Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/305

 robbed of energy and will; and conditions always conspire to thrust them back into the depths. When Natasha and Vaska are about to start out. on the road to a new life, fate overtakes them. The girl, during a scene with her heartless sister, is terribly scalded by the latter, and Vaska, rushing to the defense of his sweetheart, encounters her brutal brother-in-law, whom he accidentally kills. Thus these " superfluous ones " go down in the struggle. Not because of their vicious or degrading tendencies; on the contrary, it is their better instincts that cause them to be swept back. into the abyss. But though they perish, the inspiration of Luka is not entirely lost. It is epitomized in the words of one of the victims.

Sahtin.. The old man—he lived from within. He saw everything with his own eyes. . . I asked him once: "Grandfather, why do men really live? "Man lives ever to give birth to strength. There live, for example, the carpenters, noisy, miserable, people. . and suddenly in their midst is a carpenter born. . such all a carpenter as the world has never seen: he is above no other carpenter can be compared to him. He gives a new face to the whole trade. . . his own face, so to speak. . . and with that simple impulse it has advanced twenty years. . . and so the others live. . . the locksmiths and the shoemakers, and all the rest of the working people. . . and the same is true of other classes—all to give birth to strength. Everyone thinks that he for himself takes up room in the world, but it turns out that