Who are the “dead souls” in the poem? "Dead Souls": the meaning of the title. Poem by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol Does Gogol see living souls around him
The plot of the poem by N.V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls” is based on the journey of the landowner-adventurer Chichikov, who travels throughout Russia and buys peasant souls that actually do not exist, but are still listed in documents, from serf owners. However, what is important is not the fact of Chichikov’s cunning trip itself, but the reflection in the poem of the characters and morals of the people of that era. Five “portrait” chapters telling about the hero’s meeting with the landowners show how differently and at the same time essentially the same serf relations developed in Gogol’s time (that is, in the first half of the 19th century) in one of the provincial corners of Russia and how they were reflected in the way of life and characters of the landowners of that time.
The landowners meet Chichikov in a manner consistent with the author's plan. First, Pavel Ivanovich meets with the mismanagement and soft-hearted Manilov, then with the petty Korobochka, then with the carouser and “master of life” Nozdryov, after him with the tight-fisted Sobakevich, and in the end with the miser Plyushkin. Thus, as we read the poem, we encounter more and more perverted characters. Essentially, these heroes are “dead” souls in the poem.
So, the gallery of “portraits” presented in Gogol’s poem begins with the landowner Manilov. Manilov's appearance and cutesy manners fully correspond to the basic properties of his character - meaningless daydreaming and complete isolation from life. IN Everyday life Manilov, we do not observe any serious independent undertakings. He abandoned the farm a long time ago; the estate is managed by a clerk. As we learn from Manilov’s conversation with Chichikov, the unfortunate landowner has no idea how many peasants he actually has and whether any of them have died since the last census. The idleness and mental lethargy of the landowner is eloquently evidenced by the fact that in his office for two years now there has been a book, pawned all on the same page and since then he has never picked it up.
However, not everything is so bad in Manilov: sometimes a thirst for activity awakens in him, and he begins to daydream, dreaming, for example, about building a stone bridge across a pond near his house. It’s just a pity that these dreams were never destined to come true, and in general, all Manilov’s projects seem like fun that a real owner shouldn’t think about.
As we move away from Manilov, we remember him with more and more sympathy: although he is empty, he is harmless and even charming in his own way, while the rest of the representatives of this class appear truly disgusting in Gogol’s portrayal. This quality received its greatest expression in the image of Plyushkin.
Plyushkin, according to the author, represents a “hole in humanity.” Everything that was human in him died long ago. The astonished Chichikov sees in front of him an amorphous creature that has lost all signs of gender and age. By portraying Plyushkin, the author shows what a person who has forgotten about his true purpose can turn into.
The feeling of death is present, it seems, in the very atmosphere surrounding the “patched” Plyushkin: his estate has long since fallen into disrepair, the house looks like a “decrepit invalid.” At the same time, Plyushkin owns thousands of serf souls, and his barns and storerooms are full of various goods. However, everything acquired and accumulated rots, the peasants, left without work and bread, “are dying like flies,” and the owner, driven by pathological stinginess, continues to accumulate all sorts of rubbish in his house. His frugality borders on madness. Plyushkin's soul is so dead that he has no feelings left, and he doesn't even want to know his children. “A person could stoop to such insignificance, pettiness, and disgusting!” - exclaims the writer.
In his poem, Gogol contrasts the “dead” souls of the landowners with the “living” souls of the people, in which, despite all the hardships and obstacles, the flame of hard work, sympathy, and love does not go out. These are the shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov, Stepan Probka, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai, the carriage maker Mikheev, the serf girl Pelageya, Proshka and Mavra, and the brickmaker Milushkin. The author feels annoyance and bitter regret that the peasant - a “living” soul, a representative of the majority of the country’s population, its breadwinner and protector - remains in shameful dependence on “dead” souls. Gogol's poem is an attempt by the writer to draw the attention of thinking people to the intolerance of this situation in Russia.
The main theme of living and dead souls in Gogol’s poem “ Dead Souls" We can judge this by the title of the poem, which not only contains a hint at the essence of Chichikov’s scam, but also contains a deeper meaning that reflects the author’s intention of the first volume of the poem “Dead Souls.”
There is an opinion that Gogol planned to create the poem “Dead Souls” by analogy with Dante’s poem “The Divine Comedy”. This determined the proposed three-part composition of the future work. “The Divine Comedy” consists of three parts: “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”, which were supposed to correspond to the three volumes of “Dead Souls” conceived by Gogol. In the first volume, Gogol sought to show the terrible Russian reality, to recreate “hell” modern life. In the second and third volumes, Gogol wanted to depict the revival of Russia. Gogol saw himself as a writer-preacher who, drawing on... pages of his work, a picture of the revival of Russia, brings it out. crisis.
