Abstract: Holistic analysis of the work “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol

Gogol called “Dead Souls” a poem, although this name did not formally correspond to the then understanding of the poem as a genre. Belinsky believed that the distinctive feature of the poem is that it “embraces life in its external moments.” This definition corresponded to the widespread genre of heroic epic poem in Russian literature.

In the literature of the 19th century, before Gogol, the romantic poem enjoyed great success, where attention was focused on a strong and proud personality, on its tragic fate in the conditions of modern society.

Gogol's work does not look like a heroic epic, much less a romantic poem. It is no coincidence that the definition of “Dead Souls” as a poem was one of the reasons for the fierce attacks on Gogol by reactionary criticism, which sought to interpret the comic in Gogol as a caricature, the satirical as a consequence of the writer’s coldness and dislike for what was native or his penchant for jokes, wit, and mystification of the reader.

There were also critics for whom the genre definition of “Dead Souls” served as a reason for an enthusiastic apology for Gogol and his new creation. But such praise turned out to be more dangerous than the direct abuse of reactionary critics, for behind these praises hid the same desire to emasculate the critical, satirical pathos from the poem.

K. Aksakov put Gogol's poem on a par with the Iliad, proclaimed its creator a new Homer, reviving the ancient epic, and considered the novel, which was establishing itself in narrative literature, to be nothing more than a crushing and degeneration of the ancient epic.

Belinsky, arguing with K. Aksakov about the genre nature of “Dead Souls,” rejected his statement about “Dead Souls” as a kind of “Iliad” of modern times. The critic showed that the poem "Dead Souls" is diametrically opposed to the "Iliad", for in the "Iliad" life is "raised to apotheosis", and in "Dead Souls" it is "decayed and denied." The great significance of Gogol’s work, the critic wrote, lies in the fact that “in it life is hidden and dissected down to the smallest detail, and these small details are given a general meaning.” Belinsky rejected Aksakov’s statement about the novel of modern times as evidence of the reduction of the ancient epic. He pointed out that the most characteristic feature of modern literature is the analysis of life, which found artistic expression precisely in the novel. Homer's Iliad is an expression of the life of the ancient Greeks, their content in their form

Gogol's work, Belinsky wrote, presents a broad picture of life in modern Russia. The very nature of the writer’s ideological and artistic task comes primarily from Pushkin, who thought a lot about the past and about the ways of the historical development of his Motherland. The scale of the problematics of “Dead Souls” can be correlated with the problematics of “The Bronze Horseman” or Chaadaev’s philosophical letters. The questions posed in them were key in the 30s. They determined the demarcation of the contending forces, and Gogol’s poem aggravated and accelerated this demarcation. Gogol also took into account the traditions of the social and moral-descriptive novel of Russia and the West.

The plot of his poem is very simple: these are the adventures of Chichikov. “Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that such a “plot” of “Dead Souls” is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” Gogol himself also repeatedly asserted that in order “to find out what Russia is today, you definitely need to travel around it yourself.” The task required reproducing the general picture of life in autocratic-serf Russia (“All of Rus' will appear in it”), and turning to the travel genre turned out to be natural and logical.

Chichikov's travels around Rus' to buy up dead souls turned out to be a very capacious form for the artistic framing of the material. This form carried great educational interest, because in the poem not only Chichikov travels, but also, invisible to him (but quite visible to the reader), the author travels with his hero. It was he who wrote the sketches of road landscapes, travel scenes, and various information (geographical, ethnographic, economic, historical) about the “traversed” area. These materials, which are integral components of the “travel” genre, serve in “Dead Souls” the goals of a more complete and specific depiction of Russian life in those years.

It is the author, meeting with representatives of the landowner, bureaucratic and popular world, who creates a rich gallery of character portraits of landowners, officials, peasants, connecting them into a single, holistic picture, in which everything serves to reveal the springs of people’s actions and intentions, to motivate them with circumstances and the psychology of the characters, any twist in the plot. “Dead Souls” is an artistic study where everything seems to be calculated, each chapter has its own subject. But at the same time, all sorts of inconsistencies and surprises burst into this strictly verified scheme. They are in the descriptions, and in the alternation of plans, stories, in the very nature of Chichikov’s “negotiation”, in its development, in the judgments of the inhabitants of the city of N. Thinking about these incongruities, peering into the unfolding general picture of life contemporary with Gogol, the reader began to understand that these incongruities and alogisms are characteristic features of Russian life, and not so much Chichikov with his fraudulent “passages”, but a huge epic theme, the theme of Russia is the essence of the work, and this theme is present on all pages of the poem, and not just in the lyrical digressions. This is why the characters in Dead Souls cannot be considered separately. To tear them “from the context, the environment, the entire mass of characters in the poem means cutting it into pieces and thereby killing its meaning,” notes a Soviet researcher of Gogol’s work ( Gukovsky G. L. Gogol's realism. M., 1959, pp. 485-486).

The author, filling his journey with great social and patriotic content, undoubtedly relies on Fonvizin (“Letters from Abroad”), Radishchev (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), Pushkin (“Onegin’s Journey”).

