Image of landowners. The image of landowners in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Satirical depiction of landowners in the poem by N. V. Gogol “dead souls”

Essays on literature: Portrayal of landowners in N. V. Gogol’s poem Dead Souls

Gogol is a great realist writer, whose work is firmly entrenched in Russian classical literature.

His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give a broad picture of the district landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem "Dead Souls" Gogol extremely exposes the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the failure of the bureaucratic apparatus, the withering away of serf-feudal relations, the difficult situation common people. Therefore, the poem “Dead Souls” is rightly called the Russian encyclopedia provincial life first third of the 19th century. In the poem, along with negative images landowners, officials, a new hero - an emerging entrepreneur, images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself are given.

Complete misunderstanding practical side life, mismanagement we note with the landowner Manilov. He is not involved in the management of his estate, entrusting this entirely to the steward. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last audit. His house “stood alone on the Jurassic, open to all the winds that might blow.” Instead of a shady garden, there were five or six birch trees “with thin tops” around the manor’s house. And in the village itself there was nowhere “a growing tree or any greenery.” Its impracticality is also evidenced by the interior furnishings of his house, where next to the magnificent furniture there were “two chairs, covered with simple matting,” or “mountains of ash knocked out of a pipe,” lying on an expensive polished table. But we find the most vivid reflection of Manilov’s character in his language, speech manner: “... Of course... if the neighborhood were good, if, for example, there was such a person with whom in some way you could talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some kind of science, so that it would stir the soul, would give, so to speak, something like that to the guy.” Here he still wanted to express something, but, noticing that he was a little confused, he only picked his hand in the air.”

Korobochka has a completely different attitude towards farming. She has a “pretty village”, the yard is full of all kinds of birds, there are “spacious vegetable gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets and other household vegetables”, there are “apple trees and other fruit trees”. She knows the names of her peasants by heart. But her mental horizons are extremely limited. She is stupid, ignorant, superstitious. The box does not see anything further than “its nose”. Everything “new and unprecedented” frightens her. She is a typical representative of small provincial landowners leading subsistence farming. Her behavior (which can also be noted in Sobakevich) is guided by a passion for profit, self-interest.

But Sobakevich is significantly different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol’s words, “a devil’s fist.” The passion for enrichment pushes him to be cunning and forces him to seek out various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash rent. He is not at all surprised by the buying and selling dead souls, but only cares about how much he gets for them.

A representative of another type of landowner is Nozdryov. He is the complete opposite of Manilov and Korobochka. Nozdryov is a restless hero, a hero of fairs, drinking parties, and the card table. He is a carouser, a brawler and a liar. His farm has been neglected. Only the kennel is in excellent condition. Among dogs, he is like a “dear father” among a large family (I just want to compare him with Fonvizin’s Skotinin). He immediately squanders the income received from the forced labor of peasants, which speaks of his moral decline, indifference to the peasants.

Complete moral impoverishment, loss human qualities characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed it “a hole in humanity.” Speaking about Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting it in the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is “a swindler, he starved all the people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs.” Over the last three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin’s place. With the eerie mien of a half-crazed man, he declares that “his people are painfully gluttonous, and out of idleness they have acquired the habit of eating.” About 70 peasants from Plyushkin escaped and became outlaws, unable to endure starvation. life. His servants run around barefoot until late winter, since the stingy Plyushkin has only boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only when the servants enter the vestibule of the master’s house. Plyushkin and others like him slowed down the economic development of Russia: “On the vast territory of the estate. Plyushkina (and he has about 1000 souls) economic life froze: mills, fulling mills, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, luggage and stacks turned into pure manure, flour turned into stone, into cloth. canvases and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, on the farm, income was still collected, the peasant still carried the quitrent, and the woman still carried the linen. All this was dumped into storerooms, and it all became rot and dust." Truly "laughter through tears."

Plyushkin and other landowners represented by Gogol were “written off from life.” are the product of a certain social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but turned into a vulgar, idle, sugary dreamer. With enormous force, Gogol indicted the feudal-serf system, the Nicholas regime, the entire way of life in which Manilovism, Nozdrevism, Plyushkinsky squalor were typical, normal life phenomena.

In this display of the thoroughly vicious serfdom order and political system Russia lies the great significance of the poem “Dead Souls”. “The poem shocked all of Russia” (Herzen), it awakened the self-awareness of the Russian people.