The artistic space of the first volume of the poem consists of two worlds: the real world, where the main character is Chichikov, and the ideal world of lyrical digressions, where the main character is the narrator.
The real world of Dead Souls is scary and ugly. Its typical representatives are Manilov, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, police chief, prosecutor and many others. These are all static characters. They have always been the way we see them now. “Nozdryov at thirty-five was exactly the same as at eighteen and twenty.” Gogol does not show any internal development of the landowners and city residents, this allows us to conclude that the souls of the heroes of the real world of “Dead Souls” are completely frozen and petrified, that they are dead. Gogol portrays landowners and officials with evil irony, shows them as funny, but at the same time very scary. After all, these are not people, but only a pale, ugly semblance of people. There is nothing human left in them. The dead fossilization of souls, the absolute lack of spirituality, is hidden both behind the measured life of the landowners and behind the convulsive activity of the city. Gogol wrote about the city of Dead Souls: “The idea of a city. Arising to the highest degree. Emptiness. Idle talk... Death strikes an unmoved world. Meanwhile, the reader should imagine the dead insensibility of life even more strongly.”
The life of the city outwardly boils and bubbles. But this life is really just empty vanity. In the real world of Dead Souls, a dead soul is a common occurrence. For this world, the soul is only what distinguishes a living person from a dead person. In the episode of the prosecutor’s death, those around him realized that he “had a real soul” only when all that was left of him was “only a soulless body.” But is it really true that all the characters in the real world of “Dead Souls” have a dead soul? No, not everyone.
Of the “indigenous inhabitants” of the real world of the poem, paradoxically and strangely enough, only Plyushkin has a soul that is not yet completely dead. In literary criticism, there is an opinion that Chichikov visits landowners as they become spiritually impoverished. However, I cannot agree that Plyushkin is “deader” and more terrible than Manilov, Nozdryov and others. On the contrary, the image of Plyushkin is much different from the images of other landowners. I will try to prove this by turning first of all to the structure of the chapter dedicated to Plyushkin and to the means of creating Plyushkin’s character.
The chapter about Plyushkin begins with a lyrical digression, which has not happened in the description of any landowner. A lyrical digression immediately alerts readers to the fact that this chapter is significant and important for the narrator. The narrator does not remain indifferent and indifferent to his hero: in lyrical digressions, (there are two of them in Chapter VI) he expresses his bitterness from the realization of the degree to which a person could sink.
The image of Plyushkin stands out for its dynamism among the static heroes of the real world of the poem. From the narrator we learn what Plyushkin was like before and how his soul gradually coarsened and hardened. In Plyushkin's story we see a life tragedy. Therefore, the question arises, is Plyushkin’s current state a degradation of the personality itself, or is it the result of a cruel fate? At the mention of a school friend, “some kind of warm ray slid across Plyushkin’s face, it was not a feeling that was expressed, but some kind of pale reflection of a feeling.” This means that, after all, Plyushkin’s soul has not yet completely died, which means that there is still something human left in it. Plyushkin’s eyes were also alive, not yet extinguished, “running from under his high eyebrows, like mice.”
Chapter VI contains a detailed description of Plyushkin’s garden, neglected, overgrown and decayed, but alive. The garden is a kind of metaphor for Plyushkin’s soul. There are two churches on Plyushkin’s estate alone. Of all the landowners, only Plyushkin utters an internal monologue after Chichikov’s departure. All these details allow us to conclude that Plyushkin’s soul has not yet completely died. This is probably explained by the fact that in the second or third volume of Dead Souls, according to Gogol, two heroes of the first volume, Chichikov and Plyushkin, were supposed to meet.
The second hero of the real world of the poem, who has a soul, is Chichikov. It is in Chichikov that the unpredictability and inexhaustibility of the living soul is most clearly shown, albeit not God knows how rich, even if it is becoming scarcer, but alive. Chapter XI is devoted to the history of Chichikov’s soul, it shows the development of his character. Chichikov's name is Pavel, this is the name of the apostle who experienced a spiritual revolution. According to Gogol, Chichikov was supposed to be reborn in the second volume of the poem and become an apostle, reviving the souls of the Russian people. Therefore, Gogol trusts Chichikov to tell about dead peasants ah, putting my thoughts into his mouth. It is Chichikov who resurrects in the poem the former heroes of the Russian land.