But Dead Souls is not a novel of adventure or travel. There is no complexity of the plot here, just as there is no violation of life and artistic logic. The work does not tell about the life and suffering of one hero like Onegin or Pechorin. It also does not contain the poetry of love, which plays such an important role in the development of the plot in the novels “Eugene Onegin” and “Hero of Our Time”. Gogol in “Dead Souls” breaks with the family-everyday plot structure and begins another, new type of Russian novel. Although his work depicts private life taking place in the “everyday”, it takes place in the social “everyday”. The writer consciously abandons the love plot and love intrigue developed over centuries. Revealing the ugliness of contemporary Russian life, he shows that it is not love, not passion, but base, vulgar “enthusiasm” - and the strongest of them: “money capital, profitable marriage” - that turn out to be the main stimulus for the behavior of the “dead souls” of landowners and bureaucrats peace.

A look at life through “the laughter visible to the world and the invisible, unknown to him tears,” the depth of the artist’s penetration into reality, its harsh and uncompromising analysis, the civic pathos that fills the work, the tragic meaning of the comic - all these qualities are inherent in the realistic novel. Thus, Gogol’s work is the greatest achievement of Russian literature and constitutes a new link in the history of the Russian realistic novel of the 19th century.

With particular force, Belinsky emphasized the satirical, critical pathos of “Dead Souls,” directed against Russian feudal reality.

Considering the measure of “the dignity of a poetic work to be true to its reality,” Belinsky pointed out the irreparable error in the general plan of “Dead Souls” as a poem, declaring the impossibility of realizing this plan by means of realism, for the “substance of the people” can be the subject of a poem as an epic work “only in its own way.” reasonable definition, when it is something positive and real, and not fortune-telling and conjectural, when it is already past and present, and not only the future" ( Belinsky V. G. Full collection op. in 13 volumes. M., 1956, vol. VI, p. 420). And yet Belinsky nowhere calls Dead Souls a novel.

On the genre uniqueness of Gogol’s work JI. Tolstoy said: “I think that every great artist should create his own forms. If the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, then so can their form... let’s take Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. What is this? Neither a novel nor a story. Something completely original."

Why did Gogol call “Dead Souls” a poem? He put a broader meaning into the words “poetry” and “prose” than “verse” and “prose”: and the prose genre, he said, “can quietly rise to a poetic state and harmony,” which is why a number of works written in prose can be classified as to poetic works.

Gogol divides narrative literature into types and genres depending on the breadth of reality. Narrative literature is all the more significant the more convincingly the poet proves his thoughts not with direct statements from himself, but in living persons, “each of which, with its truthfulness and faithful leap from nature, captivates the reader’s attention.” This does not make the work lose any of its educational, “didactic” meaning. Moreover, the more natural and life-true the events unfold in it, the more effective its educational significance.

Gogol was not satisfied with the existing forms of literature (novel, story, drama, ballad, poem). He opposes unprincipled works, where the lack of thought is covered up by the spectacularity of incidents or the copying of nature, and the author appears as a simple descriptor.

The most complete and greatest creation of narrative literature, according to Gogol, is the poetic epic. Its hero is always a significant person who comes into “contact” with many people, events, and phenomena. The epic “embraces” not individual features of life - it finds its expression “the entire era of time”, among which the hero acted, with his way of thinking, beliefs, with the entire amount of knowledge that humanity had achieved by that time. Epic is the highest form of art, which does not age either in its cognitive or aesthetic essence, since it gives a picture of the life of an entire people, and sometimes many peoples. The brightest examples of epic are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

The novel in Gogol's mind can also be a poetic phenomenon. But it is not an epic, since it does not depict the whole life, but is limited only to an incident in life - however, so significant that it made “life appear in a brilliant form, despite the designated space.”

But Gogol found that in modern times another, completely special kind of narrative literature had appeared, constituting “as it were the core between the novel and the epic” - the so-called “small type of epic.” The hero in the “small epic” is a private, invisible person who does not have many connections with people, events and phenomena of the era, but is still significant “in many respects for the observer of the human soul.” There is no worldwide coverage of phenomena, as in the epic; nevertheless, the “small epic” expands the genre boundaries of the novel. The novel, but Gogol's thoughts, is constrained in its possibilities by the limited circle of persons chosen to be depicted, the movement of the plot and the narrowing of space. In the novel, the author cannot dispose of the characters at his personal discretion; their connections and relationships between themselves and the world around them are determined by the incident in which they are “entangled” and which should reveal human characters. That is why everything in a novel must be strictly thought out: the plot, the events, the characters.

“The Small Epic” does not know such restrictions and, unlike the novel, carries within itself “the full epic volume.” It is achieved by the fact that the author leads the hero “through a chain of adventures and changes” in order to provide the reader with “a true picture of everything significant in the features and morals of the time he took.” Such a work represents a wide canvas of life and has a free composition. It will also contain a large number of characters, many of whom are not very closely connected with the main character, with his fate. In such a work, the descriptive epic element is organically combined with the lyrical element, for life is also revealed through the author’s experiences. Finally, such a work is inspired by a high goal, since its tasks include the author’s desire to attract “the gaze of an observant contemporary” who is looking for “life lessons for the present” in the past. It, according to Gogol’s deepest conviction, is a poetic creation, although it is written in prose.

