Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time": characteristics, image, description, portrait. Grigory Pechorin from the novel M

dream of becoming a corrector of human vices ...

He just had fun drawing modern

a person as he understands him and, to his and your

unfortunately, met too often.

M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time"

Grigory Pechorin is a young man belonging to the generation of the 30s of the XIX century, a representative of high secular society. His "best" young years were spent, in his own words, in a "struggle with himself and the world."

Pechorin is a representative of the thinking people of his time, he has an undoubted mind and is critical of himself and the world. Pechorin's deep mind allows him to correctly judge people, and at the same time he is self-critical. He is cold, arrogant, but one cannot say that feelings are alien to him, and one cannot call him an infantile, weak-willed person. We learn that in his youth, Pechorin "madly enjoyed all the pleasures that money can get," and ... they were "disgusted" by him. Then he set off into the big world, and soon he was also tired of society, and the love of secular beauties only irritated his imagination and pride, but his heart remained empty. Out of boredom, Pechorin began to read and study, but "science is also tired"; he realized that neither fame nor happiness depend on them at all, because "the happiest people are ignoramuses, and fame is luck, and in order to achieve it, you just need to be clever." He got bored again and went to the Caucasus. It was the happiest time of his life. Pechorin sincerely hoped that "boredom does not live under Chechen bullets," but again in vain - after a month he got used to their buzzing. Finally, when he saw and fell in love with Bela, he thought that this was an angel sent to him by "compassionate fate", but again he was mistaken - "the love of a savage woman turned out to be no better than the love of a noble lady," and he was soon fed up with the ignorance and simple-heartedness of a mountain woman.

The character of Pechorin is very contradictory. As the hero himself says: "My whole life was only a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions of heart or mind." Inconsistency is manifested not only in the thoughts and actions of the hero. Lermontov, painting a portrait of Pechorin, insistently emphasized the oddities in his appearance: he was already about thirty years old, and "there is something childish in his smile", his eyes "did not laugh when he laughed ... This is a sign of either an evil disposition, or a deep , constant sadness ...", and "his look - short, but penetrating and heavy, left such an indifferently calm impression of an immodest question and could have seemed impudent if it were not so indifferently calm." Pechorin's gait "was careless and lazy, but ... he did not wave his arms - a sure sign of some secrecy of character." On the one hand, Pechorin has a "strong build," and on the other, "nervous weakness."

Pechorin is a disappointed person, living out of curiosity, skeptical about life and people, but at the same time, his soul is in constant search. “I have an unhappy character,” he says, “whether my upbringing made me like that, whether God created me that way, I don’t know; I only know that if I am the cause of the misfortune of others, then I myself am no less unhappy.” This is a young man of the 30s, the time of rampant reaction, when the Decembrist uprising had already been crushed. If Onegin could go to the Decembrists (which Pushkin thought to show in the tenth chapter of his novel), Pechorin was deprived of such an opportunity, and the revolutionary democrats as a social force had not yet declared themselves. That is why Belinsky emphasized that "Onegin is bored, and Pechorin suffers deeply ... fights to the death with life and forcibly wants to snatch his share from her ..."

Pechorin denies love and happiness in family life, and in his relations with women, vanity and ambition are driven. "To arouse in oneself a feeling of love, devotion and fear - isn't it the first sign and the greatest triumph of power?" - says the hero. However, his attitude to the Faith testifies to the ability to deep feelings. Pechorin admits: "With the possibility of losing her forever, Vera has become dearer to me than anything in the world - dearer than life, honor, happiness!"

With a bitter feeling, Pechorin regards himself as a "moral cripple", whose better half of the soul "dried up, evaporated, died." He understands that he "had a high appointment", feels "in his soul ... immense forces", but he wastes his life on petty deeds unworthy of him. Pechorin sees the reason for his tragedy in the fact that his "soul is corrupted by light." "I am worthy of pity ... my soul is spoiled by light, my imagination is restless, my heart is insatiable; everything is not enough for me: I get used to sadness just as easily as to pleasure, and my life becomes emptier day by day ...", - Pechorin says to Maksim Maksimych. This means that he was never able to escape from the society surrounding him.

