Characteristics of the hero
Many writers of the first half of the 19th century assigned a huge role to the theme of Russia in their work. Like no one else, they saw the gravity of the situation of the serfs and the ruthless tyranny of officials and landowners. Moral values fade into the background, and money and position in society come to the fore. Serfdom underlies state system Russia. People do not strive for the best, are not interested in sciences and art, and do not try to leave any spiritual heritage for their descendants. Their goal is wealth. In his quest for profit, a person will stop at nothing: he will steal, deceive, sell. All this cannot but worry thinking people who are not indifferent to the fate of Russia. And, of course, NVG could not ignore this. The meaning of the name "M's souls" is very symbolic. G spares no color, showing the reader the spiritual misery that threatens Russia. We can only laugh at what we cannot fix. A whole gallery of landowners passes before the reader as the plot of “The M-th Souls” progresses; the direction of this movement is very significant. Having begun the image of the landowners with the empty, idle dreamer and dreamer Manilov, G. completes this portrait gallery with “a terrible hole in humanity” - Plyushkin. Somewhere in the middle, not between them, is Nozdryov. There is something in him from Manilov’s crazy fantasies and something from Plyushkin’s greed. We first meet N in the city of NN and do not learn anything special about him, except that he is a card sharper. But on the way to Sobakevich’s estate, the roads of N-va and Ch-va intersect once again. And here G did not spare colors to describe the habits and character of this landowner. In my opinion, N is one of the most ridiculous characters in the poem. Everything about him is absurd: his funny manner of boasting, the obvious nonsense that he sometimes talks without thinking about the consequences, and much, much more. G calls him a broken guy, and he is. N lives for today and does not think about tomorrow: having won at cards, he exchanged all his winnings for all sorts of unnecessary things, which the next day were lost to another, more successful player. The author says that this was due to some kind of “restless nimbleness and liveliness of character.” This same glibness forced N to commit other rash acts, such as his excessive boasting. Everything that N has is the best, the most thoroughbred dogs, the most expensive horses, however, in fact, often the boasting does not even have a real basis. His domain ends in someone else's forest, but this does not stop N from calling it his own. This landowner constantly gets into all sorts of stories: either he will be removed from the assembly of the nobility, or he will participate in “inflicting a personal insult on the landowner Maximov with rods while drunk.” There is one more trait N that deserves special attention: he loved to spoil people he knew, and the closer he knew the person, the more the landowner bullied him. He upset weddings and trade deals, never considered his pranks to be offensive, and was often surprised to learn about the offense of an acquaintance. Despite the fact that the work contains a fair amount of humor, “M d” can be called “laughter through tears.” What awaits Russia: a complete loss of spirituality or a complete inability to take serious actions? This question torments the author. People have changed little, so “Md” is a warning for us too.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a very bilious person and drew images for his characters in the poem “Dead Souls” from his friends, acquaintances and acquaintances. Fortunately, the society at that time was small and almost everyone knew each other.
So Nozdryov was depicted by Gogol with two very famous people. The appearance and image are from Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, yes, our great poet, and the character is from the legendary, but half-forgotten Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy.
An American (a relative of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy), a desperate fidget, a duelist, a gambler and an adventurer. He traveled with Kruzenshtern and Rezanov to America, managed to get everyone to quarrel and even wanted to seize ships and pirate, was landed on the Aleutian Islands, managed to get out of there, and reached St. Petersburg on foot from Kamchatka. He fought in several wars and the War of 1812, was demoted to the ranks of soldiers twice, but retired as a colonel, killed eleven people in duels, and so on and so forth.
Fyodor Tolstoy was close in character to Pushkin; they were friends and probably joked and teased the withdrawn Gogol. It was with Nozdryov that he took it out on them.
Nozdryov's age in the poem is 35 years. He is young, healthy and very energetic:
“He was of average height, a very well-built fellow with full rosy cheeks, teeth white as snow and jet-black sideburns. He was as fresh as blood and milk; health seemed to be dripping from his face. .."
Gogol pays special attention to his sideburns:
“...his thick and very good sideburns...” - which, however, often thinned out after Nozdryov was beaten for them for his next prank.
Nozdryov’s irrepressible energy makes him lie, cheat, bully everyone around him:
“Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting where he was present was complete without a story. Some story would certainly happen: either the gendarmes would lead him out of the hall by the arm, or his own friends would be forced to push him out.”
He is incorrigibly gambling - cards, checkers, bets, anything to compete and argue. Nozdryov is always on first name terms with people, he always sticks to his friend, his best comrade. But he can’t resist doing something mean to his friend:
“There are people who have a passion to spoil their neighbors, sometimes for no reason at all... Nozdryov had the same strange passion.”
At the same time, he is not malicious, not vindictive: he lies, and puts up, and acts meanly from the bottom of his heart.
"...what can happen only in Rus' alone, after a while he already met again with those friends who were pestering him, and met as if nothing had happened.."
It is clear from everything that Gogol was sharply disliked this type of people. Nikolai Vasilyevich expressed his attitude towards Nozdryov in the words of coachman Chichikov:
“What a nasty master!” Selifan thought to himself. “I have never seen such a master. I mean, I should spit on him for that!”
On the one hand, the hero of the poem “Dead Souls” Nozdryov appears in the work as a lively, active and restless person, but on the other hand, he can be called a “dead soul”.
