Résumé
Résumé de Les Sept Frères
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love earthy comic novels, family stories and tales about outsiders, and anyone curious about Finland and its literature.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Seven Brothers is the first great novel written in the Finnish language. Aleksis Kivi began publishing it in parts in 1870, when Finland was a poor, mostly rural land under Russian rule, and when most educated people still wrote in Swedish. Kivi wrote about the people nobody wrote about: farm boys, loud, hungry, proud and badly schooled. He died in 1872, poor and ill, before he saw the book treated as the foundation of Finnish literature.
The story follows seven orphaned brothers on the Jukola farm in the south of Finland. They are strong, quarrelsome and funny, and they hate the one thing the village demands of them, which is learning to read. Reading is required before the church will let them be confirmed and treat them as full adults. They fight their neighbours, face the law, and finally walk off into the forest to make a life of their own.
This summary gives you the substance of the whole book: who the brothers are, what they want, how their troubles grow, and what Kivi is really saying about freedom, work, faith and belonging. It does not give away the ending. Let us begin with the farm where it all starts, and with the brothers who own it.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Seven brothers own a wild farmFree
- 2Reading is the thing they refuse
- 3Fists answer every insult
- 4The forest calls them away
- 5Work, fire and sauna at Impivaara
- 6Beasts, hunts and nights of fear
- 7Freedom and belonging pull against each other
- 8A family of seven clashing temperaments
- 9How Kivi tells it: humour, song and a new language
Point clé 1 sur 9
Seven brothers own a wild farm
The story opens at Jukola, a farm in the Hame region of southern Finland. The brothers live there with no parents left to command them. They are Juhani, Tuomas, Aapo, Simeoni, Timo, Lauri and Eero, listed from the eldest to the youngest. Kivi makes each one a person you can tell apart within a few pages.
Juhani is the eldest and the loudest. He is quick to anger, quick to laugh, and always ready to boast of what he can do with his fists. Tuomas is the stubborn one, a big man who digs in his heels and cannot be moved by talk. Aapo is the thoughtful brother, calm and clever, the one who most often tries to hold the others together when a quarrel is brewing.
Simeoni is a dreamer with a shaky sense of what is real, and he likes a drink when it is offered. Timo is gentle and simple, and the others tease him for it. Lauri loves the woods and the quiet, and often slips away from the noise of his brothers. Eero is the youngest, sharp and quick, and in time he shows the most skill with words and the most patience with books.
These seven are the heirs of a good farm, with fields, forest and buildings. But they are not farmers in the careful way of their neighbours. They are more at ease hunting, wrestling and sleeping late than doing the steady chores that a farm needs. From the start you feel that the whole village is watching them, half amused and half afraid.
Kivi gives you the house, the yard, the smoky cabin and the rough humour of the brothers' talk. The reader learns early that this is a family held together by loyalty and by habit, not by any plan. That bond is what the rest of the book tests.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Les Sept Frères
What is Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi about?
It is about seven orphaned brothers on the Jukola farm in southern Finland. They refuse to learn to read, fight with neighbours and the law, and retreat to the forest, where they build a life of their own.
Who are the seven brothers in Seven Brothers?
They are Juhani, Tuomas, Aapo, Simeoni, Timo, Lauri and Eero, from eldest to youngest. Juhani is the loudest, Aapo the peacemaker, and Eero the sharpest and most able with words.
When was Seven Brothers written and is it a true story?
Kivi began publishing it in parts in 1870, and it appeared as a book after his death in 1872. It is fiction, but it draws on real rural life in nineteenth-century Finland.
Why is Seven Brothers important in Finland?
It is the first major novel in Finnish, written when Swedish was the language of the educated. It gave Finnish a literary voice, and Kivi is honoured as the national writer of Finland.
Is Seven Brothers hard to read?
It is not hard to follow. The story is loose, funny and episodic.