Bazarov's parents - characteristics and their role in the life of the protagonist

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Evgeny Bazarov is the main character in Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons". Bazarov's character is a young man, a convinced nihilist, contemptuous of art and respecting only the natural sciences, a typical representative of the new

generations of thinking youth. The main plot of the novel is the conflict between fathers and children, the bourgeois way of life and the desire for change.

In literary criticism, much attention is paid to the confrontation between Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, the relationship of Bazarov and Odintsova, the personality of Arkady Nikolaevich (Bazarov's friend), but very little is said about the relationship of the protagonist with his parents. This approach is very unreasonable, because without studying his relationship with his parents, it is impossible to fully understand his character.

Bazarov's parents are simple good-natured old men who love their son very much. Vasily Bazarov (father) is an old county doctor leading a boring, colorless life of a poor landowner, who at one time spared nothing for a good upbringing of his son.

Arina Vlasyevna (mother) - a noblewoman,who "needed to be born in the era of Peter the Great," a very kind and superstitious woman who knows how to do only one thing - excellent cooking. The image of Bazarov's parents, a kind of symbol of ossified conservatism, is opposed to the main character - inquisitive, intelligent, sharp in judgment. However, despite such a different worldview, Bazarov's parents truly love their son, in the absence of Yevgeny, all their free time is spent thinking about him.

Bazarov, on the other hand, treats his parents rather dryly, of course he loves them, but he is not used to open outpourings of feelings, he is burdened by constant obsessive attention. He cannot find a common language with either his father or mother, he cannot even have discussions with them, as with the family of Arkady. Bazarov is hard on this, but he cannot help himself. He agrees to live with his parents under the same roof only on the condition that he will not be interfered with in the natural sciences in his office. Bazarov's parents understand this very well and try to please their only child in everything, but it is, of course, extremely difficult for them to endure such an attitude.

Perhaps Bazarov's main trouble was that he was not understood by his parents, due to the big difference in intellectual development and level of education, and did not receive moral support from them, which is why he was so sharp and emotionally cold a man that often pushed people away from him.

However, in the parental home, we are shown another Evgeny Bazarov - softer, understanding, fulltender feelings that he will never show outwardly due to internal barriers.

The characterization of Bazarov's parents puzzles us: how could a person of such advanced views grow up in such a patriarchal environment? Turgenev once again shows us that a person can create himself. However, he also shows Bazarov's main mistake - his alienation from his parents, because they loved their child for who he is, and suffered greatly from his attitude. Bazarov's parents survived their son, but with his death the meaning of their existence ended.