The life of this landowner is absolutely soulless. Gogol conveys this through the image of Nozdrev’s estate, his office, where “there were no noticeable traces of what happens in offices, that is, books or paper; only a saber and two guns were hanging." The hero's economy is completely destroyed. Even lunch consists of dishes that are burnt, or, on the contrary, not cooked.
Nozdryov does not develop internally, does not change depending on age: “at thirty-five he was exactly the same as he was at eighteen and twenty: a lover of a walk.”
This landowner is a “dashing reveler”: “his sensitive nose heard him several dozen miles away, where there was a fair with all sorts of conventions and balls.” He also had a “passion for cards,” and he played cards not entirely sinlessly and purely.
Nozdryov loves to lie, sometimes unnecessarily, to boast and exaggerate. Because of his character, he constantly finds himself in some kind of situation or story, for which Gogol ironically calls him “a historical person.”
This hero can easily betray a person, has a passion for “to spoil his neighbor,” and if chance brings him again to meet the person he offended, he will not consider him at all his enemy; on the contrary, he will again treat him differently. friendly. An example of this is how the hero treated Chichikov: it was Nozdryov who spilled the secret about buying dead shower. But after what happened, the landowner continues to consider Chichikov a comrade and even says to him: “You’re such a scoundrel, you’ll never come to see me.”
Thus, the main character traits of the hero become: lack of spirituality, lack of internal development, frivolity, and the ability to betray. His image is one of the universal human types, and Gogol writes that he “will not be out of the world for a long time.”
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Updated: 2016-07-04
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The image of N. represents the type of broken fellow, a reveler, for N. every time ends up in history: either he is taken out of the hall by the gendarmes, or pushed out by his own friends, or he gets drunk in the buffet. N. is also keen on the female sex, he is not averse to taking advantage of strawberries (he is a regular at provincial theaters and a fan of actresses, his children are raised by a pretty nanny). N.'s main passion is to spoil his neighbor: N. spread tall tales, upset the wedding, but still considered himself a friend of the one to whom he spoiled. N.'s passion is universal and does not depend on rank or weight in society. According to Gogol, like N., a man with a noble appearance, with a star on his chest, craps (And he craps like a simple college registrar). The surname N. is a metonymy of the nose (an absurd double separation occurs: the nostrils from the nose, the nose from the body). N.'s portrait is also built on the metonymy of the face and is consistent with his metonymic surname: he sometimes returned home with only his sideburns, and then rather thin. But his healthy and full cheeks were so well created and contained so much plant power that his sideburns soon grew back, even better than before. Things around N. are identical to his boastful and gambling nature. On the one hand, they illustrate N.'s chaotic nature, on the other, his gigantic claims and passion for exaggeration. Everything in N.’s house is splattered with paint: the men are whitewashing the walls. N. shows Chichikov and Mizhuev the stables, where the stalls are mostly empty; a pond where previously, according to N., there was a fish of such size that two people could hardly pull it out; a kennel with thick-dog and pure-dog dogs, which inspired amazement at the strength of the black meats; the field where N. caught a brown hare by its hind legs. N.'s office reflects his warlike spirit: instead of books, sabers, guns, and Turkish daggers hang on the walls, on one of which was mistakenly carved: Master Savely Sibiryakov (Gogol's alogism emphasizes the absurdity of N.'s lies). Even the fleas in N.'s house, which bit Chichikov all night, are, like N., fast insects. N.'s energetic, active spirit, in contrast to Manilov's idleness, is nevertheless devoid of internal content, absurd and ultimately just as dead. N. changes everything: guns, dogs, horses, a barrel organ, not for the sake of profit, but for the sake of the process itself. For four days, without leaving the house, N. picks up a marked deck that one could rely on as a faithful friend. N. is a sharper, he drugs Chichikov with Madeira and mountain ash with the smell of fusel, in order to beat him at cards. While playing checkers with Chichikov, N. manages to push the checkers into kings with the cuff of his robe sleeve. If Manilov cares about delicate details, Sobakevich about the whole, then N. neglects both. N.’s food expresses his reckless spirit: some things were burnt, some were not cooked at all. It is clear that the cook was guided by some kind of inspiration and put in the first thing that came to hand lt; ...gt; pepper cabbage, stuffed milk, ham, peas in a word, roll and roll, it would be hot, but some kind of taste would probably come out. N. is impulsive and angry. In a drunken state, N. flogs the landowner Maksimov with rods and is going to beat Chichikov with the help of stalwart servants. N. is capable of praising and scolding at the same time, without mincing words: I bet you’re lying! , because you are a big scammer lt; ...gt; If I were your boss, I would hang you on the first tree (about Chichikov); it’s just a Jewish person (about Sobakevich). N. the initiator of the scandal around dead souls, he was the first to reveal Chichikov’s secret at the governor’s ball, after which in the middle of the cotillion he sat down on the floor and began to grab the dancers’ skirts. N., in a conversation with officials, confirmed that Chichikov was a spy, had been a fiscal officer even at school, that he was printing fake banknotes and that a guard was posted at his house for the night, but Chichikov changed all the banknotes for real ones in one night, that he, N., helped Chichikov kidnap the governor’s daughter, etc.