All these inconsistencies and contradictions in appearance and behavior reflect the personal tragedy of the hero, do not allow him to live a full life, but they also reflect the tragedy of a whole generation of that time. Lermontov, in the preface to his novel, wrote that Pechorin is "a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development," and his tragedy is that such people "are not capable of great sacrifices, either for the good of mankind, or even for your own ... happiness." Pechorin's diary, which presents a whole gallery of images of young people of the 30s of the 19th century, more than once confirms Lermontov's idea, reflected in the Duma. This generation is "shamefully shameful" indifferent, languishing under the burden of "knowledge and doubt", loving and hating by chance, as if doomed to "grow old in inaction", "without sacrificing anything to either anger or love ..." But in the face of Pechorin before us appears not only a peculiar person, typical of his era. This is a person formed by this age, and in no other era could such a person appear. All the features, all the advantages and disadvantages of his time are concentrated in him.

A short essay on literature on the topic “A Hero of Our Time: the image of Grigory Pechorin in the composition of the novel” with quotes from the text for grade 9. Pechorin in the system of images: how does he compare with other characters?

A Hero of Our Time is one of the first Russian psychological novels. Appearing in the press, he immediately caused a public outcry. The main task of the novel is to reveal the soul of the protagonist, Grigory Pechorin, in relations with various personalities, in acute conflict situations. This is the reason for the special composition of the novel: it is not chronological accuracy that is important here, but the recognition of character by readers.

Grigory Pechorin is a Russian officer serving in the Caucasus. He is an image of an "extra person": lonely, misunderstood, not finding his own way, and therefore unhappy.

The character is revealed gradually, its features are not on the surface. That is why at first we see the hero through "foreign" eyes: his colleague Maxim Maksimych and the traveler narrator, from the external image we move on to the secrets of the soul. Just in appearance, Pechorin is not deprived: he is not doll-like handsome, but interesting (“... he was generally very good-looking and had one of those original physiognomies that secular women especially like ...”), facial features are correct. Everything - from hands to hair color - expresses thoroughbredness and aristocracy in the hero (“Despite the light color of his hair, his mustache and eyebrows were black - a sign of breed in a person, just like a black mane and a black tail on a white horse ...” and “ ... his soiled gloves seemed purposely tailored to his small aristocratic hand, and when he took off one glove, I was surprised at the thinness of his pale fingers"). The eyes immediately reflect Pechorin's personality: they never laugh, they have a steely sheen, an attentive, studying look.

In the presentation of Maxim Maksimych, the main character appears as a cold, prudent person who destroys other people's lives at his own whim. So he stole the beautiful Bela from his native village, fell in love with himself, then she got bored, he began to neglect his previously beloved girl. As a result, Bela died, and Pechorin did not shed a single tear. Of course, we understand that the difference in the characters of the simple-hearted Maxim Maksimych and the restrained Pechorin, who suffered silently and deeply, plays a role here. After all, as we will learn later, Bela was the last thread connecting the hero with the world, his last hope.

In Pechorin's Journal, we are transported into the thoughts of the hero, we see everything through the prism of his perception. In "Taman" we see the adventurous beginning of Pechorin's character. His thirst for adventure and the desire to overcome boredom even overlaps his sharp mind and observation, which is why he goes with a mysterious girl, wittily named by him Ondine, for a night walk. Pechorin almost dies, because he finds out that he got to the smugglers. The hero stirred up a nest of criminals, destroyed a long-term way of life. For the first time, the motif of fatality sounds.

"Princess Mary" is the largest part of the novel. Here are several hypostases of the hero. Pechorin is a friend in a relationship with Dr. Werner (the main character does not believe in friendship, therefore he distances himself from Werner, despite his internally benevolent attitude). Pechorin is a rival in the conflict with Grushnitsky (the main character places honor high, does not allow himself to be laughed at, he is immeasurably stronger and higher than the enemy, but also ruthless). Pechorin, the conqueror of hearts in his relationship with Princess Mary (decided to seduce the girl in order to annoy Grushnitsky, amuses and laughs at her, soon imbued with sympathy for the heroine, but cannot lose his freedom and ruin Mary's life with his presence). Pechorin is passionately loving in a relationship with Vera (it is in front of her that he does not play a role, she has known and understood him for a long time, the loss of Vera is the main and most serious shock in the life of the hero). In all forms, Pechorin is the "axe of fate", he left a tragic mark in the life of every hero (and Grushnitsky's life was completely cut off).

The Fatalist is the most philosophical chapter of the novel, in which the hero asks eternal questions of fate, predestination, and his place in the world. It is the latter that he does not find. His large-scale personality does not find real meaning in his whole life, he needs great achievements, and everyday life is around. Awareness of his own uselessness leads Pechorin to his own death in the future, he has no reason to live.

