The image of the landowners in the poem Dead Souls is brief. Helping a student

The image of the landlords in the poem by N. V. Gogol "Dead Souls"

The central place in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by five chapters, in which the images of landowners are presented: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin. The chapters are arranged in a special sequence according to the degree of degradation of the heroes.
The image of Manilov, as it were, grows out of 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, unfit. His house stands on the south, “open to all winds”. In the 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 drinking, the housekeeper is stealing, the servants are idle. The landowner's leisure is occupied with the aimless folding of the ashes from the pipe into the hills, and the book has been lying in his office for two years with a bookmark on the 14th page.
The portrait and character of Manilov were created according to the principle: “it seemed that pleasantness was too much transferred to sugar.” On Manilov’s face was “an expression not only sweet, but even cloying, similar to that potion that the clever secular doctor sweetened mercilessly ...”
The love of Manilov and his wife is too sugary and sentimental: “Open your mouth, darling, I’ll put this piece for you.”
But despite the “excess”, Manilov is really 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 “excess”, but of a different kind - excessive thrift, distrust, timidity, narrow-mindedness. She is “one of those mothers, small landowners, who cry for crop failures, losses and hold their heads somewhat to one side, and meanwhile they are gaining a little money in motley bags.” Things in her house
reflect her naive idea of ​​prosperity and beauty, and at the same time - her pettiness and narrow-mindedness. “The room was hung with old striped wallpaper; pictures with some birds; between the windows there are small antique mirrors with dark frames in the form of curled leaves; behind every mirror there was either a letter, or an old pack of cards, or a stocking; wall clock with painted flowers on the dial”. Gogol calls Korobochka "club-headed". She is afraid to sell cheap when selling "dead souls" in order to somehow "not incur a loss." Korobochka decides to sell the souls only out of fear, because Chichikov wished: “... yes, perish and go around with your whole village!” “Cudgel-headed” Korobochka is a feature of a person who “as soon as he hacked something into his head, you can’t overpower him with anything.”
Sobakevich outwardly resembles an epic hero: boots of a gigantic size, cheesecakes “much larger than a plate”, “has never been sick.” But his actions are by no means heroic. He scolds everyone, sees scoundrels and swindlers in all. The whole city, according to him, - “a swindler sits on a swindler and drives a scammer ... there is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.” The portraits on the walls, depicting heroes, speak of the unrealized heroic, heroic possibilities of the “dead” soul of Sobakevich. Sobakevich - "man-fist". It expresses a universal passion for the heavy, earthly, the absence of lofty ideals.
Nozdrev - “broken fellow”, reveler. His main passion is “to spoil his neighbor”, while continuing to be his friend.
“A sensitive nose could hear him for several tens of miles, where there was a fair with all sorts of congresses and balls.” In Nozdryov's office, instead of books, there are sabers and Turkish daggers, on one of which is written: "Master Savely Sibiryakov." Even the fleas in Nozdryov's house are "fast-moving insects." Nozdryov's food expresses his reckless spirit: "some things got burnt, some didn't cook at all... in a word, go ahead, it would be hot, but some taste would surely come out." However, Nozdryov's activity is devoid of meaning, let alone public benefit, because he is also "dead."
Plyushkin appears in the poem as a sexless creature whom Chichikov takes for a housekeeper. The images surrounding this hero are a moldy cracker, a greasy dressing gown, a roof like a sieve. Both objects and the owner himself are subject to decay. Once an exemplary host and family man, Plyushkin has now turned into a recluse spider. He is suspicious, stingy, petty, mentally degrading.
Showing consistently the life and character of the five landowners, Gogol depicts the process of gradual degradation of the landlord class, reveals all its vices and shortcomings.