It is not difficult to notice that the listed signs of a “small epic” can be attributed to “Dead Souls”, because in this work “the picture of shortcomings, vices and everything that Gogol saw “in a given era and time” is statistically captured.

“Dead Souls” is a new stage in the development of the poem. This is a realistic poem-novel, where a monolithic picture of the whole is given, where each episode is large-scale, since it is one of the moments in the great narrative of human life, endless in its content. Thus, Proshka, an episodic person, appears in the poem only once, but he allows the reader to see the homeless, joyless, cursed life of thousands of boys in the hallway, in the hallway of the landowner, at the errands of the official. And Manilov, and Korobochka, and Plyushkin also represent truly mournful pages from a huge book that tells about what awaits a person in his life’s destiny .

When citing Gogol’s formula “laughter through tears,” researchers usually mean the bitterness that filled the writer’s mind and heart at the sight of untruth and evil reigning in the world, distorting human nature.

We believe that this is only one side of the matter. There is another one - “laughter” and “tears” stand in the same emotional row, as if equalized. The tears that appear in the eyes of a satirist can also be tears of delight, they can be caused by the consciousness, as Saltykov-Shchedrin said, that the vice has been guessed and laughter has already been heard about it.

Gogol's book is permeated with active humanism. There is no indifference in her, no light display of life. It contains artistic and life truth in its harsh, sometimes bitter and cruel impartiality. The cry of the heart in the chapter about Plyushkin is one of the manifestations of the writer’s humanistic aspirations, evidence of his deep love for man, faith in the victory of the bright in people. To understand Gogol means to show sensitivity to a person’s spiritual world, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, and the sublime in the earthly. In his book, the great idea of ​​humanity, humaneness triumphs - an idea that is fundamentally beautiful and life-affirming, expressed through concrete images and facts. “Dead Souls” is an effective book, it awakened the conscience of people, called to destroy the evil, vulgar, shameful in life.

In “Dead Souls,” negative characters act in the foreground; the deathly insensitivity of the ruling exploiting class, which delayed the economic and cultural development of the country, is exposed with great force, but the title of the work does not reveal its theme, because the true epic image in it is the image of the native land. The hero of the work is a people without rights, downtrodden, in slavish captivity and yet harboring inexhaustible strength. Passing through the entire poem, on the one hand, is the Rus' of the Sobakevichs, the Plyushkins, the Nozdrevs, the Chichikovs - the Rus' that stands before our eyes every minute, although strong, but dead; on the other hand, the Russia of the future is powerful and beautiful, a living Russia, rapidly rushing into the unknown “sparkling, wonderful, unknown distance to the earth.”

In the work, therefore, there are two planes, both of them, in their development and movement, enter into complex interaction. But their direction of movement is one—towards the death of the “dead souls” of Russia, landowners and officials, and to the triumph of the living souls of people’s Russia. This makes the poem a major, optimistic work. Real Rus' is embodied in a whole gallery of “cold, fragmented everyday characters” - landowners, officials, Chichikov. The Rus' of the future emerges from the lyrical digressions with which the composition of the poem is “layered” and which constitute the integral beginning of its poetic structure.

Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"

Any literary work can be considered as a kind of author’s statement. In this sense, it is true that a work of art can be presented as a kind of question, appeal or appeal to people. And the title of a work is the first word in the dialogue between the author and the reader; it helps to understand the main idea, that is, the direction of the author’s address to the reader. The title reveals the essence of the work and becomes part of the text. For example, in the title of a satirical work, the author gives vent to irony, his mockery. It often happens that the title becomes a key word that carries many meanings (acquires a symbolic meaning) and is the leitmotif of the work. The title is irreplaceable, since it conveys the author's concept, the author's vision of the world, it must be concise, expressive, sonorous, must be complete, be original, that is, unique. The preliminary censorship was afraid of the title “Dead Souls,” so the first edition was published under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls,” that is, the title of the work included something that the author did not want to put there, since the central idea of ​​the work was focused precisely on the concept “ dead souls”, and not in the description of Chichikov’s adventures.

The title has its own characteristics. Often in the titles there is a contrast ("War and Peace"), an oxymoron ("Feast during the Plague", "The Stone Guest", "The Miserly Knight"), paradoxes (in "Marriage" there is no marriage, in "The Inspector General" there is no auditor).

What occupies Gogol in “The Inspector General” is not the mayor’s mistake, but the very process of transforming the dummy Khlestakov into an important person (as the title of the work hints at). This is the real innovation of Gogol the playwright.

It happens that the names discreetly indicate a hidden meaning. The name “Dead Souls” is very ambiguous, because initially the word “souls” itself has several meanings. In the usual understanding of this word, the soul is an immortal substance that determines life, elevates a person above all other earthly creatures, giving him the ability to think and feel. In Gogol, an oxymoron arises, since in the traditional understanding the soul cannot die. The title of Gogol's poem sounds defiant, too bold and even blasphemous.

