<b>3.5</b> 
<i>"There's a girl sitting out there in the kitchen reading a book and crying. Really crying. [...]I says to her: 'What is it, dearie?' and she says: 'The poor man!' And I says: 'What man?' 'Here in the book,' she says."(p.124)</i> 

Being incredibly transparent, I think I would have liked my reading experience a lot better in a different translation. The translation I read was very serviceable, but I get the sense in reading other reviews of this play that it strays pretty far from Gorky's original style. 

That being said, thematically, even in a wonky translation, 'The Lower Depths' has a lot to say, and seems to have stood the test of time on the grounds of both its subject matter and its driving philosophical musing. 

Plot-wise, we're following a short period in the lives of a group of society's outcasts and bear witness to the squalor in which they live and the bleakness of any prospect that things will or even can get better for them. 

Thematically, the central question is the role of hope/optimism in the face of such dire, systemic poverty. Can you escapism your way out of misery? 

In some manner or other, each of the characters explore possible avenues of escape, either literal (as in, impractical dreams of moving to Siberia) or figurative (reading romantic novels). Alcoholics dream of a healthier life of sobriety, and a dying woman wonders whether her impending death is something to dread or celebrate. 

Then arrives Luka, an aging pilgrim who fosters the escapism everyone else is engaging in. He reassures the dying woman, Anna, that the afterlife will be sweet and without suffering, he encourages the alcoholic actor to consider going to a (for all intents and purposes) rehab facility that may or may not exist. 

And with his encouragement of this type of escapism he also brings a call for kindness:
<i>"Somebody has to be kind in this world. You've got to have sympathy for people. Christ loved everybody, and told us to do the same. And I can tell you truly that many a time you can save a person by pitying him."</i> He goes on to tell a story of two thieves he catches trying to break into his home. First, he punishes them by having them beat each other with switches under threat of death. But then he takes pity on them when they beg for food, and the three of them pass a pleasant winter together with the two would-be thieves helping him look after the property. "If I hadn't taken pity on them, now, they might have killed me or done something else just as bad, and that would have meant a trial, and jail, and Siberia. What for? A jail can't teach a person what's right [...] but a man-- he can teach a person what's right, and very easy at that."</i> 

This is where the moral and the philosophy get a bit murky. Because, though Luka is a champion of both hope and compassion, only one of those things could possibly create a material difference in any of these people's lives, and it isn't the one that's internal (hope). But it is complicated. Because what about the case of Anna? No amount of compassion could have prevented her death (though it may have extended her life and the quality of life, which isn't nothing). What, then, was the harm in her comforting fantasies of a perfect afterlife? 

Another character proclaims that the uncomfortable truth is always more valuable than the comforting lie, but in a system where virtually none of these people had the opportunity to raise their quality life in a society with no social safety net, a society not built on compassion, what else did they have but to retreat into fantasy? Is the truth then not an unnecessary cruelty? 

But, then, on the other hand, if a person languors in the comforting lie, in the escapism, then they are unlikely ever to rise up and push for systemic improvement. But, then, on the other, other hand, is it the responsibility of a society's most downtrodden to lift themselves up by means of revolution? 

Gorky leaves us with these and many other questions as the curtain falls on the final act, three of the main characters now dead by accidental killing, by disease, and by suicide. Are they the lucky ones? he invites us to consider. 

The most striking thing about 'The Lower Depths' is how sadly relevant it feels 100 years after its publication. The current addiction and homelessness crises come easily to mind. Refugees have a place in this modern cast. Sex workers, particularly those with identities that intersect with other marginalized identities have their place. 

I look around at my unhoused neighbors, curled up in dirty jackets and blankets under stoops and shop awnings that offer the barest protection from the elements. How can I possibly blame them for choosing the comforting lie over harsh reality when our modern society despises them just as much as Gorky's did? How can I expect a person to give up on whatever form of escapism they have chosen when just as in the case of Gorky's character of Kleshch (the only one to have a job when the play begins), work as it exists below a certain rung of the social ladder doesn't guarantee that you won't end up shoulder to shoulder with a drug addict or alcoholic or consumptive person anyway? 

The bleakness of 'The Lower Depths' is, to me, the rage of Caliban at seeing his own face in the mirror. The question of whether or not the downtrodden (as in, those that are figuratively trodden into the ground by those who make the rules and those who uphold them) should abandon the lies that bring them a spark of comfort or hope is a smokescreen. Why are we focussing on that when the actual solution to abject suffering under poverty is a society operating under a system built on collective compassion rather than punishment and callous individualism?