The dream of a future epic work dedicated to Russia led Gogol to the idea of ​​the poem Dead Souls. Work on the piece began in 1835. the plot of the poem, prompted by Pushkin, determined the initial scheme of the work: to show Russia 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 that good that lurked in Russian life and that gave hope for the possibility of its renewal.The breadth of the idea 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 the maximum breadth of coverage. This world is ugly. This world is terrible. This is a world of inverted values, spiritual guidelines are perverted in it, 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 practically impossible to assess the degree of its immorality, to see the abyss separating it from the world of true values. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the reason causing spiritual degradation, moral disintegration of society. Plyushkin, Nozdrev, Manilov, the prosecutor, the chief of police and other heroes live in this world, who are original caricatures of Gogol's contemporaries. A whole gallery of characters and types devoid of a soul was created by Gogol in a 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 the landscape, the landscape of the Manilov estate, and the interior of his dwelling. The things surrounding him characterize Manilov no less than the portrait and behavior: "Everyone has his own enthusiasm, but Manilov had nothing." Its main feature is uncertainty. Manilov's outward well-being, his benevolence and willingness to serve, appear to Gogol as terrible traits. All this in Manilov is hypertrophied. His eyes, "sweet as sugar," express nothing. And this sweetness of appearance brings a feeling of unnaturalness to every movement of the hero: here on his face appears "an expression not only sweet, but even cloying, like the potion that the dexterous doctor sweetened mercilessly, imagining to please the patient with it." Manilov? Emptiness, his worthlessness, soullessness with endless discussions about the happiness of friendship. While this landowner prospers and dreams, his estate is being destroyed, the peasants have forgotten how to work. Korobochka has a completely different attitude to the economy. She has a "pretty village", a yard full of all kinds of birds. But Korobochka sees nothing further than her nose, everything "new and unprecedented" frightens her. Her behavior (which can be noted in Sobakevich) is guided by a passion for profit, self-interest. But Sobakevich is very different from Korobochka. He, in Gogol's words, "damn fist. "The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, makes him seek various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he applies yat innovation - cash dues. He is not at all surprised by the sale and purchase of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will receive for them. His life is monotonous. It disposes to idleness and idle thought. The horizons of the landowner are narrow, and the character is insignificant. Such is Manilov, whom the author does not accidentally endow with a characteristic surname, each syllable of which can be pulled. Not a single harsh sound. Smoothness, ductility, boredom. Comparing the hero with a cat, the author emphasizes the kindness, courtesy, politeness of Manilov, which are brought to the grotesque. 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 features take ugly forms. Throughout his life, Manilov did nothing useful. His existence is pointless. This is emphasized by Gogol even in the description of his estate, where mismanagement and desolation reign. And all the mental activity of the owner is limited to fruitless fantasies that it would be nice to make an "underground passage" or build a "stone bridge" across the pond. Highlighting in the portrait of the character "sweet as sugar" eyes, 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 does not know life at all, reality is replaced by an empty fantasy, a game of sluggish imagination. Manilov looks at everything through rose-colored glasses. The spiritual world of the Russian landowner is miserable, the way of life is musty and primitive. The box in the gallery of "dead souls" strikes with greed and pettiness, cunning and stinginess. Hence such a 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 for crop failures", and meanwhile "gain a little bit of money." A distinctive feature of the heroine is her inhuman stupidity. Gogol aptly calls her "cudgel-headed" and "strongly
but not all landowners are quiet and harmless, like Korobochka and Manilov. Rural idleness and life without worries sometimes degraded a person so much that he turned into a dangerous, impudent hooligan. society. Chatter, boasting, swearing and lies - that's all he is capable of. This joker keeps himself cheeky and arrogant, has a "passion to spoil his neighbor." The hero's language is littered with all sorts of distorted words, invented ridiculous expressions, swear words, alogisms. Complements portrait of Nozdryov his surname, consisting of a large number of consonants, creating the impression of an explosion. In addition, the combination of letters evokes associations with the hero’s favorite word “nonsense.” Gogol does not like the other extreme - the absurd housekeeping and hardiness of strong landowners. The life of people like Sobakevich is built soundly, conscientiously.Unlike Nozdrev and Manilov, the hero is connected with economic activity. his everything is "stubborn", without precariousness, in some kind of "strong and clumsy order". Even the huts of the peasants were built to last for centuries, and the well was made of such oak, "which is only used ... on ships." The external mighty appearance of Sobakevich is emphasized through the interior of the house. The paintings depict heroes, and the furniture looks like the owner. Each chair seems to say: "... I am Sobakevich." The landowner eats in accordance with his appearance. The meals are large and hearty. If a pig, then whole on the table, if a ram, then also whole on the table. Gradually, the image of a gluttonous "man-fist", "bear" and at the same time a cunning rogue, whose interests are reduced to personal material well-being, is gradually taking shape. 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, in essence, his mind. In people, he sees only enemies, plunderers of his property, does not trust anyone. Therefore, he abandoned society, from 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 the peasants to be parasites and thieves, he hates them and sees in them beings of a lower order. Already the appearance of the village speaks of their heavy and hopeless fate. The deep decline of the entire serf way of life is most clearly expressed precisely in the image of Plyushkin.