The protagonist of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" really reflected the era: this generation is lost, disappointed, its best representatives died out without finding their way. A person like Pechorin is rare. He really captivates and can lead, his nobility, subtle mind, observation - these are the qualities that readers should learn from.

The image of Pechorin in the novel by M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time"

The novel "A Hero of Our Time" was written in 1838-1840 of the 19th century. It was the era of the most severe political reaction that came in the country after the defeat of the Decembrists. In his work, the author recreated in the image of Pechorin, the protagonist of the novel, a typical character of the 30s of the XIX century.

Pechorin is an educated secular person with a critical mind, dissatisfied with life and not seeing an opportunity for himself to be happy. It continues the gallery of "superfluous people" opened by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Belinsky noted that the idea to portray the hero of his time in the novel does not belong exclusively to Lermontov, since at that moment Karamzin's “Knight of Our Time” already existed. Belinsky also pointed out that many writers of the early 19th century had such an idea.

Pechorin is called a “strange person” in the novel, as almost all other characters say about him. The definition of “strange” takes on the shade of a term, followed by a certain type of character and personality type, and is broader and more capacious than the definition of “an extra person”. There were such “strange people” before Pechorin, for example, in the story “A Walk in Moscow” and in Ryleev’s “Essay on an Eccentric”.

Lermontov, creating the "Hero of Our Time", said that he "had fun to paint a portrait of a modern person the way he understands and met him." Unlike Pushkin, he focuses on the inner world of his characters and argues in the “Preface to Pechorin’s Journal” that “the history of the human soul, even the smallest soul, is almost more interesting and not more useful than the history of a whole people.” The desire to reveal the inner world of the hero was also reflected in the composition: the novel begins, as it were, from the middle of the story and is consistently brought to the end of Pechorin's life. Thus, the reader knows in advance that Pechorin's "frantic race" for life is doomed to failure. Pechorin follows the path that his romantic predecessors took, thus showing the failure of their romantic ideals. Pechorin gets from the “civilized” world to the world of “children of nature”, to the Caucasus, but even there he turns out to be a stranger, an “extra person”, and, apart from suffering and confusion, he brings nothing: he becomes an indirect culprit of Bela’s death, upsets lives “ honest smugglers”, because of him the fate of Princess Mary collapses.

The structure of the “Hero of Our Time” is fragmentary, so the novel is a system of disparate episodes-stories, united by a common hero - Pechorin. Such a composition is deeply meaningful: it reflects the fragmentation of the main character's life, his lack of any goal, any unifying principle. The life of the hero passes at crossroads in the eternal search for the meaning of human existence and happiness. Pechorin is on the road almost all the time. “This is a world on the road,” Gogol said about “A Hero of Our Time”.

In the way Lermontov portrays the main character, one feels the desire to give him a social characteristic. Pechorin is a product and a victim of the Nikolaev era rolled into one, “whose soul is corrupted by light and torn into two halves, the best of which dried up and died,” while the other “lived at the service of everyone.” There is something in this character that takes him beyond the scope of sociality, that is, Lermontov reveals in his hero universal principles that do not depend on era and time. In this sense, the task that Lermontov sets himself is comparable to Dostoevsky's task: "With all realism, find a person in a person." Lermontov in the novel pays much attention to depicting not only the consciousness, but also the self-consciousness of the hero. Intense psychological analysis is the "disease of the age", but also a necessary form of self-knowledge of a developed personality. The fact that Pechorin constantly reflects on his actions, analyzes his feelings, is evidence that we are dealing with an extraordinary person; the hero of Lermontov's novel is a personality in the highest sense of the word. We can draw a comparison with Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin". Pechorin, also being a “superfluous person”, differs from Onegin not only in his temperament, not only in his depth of thought, but also in the degree of self-awareness, his attitude to the world. Pechorin, to a greater extent than Onegin, is a thinker, an ideologist. In this sense, he is a hero of his time. The effectiveness of Pechorin, which Lermontov focuses on, is explained, first of all, by the degree of development of this hero: he is well educated, well versed in people, knows their weaknesses, but uses this knowledge for his own purposes. Pechorin's trouble is that his independent self-consciousness and will turn into individualism. In his opposition to reality, he proceeds only from his "I". He is not just an egoist, he is an egocentric. Pechorin is a figure not only by nature, but also by conviction. He himself points out that "whoever has more ideas in his head, he acts more than others."

