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Chichikov is a hero of his time. Essay based on N. Gogol’s story “Dead Souls”

Every time has its own heroes. They determine his face, character, principles, ethical guidelines. With the advent of "Dead Souls" entered Russian literature new hero, unlike its predecessors. The elusive, slippery feeling is felt in the description of his appearance. “In the chaise sat a gentleman, not handsome, but not bad-looking either, not too fat, not too thin; It’s impossible to say that he’s old, but it’s also not that he’s too young...” It’s even difficult for Gogol to determine his position, to give a name to this new phenomenon. In the end, the word was found: “It is most fair to call him: owner, acquirer.” This is a representative of the new, bourgeois relations that are taking shape in Russian life.

Chichikov grew up, although in a noble, but poor family, in a house with small windows that were not opened either in winter or in flight. Poverty, humiliation, and loneliness gradually convinced Pavlusha that there was only one way to establish herself in life - money. For the rest of his life he remembered his father’s will: “You will do everything and you will lose everything with a penny.”

Having experienced failures in the service, Chichikov poses a fair question to himself: “Why me? Why did trouble befall me?... and why should I disappear like a worm? “Chichikov does not want to “disappear” and is looking for ways to adapt to a new life. The method of enrichment he invented can be called an adventure, a scam. But time itself told him: the disorder in the country, the difficult situation of the peasants. “And now the time is convenient, recently there was an epidemic, quite a few people died out, thank God. The landowners played cards, wrapped themselves up and squandered their money; “everyone has come to serve in St. Petersburg: names have been abandoned, they are managed haphazardly, taxes are becoming more difficult to pay every year.” The goods that Chichikov buys are, even today, unusual for either the ear or the mind - dead souls. But no matter how scary the unusualness of the scam offered to the landowners may be, its obvious benefits blinds one to the fact that in most cases Chichikov manages to persuade the landowners to sell him “dead souls”.

And in addition, Chichikov possesses many qualities of a man of the “new time”, a “businessman”, a “speculator”: pleasantness in behavior and concessions, and liveliness in business affairs - “everything turned out to be necessary for this world.” There was only one thing missing from the clever entrepreneur - alive human soul. Chichikov expelled all living compulsions from his life. Human feelings, the “brilliant joy” of life gave way to practicality, ideas of success, and calculation. At the end of the first volume, Chichikov did not achieve his goal. He not only experienced commercial failures, but also suffered a moral loss. But in the life of our hero there have already been defeats, and they did not force Chichikov to give up his dream of life “in all comforts, with all prosperity.” And it seems to me that he will realize it someday. After all, he has no other dreams and goals. And failure will make him more experienced and cunning. Or isn’t that why Chichikov smiles because he’s racing miles away in a troika?

Why can each of the landowners be called a “Dead Soul” Gogol. Write it yourself, or leave a link))) Thank you in advance) and received the best answer

Answer from Liudmila Sharukhia[guru]
Before the reader passes a gallery of living but soulless heroes, people with dead soul. These are the landowners Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, and officials provincial town N, and serfs. This is the swindler Chichikov, who carries out his brilliant scam on the pages of the work.
In his poem, Gogol gives a detailed portrait of landowner Russia. His work can be called an encyclopedia of Russian landowners, he worked out their types and characters in such detail.
Chichikov begins his journey with a visit to the landowner Manilov. This hero is sweetly pleasant, he is gentle and affectionate with his guest and can give a false impression even before dead soul. But Gogol emphasizes the emptiness and insignificance of Manilov. Having caught on to any topic, Manilov’s thoughts float into the distance, into abstract thoughts. think about real life, and even more so, this hero is not capable of making any decisions. Everything in this character's life has been replaced by refined formulas. Manilov's world is a world of false idyll, the path to death.
The inner world of Nastasya Petrovna Korobochka is empty and shallow. The callousness of this landowner is reflected in her pettiness. The only thing that worries Korobochka is the price of hemp and honey. All she can remember about her late husband is that he loved to have a girl scratch his heels. This especially manifests her isolation from people, complete indifference and dullness.
The third landowner from whom Chichikov is trying to buy dead souls is Nozdryov. This is a dashing 35-year-old “talker, carouser, reckless driver.” Nozdryov lies continuously and bullies everyone indiscriminately. He is very passionate, ready to “take a shit” best friend without any purpose. Nozdryov’s entire behavior is explained by his dominant quality: “nimbleness and liveliness of character.” This landowner does not think or plan anything, he simply does not know the limits in anything.
Mikhailo Semenych Sobakevich – the fourth “seller” dead souls. The very name and appearance of this hero (reminiscent of a “medium-sized bear”, his tailcoat is of a “completely bearish” color, he steps at random, his complexion is “red-hot, hot”) indicate the power of his nature.
Sobakevich is a type of Russian kulak, a strong, calculating owner. Talking with Chichikov, he busily moves on to the essence of the question: “Do you need dead souls? “The main thing for Sobakevich is the price; everything else doesn’t interest him. He bargains competently, praises his goods (all souls are “like a vigorous nut”) and even manages to deceive Chichikov (slips him “ female soul" – Elizaveta Sparrow). Stepan Plyushkin personifies the complete death of the human soul. It seems to me that in the image of Plyushkin the author shows the death of a bright and strong personality, consumed by the passion of stinginess.

