Tactlessness in literary works. Arguments for writing the Unified State Examination

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The problem of thoughtless use of words and tactlessness in relation to others

Essay sample

A talented poetess once remarked:

Be careful with your words
They both wound and execute,
Sometimes they are like stones in the soul,
Uncleaned by anyone, they lie.

One cannot but agree with this idea. A word can bring a person untold joy, and sometimes plunge him into terrible despair. The text by S. Lvov is dedicated to this topic. His main problem is the problem of thoughtless handling of words and, as a consequence, the problem of tactlessness in relations with one’s neighbor.

This problem is very relevant for our modern life. How often do we encounter this kind of tactlessness in various magazine and newspaper articles, and in publications on the Internet.

S. Lvov is very concerned about this careless handling of words. He gives an example of a situation from his life. The famous writer forever offended the boy by calling him a “tongued fat man” in his article. And the girl writer ended up in the hospital after receiving a harsh review of her work. “Be careful with your words! It can seriously hurt!” - the author calls in the finale.

S. Lvov's text is very figurative and emotional. The author uses a variety of means of artistic expression: epithet (“a big-tongued fat man”), metaphor (“to pull her out of the abyss of despair”), gradation (“a pathetic, weak, uninteresting person”).

I completely share the author's point of view. We need to be careful when using words, because we can not only offend others, but also be misunderstood by them. Our words can be misinterpreted. Remember the famous lines of F.I. Tyutcheva:

We can't predict
How our word will respond,
And we are given sympathy,
How grace is given to us.

And it’s as if our young poetess A. Nebutova continues Tyutchev’s thought in the poem “Be careful with words.” She says here that “a word can kill a person.” How sometimes we regret the words that escaped us involuntarily and caused pain to another person!

L.N. thought the same. Tolstoy, who wrote: “The word is a great thing. Great because with a word you can unite people, with a word you can separate them, with a word you can serve love, but with a word you can serve enmity and hatred. Beware of such a word that divides people.”

Thus, let us be attentive and careful in handling the word, let us be careful in dealing with our loved ones, friends, and people around us.

Text for an essay on the topic of thoughtless use of words, tactlessness

Wounds from words are caused not only by rudeness, but often by thoughtless handling of words. I myself suffered from this once in my life. As a child, I was fat and remained that way. As an adult, I can easily bear this, but when I was a schoolboy, I was teased, and I suffered terribly. It took a lot of endurance and the ability to stand up for oneself to stop teasing. And so he invited us, a group of schoolchildren, to the editorial office of a large newspaper famous writer. They gave us tea and treated us to cakes. The writer talked to us about school. I was getting ready to write an essay. I answered his questions too. The essay appeared. I unfolded the newspaper and felt cold: he, indicating my first and last name and school, called me in the essay “the tongue-tied fat man Seryozha!” Is there much joy in the fact that he praised my answers? He made me famous all over the country as a big-tongued fat man! It was said aptly, no matter how much I fought back, nothing helped, this new nickname stuck to me for a long time. There was only one answer: “That’s what they published in the newspaper!” So that’s how it is.”

Many years later. We met with this writer at a holiday home. We talked and I asked him:

Do you know what grief you once caused me?

He was terribly surprised.

I told him this story. He said:

Forgot: Excuse me!

An adult, I excused him, but as a boy I hated him. Children are especially sensitive to words, especially vulnerable. Parents, teachers, journalists writing about children, doctors, do not forget about this.

This happened in one family. A daughter, a fifth-grade schoolgirl, who had recently suffered a serious long-term illness, returned home one day pale and said:

I won't go to this school again.

She didn't explain anything. All you could see was that she was immensely shocked.

Better to die than to go to this school.

The parents decided to transfer the girl to a nearby school. And only years later she told what the matter was. During a medical examination in the presence of her friends, the school doctor exclaimed sympathetically:

You can't live with such a heart!

Her friends bombarded the girl with questions. She dressed silently and silently left the school. I left, never to return there again. She didn’t say anything to anyone, so as not to upset anyone close to her. She believed her elders and thought that she was living in her last weeks.

This wound was inflicted with a word not by anger, not by rudeness, but by stupidity and ignorance.

The weaver girl stuttered badly from childhood and suffered greatly from it. Her life was not easy. She described her story in a story where she portrayed herself under a different name. She had a naive dream: the story would be published, people would read it, recognize her in the heroine and understand how unfair they were to her. And her life will change. She sent the story to a literary consultation. The employee who read the manuscript was apparently in a hurry, or perhaps did not know his job well. Only he did not notice that the cover letter said: the story is autobiographical. And he wrote to the author: you brought out a pathetic, weak, uninteresting person as the main character.

It seemed to him that he was writing a review of a story, but he wrote a review about the life of a girl who already considered herself useless to anyone. His cruel response - not out of ill will, but out of inattention and mental dullness - put the girl in the hospital for a long time. And when my editorial comrades and I set out to pull her out of the abyss of despair, it turned out to be not easy!

Be careful with your words! It can seriously hurt!

