Features of the depiction of landowners in the poem. Depiction of landowners in the poem Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Depiction of landowners by Gogol

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.”

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 of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will get 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 and indifference to the peasants.

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 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, became outlaws, unable to bear the hunger 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 a product of a certain social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; Manilov served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but he 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.

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

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 perverted, 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 of 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 means, including landscape, the landscape of Manilov’s estate, and 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. Such is Manilov, whom the author not by chance endows with a characteristic surname, every 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 grotesqueness. 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. The spiritual world of the Russian landowner is wretched, the way of life is musty and primitive. 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.” A distinctive feature of 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 language is clogged with all sorts of distorted words, invented absurd expressions, swear words, and alogisms. The portrait of Nozdryov is complemented by his surname, consisting of a large number of consonants, creating 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 Nozdrev 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 were built to last, and the well was 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, his 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 wretchedness of his heroes, he constantly experiences the loss of humanity in them. This is “laughter through tears,” as the writer defined the uniqueness of his creative method. The poem was enthusiastically welcomed by Belinsky, who saw in it “a purely Russian, national creation, snatched from the hiding place of people’s life, as true as it is patriotic, mercilessly pulling back the veil from reality and breathing passionate, blood-borne 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.

Gogol created his works in the historical conditions that developed in Russia after the failure of the first revolutionary action - the Decembrist uprising of 1825. The new socio-political situation posed new tasks for the figures of Russian social thought and literature, which were deeply reflected in Gogol’s work. Having turned to the most important social problems of his time, the writer went further along the path of realism, which was opened by Pushkin and Gribo-edov. Developing the principles of critical realism, Gogol became one of the greatest representatives of this trend in Russian literature. As Belinsky notes, “Gogol was the first to look boldly and directly at Russian reality.”

One of the main themes in Gogol’s work is the life of the Russian landowner class, the Russian nobility as the ruling class, its fate and role in public life. It is characteristic that Gogol’s main way of depicting landowners is satire. The images of landowners reflect the process of gradual degradation of this class, revealing all its vices and shortcomings. Gogol's satire is tinged with irony and “hits right in the forehead.” Irony helped the writer talk about what was impossible to talk about under censorship conditions. Gogol's laughter seems good-natured, but he spares no one, every phrase has a deep, hidden meaning, subtext. Irony is a characteristic element of Gogol's satire. It is present not only in the author’s speech, but also in the speech of the characters. Irony, one of the essential features of Gogol’s poetics, gives the narrative greater realism, becoming an artistic means of critical analysis of reality.

In Gogol’s largest work, the poem “Dead Souls,” the images of landowners are presented most fully and multifacetedly. The poem is structured as the story of the adventures of Chichikov, an official who buys “dead souls.” The composition of the poem allowed the author

talk about different landowners and their villages. Almost half of the first volume of the poem (five chapters out of eleven) is devoted to the characteristics of various types of Russian landowners. Gogol creates five characters, five portraits that are so different from each other, and at the same time, in each of them the typical features of a Russian landowner appear.

Our acquaintance begins with Manilov and ends with Plyushkin. This sequence has its own logic: from one landowner to another, the process of impoverishment of the human personality deepens, an ever more terrible picture of the decomposition of feudal society unfolds.

Manilov opens a portrait gallery of landowners. Already in the surname itself his character is manifested. The description begins with a picture of the village of Manilovka, which “not many could lure with its location.” The author ironically describes the master's courtyard, with the pretense of an "Aglitsky garden with an overgrown pond", sparse bushes and with a pale inscription: "Temple of solitary reflection." Speaking about Manilov, the author exclaims: “God alone could say what Manilov’s character was.” He is kind by nature, polite, courteous, but all this took on ugly forms in him. Manilov is beautiful-hearted and sentimental to the point of cloying. Relations between people seem to him idyllic and festive. Manilov does not know life at all; reality is replaced by empty fantasy. He loves to think and dream, sometimes even about things useful for the peasants. But his projection is far from the demands of life. He does not know and never thinks about the real needs of the peasants. Manilov imagines himself as a bearer of spiritual culture. Once in the army he was considered the most educated person. The author speaks ironically about the situation in Manilov’s house, in which “something was always missing”, about his sugary relationship with his wife. When talking about dead souls, Manilov is compared to an overly smart minister. Here, Gogol’s irony, as it were, accidentally intrudes into a forbidden area. Comparing Manilov with a minister means that the latter is not so different from this landowner, and “Manilovism” is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar world.

The third chapter of the poem is devoted to the image of Korobochka, which Gogol classifies as one of those “small landowners who complain about crop failures, losses and keep their heads somewhat to one side, and meanwhile gradually collect money in colorful bags placed in boxes chest of drawers." This money is obtained from the sale of a wide variety of subsistence products. Korobochka realized the benefits of trade and, after much persuasion, agrees to sell such an unusual product as dead souls. The author is ironic in his description of the dialogue between Chichikov and Korobochka. The “club-headed” landowner cannot understand for a long time what they want from her, she infuriates Chichikov, and then bargains for a long time, fearing “just so as not to make a mistake.” Korobochka's horizons and interests do not extend beyond the boundaries of her estate. The household and its entire way of life are patriarchal in nature.

