The Changing Nature of Main Characters in Russian Novels

A major inequality betwixt the anti- chock of Pushkin and the other two is that Pushkin's wise is primarily historic and places more significance on the political and social changes pickings place rather than the changes in the personality of one macrocosm. Pushkin's Grinyov illustrates finished his confusion the general state of the era which the author explores. As such, Grinyov is far more a bewildered character than a hero or anti-hero. However, in this context, he is more anti-hero than hero.

Lermontov's novel is mainly about one objet d'art---Pechorin. Pechorin himself is a complex man, soundly an anti-hero, as Lermontov makes clear when he writes that the novel is a depiction " non of a single person" only "of the vices of our square generation in their ultimate development" (Lermontov 19).

Lermontov has created Pechorin to show not only what is nefarious about one man, but what is villainous about a whole association. To Lermontov, Pechorin is a symptom of a sick society. It is a society without direction or purpose, and Pechorin represents that society as he goes about doing whatever he wants to do without concern for the disastrous results of his selfishness.

The conflict in the book is between the character of Pechorin

Dostoevsky's anti-hero, Raskolnikov, can be seen as a man without a God, without clean-livings, without social or psychological guidelines to follow. In other words, like Lermontov's anti-hero, Raskolnikov is a man loose in the world with no ethical compass. uniform Pechorin, with no such compass, Raskolnikov is drawn to evil, in this case take for little economic gain, primarily murder for the sake of experiencing murder. somewhat(prenominal) Pechorin and Raskolnikov are men who have goodness within them, but, because of some combination of personal and social failure, they are unable to drop that goodness into action.

Pushkin, Alexander. The Captain's Daughter and Other Stories. New York: Vintage, 1936.

It seems inevitable that the hero will die a violent death, as he does.

The book is successful because Pechorin is fascinating as a man who does evil while being aware that he should not be doing it, who knows he is doing evil but cannot, or believes that he cannot behave in any other way. Because of this conflict, he is a tormented man. Although one may judge him for his evil ways and feel he deserves his death, one also cannot help but feel some sorrow for the soul of such a lost man who knows he is lost. If the reader is merely repulsed, wherefore he or she has failed to understand the author's purpose, which is to bring about some measure of compassion or understanding for Pechorin.

and the society in which he lives, as well as between a man who behaves without morality and the average reader's belief in moral behavior. As the book is presented, there is no real " issue" to this conflict, as the author himself makes clear. Lermontov, referring to himself, writes that he "merely found it jocund to draw modern man such as he understood him," adding that "the malady has been diagnosed--heaven alone knows how to cure it" (20). One strength say that the disease has been cured by the death of Pechorin in the duel, but that would be an incorrect conclusion, because Pechorin is only a
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