2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
The prose poem "Dead Souls" is the central work in the work of one of the most original and colorful Russian writers - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.
Gogol as a mirror of Russian landlordism
In the work "Dead Souls" the main characters are representatives of one of the three main strata of Russian society in the first half of the nineteenth century - landowners. The other two estates - the bureaucracy and the peasantry - are shown somewhat schematically, without the special colors inherent in Gogol's language, but the landlords … In this work you can see their different colors, characters and habits. Each of them represents some kind of human weakness, even a vice inherent in people of this class (according to the author's observations): low education, narrow-mindedness, greed, arbitrariness. Let's take a closer look at them.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls. Main characters
No need hereretell the plot of the poem in prose, as this would require a separate article. Let's just say that a certain person by the name of Chichikov, in modern times a real fine fellow - resourceful, inventive, with original thinking, extremely sociable and, most importantly, absolutely unscrupulous - decides to buy "dead souls" from the landowners in order to use them as mortgage, under which you can buy a real village with living peasants of flesh and blood.
To implement his plan, Chichikov travels around the landowners and buys "dead" peasants from them (surnames included in tax returns). In the end, he is exposed and escapes from NN City in a carriage carried away by the "Three Bird".
If we discuss who the main characters of the poem "Dead Souls" are, then collegiate adviser Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov will certainly top their list.
Images of landlords
The second number I would like to mention the landowner Manilov - a sentimental, pompous, empty, but harmless man. He quietly dreams, sitting in his estate, looking at life through rose-colored glasses and making unrealizable plans for the future. And although Manilov does not cause much sympathy, he is still not the most unpleasant character in the poem Dead Souls. The main characters that appear before the reader are much less harmless.
Korobochka is an elderly and narrow-minded woman. However, he knows his business well and holds the income from his small estate firmly in his wrinkled hands. She sells souls to Chichikov for fifteen rubles, and the only thing that confuses her in this strange deal isprice. The landowner is worried about how not to sell too cheap.
Continuing the list under the conditional name "Dead Souls - the main characters", it is worth mentioning the gambler and reveler Nozdryov. He lives widely, cheerfully and noisily. Such a life rarely fits into the generally accepted framework, because this landowner is on trial.
Following Nozdryov, we get acquainted with the rude and stubborn Sobakevich, "the fist and the beast", according to Chichikov's description. Now they would call him a “strong business executive.”
And the painfully stingy Plyushkin closes the row of sellers of "dead souls". This landowner was so dominated by his passion for frugality that he practically lost his human appearance, in any case, at first glance it is impossible to determine his gender and social affiliation - it's just some kind of figure in tatters.
Besides them, Nikolai Vasilievich mentions representatives of other classes: officials and their wives, peasants, soldiers, but it is the landowners in the work "Dead Souls" that are the main characters. Pretty soon it becomes clear that it is their souls that are dead, and not the first year, and it is on them that the narrowed eye of the writer and his sharp pen are aimed.
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