Reply from Merry<3 [newbie]
essay-reasoning: “What is common between Manilov and Nozdryov”?

Reply from Lena Kuzmina[active]
From the poem “Dead Souls” it is clear that not a single landowner even thinks about the spiritual. As Sobakevich put it, there is only one decent person in the city, and even that one is a pig.

Why are there no positive heroes in the first volume of Dead Souls? How can one determine the essence of the metaphysical process occurring with the heroes of the poem? (correlate the answer with the title of the poem). Who, from Gogol’s point of view, is responsible for the process of impoverishment and death of the Russian people: the state, the social system, the authorities, the nobility, the people?

The images of the author's contemporary landowners are most widely represented on the pages of the poem. These are the “dead souls” of the poem. Gogol showed them in order of increasing moral degradation.

In Korobochka, Gogol presents us with a different type of Russian landowner. Thrifty, hospitable, hospitable, she suddenly becomes “club-headed” in the scene of selling dead souls, afraid of selling herself short. This is the type of person with his own mind.

In Nozdryov, Gogol showed a different form of decomposition of the nobility. The writer shows us two essences of Nozdryov: first he is an open, daring, straight face. But then you have to make sure that Nozdryov’s sociability is an indifferent familiarity with everyone he meets and crosses, his liveliness is an inability to concentrate on any serious subject or matter, his energy is a waste of energy in revelries and debauchery. His main passion, in the words of the writer himself, is “to spoil your neighbor, sometimes for no reason at all.”

Sobakevich is akin to Korobochka. He, like her, is a hoarder. Only, unlike Korobochka, he is a smart and cunning hoarder. He manages to deceive Chichikov himself. Sobakevich is rude, cynical, uncouth; No wonder he is compared to an animal (a bear). By this Gogol emphasizes the degree of savagery of man, the degree of death of his soul.

This gallery of “dead souls” ends with a “hole in humanity” - Plyushkin. This is the eternal image of the stingy in classical literature. Plyushkin is an extreme degree of economic, social and moral decay of the human personality.

Provincial officials also join the gallery of landowners who are essentially “dead souls”. Who can we call living souls in the poem, and do they even exist? Perhaps Gogol did not intend to contrast the suffocating atmosphere of life of officials and landowners with the life of the peasantry.

However, the image of the nobles, the masters of the country in the countryside and in the city, significantly predominates in this single and motley picture. Landowners and officials are brought to the fore by Gogol because his book is an indictment, and the accusation falls precisely on them, the owners of the country, and, therefore, those who are responsible for its condition.

There were references to the fact that Gogol included positive images of ideal landowners in the following volumes of Dead Souls. But this link is empty, since it appeals to non-existent evidence. There are no further volumes of the poem, no one has read them and no one knows what would have been there. We know only scattered and more or less rough scraps of the second volume, written at another time by another Gogol. And what exactly Gogol wanted to put in the second or third volume when he created the first volume, we don’t know, just as we don’t know what kind of “thunder of other speeches” (the seventh chapter), and what kind of valiant husband and “wonderful Russian maiden” "(eleventh chapter) should have appeared in these volumes, and what would have been their moral and social character.

In the second volume of the poem, the image of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, by the will of the author, was supposed to take the path of moral resurrection. The artificiality of the plan is already visible in the fact that virtuous ideas are instilled in Chichikov by the tax farmer Murazov, of whose own integrity the author was unable to convince the reader. However, the powerful artistic force of the first volume makes itself felt here in places: Chichikov can suddenly reveal his predatory face of a hoarder. True, Gogol did not paint an ideal picture of the life of the transformed Chichikov, but, unfortunately, the artistic tendency of the second volume of Dead Souls led precisely to such a picture (the third volume was also supposed to be there, where it probably should have been presented in full).