Showing all the ugliness and spiritual poverty of his heroes, he constantly experiences the loss of a human principle 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 creation purely Russian, national, snatched from the hiding place of people's life, as true as it is patriotic, mercilessly pulling off the veil from reality and breathing passionate, bloody love for the fruitful grain of Russian life: an immense artistic creation ... ".

The central place in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by five chapters, in which the images of landowners are presented: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin. The chapters are arranged in a special sequence according to the degree of degradation of the heroes.
The image of Manilov, as it were, grows out of 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, unfit. His house stands on the south, “open to all winds”. In the 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 drinking, the housekeeper is stealing, the servants are idle. The landowner's leisure is occupied with the aimless folding of the ashes from the pipe into the hills, and the book has been lying in his office for two years with a bookmark on the 14th page.
The portrait and character of Manilov were created according to the principle: “it seemed that pleasantness was too much transferred to sugar.” On Manilov's face there was "an expression not only sweet, but even cloying, like that potion, which the dexterous secular doctor sweetened mercilessly..."
The love of Manilov and his wife is too sugary and sentimental: “Open your mouth, darling, I’ll put this piece for you.”
But despite the “excess”, Manilov is really 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 “excess”, but of a different kind - excessive thrift, distrust, timidity, narrow-mindedness. She is “one of those mothers, small landowners, who cry for crop failures, losses and hold their heads somewhat to one side, and meanwhile they are gaining a little money in motley bags.” Things in her house
reflect her naive idea of ​​prosperity and beauty, and at the same time - her pettiness and narrow-mindedness. “The room was hung with old striped wallpaper; pictures with some birds; between the windows there are small antique mirrors with dark frames in the form of curled leaves; behind every mirror there was either a letter, or an old pack of cards, or a stocking; wall clock with painted flowers on the dial”. Gogol calls Korobochka "club-headed". She is afraid to sell cheap when selling "dead souls" in order to somehow "not incur a loss." Korobochka decides to sell the souls only out of fear, because Chichikov wished: “... yes, perish and go around with your whole village!” “Cudgel-headed” Korobochka is a feature of a person who “as soon as he hacked something into his head, you can’t overpower him with anything.”
Sobakevich outwardly resembles an epic hero: boots of a gigantic size, cheesecakes “much larger than a plate”, “has never been sick.” But his actions are by no means heroic. He scolds everyone in a row, sees scoundrels and scammers in everyone. The whole city, according to him, “a swindler sits on a swindler and drives a swindler ... there is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.” The portraits on the walls, depicting heroes, speak of the unrealized heroic, heroic possibilities of the “dead” soul of Sobakevich. Sobakevich - "man-fist". It expresses a universal passion for the heavy, earthly, the absence of lofty ideals.
Nozdrev - “broken fellow”, reveler. His main passion is “to spoil his neighbor”, while continuing to be his friend.
“A sensitive nose could hear him for several tens of miles, where there was a fair with all sorts of congresses and balls.” In Nozdryov's office, instead of books, there are sabers and Turkish daggers, on one of which is written: "Master Savely Sibiryakov." Even the fleas in Nozdryov's house are "intelligent insects." Nozdryov's food expresses his reckless spirit: "some things got burnt, some didn't cook at all... in a word, go ahead, it would be hot, but some taste would surely come out." However, Nozdryov's activity is devoid of meaning, let alone public benefit, because he is also "dead."
Plyushkin appears in the poem as a sexless creature whom Chichikov takes for a housekeeper. The images surrounding this hero are a moldy cracker, a greasy dressing gown, a roof like a sieve. Both objects and the owner himself are subject to decay. Once an exemplary host and family man, Plyushkin has now turned into a recluse spider. He is suspicious, stingy, petty, mentally degrading.
Showing consistently the life and character of the five landowners, Gogol depicts the process of gradual degradation of the landlord class, reveals all its vices and shortcomings.