The reader understands the ambiguity, innovation and boldness of the title “Dead Souls”. But the fact is that this contains the direct meaning of the word, and this is what hits the reader’s consciousness. In Dahl's dictionary, from the meanings of the word “soul” it is clear that the concept of “dead souls” existed at that time: these are people who died between two national censuses, but are still listed by paying taxes.

That is, for the reader - a contemporary of Gogol, there is nothing incredible in the title of the poem. But these words take on a different meaning in connection with Chichikov. For landowners, “dead souls” is the name of the product. Over time, new shades of meaning appeared in the title: landowners, officials, city fathers, and even Chichikov himself began to be called “dead souls.”

Gogol himself speaks very uniquely about his characters. He wrote: “My heroes are not villains at all; If I had added just one good trait to any of them, the reader would have made peace with them all.” Here the moral and ethical problem of the work arises: one might think that Gogol did not see them as monsters, tormentors, but he aimed further. It was important for him that every reader think about his own soul. The author addresses the reader almost directly (similar to Eugene Onegin).

In “Eugene Onegin” there are two faces of the reader (an opponent and a like-minded person), as is the case with Gogol, but this is not so noticeable. The author polemicizes with the enemy reader in both comic and serious ways. And Gogol addresses the like-minded reader in lyrical digressions (it is there that the reader becomes acquainted with the author’s position and hears the author’s word), where the hope for sympathy and understanding is clearly visible.

Gogol leaves hope that the dead can still turn into the living. Literary critic Yuri Mann proves that Gogol portrayed officials not in terms of their level of degradation. Mann believed that in Plyushkin, in comparison with Manilov, there was more human enthusiasm, albeit distorted, and perhaps even terrible. There is more life in Plyushkin than in Manilov with his sweetness.

Gogol believed that what is like death is dead, lifeless. But the first to connect these concepts was Pushkin, not Gogol:

And everything that pleases lives,

All that rejoices and shines,

Brings boredom and languor to a soul that has been dead for a long time...

A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”

Gogol argues with those readers who proudly look down on the writer. Gogol is worried that a person of his time has a cold gaze, that a living soul and curiosity are not eternal in a person. At the end of the first volume there is a motif that echoes the title. Gogol believed that the dead human soul could be resurrected, and he believed that a writer could help him.

Belarusian State University

Faculty of Philology

Department of Theory of Literary Studies

Holistic analysis of the work

“Dead Souls” N.V. Gogol

1st year student

Department of Slavic Philology

(Polish and Russian philology)

Svistunov Vadim Alexandrovich

Teacher:

Morozova T.A.

Minsk - 2006

In the poem “Dead Souls,” the author posed the most painful and pressing issues of contemporary life. He clearly showed the decomposition of the serf system, the doom of its representatives. The very title of the poem had enormous revealing power and carried within itself “something terrifying.”

According to N.V. Gogol’s plan, the theme of the poem should have been the whole of contemporary Russia. In the conflict of “Dead Souls,” the writer took two types of contradictions inherent in Russian society in the first half of the 19th century: between the imaginary meaningfulness and real insignificance of the ruling strata of society and between the spiritual forces of the people and their enslavers.

The problems in the poem are two-dimensional - national and sociocultural. The national issue lies in depicting Gogol’s attitude towards Russia at that time. The question arises - where is Russia going - which the author reveals in two ways. On the one hand, there is a dead Russia, with its landowners and provincial officials of all ranks, on the other, the “Russia of the Chichikovs” that is replacing it. Sociocultural issues are expressed by the author’s emphasis on the features of everyday culture and life among various characters in the poem. The idea of ​​the poem is also closely related to the problem: the writer is concerned with the question of man, his meaning and purpose in life. It also shows all the lack of rights, all the darkness and vulgarity of the interests of both the provincial society and the landowners.

Undoubtedly, there is satirical pathos in the poem “Dead Souls”. In my opinion, in relation to landowners, and even Chichikov himself, one can apply such a definition as invective. Indeed, by satirically exposing, for example, all the bad sides of Plyushkin, the object of ridicule becomes so pitiful that it no longer causes laughter.

In order to fully convey all the wretchedness and desolation of the landowners, N.V. Gogol very skillfully uses various artistic details, primarily external ones. Let's consider one of the artistic details - a portrait - using the example of various landowners. Nozdryov - portrait description: “He was of average height, a very well-built fellow with full rosy cheeks, teeth as white as snow and jet-black sideburns. It was as fresh as blood and milk; his health seemed to be dripping from his face.” The portrait is also revealed through a description of Nozdryov’s behavior and nature: “Nozdryov’s face is probably already somewhat familiar to the reader. Everyone has encountered many such people. They are called broken fellows, they are reputed even in childhood and at school for being good comrades, and at the same time they can be beaten very painfully. In their faces you can always see something open, direct, and daring. They soon get to know each other, and before you know it, they’re already saying “you.” They will make friends, it seems, forever: but it almost always happens that the person who has become friends will fight with them that same evening at a friendly party. They are always talkers, revelers, reckless drivers, prominent people.” Sobakevich - portrait-comparison: “When Chichikov looked sideways at Sobakevich, this time he seemed to him very similar to a medium-sized bear. To complete the similarity, the tailcoat he was wearing was completely bear-colored, his sleeves were long, his trousers were long, he walked with his feet this way and that, constantly stepping on other people’s feet.”