The images drawn by Gogol in the poem were received ambiguously by his contemporaries: many reproached him for drawing a caricature of contemporary life and depicting reality in a funny, absurd way. Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landowners (leading his main character from the first of them to the last) primarily in order to answer main question occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what modern life contains at least the slightest hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the key to the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in lyrical digression about the “Rus' Troika”, the leitmotif permeates the entire narrative, and it is to it that the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of the landowners, are subordinated.

The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead Souls, - Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely divorced from reality, his main occupation is fruitless soaring in the clouds, useless project-making. He talks about this as appearance his estate (a house on a hill, open to all the winds, a gazebo - a “temple of solitary reflection”, traces of begun and unfinished buildings), and the interior of living quarters (assorted furniture, piles of pipe ashes laid out in neat rows on the windowsill, some kind of book , the second year laid down on the fourteenth page, etc.). When drawing an image, Gogol pays special attention to details, interiors, things, through them showing the characteristics of the owner’s character. Manilov, despite his “great” thoughts, is stupid, vulgar and sentimental (lisping with his wife, “ancient Greek” names of not very neat and well-mannered children). The internal and external squalor of the depicted type prompts Gogol, starting from him, to look for positive ideal, and do it “by contradiction”. If complete isolation from reality and fruitless wandering in the clouds lead to something like this, then perhaps the opposite type will inspire us with some hope? Korobochka in this respect is the complete opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not have her head in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of Korobochka does not give the desired ideal. Pettiness and stinginess (old coats stored in chests, money put in a stocking for a “rainy day”), inertia, dull adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, “club-headedness” make her appearance almost more repulsive than the appearance of Manilov . Despite all the dissimilarity between the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one common feature- inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not influence the reality around them. Perhaps an active person will be a model from whom the younger generation should take an example? And, as if in response to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his hectic activities are mostly scandalous in nature. He is a regular at all the drinking and carousing in the area, he exchanges everything for anything (he tries to sell Chichikov puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.), cheats when playing cards and even checkers, and mediocrely squanders the money he gets from sales. harvest. He lies without any need (it was Nozdryov who subsequently confirms the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor’s daughter and took him as an accomplice, without batting an eyelid he agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon who escaped from exile, etc.). Repeatedly he was beaten, and by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued in the same spirit - “and he is nothing, and they, as they say, are nothing.” As a result, Nozdrev’s “activities” cause almost more troubles than the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. And yet, there is a feature that unites all three types described - it is impracticality.

The next landowner, Sobakevich, is extremely practical. This is the type of “master”, “fist”. Everything in his house is durable, reliable, made “to last forever” (even the furniture seems to be filled with self-satisfaction and wants to shout: “Iya Sobakevich!”). However, all of Sobakevich’s practicality is aimed at only one goal - obtaining personal gain, to achieve which he stops at nothing (“cursing” Sobakevich of everyone and everything - in the city, according to him, there is one decent person - the prosecutor, “yes and he, if you look at it, is a pig,” Sobakevich’s “meal”, when he eats mountains of food and so, it seems, is capable of swallowing the whole world in one sitting, the scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very object of the purchase - sales, but immediately feels that the matter smells of money that can be “ripped off” from Chichikov). It is absolutely clear that Sobakevich is even further from the sought-after ideal than all previous types.

Plyushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his current state (“how he got to this life”) is shown to us by Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol that contains Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdryov, and Sobakevich. What is common to all the types depicted in the poem is that their lives are not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, and are not filled with concern for the common good, progress, or the desire for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if it does not contain concern for the good of the nation or country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a “hole in humanity”, that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a miser who has lost all human form, stealing old buckets and other rubbish from his own peasants, turning own house into a scrap heap, and his serfs into beggars - that is why his image is the final stop for all these manilas, boxes, nozdrevs and dogs. And it is precisely “a hole in humanity,” like Plyushkin, that Russia may turn out to have if it does not find the strength to tear away all these “dead souls” and bring them to the surface of national life positive image- active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly, sanctified by concern for the common good. It is characteristic that it was precisely this type that Gogol tried to bring out in the second volume of Dead Souls in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo. However surrounding reality did not provide material for similar images- Kostanzhoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that has no relevance real life not the slightest relation. Russian reality supplied only manilas, boxes, nozdrevs and Plyushkins - “Where am I? I don't see anything... Not a single one human face,.. There’s only snout, snout around...” Gogol exclaims through the mouth of the Governor in “The Inspector General” (compare with the “evil spirits” from “Evenings...” and “Mirgorod”: a pig’s snout sticking out of the window in “Sorochinskaya fair", mocking inhuman faces in " Enchanted place"). That is why the words about Rus'-troika sound like a sad cry of warning - “Where are you rushing?.. Doesn’t give an answer...”.

