based on the text by M. Jafarli. I hope it will be useful to colleagues.
Since childhood, we are faced with the problem of choosing the right solution in a difficult life situation. As children, our parents help us do this, but as soon as we enter adulthood, we must make decisions ourselves. But how can you learn to make the right choice? Indeed, in some situations, the lives of other people may depend on our decision. How not to make mistakes and go astray? T. Jafarli will help us answer these questions.
It is the problem of life choice that he raises in the text.
Using an example from the life of a simple teacher, the author shows a situation in which people’s lives depend on their choice. Yuri Lelyukov covered a live grenade with himself during class, which was confused with a training one. He, without hesitation, gave his life in the name of saving children (“... he fulfilled his highest human duty to people - he sacrificed himself to save others!”)
Jafarli says that everyone has the right to choose. But the main thing is to use it correctly and not make a mistake after which you will blame yourself.
I completely share the author's position.
Indeed, no matter what decision we make, we are always responsible for our actions. Thus, in Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” Natasha Rostova makes a choice between true love and fleeting attraction. She chooses Anatoly Kuragin, with whom she decides to escape, but she is stopped in time. Soon Natasha will understand that she made the wrong choice, which changed both her life and the fate of Andrei Bolkonsky, who was able to forgive her only before his death.
There are situations in which a person faces the most difficult choice: to die but save people or vice versa. Let us remember the events of September 1, 2004. On this day, a school was seized in Beslan. The terrorists captured innocent children and were ready to kill them to achieve their goal. For three days these defenseless creatures died in agony without water or drink. The Russian group "Alpha" hastened to help Beslan. The fighters could not come to terms with the fact that the killers had encroached on the sacred. They understood that they were going to certain death, but they could not allow children who were not to blame for anything to die. The special forces did everything they could, but there were no casualties, although many were saved. The guys made the right choice - they saved the children, prevented their parents from losing the most valuable thing in life, but thereby orphaned their own.
Thus, we see that “every day, every hour, human endurance, ideological conviction, wisdom, and the ability to navigate the incredible hustle and bustle of the day are being tested.” We understand that not only our personal fate, but also the lives of other people may depend on our choice.
(Grade 10).

A moral choice, in my opinion, is a decision made by a person on what is the right thing to do in a given situation. It is based on the concept of GOOD and EVIL and is an indicator of a person’s moral and ethical attitudes: most people act as their conscience allows them. Moral choices, in my opinion, are life itself.

Any choice directs a person’s life in a certain direction, which he is able to change. The rulers of states cannot avoid moral choice, therefore the entire world history, all of humanity rests on the morality of the chosen ones. But personal moral choice is no less important: it characterizes the person himself, showing what kind of person he is - good or bad, friend or not... Examples of personal choice are present in the text of A. Aleksin and in one story that happened to me.

As the first argument confirming my point of view, I can cite several sentences from the story, which show Vanya Belov’s act. He took Senka Golubkin’s blame upon himself, appearing “in the midst” of a conversation with the director and saying that it was he who took six dictation notebooks (30-34). A normal act of a person who rescues a friend from trouble. Another thing is surprising: Senka “was not imbued with gratitude to Vanya Belov; on the contrary, it was from then on that he disliked him” (38). This is the moral choice of a person: one saves, the other hates. It all depends on the person and his character.

The second argument in favor of my opinion will be a short story about a recent story. It was a math lesson and my class was solving tests. Suddenly a whisper is heard: my friend asks me to let him write it off. I was faced with a choice: I’ll let you rewrite my answers - I’ll help at the moment, but I’ll ruin the study of all the material, because my friend will mindlessly copy it and won’t understand anything; I’ll refuse - I’ll offend him, but I’ll help him come to his senses. And I didn’t give you my notebook. It was my choice. The most amazing thing is that my friend understood me and was not offended.

I think, having given two arguments, I have proven my understanding of the words “moral choice”. Unfortunately, not all people make the right choice. You need to be careful and judicious when choosing your action in a given situation, then the world will become a much better place.

Text 11.1

(1) There are people who are painfully aware of other people’s successes. (2) This was Senya Golubkin. (3) Everywhere he saw the benefits and privileges that others had. (4) If someone got sick, Senka said: (5) “I see... (6) I decided to rest!” (7) If someone received an A for a homework essay, he would ask: (8) “What, did mommy and daddy work hard?”

(9) It seemed to him that any success came to people as if at his expense. (10) Envy, in which lies the source of many human weaknesses and vices, did not leave Senka alone...

(11) It was difficult to find people more different from each other than Vanya and Senka. (12) At that time Vanya still sympathized with him very much. (13) When Senya, confused and tense, wandered through the labyrinths of the famous quatrains, Vanya suffered. (14) And after the lesson, in which Golubkin received another bad mark, this brute pressed the short Vanya: he, it turns out, did not give instructions clearly and clearly enough.

(15) One day a “district” dictation was assigned, and Senya Golubkin was in a panic: a bad grade for that dictation threatened him with repeating the year.

(16) After the dictation, Senka ran along the corridor and asked his friends

classmates:

– (17) How do you spell “during”?

(18) They answered him.

– (19) There is one mistake! - he said and bent his finger. - (20) How did you write it yourself? (21) Right?

(22) If it turned out that it was correct, Senka whined:

- (23) Well, of course, I wrote it myself!

(24) After the “district” dictation, Senka did not have enough fingers on both

hands: he counted twelve mistakes. (25) Except for commas and dashes...

(26) During recess Vanya Belov came up to me and asked:

- (27) Well, Vera Matveevna, should Golubkin stay for a second year now?

– (28) I don’t know. (29) I haven’t checked it yet.