The meaning of the title of the poem is illuminated with new light. Having shown “dead souls,” Gogol is looking for “living souls.”

The people are presented in the poem as an allegorical, but tangible principle in every element of Russian life, indicating the truth of the existence of the Motherland, asserting that as long as there is hope, living souls are undead.

A short essay-discussion on the topic “The image of Chichikov in the poem Dead Souls with quotes” for grade 9. Personality characteristics of Chichikov. Why is the penny knight a dead soul? Is he capable of moral rebirth?

Not all people understand the true greatness of Dead Souls. Many people think that this is “a book that was assigned to read at school” and nothing more. In fact, Gogol’s poem is not just a boring part of the school curriculum, it is images, characters, portraits that have been alive from the 19th century to our time, and, unfortunately, will never disappear. The dead souls here are not only landowners, but also partly the main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. Whether he is a living soul or a dead one is a moot point. So let’s try to understand the image of one of the first swindlers in Russian literature.

Many say that Gogol had a rather positive attitude towards his hero, because initially his idea was to “re-educate” Chichikov for the third planned volume, but only one has reached us, and therefore we can only refer to him. In the first part, Chichikov is a dead soul, although not comparable in “vulgarity” to the landowners. Gogol himself thinks almost the same way: “But a virtuous person is still not taken as a hero.”

You can even call him “a hero of his and our time,” because Chichikov is a man with petty passions. How many young people are now obsessed with greed, how many swindlers hide behind the honorable name “businessman”? Chichikov is exactly like this, and since childhood: then he misunderstood his father’s notorious “take care of a penny.” The vulgarity of Chichikov’s soul is blamed on his father, who allegedly taught him bad things. But this is not entirely true. It is quite remarkable that Gogol writes: “He was born simply, as the proverb says: neither like his mother, nor like his father, but like a passing fellow.” That is, the writer draws a line of demarcation between the son and the parents. After all, Chichikov by nature is closer to the philistinism than to his noble roots.

Although his father was poor, he taught his son the “science of wise stinginess” and not the frantic search for profit by any means. Chichikov Sr. himself “occupied all positions in the house.” That is, he does not so much strive for profit as simply save. And he taught his son morality and practicality, and not bad things: “Don’t lie, listen to your elders and carry virtue in your heart.” The only thing that can be blamed on the father is his monologue about terrible greed and frugality. But he did not follow this as ardently as his son did. Pavlusha apparently had this vile trait in her from birth.

Chichikov's estate

And Chichikov quickly began to turn into what he seemed destined to become from the very beginning. Buttering towards teachers, a cynical attitude towards friendship, hypocrisy and greed - all this only progressed in him. Gogol writes: “It cannot be said, however, that the nature of our hero was so harsh and callous and that his feelings were so dulled that he knew neither pity nor compassion; he felt both, he would even like to help, but only so that it would not be a significant amount, so as not to touch the money that should not have been touched.”

It seems to us that the author’s last words are written with irony. For the hero, everything comes down to money, he dreams of a beautiful life and saves it in order to increase it and then not need anything. These are quite sensible thoughts, and Chichikov also clearly has a talent for running a business, but he is so cynical that these are no longer dreams, but mania. Going over your head, indifferently playing on feelings - everything is allowed in order to live happily ever after. His entire biography is a slippery slope from one scam to another.

How Gogol sees his heroes

For some reason, Gogol saw in Chichikov a person capable of re-education, but later he burned the second volume due to the lack of “life truth” and did not proceed to the third. Maybe partly because the Chichikovs will never be re-educated? The author himself contradicts himself in his expressions. He begins to describe Chichikov’s biography with the following words: “No, it’s time to finally hide the scoundrel too. So, let’s harness the scoundrel!” And later he softens the expression: “It is most fair to call him: owner, acquirer. Acquisition is the fault of everything; because of him, deeds were carried out that the world calls not very pure.”

By painting this controversial image, Gogol wanted to show his contemporaries how bad unprincipled businessmen are, who were brought up not on moral ideals, but on the thirst for wealth and luxury. Whether the writer gave such people a chance to repent and return to a righteous life is a debatable question. Perhaps, in the continuation of the poem, the vector of development of the hero’s spiritual qualities would have changed radically, but Pavlusha remained frozen in history as a practical cynic, repeating his “Take care of your penny” like the “Our Father.” The Chichikovs are the problem of Russia.