Landscape occupies a significant place among Gogol's artistic details. This is how the descriptive landscape is seen in Manilov: “The village of Manilovka could not attract many people with its location. The master's house stood alone on the jura, that is, on a hill, open to all the winds that could blow; the slope of the mountain on which he stood was covered with trimmed turf. Two or three flower beds with lilac and yellow acacia bushes were scattered on it in English style; five or six birch trees in small clumps here and there raised small-leaved thin peaks.” The psychological landscape can also be seen if you remember the weather that was when Chichikov visited Korobochka - it was night and it was raining very heavily. It is also characteristic that Chichikov was going to go to Sobakevich, but got lost and ended up with Korobochka. All this did not bode well for Chichikov - it was Korobochka who later told about his strange transactions.

However, a significant place among artistic details, along with a portrait, is occupied by the world of things. Gogol discovered an almost new function in the use of material details. But still, I will designate this function as psychological. Thus, with the help of things, Plyushkin’s features are revealed: “It seemed as if the floors were being washed in the house and all the furniture had been piled here for a while. On one table there was even a broken chair, and next to it a clock with a stopped pendulum, to which the spider had already attached its web. There was also a cabinet leaning sideways against the wall with antique silver, decanters and Chinese porcelain. On the bureau, lined with mother-of-pearl mosaic, which had already fallen out in places and left behind only yellow grooves filled with glue, lay a lot of all sorts of things: a bunch of finely written papers, covered with a green marble press with an egg on top, some kind of old book bound in leather with a red a sawn-off lemon, all dried up, the height of no more than a hazelnut, a broken armchair, a glass with some liquid and three flies, covered with a letter, a piece of sealing wax, a piece of a rag picked up somewhere, two feathers, stained with ink, dried out, as if consumption, a toothpick, completely yellowed, with which the owner, perhaps, picked his teeth even before the French invasion of Moscow.”

The chronotope of the poem is abstract. Gogol shows all of Russia through an unnamed city N.

The heroes of the poem are clearly characterized by their own speech. So Nozdryov has a very large vocabulary of words from different linguistic environments. In his speech there are French barbarisms: “bezeshki”, “clique-matradura”, “burdashka”, “scandalous”; jargon: “banchishka”, “galbik”, “password”, “break the bank”, “play with a doublet”; dog breeding professionalisms: “face”, “barrel ribs”, “breasted”; and many vulgarisms: “svintus”, “scumbag”, “you’ll get the bald devil”, “fetyuk”, “bestia”, “you’re such a cattle breeder”, “khidomor”, “scoundrel”, “death I don’t like such meltdowns”. There are also archaisms in the work: “key keeper”, “master”, “coachman”; and historicisms: “eighteen”. Manilov’s speech is very rich in various tropes that serve to give the speech sublimity, courtesy and courtesy: “observe delicacy in your actions”, “magnetism of the soul”, “name day of the heart”, “I do not have the high art of expressing myself”, “chance brought me happiness” , “what grief I have not tasted.”

The composition of the poem is distinguished by clarity and clarity: all parts are interconnected by the plot-forming hero Chichikov, who travels with the goal of getting “a million.” In the first chapter, expositional, introductory, the author gives a general description of the provincial provincial town and introduces readers to the main characters of the poem.
The next five chapters (plot and development of the action) are devoted to the depiction of landowners in their own family and everyday life in their estates. The content of all these five chapters is based on one general principle: the appearance of the estate, the state of the economy, the manor's house, the interior decoration, the characteristics of the landowner and his relationship with Chichikov. In this way, Gogol paints a whole gallery of landowners, who together recreate the general picture of serfdom.

The climax of the poem is the exposure of Chichikov first by Nozdryov, and then by Korobochka. And the denouement ends with Chichikov’s flight from the city.
A significant place in the poem “Dead Souls” is occupied by lyrical digressions and inserted episodes, which is characteristic of the poem as a literary genre. In them, Gogol touches on the most pressing Russian social issues. The author's thoughts about the high purpose of man, about the fate of the Motherland and the people are here contrasted with gloomy pictures of Russian life.

The inserted episode is “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.” The story of the heroic defender of the Fatherland, who became a victim of trampled justice, seems to crown the whole terrible picture of local-bureaucratic-police Russia painted in “Dead Souls.” The embodiment of arbitrariness and injustice is not only the provincial government, but also the capital's bureaucracy, the government itself. Through the mouth of the minister, the government renounces the defenders of the Fatherland, the true patriots, and, thereby, it exposes its anti-national essence - this is the idea in Gogol’s work.

In the poem, the plot coincides with the plot. Conflict at the content level.

The character system was made on the principle of ever deeper spiritual impoverishment and moral decline from hero to hero. So, Manilov’s economy “went somehow by itself.”