So, the main and main meaning the poem is that Gogol wanted through artistic images understand historical path Russia, to see its future, to feel in the surrounding reality the sprouts of a new, better life, to distinguish those forces that will pull Russia from the sidelines of world history and include it in the general cultural process. The image of landowners is a reflection of precisely this search. Through extreme typification, Gogol creates figures of a national scale, representing the Russian character in many forms, in all its inconsistency and ambiguity. The types derived by Gogol are an integral part of Russian life; these are precisely Russian types, which, no matter how bright, are just as stable in Russian life - until life itself radically changes.

Like the images of landowners, the images of officials, a whole gallery of which Gogol unfolds before the reader, perform a certain function. Showing the life and customs of the provincial town of NN, the author tries to answer the main question that worries him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what in modern life contains at least the slightest hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people.

The theme of bureaucracy is an integral part and continuation of the ideas that Gogol developed when depicting landowners in the poem. It is no coincidence that the images of officials follow the images of landowners. If the evil embodied in the owners of the estates - in all these boxes, Manilovs, Sobakevichs, Nozdrevs and Plyushkins - is scattered throughout the Russian expanses, then here it appears in a concentrated form, compressed by the living conditions of the provincial city. A huge number of “dead souls” gathered together creates a special monstrously absurd atmosphere.

If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, dispatching its needs through offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is officials who ensure the functioning of this entire mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which is not imprinted with a lofty idea, the desire to promote the common good, becomes an embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. Essentially, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (unlike the landowners, who had, albeit ugly, but still their own physiognomy), even loses given name, since the name is still a kind of personal characteristic, and becomes simply Postmaster, Prosecutor, Governor, Chief of Police, Chairman or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Kuvshinnoe Rylo. A person turns into a detail, a “cog” of the state machine, of which he is a micromodel provincial town NN. The officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the positions they occupy.

To enhance the contrast, Gogol gives grotesque “portraits” of some officials - the chief of police is famous for the fact that, according to rumors, he only needs to blink when passing a fish row to ensure a luxurious lunch and an abundance of fish delicacies. The postmaster, whose name was Ivan Andreevich, is known for the fact that they always added to his name: “Sprechen zi deutsch, Ivan Andreich?” The chairman of the chamber knew Zhukovsky’s “Lyudmila” by heart and “masterfully read many passages, especially: “Bor has fallen asleep, the valley is sleeping,” and the word “Chu!” The others, as Gogol sarcastically notes, were “also more or less enlightened people: some read Karamzin, some Moskovskie Vedomosti, some didn’t even read anything at all.” The reaction of city residents, including officials, to the news that Chichikov was buying dead souls is noteworthy - what is happening does not fit into the usual framework and immediately gives rise to the most fantastic assumptions - from the fact that Chichikov wanted to kidnap the governor’s daughter, to the fact that Chichikov is either a wanted counterfeiter or an escaped robber, about whom the Chief of Police receives an order for immediate arrest. The grotesqueness of the situation is only enhanced by the fact that the Postmaster decides that Chichikov is Captain Kopeikin in disguise, a hero of the War of 1812, an invalid without an arm and a leg. The rest of the officials assume that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise, having escaped from St. Helena Island.

The absurdity of the situation reaches its climax when the prosecutor dies as a result of a collision with insoluble problems (from mental stress). In general, the situation in the city resembles the behavior of a mechanism into which a grain of sand suddenly fell. Wheels and screws, designed for very specific functions, spin idle, some break with a bang, and the whole mechanism rings, jangles and “goes haywire.”

If the city is a soulless machine, killing everything living and pure in people, destroying the very human essence, depriving them of all human feelings and even a normal name, turning the city itself into a “cemetery” of dead souls, then ultimately all of Russia can take on a similar appearance if it does not find the strength to reject all this “deadness” and bring to the surface a national a positive image of life - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly, sanctified by concern for the common good.

The dream of a future epic work dedicated to Russia led Gogol to the idea of the poem “Dead Souls.” Work on the work began in 1835. The plot of the poem, suggested by Pushkin, determined the initial scheme of the work: to show Rus' from one side,” that is, from its negative side. However, the ultimate goal of his work, Gogol planned to “expose to the eyes of the people” all the good that was hidden in Russian life and that gave hope for the possibility of its renewal. The breadth of the plan determined the writer’s appeal to epic forms.