The images of dead peasants in the poem are ideal. Gogol emphasizes the fabulous, heroic features in them. All biographies of dead peasants are determined by the motive of movement passing through each of them (“Tea, all the provinces left with an ax in his belt... Where are your fast legs carrying you now? ... And you are moving from prison to prison...”). It is the dead peasants in “Dead Souls” who have living souls, in contrast to the living people of the poem, whose soul is dead.
The ideal world of “Dead Souls,” which appears to the reader in lyrical digressions, is the complete opposite of the real world. In an ideal world there are no Manilovs, Sobakeviches, Nozdryovs, prosecutors; there are not and cannot be dead souls in it. The ideal world is built in strict accordance with true spiritual values. For the world of lyrical digressions, the soul is immortal, since it is the embodiment of the divine principle in man. Immortals live in an ideal world human souls. First of all, it is the soul of the narrator himself. It is precisely because the narrator lives according to the laws of the ideal world and that he has an ideal in his heart that he can notice all the abomination and vulgarity of the real world. The narrator has a heart for Russia, he believes in its revival. The patriotic pathos of lyrical digressions proves this to us.
At the end of the first volume, the image of Chichikov’s chaise becomes a symbol of the ever-living soul of the Russian people. It is the immortality of this soul that instills in the author faith in the obligatory revival of Russia and the Russian people.
Thus, in the first volume of Dead Souls, Gogol depicts all the shortcomings, all negative sides Russian reality. Gogol shows people what their souls have become. He does this because he passionately loves Russia and hopes for its revival. Gogol wanted people, after reading his poem, to be horrified by their lives and awaken from a deadening sleep. This is the task of the first volume. Describing the terrible reality, Gogol depicts to us in lyrical digressions his ideal of the Russian people, speaks of the living, immortal soul of Russia. In the second and third volumes of his work, Gogol planned to transfer this ideal to real life. But, unfortunately, he was never able to show the revolution in the soul of the Russian people, he was unable to revive dead souls. This was Gogol’s creative tragedy, which grew into the tragedy of his entire life.
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Municipal educational institution
Literature abstract on the topic:
“Souls dead and alive in the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"
Novocherkassk
1. The history of the creation of the poem “Dead Souls”
2. Souls dead and alive in the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"
2.1 The purpose of Chichikov’s life. Father's Testament
2.2 What are “dead souls”?
2.3 Who are the “dead souls” in the poem?
2.4 Who are the “living souls” in the poem?
3. The second volume of “Dead Souls” - a crisis in Gogol’s work
4. Journey to meaning
Bibliography
1. The history of the creation of the poem “Dead Souls”
There are writers who easily and freely come up with plots for their works. Gogol was not one of them. He was painfully inventive in his plots. The concept of each work was given to him with the greatest difficulty. He always needed an external push to inspire his imagination. Contemporaries tell us with what greedy interest Gogol listened to various everyday stories, anecdotes picked up on the street, and even fables. I listened professionally, like a writer, remembering every characteristic detail. Years passed, and some of these accidentally heard stories came to life in his works. For Gogol, P.V. later recalled. Annenkov, “nothing was wasted.”
Gogol, as is known, owed the plot of “Dead Souls” to A.S. Pushkin, who had long encouraged him to write a great epic work. Pushkin told Gogol the story of the adventures of a certain adventurer who bought up dead peasants from landowners in order to pawn them as if they were alive in the Guardian Council and receive a hefty loan for them.
But how did Pushkin know the plot that he gave to Gogol?
History of fraudulent tricks with dead souls could have become known to Pushkin during his exile in Chisinau. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of peasants fled here, to the south of Russia, to Bessarabia, from different parts of the country, fleeing from paying arrears and various taxes. Local authorities created obstacles to the resettlement of these peasants. They were chasing them. But all measures were in vain. Fleeing from their pursuers, fugitive peasants often took the names of deceased serfs. They say that during Pushkin’s stay in exile in Chisinau, rumors spread throughout Bessarabia that the city of Bendery was immortal, and the population of this city was called “immortal society.” For many years, not a single death was recorded there. An investigation has begun. It turned out that in Bendery it was accepted as a rule: the dead “should not be excluded from society,” and their names should be given to the fugitive peasants who arrived here. Pushkin visited Bendery more than once, and he was very interested in this story.