The compositional basis of Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” is Chichikov’s travels through the cities and provinces of Russia. According to the author’s plan, the reader is invited to “travel all over Rus' with the hero and bring out many different characters.” In the first volume of Dead Souls, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol introduces the reader to a number of characters who represent the “dark kingdom”, familiar from the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky. The types created by the writer are relevant to this day, and many proper names have become common nouns over time, although recently they are used less and less in colloquial speech. Below is a description of the characters in the poem. In Dead Souls, the main characters are landowners and the main adventurer, whose adventures form the basis of the plot.

Chichikov, the main character of Dead Souls, travels around Russia, buying documents for dead peasants who, according to the auditor’s book, are still listed as alive. In the first chapters of the work, the author tries in every possible way to emphasize that Chichikov was a completely ordinary, unremarkable person. Knowing how to find an approach to every person, Chichikov was able to achieve favor, respect and recognition in any society he encountered without any problems. Pavel Ivanovich is ready to do anything to achieve his goal: he lies, impersonates another person, flatters, takes advantage of other people. But at the same time, he seems to readers to be an absolutely charming person!

Gogol masterfully showed the multifaceted human personality, which combines depravity and the desire for virtue.

Another hero of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” is Manilov. Chichikov comes to him first. Manilov gives the impression of a carefree person who does not care about worldly problems. Manilov found a wife to match himself - the same dreamy young lady. Servants took care of the house, and teachers came to their two children, Themistoclus and Alcidus. It was difficult to determine Manilov’s character: Gogol himself says that in the first minute one might think “what an amazing person!”, a little later one might be disappointed in the hero, and after another minute one would become convinced that they couldn’t say anything about Manilov at all. There are no desires in it, no life itself. The landowner spends his time in abstract thoughts, completely ignoring everyday problems. Manilov easily gave the dead souls to Chichikov without asking about the legal details.

If we continue the list of characters in the story, then the next one will be Korobochka Nastasya Petrovna, an old lonely widow who lives in a small village. Chichikov came to her by accident: the coachman Selifan lost his way and turned onto the wrong road. The hero was forced to stop for the night. External attributes were an indicator of the landowner’s internal state: everything in her house was done efficiently and firmly, but nevertheless there were a lot of flies everywhere. Korobochka was a real entrepreneur, because she was used to seeing in every person only a potential buyer. Nastasya Petrovna was remembered by the reader for the fact that she did not agree to the deal. Chichikov persuaded the landowner and promised to give her several blue papers for petitions, but until he agreed next time to definitely order flour, honey and lard from Korobochka, Pavel Ivanovich did not receive several dozen dead souls.

Next on the list was Nozdryov- a carouser, a liar and a merry fellow, a playmaker. The meaning of his life was entertainment; even two children could not keep the landowner at home for more than a few days. Nozdryov often got into various situations, but thanks to his innate talent for finding a way out of any situation, he always got away with it. Nozdryov communicated easily with people, even with those with whom he managed to quarrel; after a while he communicated as if with old friends. However, many tried not to have anything in common with Nozdryov: the landowner hundreds of times came up with various fables about others, telling them at balls and dinner parties. It seemed that Nozdryov was not at all bothered by the fact that he often lost his property at cards - he certainly wanted to win back. The image of Nozdryov is very important for characterizing other heroes of the poem, in particular Chichikov. After all, Nozdryov was the only person with whom Chichikov did not make a deal and indeed did not want to meet with him anymore. Pavel Ivanovich barely managed to escape from Nozdryov, but Chichikov could not even imagine under what circumstances he would see this man again.

Sobakevich was the fourth seller of dead souls. In his appearance and behavior he resembled a bear, even the interior of his house and household utensils were huge, inappropriate and bulky. From the very beginning, the author focuses on Sobakevich’s thriftiness and prudence. It was he who first suggested that Chichikov buy documents for the peasants. Chichikov was surprised by this turn of events, but did not argue. The landowner was also remembered for raising prices on the peasants, despite the fact that the latter were long dead. He talked about their professional skills or personal qualities, trying to sell documents at a higher price than Chichikov offered.

Surprisingly, this particular hero has a much greater chance of spiritual rebirth, because Sobakevich sees how small people have become, how insignificant they are in their aspirations.

This list of characteristics of the heroes of “Dead Souls” shows the most important characters for understanding the plot, but do not forget about coachman Selifane, and about servant of Pavel Ivanovich, and about good-natured landowner Plyushkin. Being a master of words, Gogol created very vivid portraits of heroes and their types, which is why all the descriptions of the heroes of Dead Souls are so easily remembered and immediately recognizable.

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