His estate is the front façade of landowner Russia. Pretensions to sophistication emphasize the emptiness of the estate's inhabitants. A lonely house, sparse lilac bushes, and gray huts make a depressing impression. In the rooms, next to expensive furniture, there are chairs covered with matting. But the owner does not understand, does not see the decline of his farm. By nature, Manilov is courteous and polite, but all this took on funny forms with him. Sweetness and sentimentality constitute the essence of his character. Even Manilov’s speech is too vague: “some kind of science,” “some kind of guy.” He has brought no benefit to anyone and lives on trifles. He does not know life, reality is replaced by empty fantasies. So, Manilov is a “so-so, neither this nor that” person.

Korobochka is “one of those mothers, small landowners who cry over crop failures and losses, and meanwhile collect a little money into little bags...” She does not indulge in daydreaming, like the previous image, she is prudent and busy only with accumulation and her household. Captivated by the thirst for profit, she sells everything: lard, hemp, serfs. People for her are just animate goods. She’s not even surprised by Chichikov’s strange proposal, but she’s afraid of selling herself too cheap: “They’re worth it... they’re somehow worth more,” and she goes to town to find out the price. Chichikov, and with him the author, calls her “club-headed.”

In Nozdryov, Gogol emphasizes aimless activity: “... he invited you to go anywhere, even to the ends of the world, enter whatever enterprise you want, change whatever you want.” But since his undertakings are devoid of goals, Nozdryov does not bring anything to the end. On his scattered estate, only the kennel is in excellent condition: among dogs he is “like a father among a family.” He deceives completely calmly, he has no moral principles. With their labor, the peasants create all the benefits and relieve the landowner from worries. Nozdryov is used to getting what he wants, and if someone opposes, he becomes dangerous: “Not a single meeting where he was without a story.” He behaves cheekily and rudely. Gogol ironically calls the hero a “historical man.” Resembling a bear, Sobakevich has all the appropriate habits. There was “no soul at all” in his body. The furniture in the house also resembles the owner himself. This is how Gogol achieves brightness and expressiveness in describing the characteristic features of the hero. He always cares only about his own benefit, and his main goal is to fill his stomach. Sobakevich is “economical,” smart and practical: he does not ruin the peasants, since it is not profitable for him. He treats everyone with his own label: a rogue and a swindler. Sobakevich knows that everything in the world is for sale, and declares to Chichikov: “If you please, I’m ready to sell.” The main character concludes: “No, whoever has a fist cannot straighten into a palm.” The theme of moral decline and spiritual death reaches its culmination in the chapter about Plyushkin. The estate is struck by disrepair and devastation. It seems that life has left this village: “The logs on the huts were dark and old; many of the roofs showed through like a sieve...” Gogol emphasizes the spirit of death: “it was impossible to say that a living creature lived in this room...” The owner himself locked himself away from the outside world in his castle. Like the housekeeper, Plyushkin is a slave of things, but not the master. Because of his passion, he cannot distinguish useful things from trash: grain and flour perish, and moldy Easter cake and tincture are stored. And once upon a time Plyushkin “was just a thrifty owner.” The thirst for enrichment at the expense of the peasants turned him into a miser.

In the process of depicting landowners and officials, the image of the main character of the story, Chichikov, gradually unfolds before readers. Only in the final, eleventh chapter does Gogol reveal his life in all details and finally expose his hero as a cunning bourgeois predator, a swindler, a civilized scoundrel.

Throughout the entire poem, Gogol, parallel to the plot lines of landowners, officials and Chichikov, continuously draws another one - connected with the image of the people. With the composition of the poem, the writer constantly reminds us of the existence of a gulf of alienation between the common people and the ruling classes.

Today in class we met Gogol and his Dead Souls. It turns out N.V. he wrote for seventeen whole years; moreover, Gogol’s book Dead Souls was supposed to be three volumes, but the author manages to publish only the first volume in a full format. The second volume was written, but for his own reasons, Gogol burned the second volume of Dead Souls, and did not have time to write the third volume at all, since the writer’s life was cut short.

Gogol Dead Souls

Gogol's short poem Dead Souls is suitable for a reader's diary, where you can make a short annotation of the work.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a poem where the plot is based on the scam of the protagonist Chichikov, who planned to buy up all the dead souls for little money, and then pawn these souls in the guardianship council, but for a lot of money. What are these dead souls? In Russia, every ten years a census of serfs was carried out, however, people tend to die, and if a person died between the census, the landowner still had to pay taxes, since this person was considered alive according to the documents. So Chichikov hoped to ransom all the dead, believing that such a deal would benefit the landowners.

It was with Chichikov’s trip to the city of N that our acquaintance with various landowners and officials began, who were the personification of all the rich people who lived during the times of serfdom. Among them were spendthrifts, such as Manilov and Nozdrev, there were also hoarders, such as Korobochka and Sobakevich, and there was also Plyushkin, who was so stingy that he himself went hungry and in rags, his people were dying of hunger, at that time like food rotting in pantries.