According to the laws of the epic, Gogol recreates a picture of life in the poem, striving for maximum breadth of coverage. This world is ugly. This world is scary. This is a world of inverted values, the spiritual guidelines in it are distorted, the laws by which it exists are immoral. But living inside this world, having been born in it and having accepted its laws, it is almost impossible to assess the degree of its immorality, to see the abyss that separates it from the world true values. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the reason that causes spiritual degradation and moral decay of society. In this world live Plyushkin, Nozdrev, Manilov, the prosecutor, the police chief and other heroes, who are original caricatures of Gogol’s contemporaries. Gogol created a whole gallery of characters and types devoid of soul in the poem, they are all diverse, but they all have one thing in common - none of them have a soul. The first in the gallery of these characters is Manilov. To create his image, Gogol uses various artistic media, and including the landscape, the landscape of Manilov’s estate, the interior of his home. The things surrounding him characterize Manilov no less than his portrait and behavior: “Everyone has their own enthusiasm, but Manilov had nothing.” Its main feature is uncertainty. Manilov's external well-being, his goodwill and willingness to serve seem to Gogol to be terrible traits. All this is exaggerated in Manilov. His eyes, “sweet as sugar,” express nothing. And this sweetness of appearance introduces a feeling of unnaturalness in every movement of the hero: here on his face appears “an expression that is not only sweet, but even cloying, similar to that potion that the clever doctor sweetened mercilessly, imagining with it to please the patient.” What kind of “potion” was sweetened by the cloying Manilov? His emptiness, his worthlessness, his soullessness with endless discussions about the happiness of friendship. While this landowner is prospering and dreaming, his estate is being destroyed, the peasants have forgotten how to work. Korobochka has a completely different attitude to farming. Her yard is full of all kinds of birds. But Korobochka does not see anything beyond her nose, everything “new and unprecedented” frightens her. Her behavior (which can also be noted in Sobakevich) is driven by a passion for profit, self-interest. But Sobakevich is very different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol’s words, “the devil.” fist." The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, forces him to find different means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash rent. He is not at all surprised by the buying and selling of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will get for them. His life is monotonous. It encourages idleness and idleness. The landowner's horizons are narrow, and his character is insignificant. This is Manilov, whom the author not accidentally endows with characteristic surname, each syllable of which can be drawn out. Not a single sharp sound. Smoothness, stringiness, boredom. Comparing the hero with a cat, the author emphasizes Manilov’s kindness, courtesy, and politeness, which are brought to the point of grotesquery. The episode is comical when the hero, not wanting to be the first to enter the room, squeezes sideways into the door at the same time as Chichikov. But all these traits take on ugly forms. Throughout his entire life, Manilov did nothing useful. His existence is aimless. This is emphasized by Gogol even in the description of his estate, where mismanagement and desolation reign. And all the owner’s mental activity is limited to fruitless fantasies that it would be nice to build an “underground passage” or build a “stone bridge” across the pond. By highlighting the “sweet as sugar” eyes in the character’s portrait, Gogol emphasizes that the “hero” is beautiful-hearted and sentimental to the point of cloying. Relations between people seem to him idyllic and festive, without clashes, without contradictions. He doesn’t know life at all; reality is replaced by empty fantasy, the play of a sluggish imagination. Manilov looks at everything through rose-colored glasses. Poor spiritual world Russian landowner, musty and primitive lifestyle. The box in the gallery of “dead souls” amazes with its greed and pettiness, cunning and stinginess. Hence the surname, which evokes associations with various boxes, chests and drawers in which various things are carefully stored. Thus, Korobochka is one of those “aunts” who “cry when the harvest fails,” and meanwhile “earn a little money.” Distinctive feature The heroine is her inhuman stupidity. Gogol aptly calls her “club-headed” and “strong-headed.” But not all landowners are quiet and harmless, like Korobochka and Manilov. Village idleness and life without worries sometimes degraded a person so much that he turned into a dangerous, arrogant hooligan. A gambler, gossip, drunkard and rowdy, Nozdryov is extremely typical of Russian noble society. Chatting, boasting, swearing and lying - that's all he is capable of. This joker behaves cheekily and insolently, has a “passion to spoil his neighbor.” The hero's tongue is clogged with all sorts of distorted words, invented ridiculous expressions, swear words, alogisms. The portrait of Nozdryov is complemented by his surname, consisting of large quantity consonants that give the impression of an explosion. In addition, the combination of letters evokes an association with the hero’s favorite word “nonsense.” Gogol also did not like the other extreme - the homeliness and shrinkage of strong landowners brought to the point of absurdity. The life of people like Sobakevich is organized well and conscientiously. Unlike Nozdryov and Manilov, the hero is associated with economic activity. Everything with him is “stubborn”, without instability, in some kind of “strong and clumsy order.” Even the peasants' huts are built to last, and the well is made from the kind of oak "that only goes... to ships." The external powerful appearance of Sobakevich is emphasized through the interior of the house. The paintings depict heroes, and the furniture resembles its owner. Each chair seems to say: “...I am Sobakevich.” The landowner eats according to his appearance. The dishes are served large and filling. If it’s a pig, then the whole thing is on the table; if it’s a ram, then the whole thing is on the table. Gradually, an image of a gluttonous “man-fist”, a “bear” and at the same time a cunning scoundrel, whose interests boil down to personal material well-being, is emerging. The gallery of landowners is “crowned” by Plyushkin, the most caricatured and at the same time terrible character. This is the only “hero” whose soul is steadily degrading. Plyushkin is a landowner who has completely lost his human appearance, and, essentially, his reason. In people he sees only enemies, thieves of his property, and does not trust anyone. Therefore, he abandoned society, my own daughter, cursed his son, does not receive guests and does not go anywhere himself. And his people are dying like flies. He considers peasants to be parasites and thieves, hates them and sees them as beings of a lower order. The very appearance of the village speaks of their difficult and hopeless lot. The deep decline of the entire serf way of life is most clearly expressed in the image of Plyushkin.