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

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

His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give the broadest image of the county landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem "Dead Souls" Gogol reveals to the utmost the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the inconsistency 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 the 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 - a nascent entrepreneur, images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself are given.

A complete misunderstanding of the practical side of life, mismanagement, we note at the landowner Manilov. He does not manage his estate, completely entrusting this to the clerk. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last revision. His house "stood loneliness at a brisk pace, open to all the winds, which only take it into their head to blow." Instead of a shady garden around the manor's house, there were five or six birches "with thin tops." And in the village itself there was nowhere "a growing tree or any kind of greenery." His impracticality is also evidenced by the interior of his house, where next to the magnificent furniture "two chairs covered with simple matting" or "heaps of ash knocked out of a pipe" lying on an expensive polished table side by side. 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, such a person with whom one could in some way talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some kind of science, so that it stirs the soul, it would give, so to speak, a kind of guy. Here he wanted to express something else, but, noticing that he had somewhat reported, he only fiddled with his hand in the air.

Korobochka has a completely different attitude to the household. She has a "pretty village", a yard full of all kinds of birds, there are "spacious 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" scares 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, "the devil's fist." The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, makes him seek various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash dues. He is not at all surprised by the sale and purchase of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will receive for them.

The representative of another type of landowners is Nozdrev. He is the complete opposite of Manilov and Korobochka. Nozdrev is a fidget, a hero of fairs, drinking parties, a card table. He was a reveler, a brawler and a liar. His business is running. Only the kennel is in excellent condition. Among dogs, he is like a "father" among a large family (one would like to compare him with Fonvizin's Skotinin). He immediately squanders the income received from the forced labor of the peasants, which speaks of his moral decline, indifference to the peasants.

Complete moral impoverishment, the loss of human qualities are characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed him "a hole in humanity." Speaking of Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting on the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is "a swindler, he starved all people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs." Over the past three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin. With a terrible mien of a half-madman, he declares that "the people are painfully gluttonous with him, from idleness they have got into the habit of cracking." life. His courtyards run barefoot until late winter, since stingy Plyushkin has one boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only when the courtyards enter the canopy of the manor's house. Plyushkin and his ilk hampered the economic development of Russia: "On the vast territory of the estate Plyushkin (and he has about 1,000 souls), economic life froze: mills, felters, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, stacks and stacks turned into clean manure, flour turned into stone, into cloth. canvases and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, income was collected on the farm as before, the peasant still carried the dues, the woman carried the linen. All this fell into the pantries, and all this became rotten and dust. "Truly" laughter through tears.

Plyushkin and other landowners, represented by Gogol, are "decommissioned from life;". are a product of a particular social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; Manilov served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but turned into a vulgar, idle, sugary dreamer. With great force, Gogol indicted the feudal serf system, the Nikolaev regime, the whole way of life in which Manilovism, Nozdrevschina, Plyushkin squalor are typical, normal life phenomena.

In this display of the vicious feudal order and the political system of Russia, the great significance of the poem "Dead Souls" consisted. "The poem shook the whole of Russia" (Herzen), it awakened the self-consciousness of the Russian people.