The Mother by Maxim Gorky
T he Mother by Maxim Gorky was my first novel. I think I read it during Class VII vacations. I remember very little of what I read then: A meek mother who committed herself for the cause espoused by her only son. The son and his other factory worker friends were fighting injustice. My sympathies were completely with the mother and son. In the end, the mother is waylaid. Her anguished portrait in which she is seen distributing pamphlets in a crowd was my final impression from the book. When I read the book again this week, I knew a little more. The story has the Russian revolution of 1905 as its backdrop. The workers' lot had remained unchanged generation after generation. The workers broke under the burden of labour and gross exploitation. In the evenings, they would get drunk at the tavern and get into a brawl with one another. Women were in much more pitiable condition, living in the constant terror of being beaten up by the...