Showing all the ugliness and spiritual misery of his heroes, he constantly experiences the loss of humanity in them. This is “laughter through tears,” as the writer defined the originality of his creative method. The poem was enthusiastically welcomed by Belinsky, who saw in it “a purely Russian, national creation, snatched from a hiding place folk life, as true as it is patriotic, mercilessly pulling back the veil from reality and breathing passionate, bloody love for the fertile grain of Russian life: an immensely artistic creation...”

Depiction of landowners in Gogol's poem "DEAD SOULS"

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great realist writer, whose work has become firmly entrenched in Russian classical literature.

His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give a broad picture of the district landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem “Dead Souls,” Gogol extremely exposes the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the failure of the bureaucratic apparatus, the withering away of serf-feudal relations, and the plight of the common people. Therefore, the poem “Dead Souls” is rightly called an encyclopedia of Russian provincial life in the first third of the 19th century. In the poem, along with negative images of landowners, officials, a new hero - an emerging entrepreneur, there are images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself.

We note a complete lack of understanding of the practical side of life and mismanagement of the landowner Manilov. He is not involved in the management of his estate, entrusting this entirely to the steward. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last audit. His house “stood alone on the Jurassic, open to all the winds that might blow.” Instead of a shady garden, there were five or six birch trees “with thin tops” around the manor’s house. And in the village itself there was nowhere “a growing tree or any greenery.” Its impracticality is also evidenced by the interior furnishings of his house, where next to the magnificent furniture there were “two chairs, covered with simple matting,” or “mountains of ash knocked out of a pipe,” lying on an expensive polished table. But we find the most vivid reflection of Manilov’s character in his language, speech manner: “... Of course... if the neighborhood were good, if, for example, there was such a person with whom in some way you could talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some kind of science, so that it would stir the soul, would give, so to speak, something like that to the guy.” Here he still wanted to express something, but, noticing that he was a little confused, he only picked his hand in the air.”

But Sobakevich is significantly different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol’s words, “a devil’s fist.” The passion for enrichment pushes him to be cunning and forces him to seek out various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash rent. He is not at all surprised by the buying and selling of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will get for them.

Complete moral impoverishment and loss of human qualities are characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed it “a hole in humanity.” Speaking about Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting it in the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is “a swindler, he starved all the people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs.” Over the past three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin. With the eerie mien of a half-crazed man, he declares that “his people are painfully gluttonous, and out of idleness they have acquired the habit of cracking food.” About 70 peasants from Plyushkin escaped and became outlaws, unable to endure starvation. His servants run barefoot until late winter, since the stingy Plyushkin has only boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only then. when the servants enter the vestibule of the manor's house. Plyushkin and others like him slowed down the economic development of Russia: “On the vast territory of Plyushkin’s estate (and he has about 1000 souls), economic life froze: mills, fulling mills, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, luggage and stacks stopped turning into pure manure, flour turned into stone, cloth and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, income was collected on the farm as before, the peasant still carried the rent, and the woman carried the linen. All this was dumped in the treasure.