Most likely, it was she who became the seed of the plot, which was retold by the poet to Gogol almost a decade and a half after the Chisinau exile.
It should be noted that Chichikov’s idea was by no means such a rarity in life itself. Fraud with “revision souls” was a fairly common thing in those days. It is safe to assume that not only one specific incident formed the basis of Gogol’s plan.
The core of the plot of Dead Souls was Chichikov’s adventure. It only seemed incredible and anecdotal, but in fact it was reliable in all the smallest details. Feudal reality created very favorable conditions for such adventures.
By a decree of 1718, the so-called household census was replaced by a capitation census. From now on, all male serfs, “from the oldest to the very last child,” were subject to taxation. Dead souls (dead or runaway peasants) became a burden for landowners who naturally dreamed of getting rid of it. And this created a psychological precondition for all kinds of fraud. For some, dead souls were a burden, others felt the need for them, hoping to benefit from fraudulent transactions. This is precisely what Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov hoped for. But the most interesting thing is that Chichikov’s fantastic deal was carried out in perfect accordance with the paragraphs of the law.
Many stories are based on Gogol's works- an absurd anecdote, an exceptional case, an emergency. And the more anecdotal and extraordinary the outer shell of the plot seems, the brighter, more reliable, more typical it appears before us real picture life. Here is one of the peculiar features of the art of a talented writer.
Gogol began working on Dead Souls in mid-1835, that is, even earlier than on The Inspector General. On October 7, 1835, he informed Pushkin that he had written three chapters of Dead Souls. But the new thing has not yet captured Nikolai Vasilyevich. He wants to write a comedy. And only after “The Inspector General,” already abroad, Gogol really took up “Dead Souls.”
In the fall of 1839, circumstances forced Gogol to travel to his homeland and, accordingly, take a forced break from work. Eight months later, Gogol decided to return to Italy to speed up work on the book. In October 1841, he came to Russia again with the intention of publishing his work - the result of six years of hard work.
In December, the final corrections were completed, and the final version of the manuscript was submitted to the Moscow Censorship Committee for consideration. Here “Dead Souls” met with a clearly hostile attitude. As soon as Golokhvastov, who chaired the meeting of the censorship committee, heard the name “Dead Souls,” he shouted: “No, I will never allow this: the soul can be immortal - there cannot be a dead soul - the author is arming himself against immortality!”
It was explained to Golokhvastova that we're talking about about the revision souls, but he became even more furious: “This certainly cannot be allowed... this means against serfdom!” Here the committee members chimed in: “Chichikov’s enterprise is already a criminal offense!”
When one of the censors tried to explain that the author did not justify Chichikov, they shouted from all sides: “Yes, he does not justify, but now he has exposed him, and others will follow the example and buy dead souls...”
Gogol was eventually forced to withdraw the manuscript and decided to send it to St. Petersburg.
In December 1841, Belinsky visited Moscow. Gogol turned to him with a request to take the manuscript with him to St. Petersburg and help him speedy passage through St. Petersburg censorship authorities. The critic willingly agreed to carry out this assignment and on May 21, 1842, with some censorship corrections, “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls” was published.
The plot of “Dead Souls” consists of three externally closed, but internally very interconnected links: landowners, city officials and the biography of Chichikov. Each of these links helps to more thoroughly and deeply reveal Gogol’s ideological and artistic concept.
2. Souls dead and alive in the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"
2.1 The purpose of Chichikov’s life. Father's Testament
This is what V.G. wrote. Sakhnovsky in his book “About the performance “Dead Souls”:
“...It is known that Chichikov was not too fat, not too thin; that, according to some, he even resembled Napoleon, that he had the remarkable ability to talk to everyone as an expert on what he pleasantly talked about. Chichikov's goal in communication was to make the most favorable impression, to win over and inspire confidence. It is also known that Pavel Ivanovich has a special charm, with which he overcame two disasters that would have knocked someone else down forever. But the main thing that characterizes Chichikov is his passionate attraction to acquisitions. To become, as they say, “a man of weight in society,” being a “man of rank,” without clan or tribe, who rushes about like “some kind of barge among the fierce waves,” is Chichikov’s main task. To get yourself a strong place in life, regardless of anyone’s or any interests, public or private, is where Chichikov’s through-and-through action lies.
And everything that smacked of wealth and contentment made an impression on him that was incomprehensible to himself, Gogol writes about him. His father’s instruction – “take care and save a penny” – served him well. He was not possessed by stinginess or stinginess. No, he imagined a life ahead with all sorts of prosperity: carriages, a well-appointed house, delicious dinners.