Gogol depicts a completely different form of decomposition of the noble class in the image of Nozdryov (Chapter IV). This is a typical “jack of all trades” person. There was something open, direct, and bold in his face. He is characterized by a peculiar “breadth of nature.” As the author ironically notes, “Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person.” Not a single meeting he attended was complete without stories! Nozdryov, with a light heart, loses a lot of money at cards, beats a simpleton at a fair and immediately “wastes” all the money. Nozdryov is a master of “pouring bullets”, he is a reckless braggart and an utter liar. Nozdryov behaves defiantly, even aggressively, everywhere. The hero’s speech is full of swear words, while he has a passion for “messing up his neighbor.” In the image of Nozdrev, Gogol created a new socio-psychological type of “Nozdrevism” in Russian literature.

When describing Sobakevich, the author’s satire takes on a more accusatory character (Chapter V of the poem). He bears little resemblance to previous landowners; he is a “kulak landowner,” a cunning, tight-fisted huckster. He is alien to the dreamy complacency of Manilov, the violent madness of Nozdryov, and the hoarding of Korobochka. He is taciturn, has an iron grip, is on his own mind, and there are few people who would be able to deceive him. Everything about him is solid and strong. Gogol finds a reflection of a person’s character in all the surrounding things of his life. Everything in Sobakevich’s house was surprisingly reminiscent of himself. Each thing seemed to say: “And I, too, are Sobakevich.” Gogol draws a figure that is striking in its rudeness. To Chichikov he seemed very similar “to a medium-sized bear.” Sobakevich is a cynic who is not ashamed of moral ugliness either in himself or in others. This is a man far from enlightenment, a die-hard serf owner who cares about the peasants only as labor force. It is characteristic that, except for Sobakevich, no one understood the essence of the “scoundrel” Chichikov, but he perfectly understood the essence of the proposal, which reflects the spirit of the times: everything is subject to purchase and sale, profit should be made from everything.

Chapter VI of the poem is dedicated to Plyushkin, whose name has become a household name to denote stinginess and moral degradation. This image becomes the last step in the degeneration of the landowner class. Gogol begins the reader’s acquaintance with the character, as usual, with a description of the village and the landowner’s estate. “Some kind of special disrepair” was noticeable on all the buildings. The writer paints a picture of the complete ruin of a once rich landowner's economy. The reason for this is not the extravagance and idleness of the landowner, but morbid stinginess. This is an evil satire on the landowner, who has become “a hole in humanity.” The owner himself is a sexless creature resembling a housekeeper. This hero does not cause laughter, but only bitter regret.

So, the five characters created by Gogol in “Dead Souls” depict the state of the noble-serf class in various ways. Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin - all these are different forms of one phenomenon - the economic, social, spiritual decline of the class of landowners-serfs.

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 the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical destiny, what modern life contains at least a small 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 a lyrical digression about the “Russian Troika,” permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of landowners, are subordinated to it.

The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead souls is Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely divorced from reality, his main occupation is fruitless soaring in the clouds, useless project-making. This is evidenced both by the appearance of 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 window sill, some kind of book, for the second year laid 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 quite neat and well-mannered children). The internal and external squalor of the depicted type encourages Gogol, starting from it, to look for a positive ideal, and to do this “by contradiction.” If complete isolation from reality and fruitless head-in-the-clouds lead to something like this, then perhaps the opposite type will give us 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 thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposing 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 later confirmed the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor’s daughter and took him as an accomplice, without blinking an eye he agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon who escaped from exile, etc.) d.). 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 complacency 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 on, 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 his own house into a dump, 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 be if it does not find the strength to tear away all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a moving mind and imagination, zealous in business, and most importantly - hallowed 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, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Kostanzhoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. Russian reality supplied only manilas, boxes, nozdrevs and Plyushkins - “Where am I? I don’t see anything... Not a single human face,.. There’s only a snout, a snout...” 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 poking through the window in “Sorochinskaya Fair”, mocking inhuman faces in “The 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 of the poem is that Gogol wanted, through artistic images, to understand the historical path of Russia, to see its future, to feel the sprouts of a new, better life in the reality surrounding him, to discern those forces that would turn Russia off the sidelines of world history and include into 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 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 his own name, since a name is still a kind of personal characteristic, and becomes simply a 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, the micromodel of which is the provincial city of NN. The officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position 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 sumptuous 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, as a result of a collision with insoluble problems (from mental stress), the prosecutor dies. 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 accept a similar appearance, if it does not find the strength to reject all this “carrion” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly, sanctified by concern for the common good.