As a personality, Pechorin is wider than the social roles offered to him, he rejects all the social framework prepared for him, tries to guess his high destiny, but at the same time is very skeptical about his chances in the fight against the surrounding society. He argues: "Many people, starting life, want to end it, like Byron or Alexander the Great, but meanwhile remain titular advisers."

The hero is not shown anywhere in the line of duty, but, nevertheless, he is very active in life. On the example of Pechorin, for the first time in Russian literature, we meet with a hero who directly poses urgent questions of human existence. These are questions about the purpose, about the meaning of human life, about its purpose. This is confirmed by the hero's reasoning before the duel with Grushnitsky and in the story "The Fatalist".

One of the goals that the hero undoubtedly realizes is the comprehension of the nature and capabilities of man. This explains the chain of psychological and moral experiments of Pechorin on himself and on others: Princess Mary, Grushnitsky, Vulich. In achieving this goal, he acts persistently and stubbornly.

The disclosure of the image of his hero Lermontov subordinates tradition. He tests Pechorin with two feelings: friendship and love. The hero can not stand either one or the other, Pechorin is disappointed in the love of the Circassian Bela, saying on this occasion that “the love of a savage is not much better than the love of a noble lady; the ignorance and simple-heartedness of one are just as annoying as the coquetry of another.” Pechorin is also incapable of friendship, of a deep sincere feeling, believing that of two friends one is always the slave of the other. In relations with Werner, he is not satisfied with either the role of master or the role of a slave.

The last story "The Fatalist" takes on special significance in Pechorin's perception of life. Throughout the story, the hero is constantly testing his fate (under the bullets of Chechens, in a duel with Grushnitsky, in the story “Taman” with an undine), but this is most expressively shown in “The Fatalist”. This is one of the most ideologically rich and intense stories of the novel. It consists of three episodes, which either deny or confirm the existence of predestination in human life. If we talk about the fatalism of the hero, then he should be called an active fatalist. Without denying the presence of forces that largely determine the life and behavior of a person, Pechorin is not inclined on this basis to deprive him of free will. Confirmation is the way he rushes out the window to the killer Cossack. At first glance, this is reckless, but Pechorin acts quite deliberately. This is not Vulich's blind risk, but intelligent human courage.

The main content of the stories about Pechorin is the story of his opposition to circumstances and fate. Circumstances and fate in the end turned out to be stronger than Pechorin. His energy pours out into empty action. The actions of the hero are most often selfish and cruel. Pechorin appears in the novel as an established character with a tragic fate. The fact that Lermontov focuses on the psychological disclosure of the image of his hero raises in a new way the question of the moral responsibility of a person for choosing a life path and for his actions.

In the way Lermontov showed Pechorin, he marked a new stage in the development of Russian society and Russian literature. If Onegin captures the process of transformation of an aristocrat into a personality, then in “A Hero of Our Time” the tragedy of an already established personality is shown, doomed to live in the conditions of the Nikolaev reaction. Pechorin turns out to be wider than the content that is embedded in his image. In this sense, Lermontov anticipates Dostoevsky. Lermontov's innovation lies in the fact that we have before us a strong, outstanding personality who does not find a place and purpose in life, is alien to the surrounding society, and is internally contradictory.

The fate of Pechorin as one of the characteristic types of his time, despite his potential heroism, was tragically hopeless. Lermontov, as a realist writer, showed this in his novel A Hero of Our Time.

And analysis] - a story about Pechorin, a representative of a whole generation of Russian people. [Cm. See also articles: Characterization of Pechorin with quotes, Appearance of Pechorin, Description of Pechorin in the story "Maxim Maksimych".]

In another story, which is part of the "Hero of Our Time", "Bela" [see. its full text and summary], Pechorin kidnaps the daughter of a Caucasian prince, the beautiful savage Bela, and takes her to a fortress beyond the Terek. Bela is chaste and proud. Pechorin does not love her, but he is bored, and his resistance amuses him. As with Princess Mary, so with Bela, he makes an experiment: to conquer this self-willed and pure creature. Only his means are now simpler: rude caresses, threats and gifts are enough to defeat the poor savage. Bela is conquered: she loves passionately, forgetting both honor, and her native village, and free life. But the experience is over, and Pechorin leaves her. Fortunately, a stray bullet from a highlander rogue shortens her ruined life. Good Captain Maksim Maksimych [see. The image of Maxim Maksimych], under whose command Pechorin serves, wanted to console him; he raised his head and laughed. “I had a frost run through my skin,” says Maksim Maksimych.

