The Stone Cross

The Stone Cross is an epic psychological novel written in 1900 by Ukrainian writer Vasyl Stefanyk. The story is dedicated to the farewell of emigrant peasants to their native land before leaving for Canada at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, after leaving the homeland of old Ivan Didukh. The author reveals the depressing feelings of the emigrant at the moment of his break with his native village and a piece of land, in the cultivation of which he invested all his life and must leave. Genre specifics According to genre features, The Stone Cross is a short story. However, by analogy with many other works of the writer, it is called a novel. The author himself called his work a studio, i.e., an artistic study of the inner world of the protagonist. "The Stone Cross," in this case, is a study of the soul of a Ukrainian peasant worker, whose social circumstances force him to break the age-old connection with the soil where he grew up. The author emphasizes the diligence and virtue of the hero over other aspects of life. The desire to leave a memory - to put a stone cross on the hill - has a deep psychological connotation. Ivan Didukh puts a cross on his blood-soaked field and buries himself alive. However, he wants to live in the memory of his descendants, and he wants this cross to connect him to his native village both when he is far away in a foreign land and when he is not alive. The work raises the problem of eternal connection with the native land; conscientious work on the land as a manifestation of national ethics and morality, as a duty, the only means and justification of the existence of the peasant; mass impoverishment of peasants, which caused a wave of emigration overseas.