When you get acquainted with Gogol’s work, you understand that by dead souls the author means not only dead peasants. Here the concept is much broader, because we see how degraded the landowners are, how devastated and spiritual they are. Whoever we take, Chichikov with his scam, Plyushkin, who has lost his human appearance, Nozdryov, whose children are like those dogs, but the dogs live in grand style, or Sobakevich, where there is no nobility and no decency. Everyone has dead souls.

Gogol in Dead Souls reveals the bureaucracy of that time, where he shows how corrupt it is and where there is continuous theft and fraud.

Gogol Dead souls main characters

Gogol in the work Dead Souls created his main character Chichikov as a rogue in whose image one can catch the features of other heroes of the work. Chichikov is a good psychologist, so his bargaining with the landowners is conducted at the highest level. He is cunning, enterprising, and greedy.

In addition, in each of the chapters other heroes appear before us, so we get acquainted with Manilov, a thrifty landowner, and Korobochka, a widow who was petty, cunning and calculating. We meet Nozdryov, a playmaker, and Sobakevich, who was a tight-fisted and stubborn owner. There is also Plyushkin, who was such a miser that he brought his farm to ruin.

Plan:

1. Chichikov is in the city and finds out information about the landowners
2. Chichikov and a successful free deal with Manilov
3. Chichikov got lost and ended up on Korobochka's estate.
4. Chichikov from Nozdryov with an attempt to ransom dead souls from him. Chichikov left Nozdryov empty-handed
5. In the village near Sobakevich. He sells dead souls, praising every dead peasant
6. Chichikov at Plyushkin's and the deal with him
7. Chichikov goes to court to certify the deal
8. Chichikov was invited to a reception with the governor
9. Everyone is discussing Chichikova and the issue with dead souls. Chichikov is no longer invited to balls. Chichikov is sick
10. Everyone continues to wonder who Chichikov is. I remembered the story with Captain Kopeikin. Nozdryov is at Chichikov’s and talks about what is happening on the streets of the city
11. Here we learn about Chichikov, his parents and his life. Chichikov flees the city

The poem “Dead Souls” was conceived by Gogol as a grandiose panorama of Russian society with all its features and paradoxes. The central problem of the work is the spiritual death and rebirth of representatives of the main Russian classes of that time. The author exposes and ridicules the vices of the landowners, the corruption and destructive passions of the bureaucrats.

The title of the work itself has a double meaning. “Dead souls” are not only dead peasants, but also other actually living characters in the work. By calling them dead, Gogol emphasizes their devastated, pitiful, “dead” souls.

History of creation

“Dead Souls” is a poem to which Gogol devoted a significant part of his life. The author repeatedly changed the concept, rewrote and reworked the work. Initially, Gogol conceived Dead Souls as a humorous novel. However, in the end I decided to create a work that exposes the problems of Russian society and will serve its spiritual revival. This is how the POEM “Dead Souls” appeared.

Gogol wanted to create three volumes of the work. In the first, the author planned to describe the vices and decay of the serf society of that time. In the second, give its heroes hope for redemption and rebirth. And in the third he intended to describe the future path of Russia and its society.

However, Gogol only managed to finish the first volume, which appeared in print in 1842. Until his death, Nikolai Vasilyevich worked on the second volume. However, just before his death, the author burned the manuscript of the second volume.

The third volume of Dead Souls was never written. Gogol could not find the answer to the question of what will happen next to Russia. Or maybe I just didn’t have time to write about it.

Analysis

Description of the work, plot

One day, a very interesting character appeared in the city of NN, who stood out very much from other old-timers of the city - Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. After his arrival, he began to actively get acquainted with important persons of the city, attending feasts and dinners. A week later, the newcomer was already on friendly terms with all the representatives of the city nobility. Everyone was delighted with the new man who suddenly appeared in the city.

Pavel Ivanovich goes out of town to pay visits to noble landowners: Manilov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, Nozdryov and Plyushkin. He is polite to every landowner and tries to find an approach to everyone. Natural resourcefulness and resourcefulness help Chichikov to gain the favor of every landowner. In addition to empty talk, Chichikov talks with the gentlemen about the peasants who died after the audit (“dead souls”) and expresses a desire to buy them. The landowners cannot understand why Chichikov needs such a deal. However, they agree to it.

As a result of his visits, Chichikov acquired more than 400 “dead souls” and was in a hurry to finish his business and leave the city. The useful contacts Chichikov made upon his arrival in the city helped him resolve all issues with documents.

After some time, the landowner Korobochka let slip in the city that Chichikov was buying up “dead souls.” The whole city learned about Chichikov's affairs and was perplexed. Why would such a respected gentleman buy dead peasants? Endless rumors and speculation have a detrimental effect even on the prosecutor, and he dies of fear.

The poem ends with Chichikov hastily leaving the city. Leaving the city, Chichikov sadly recalls his plans to buy dead souls and pledge them to the treasury as living ones.

Main characters

A qualitatively new hero in Russian literature of that time. Chichikov can be called a representative of the newest class, just emerging in serf Russia - entrepreneurs, “acquirers”. The activity and activity of the hero distinguishes him favorably from other characters in the poem.