1. Let us remember the story by A.S. Pushkin " Captain's daughter". Grinev, in love with Masha Mironova, wrote a poem and read it to Shvabrin so that he would appreciate the work. Grinev expected praise, but Shvabrin said that the poems were not good. Taking a notebook, he analyzed every word, ridiculing the poem.

2. M.A. Bulgakov " dog's heart"The chairman of the house committee, Shvonder, trying to express himself in florid, weighty phrases, constructs incorrect, meaningless sentences, which is why Professor Preobrazhensky cannot understand him. Entering the professor's house, neither he nor his companions took off their hats, and with their dirty shoes they stained clean ones carpets.

Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov is also uncultured in Bulgakov’s story.

His speech is replete with colloquial and rude words, and he always looks unkempt: his clothes are torn, dirty and tasteless. The appearance of this hero deprives all the people around him of peace. Sharikov spends his days swearing and playing the balalaika, coming into the house drunk and bringing strangers with him.

3. From the memoirs of V.P. Astafiev. In a sanatorium, during a classical music concert, spectators left the hall, loudly slamming their chair covers and insulting the musicians.

Updated: 2017-07-23

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Even a sensitive and sympathetic person can react tactlessly to someone else’s misfortune. Sometimes the words of encouragement hurt, although he himself does not want it. Why is this happening? How to avoid this?

I wanted to calm you down, but I offended you

A person who has fallen into depression is urged to immediately pull himself together. A woman who has lost a child is reassured by the fact that she will be able to give birth to another. A teenager suffering from bullying by peers is accused of weakness of character and lack of will. In such cases, people try to help a friend (relative) who has had to face problems in their life, but do not notice that they are behaving tactlessly. Juliana Brains, a social psychologist, knows why this happens. The thing is that a sympathizer cannot always appreciate the scale of the victim’s experiences or simply ignores them.

For example, Sheryl Sandberg, a member of the board of directors of Facebook, recently lost her husband. 30 days after the tragedy, the woman published in the same social network a post dedicated to the end of shloshim (Jewish funeral tradition). Sheryl Sandberg was deeply hurt by a friend's simple comment that everything would be fine.

In fact, a sincerely sympathetic person recognizes that such a situation can never be favorable, because the bereaved will grieve the loss all his life. Tactlessness can manifest itself in the fact that a “sympathetic” person tries to place responsibility for what happened on the victim of circumstances.

Reasons for tactlessness

Many people are interested in why people don’t know how to behave tactfully when trouble happens to their friend, friend or relative. The reason for this behavior is often explained by the fact that the sympathizer has not had to deal with the problem that the victim is experiencing. For example, a person enjoying a harmonious relationship with a partner will not be able to share the mental pain of someone abandoned or deceived.

Those who have successfully overcome a similar situation in their lives cannot sincerely sympathize with a grieving friend or relative.

Empathy forces a sympathetic person to take on part of the pain that the “victim” of the current circumstances experiences. There are people who deliberately do not delve into the problems of the victim, because they are trying to protect themselves from mental suffering. Their indifference insults those who need support.

Many people prefer to immediately give advice to the sufferer, but often the latter requires basic psychological support. A person experiencing grief, in the first time after the incident, will consider the distribution of advice to be the height of tactlessness and callousness.

No one is immune from troubles. Trouble can also happen to someone whom everyone knows as a strong and independent person. It is difficult for people observing such a situation to come to terms with the fact that the one who should show fortitude suffers from grief. That is why they try to abstract themselves from it.

Banal confusion can result in tactlessness. For example, a person simply cannot find words of consolation, so he tells the sufferer “don’t worry about it” or “everything will be fine.” However, such platitudes hurt even more a person facing difficulties in his life.

It turns out how difficult it is to answer such a simple question! Dictionaries Ushakova, Ozhegova and Shvedova interpret tactlessness as a property devoid of sensitivity or a sense of decency. The ancient Greek scientist Theophrastus states that “Tactlessness is the inability to choose the right moment, causing trouble to the people with whom you communicate...”. Every living person has encountered a similar phenomenon at least once.
We can, without thinking about offending a person, hurt him, offend him completely in vain.

We give useless advice without asking whether they need it. And we do all this with good intentions, but, nevertheless, this is tactlessness towards others.
Tact, delicacy, nobility must be constantly cultivated in ourselves. For example, one of your classmates read someone else's note. At first glance - a trifle? More likely - tactlessness. Some people have a habit of slamming the door, so hard that the glass rattles, so that those around them flinch. In the proposed passage, sentences 25-30 provide more vivid examples. Boys from their classmates rudely ridicule their friend who gave the girl flowers. High school students passing by also unceremoniously intervene in the conversation. Ridicule and ridicule of good intentions lead the hero to the fact that he himself commits a similar act (sentence 34-37) and thereby offends his mother. In this case, any definition is suitable - lack of education, tactlessness, rudeness. Of course, it is impossible to approve or reconcile with tactlessness, no matter how it manifests itself.

I believe that the ability to behave, to know what to do in certain circumstances, should be inherent in every person. And this should already be instilled in the family and school. Remember, A.P. Chekhov said: “...Good education is not that you don’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you don’t notice if someone else does it.”

Source text for working on the essay:

(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) He 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 and 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.