The central place in Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” is occupied by five chapters in which images of landowners are presented: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdryov, Sobakevich and Plyushkin. The chapters are arranged in a special sequence according to the degree of degradation of the heroes.
The image of Manilov seems to grow from a proverb: a person is neither this nor that, neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan. He is cut off from life, unadapted. His house is located on the Jurassic, “open to all winds.” In a gazebo with the inscription “Temple of Solitary Reflection,” Manilov makes plans to build an underground passage and build a stone bridge across the pond. These are just empty fantasies. In reality, Manilov's economy is falling apart. The men are drunk, the housekeeper is stealing, the servants are idle. The landowner's leisure time is occupied by aimlessly putting ashes from a pipe into piles, and the book has been lying in his office for two years with a bookmark on page 14.
The portrait and character of Manilov were created according to the principle: “in pleasantness, it seemed, too much sugar was transferred.” On Manilov’s face there was “an expression not only sweet, but even cloying, similar to that mixture that the clever secular doctor sweetened mercilessly...”
The love of Manilov and his wife is too sweet and sentimental: “Open your mouth, darling, I’ll put this piece for you.”
But despite the “excessiveness,” Manilov is truly a kind, amiable, harmless person. He is the only one of all the landowners who gives Chichikov “dead souls” for free.
The box is also distinguished by “excessiveness,” but of a different kind - excessive frugality, distrust, timidity, and limitations. She is “one of those mothers, small landowners who cry about crop failures, losses and keep their heads somewhat to one side, and meanwhile they gradually collect money in colorful bags.” Things in her house
reflect her naive idea of wealth and beauty and at the same time - her pettiness and limitations. “The room was hung with old striped wallpaper; paintings with some birds; between the windows there are old small mirrors with dark frames in the shape of curled leaves; Behind every mirror there was either a letter, or an old deck of cards, or a stocking; wall clock with painted flowers on the dial.” Gogol calls Korobochka “club-headed.” She is afraid to undercut the price when selling “dead souls,” so as not to “incur a loss.” Korobochka decides to sell souls only out of fear, because Chichikov wished: “... and be lost and bereft with your entire village!” Korobochka’s “club-headedness” is a trait of a person who “once he’s got something in his head, you can’t overpower him with anything.”
Sobakevich looks like epic hero: a gigantic-sized boot, cheesecakes “much larger than a plate,” “never been sick.” But his actions are by no means heroic. He scolds everyone, sees everyone as scoundrels and scammers. The whole city, in his words, is “a swindler sitting on a swindler and driving the swindler... there’s only one there.” honest man: prosecutor; and even that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.” The portraits on the walls depicting heroes speak of the unrealized heroic, heroic potential of Sobakevich’s “dead” soul. Sobakevich - “man-fist”. It expresses the universal human passion for the heavy, earthly, the absence of sublime ideals.
Nozdryov is a “broken fellow”, a reveler. His main passion is to “spoil his neighbor,” while continuing to remain his friend.
“A sensitive nose heard him several dozen miles away, where there was a fair with all sorts of conventions and balls.” In Nozdryov’s office, instead of books, there are sabers and Turkish daggers, on one of which it is written: “Master Savely Sibiryakov.” Even the fleas in Nozdryov’s house are “fast insects.” Nozdryov’s food expresses his reckless spirit: “some things were burnt, some were not cooked at all... in a word, roll and roll, it would be hot, but some taste would probably come out.” However, Nozdryov’s activity is devoid of meaning, much less social benefit, which is why he is also “dead.”
Plyushkin appears in the poem as a sexless creature, whom Chichikov mistakes for the housekeeper. The images surrounding this hero are a moldy biscuit, a greasy robe, a roof like a sieve. Both objects and the owner himself are subject to decay. Once an exemplary owner and family man, Plyushkin has now turned into a recluse spider. He is suspicious, stingy, petty, mentally degrading.
Showing successively the life and character of five landowners, Gogol depicts the process of gradual degradation of the landowner class, revealing all its vices and shortcomings.

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