The stories "Taman" [see. full text and summary] and "The Fatalist" [see. full text and summary] do not add anything new to Pechorin's characterization. The first describes his strange adventure with a smuggler girl who lured him into a boat and tried to drown him; the second tells the story of lieutenant Vulich, who wished to experience the power of fate: he shoots himself with a pistol, and he misfires, but on the same night a drunken Cossack in the street kills him with a saber.

In the image of Pechorin, the Russian "disease of the century" was revealed by Lermontov in all its sinister depths. A strong personality, power-hungry and icy, strong-willed and inactive, reached the point of self-decomposition. All the way has been passed. The romantic beautiful demon was debunked.

The image of Pechorin, depicted by Mikhail Lermontov, is, first of all, the personality of a young man who suffers from his restlessness and is constantly captivated by questions: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born?

What is he, the hero of the XIX century?

Pechorin is not at all like his peers, he does not have a drop of desire to move along the beaten path of the secular youth of that time. The young officer serves, but does not seek to curry favor. He is not fond of music, philosophy, does not want to go into the intricacies of studying the military craft. But it immediately becomes clear to the reader that the image of Pechorin is the image of a person who is head and shoulders above the people around him. He is smart enough, educated and talented, distinguished by energy and courage. Nevertheless, Pechorin's indifference to other people, the selfishness of his nature, the inability to empathize, friendship and love are repulsive. The controversial image of Pechorin is complemented by his other qualities: the thirst to live to the fullest, the ability to critically evaluate his actions, the desire for the best. The "pity of actions" of the character, the senseless waste of energy, his actions that hurt others - all this puts the hero in a bad light. However, at the same time, the officer himself is experiencing deep suffering.

The complexity and inconsistency of the protagonist of the famous novel is especially vividly represented by his words that two people live in it at the same time: one of them lives in the full sense of the word, and the second one thinks and judges the actions of the first one. It also tells about the reasons that laid the foundation for this “splitness”: “I told the truth - they didn’t believe me: I began to deceive ...” A young and hopeful young man in just a couple of years turned into a callous, vindictive, bilious and ambitious person; as he himself put it - "a moral cripple." The image of Pechorin in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” echoes the image of Onegin created by A. S. Pushkin: he is an “egoist involuntarily”, disappointed in life, prone to pessimism, experiencing constant internal conflict.

30s XIX century did not allow Pechorin to find and reveal himself. He repeatedly makes attempts to forget himself in petty adventures, love, exposes himself to the bullets of the Chechens ... However, all this does not bring him the desired relief and remains only an attempt to distract himself.

Nevertheless, the image of Pechorin is the image of a richly gifted nature. After all, he has a sharp analytical mind, he extraordinarily accurately evaluates people and the actions that they perform. He developed a critical attitude not only towards others, but also towards himself. In his diary, the officer exposes himself: a warm heart is beating in his chest, able to feel deeply (the death of Bela, meeting with Vera) and experience extremely strongly, although it is hidden under the mask of indifference. However, this indifference is nothing more than self-defense.

“The Hero of Our Time”, the image of Pechorin in which is the basis of the story, allows you to see the same person from completely different sides, look into different corners of her soul. Simultaneously with all of the above in the guise of an officer, we see a strong-willed, strong and active person in whom "life forces" are dormant. He is ready to act. Unfortunately, almost all of his actions end up hurting both Pechorin himself and those around him, his activities are not constructive, but destructive.

The image of Pechorin strongly resonates with Lermontov's "Demon", especially at the beginning of the novel, when something demonic, unsolved remains in the hero. The young man, by the will of fate, becomes the destroyer of other people's lives: it is he who is guilty of the death of Bela, that Maxim Maksimovich was completely disappointed in friendship, of how much Vera and Mary suffered. Grushnitsky, in turn, dies at the hands of Pechorin. Pechorin played a role in how another young officer, Vulich, died, and also in how "honest smugglers" were forced to leave their homes.

Conclusion

Pechorin is a person who no longer has a past and there is only hope for something better in the future. In the present, he remains a perfect ghost - this is how Belinsky described this contradictory image.