The image of Chichikov is distinguished by its incredible versatility and diversity. Even by the appearance of the hero it is difficult to immediately understand what kind of person he is and what he is like. “In the chaise sat a gentleman, not handsome, but not of bad appearance, neither too fat nor too thin, one cannot say that he is old, but not that he is too young.”

It is difficult to understand and embrace the nature of the main character. He is changeable, has many faces, is able to adapt to any interlocutor, and give his face the desired expression. Thanks to these qualities, Chichikov easily finds a common language with landowners and officials and wins the desired position in society. Chichikov uses his ability to charm and win over the right people to achieve his goal, namely receiving and accumulating money. His father also taught Pavel Ivanovich to deal with those who are richer and to treat money with care, since only money can pave the way in life.

Chichikov did not earn money honestly: he deceived people, took bribes. Over time, Chichikov's machinations become increasingly widespread. Pavel Ivanovich strives to increase his fortune by any means, without paying attention to any moral norms and principles.

Gogol defines Chichikov as a person with a vile nature and also considers his soul dead.

In his poem, Gogol describes typical images of landowners of that time: “business executives” (Sobakevich, Korobochka), as well as not serious and wasteful gentlemen (Manilov, Nozdrev).

Nikolai Vasilyevich masterfully created the image of the landowner Manilov in the work. By this one image, Gogol meant a whole class of landowners with similar features. The main qualities of these people are sentimentality, constant fantasies and lack of active activity. Landowners of this type let the economy take its course and do nothing useful. They are stupid and empty inside. This is exactly what Manilov was - not bad at heart, but a mediocre and stupid poser.

Nastasya Petrovna Korobochka

The landowner, however, differs significantly in character from Manilov. Korobochka is a good and tidy housewife; everything goes well on her estate. However, the landowner's life revolves exclusively around her farm. The box does not develop spiritually and is not interested in anything. She understands absolutely nothing that does not concern her household. Korobochka is also one of the images by which Gogol meant a whole class of similar narrow-minded landowners who do not see anything beyond their farm.

The author clearly classifies the landowner Nozdryov as an unserious and wasteful gentleman. Unlike the sentimental Manilov, Nozdrev is full of energy. However, the landowner uses this energy not for the benefit of the farm, but for the sake of his momentary pleasures. Nozdryov is playing and wasting his money. Distinguished by its frivolity and idle attitude towards life.

Mikhail Semenovich Sobakevich

The image of Sobakevich, created by Gogol, echoes the image of a bear. There is something of a large wild animal in the appearance of the landowner: clumsiness, sedateness, strength. Sobakevich is not concerned about the aesthetic beauty of the things around him, but about their reliability and durability. Behind his rough appearance and stern character lies a cunning, intelligent and resourceful person. According to the author of the poem, it will not be difficult for landowners like Sobakevich to adapt to the changes and reforms coming in Rus'.

The most unusual representative of the landowner class in Gogol's poem. The old man is distinguished by his extreme stinginess. Moreover, Plyushkin is greedy not only in relation to his peasants, but also in relation to himself. However, such savings make Plyushkin a truly poor man. After all, it is his stinginess that does not allow him to find a family.

Bureaucracy

Gogol's work contains a description of several city officials. However, the author in his work does not significantly differentiate them from each other. All officials in “Dead Souls” are a gang of thieves, crooks and embezzlers. These people really only care about their enrichment. Gogol literally describes in a few outlines the image of a typical official of that time, rewarding him with the most unflattering qualities.

Quotes

“Oh, Russian people! He doesn’t like to die his own death!” Chichikov

“Don’t have money, have good people to work with,” said one wise man...” Chichikov

“... most of all, take care and save a penny: this thing is more reliable than anything in the world. A comrade or friend will deceive you and in trouble will be the first to betray you, but a penny will not betray you, no matter what trouble you are in.” Chichikov's father

“...how deeply ingrained in Slavic nature is something that slipped only through the nature of other peoples...”Gogol

The main idea, the meaning of the work

The plot of “Dead Souls” is based on an adventure conceived by Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. At first glance, Chichikov's plan seems incredible. However, if you look at it, the Russian reality of those times, with its rules and laws, provided opportunities for all sorts of fraud associated with serfs.

The fact is that after 1718, a capitation census of peasants was introduced in the Russian Empire. For every male serf, the master had to pay a tax. However, the census was carried out quite rarely - once every 12-15 years. And if one of the peasants ran away or died, the landowner was still forced to pay a tax for him. Dead or escaped peasants became a burden for the master. This created fertile ground for various types of fraud. Chichikov himself hoped to carry out this kind of scam.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol knew perfectly well how Russian society with its serfdom system was structured. And the whole tragedy of his poem lies in the fact that Chichikov’s scam absolutely did not contradict the current Russian legislation. Gogol exposes the distorted relationships of man with man, as well as man with the state, and talks about the absurd laws in force at that time. Because of such distortions, events become possible that contradict common sense.

Conclusion

“Dead Souls” is a classic work, which, like no other, was written in the style of Gogol. Quite often, Nikolai Vasilyevich based his work on some anecdote or comical situation. And the more ridiculous and unusual the situation, the more tragic the real state of affairs seems.