“You will do everything and ruin everything in the world with a penny,” his father bequeathed to Pavel Ivanovich. He learned this for the rest of his life. “He showed unheard-of self-sacrifice, patience and limitation of needs.” This is what Gogol wrote in his Biography of Chichikov (Chapter XI).
...Chichikov comes to poison. There is an evil that is rolling across Rus', like Chichikov in a troika. What evil is this? It is revealed in everyone in their own way. Each of those with whom he does business has his own reaction to Chichikov’s poison. Chichikov leads one line, but he has a new role with each actor.
...Chichikov, Nozdryov, Sobakevich and other heroes of “Dead Souls” are not characters, but types. In these types, Gogol collected and generalized many similar characters, identifying in all of them a common life and social structure...”
2.2 What are “dead souls”?
The primary meaning of the expression “dead souls” is this: these are dead peasants who are still on the audit lists. Without such a very specific meaning, the plot of the poem would be impossible. After all, Chichikov’s strange enterprise lies in the fact that he buys dead peasants who were listed as alive in the audit lists. And that this is legally feasible: it is enough just to draw up a list of peasants and formalize the purchase and sale accordingly, as if the subject of the transaction were living people. Gogol shows with his own eyes that the law of purchase and sale of living goods rules in Russia, and that this situation is natural and normal.
In 1842, the poem “Dead Souls” was published. Gogol had many problems with censorship: from the title to the content of the work. The censors did not like the fact that the title, firstly, actualized the social problem of fraud with documents, and secondly, combined concepts that are opposite from a religious point of view. Gogol flatly refused to change the name. The writer’s idea is truly amazing: Gogol wanted, like Dante, to describe the whole world as Russia seemed to be, to show both the positive and negative traits, to depict the indescribable beauty of nature and the mystery of the Russian soul. All this is conveyed through various artistic means, and the language of the story itself is light and figurative. No wonder Nabokov said that only one letter separates Gogol from the comic to the cosmic. The concepts of “dead living souls” are mixed in the text of the story, as if in the Oblonskys’ house. The paradox is that alive soul in “Dead Souls” it ends up only with dead peasants!
Landowners
In the story, Gogol draws portraits of people contemporary to him, creating certain types. After all, if you take a closer look at each character, study his home and family, habits and inclinations, then they will have practically nothing in common. For example, Manilov loved lengthy thoughts, loved to show off a little (as evidenced by the episode with the children, when Manilov, under Chichikov, asked his sons various questions from the school curriculum).
Behind his external attractiveness and politeness there was nothing but senseless daydreaming, stupidity and imitation. He was not at all interested in everyday trifles, and he even gave away the dead peasants for free.
Nastasya Filippovna Korobochka knew literally everyone and everything that happened on her small estate. She remembered by heart not only the names of the peasants, but also the reasons for their death, and she had complete order in her household. The enterprising housewife tried to provide, in addition to the purchased souls, flour, honey, lard - in a word, everything that was produced in the village under her strict leadership.
Sobakevich put a price on every dead soul, but he escorted Chichikov to the government chamber. He seems to be the most businesslike and responsible landowner among all the characters. His complete opposite turns out to be Nozdryov, whose meaning in life comes down to gambling and drinking. Even children cannot keep the master at home: his soul constantly requires more and more new entertainment.
The last landowner from whom Chichikov bought souls was Plyushkin. In the past, this man was a good owner and family man, but due to unfortunate circumstances, he turned into something asexual, formless and inhuman. After the death of his beloved wife, his stinginess and suspicion gained unlimited power over Plyushkin, turning him into a slave of these base qualities.
Lack of authentic life
What do all these landowners have in common? What unites them with the mayor, who received the order for nothing, with the postmaster, police chief and other officials who take advantage of their official position, and whose goal in life is only their own enrichment? The answer is very simple: lack of desire to live. None of the characters feel any positive emotions or really think about the sublime. All these dead souls are driven by animal instincts and consumerism. There is no internal originality in landowners and officials, they are all just dummies, just copies of copies, they do not stand out from the general background, they are not exceptional individuals. Everything high in this world is vulgarized and lowered: no one admires the beauty of nature, which the author so vividly describes, no one falls in love, no one accomplishes feats, no one overthrows the king. In the new, corrupt world, there is no longer room for the exclusive romantic personality. There is no love here as such: parents don’t love children, men don’t love women - people just take advantage of each other. So Manilov needs children as a source of pride, with the help of which he can increase his weight in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, Plyushkin doesn’t even want to know his daughter, who ran away from home in her youth, and Nozdryov doesn’t care whether he has children or not.