(30) When I sat down in the teacher’s room with my notebooks, it turned out that six papers from the stack had disappeared. (31) Among them were dictations by Senya Golubkin and Vanya.

(32) During the big break, the director and I stood in an empty classroom

to break through to Golubkin's conscience. (33) It was then, in the midst of our conversation, that Vanya Belov appeared and said:

- (34) I came to bring myself into the hands of justice!

(35) I didn’t believe that he pulled out the dictations, but the director agreed

with Vanya's version. (36) After lessons, six students whose work had disappeared rewrote the dictation. (37) Senya Golubkin received a C, because he had already discovered his mistakes during the break, and moved to the seventh grade.

(38) He was not filled with gratitude to Vanya Belov; on the contrary, it was

From then on I disliked him. (39) Golubkin did not forgive nobility, just as he did not forgive literacy to those who helped him find mistakes. (40) Vanya Belov understood this. (41) After Senka once again annoyed his savior about something, I casually said to Vanya:

- (42) Well... no good deed goes unpunished?

- (43) You never know what happens! - he answered. – (44) Is this why you shouldn’t trust everyone?

(According to A. Aleksin)*

*Aleksin Anatoly Georgievich (born in 1924) – writer, playwright. His works, such as “My Brother Plays the Clarinet”, “Characters and Performers”, “Third in the Fifth Row”, etc., tell about the world of youth.

What is moral choice?

A moral choice is, first of all, a choice between good and evil: loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred, mercy or indifference, conscience or dishonor, law or lawlessness... It is made by every person throughout his life, perhaps more than once.

Since childhood, we have been taught what is good and what is bad. Sometimes life presents us with a choice: to be sincere or hypocritical, to do good or bad deeds. And this choice depends on the person himself. I will prove this thesis by citing arguments from the text by V.K. Zheleznikov and analyzing my life experience.

As the first argument confirming my point of view, I will take a few sentences. Vitya congratulated his mother on the Eighth of March and also brought flowers to his neighbor, Lena Popova (15-17). The girl was glad for the attention, but in the class “everyone immediately began to whisper when they looked at Vitya,” and during recess they began to call her “groom” (21-31). He took out his resentment on the flowers he gave to his mother (33-37). Unfortunately, he was unable to choose correctly between the ability to remain himself and the inability to resist public opinion.

As a second argument to prove the thesis, I will give an example from the reader’s experience. In A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin,” the main character faces a moral choice: to refuse a duel with Lensky or not to refuse. On the one hand, there was the opinion of society, which would condemn him for refusal, and on the other, Lensky, a friend whose death was not necessary. Evgeniy made, in my opinion, the wrong choice: a person’s life is more important than public opinion.

Thus, I proved that we are constantly faced with moral choices, sometimes even in everyday things. And this choice must be correct so as not to regret it later.

Text 11.3

(1) In the morning, Vitya saw a huge bouquet of mimosa in a crystal vase on the table. (2) The flowers were as yellow and fresh as the first warm day!

“(3) Dad gave this to me,” said mom. - (4) After all, today is the Eighth of March.

(5) Indeed, today is the Eighth of March, and he completely forgot about it. (6) He immediately ran to his room, grabbed his briefcase, pulled out a postcard in which it was written: “Dear mom, I congratulate you on the Eighth of March and I promise to always obey you,” and solemnly handed it to my mother.

(7) And when he was already leaving for school, his mother suddenly suggested:

– (8) Take a few sprigs of mimosa and give it to Lena Popova.

(9) Lena Popova was his neighbor at his desk.

– (10) Why? – he asked gloomily.

- (11) And then, today is the Eighth of March, and I’m sure that all your boys will give something to the girls.

(12) He took three sprigs of mimosa and went to school.

(13) On the way, it seemed to him that everyone was looking at him. (14) But at the school itself he was lucky: he met Lena Popova. (15) Running up to her, he handed her a mimosa.

- (16) This is for you.

- (17) Me? (18) Oh, how beautiful! (19) Thank you very much, Vitya!

(20) She seemed ready to thank him for another hour, but he turned and ran away.

(21) And at the first break it turned out that none of the boys in their class gave anything to the girls. (22) None. (23) Only in front of Lena Popova lay tender branches of mimosa.

– (24) Where did you get the flowers? – asked the teacher.

“(25) Vitya gave this to me,” Lena said calmly. (26) Everyone immediately began to whisper, looking at Vitya, and Vitya lowered his head low.

(27) And at recess, when Vitya, as if nothing had happened, approached the guys, although he already felt bad, Valerka began to grimace, looking at him.

- (28) And here the groom has come! (29) Hello, young groom!

(30) The guys laughed. (31) And then high school students passed by,

and everyone looked at him and asked whose fiancé he was.

(32) Having barely made it to the end of the lessons, as soon as the bell rang, he rushed home as fast as he could, so that there, at home, he could vent his frustration and resentment.

(33) When his mother opened the door for him, he shouted:

- (34) It’s you, it’s your fault, it’s all because of you!

(35) Vitya ran into the room, grabbed mimosa branches and threw them on the floor.

- (36) I hate these flowers, I hate them!

(37) He began to trample the mimosa branches with his feet, and the yellow delicate flowers burst and died under the rough soles of his boots.

(38) And Lena Popova carried home three tender branches of mimosa in a wet cloth so that they would not wither. (39) She carried them in front of her, and it seemed to her that the sun was reflected in them, that they were so beautiful, so special... (According to V. Zheleznikov)*

*Zheleznikov Vladimir Karpovich (born in 1925) is a modern Russian children's writer, film playwright. His works, dedicated to the problems of growing up, have become classics of Russian children's literature and have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.