The worst thing is not even this, but the fact that idleness reigns in this world. At the same time, you can be a very active and active person, but at the same time be idle. Any actions and words of the characters are devoid of internal spiritual filling, devoid of a higher purpose. The soul here is dead because it no longer asks for spiritual food.
The question may arise: why does Chichikov buy only dead souls? The answer to this, of course, is simple: he doesn’t need any extra peasants, and he will sell the documents for the dead. But will such an answer be complete? Here the author subtly shows that the world is alive and dead soul do not intersect and cannot intersect anymore. But the “living” souls are now in the world of the dead, and the “dead” have come to the world of the living. At the same time, the souls of the dead and the living in Gogol’s poem are inextricably linked.
Are there living souls in the poem “Dead Souls”? Of course there is. Their roles are played by deceased peasants, to whom various qualities and characteristics are attributed. One drank, another beat his wife, but this one was hard-working, and this one had strange nicknames. These characters come to life both in Chichikov’s imagination and in the reader’s imagination. And now we, together with the main character, imagine the leisure time of these people.
hope for the best
The world depicted by Gogol in the poem is completely depressing, and the work would be too gloomy if not for the subtly depicted landscapes and beauties of Rus'. That's where the lyrics are, that's where the life is! One gets the feeling that in a space devoid of living beings (that is, people), life has been preserved. And again, the opposition based on the living-dead principle is actualized here, which turns into a paradox. In the final chapter of the poem, Rus' is compared to a dashing troika that rushes along the road into the distance. “Dead Souls,” despite its general satirical nature, ends with inspiring lines that sound enthusiastic faith in the people.
The characteristics of the main character and the landowners, a description of their common qualities will be useful to 9th grade students when preparing for an essay on the topic “Dead Living Souls” based on Gogol’s poem.
Work test
N.V. Gogol worked on the poem “Dead Souls” for 17 years, but he was not destined to finish what he started. The first volume of the poem as it is is the result of the writer’s thoughts about Russia and its future.
The essence of the name
The title "Dead Souls" refers to the souls of dead peasants, which Chichikov buys. But to a greater extent, the dead souls are the landowners, who presented in the work a whole gallery of images of local nobles typical of Russia at that time.
Representatives of Dead Souls
The first representative souls of the dead and, perhaps, the most harmless is the landowner Manilov. His deadness is expressed in fruitless dreaming in a far from disappointing reality. He is no longer interested in anything other than his own fantasies.
The second image from this gallery is the image of Korobochka, the “club-headed” landowner. At its core, she is a hoarder, but she is so limited in her thinking that it becomes scary. Her attention is not given to things that cannot be sold, and what she does not know does not exist for her at all. It is in this limitation and pettiness that the author sees the death of her soul.
Fate pits Chichikov against Nozdryov, a joker landowner. He is having fun, carelessly squandering his property. Although he has the makings of activity and purposefulness, perhaps even intelligence, he still belongs to the category of “dead”, since he directs his energy into emptiness. And he himself is empty inside.
Sobakevich is a good owner, also a hoarder, but all his actions are aimed at his own good, and he considers those around him to be only swindlers.
Last on the list is landowner Plyushkin. His lack of spirituality reached its apogee, he lost his human appearance, although he had once been a zealous, thrifty owner. Neighboring landowners came to him to learn how to save money. After the death of his wife, he seemed to go crazy, and his thirst for hoarding took on perverted forms.
A whole undivided mass of dead souls is represented in the guise of officials of the provincial city, mired in careerism and bribery.
Living souls
Are there living souls in the poem? I think that the images of Russian peasants who embody the ideal of spirituality, skill, courage and love of freedom can be called alive. For example, images of dead or escaped peasants: master Mikheev, shoemaker Telyatnikov, stove maker Milushkin, etc.
Gogol's opinion
Gogol believes that it is the people who are able to preserve the soul within themselves. Therefore, the future of Russia depends only on the peasantry.
- What documents should an individual entrepreneur have?
- Accounting for individual entrepreneurs - rules and features of independent reporting under different tax regimes Primary documentation for individual entrepreneurs
- Accounting for individual entrepreneurs: features of accounting in individual entrepreneurs?
- How to privatize an apartment, everything about privatization List of documents for privatization of an apartment