The literary Trope of a Superfluous Man in Russian Literature and Culture

His conflict shows us the peasant’s dignity in the depths of deprivation. His full tolerance of his new identity and of his camp life, and his remarkable ability to build a worthwhile existence for himself out of the capricious camp system, make him a spiritual hero. His intensity in living, eating, and working puts him in control of his world. This is exemplified when Shukhov labors on a brick wall, the narrator says that he concentrates on it as if he owned every inch of it. In a way, although he is a slave, he is still the leader of his own small dominion. He is not an aristocrat by birth, but inwardly he is proud, dominant, and invulnerable. Accordingly, immortalizing Shukhov through publication will paint a poignant portrait of survival to the Soviet people, with the added bonus of expediting the liberalization of the national political and intellectual climate.

Both of my parents were born in Mexico. My mom grew up in Guadalajara Jalisco and my dad grew up in a little town called Cuquio, which is about an hour away from Guadalajara. Mexico is south of the United States, and Jalisco is on the West side of Mexico. Cuquio is an extremely small town that not a lot of people know about. Guadalajara in the other hand, is one of the most known places in Mexico. What makes Jalisco so unique is its beautiful places, its amazing food, and its well known language. One of the places I myself have been to is the Degollado theatre. This theater was constructed about two hundred years ago and is still used to this day. Many people visit this place just to see its beautiful interior. Food is also a very important

Furthermore, in Leo Tolstoy‘s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and analysis will demonstrate that the character Ivan Ilyich struggles throughout his life to achieve the ideals of liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness. It is through Ivan’s death and his friend’s narration of Ivan’s life that the reader comes to the realization the the middle-class Ivan has few strength’s besides his hard work to drive him towards his ideals for wealth and property. Ivan lived his whole life with the purpose of enjoying himself. He did this through winning power at work, spending money, buying things to impress his friends, throwing parties, and playing bridge. His pursuit of happiness in material things and pleasures is so great that his deliberately avoids anything unpleasant. This means that when he settled down with a family, which was expected of him, he never grows close to them.

The extraordinary man in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is presented in three fashions: the first is Dostoevsky's theory of the extraordinary man, the second is the main character's, Raskolnikov's notion of himself as an extraordinary man and the third is Dostoevsky's view of the protagonist's attachment to his self-identification with the extraordinary. Dostoevsky's ideas about the extraordinary man are given in Raskolnikov's speech to Porfiry Petrovich on pages 242 and 243. Dostoevsky's view is expressed as Raskolnikov's, and is concerned with defining what exactly an extraordinary man is. Lending the protagonist definition, however, does not signify the author's acceptance of Raskolnikov's supposed extraordinariness. Dostoevsky

Human beings have many fears ranging from the unique to the common fears of many man. There is steadily increase in people having fear of sharks as written in Sharks and People: Exploring Our Relationship with the Most Feared Fish in the Sea by Thomas P. Peschak, “The technical term for the fear of sharks is selachophobia or galeophobia. Studies by psychologists show that we are not born with fear of sharks or any other living creature, but that these fears are acquired during early childhood through the display of emotions of people in our immediate surroundings. In addition to these terrifying real-life events, the publication of the book Jaws by Peter Benchley in 1974 and the release of the Spielberg film in 1975 fanned the flames

Anton Chekhov, born in Taganrog, Russia on January 17, 1860, was considered the father of the modern short story and modern play. In 1875, his father lost his business and was forced to leave to find work in Moscow in order to pay off his debt. Anton and his three younger siblings were left with their mother, Yevgeniya, after a while they lost their home and decided to move to Moscow to be with Chekhov’s father. Chekhov, who was left behind in Taganrog to finish his schooling, helped his family financially by tutoring children in Taganrog. He found work in a clothing warehouse until he finished his final exams. After school, he joined his family in Moscow, where he continued his studies in the medical field at the University of Moscow. Chekhov used his own experiences of living in Moscow in his short story “The Lady With the Dog”.

From the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, anecdotes were very popular in Russian culture. The most well-used anecdotes had to do with peasants and ethnic minorities which the audience found funny. In the work, Entertaining Tsarist Russia edited by James von Geldern and Louise McReynolds, one is given examples of the anecdotes used during this time period. These stories are more stereotypical of those they are portraying, which in Russian culture was humorous. The anecdotes used in this work, although meant to be funny, shows the underlying social problems in Russia at this time.

Tolstoy talks about a sort of scholarly emergency that he endured late in his life, and his recuperation from it. In spite of the fact that Tolstoy appreciated what might conventionally be viewed as a successful and agreeable life, he started feeling tormented by worries of unimportance. Specifically, he reports starting to question why he should think about things that he once thought about, or why he should do the things that he would choose to do. At last, he discovered it inconceivably hard to give answers to these inquiries. The outcome, he reports, is feeling as though his life were a doltish, pointless trap played someone has bestowed upon him. He felt as though every individual task he attempted, and also his life in its totality, were without importance.

Solzhenitsyn’s book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, is a well written piece of literature that describes in stunning detail the life that may await a “Zek” in the Gulag System. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is not spread over an extended period of time, but about a single day from reveille to when Ivan Denisovich’s eyes close that night. This allows for a more critical and unshrouded view of what Denisovich is thinking while performing menial tasks such as eating, walking to the work site, and observing those around him. Denisovich tells the reader about the people around him and his thoughts on their character. For example, “Senka was a quiet, luckless fellow.

Tolstoy, in other hand, immerses a reader into a short life story of the protagonist, starting from his family origins, to his youth and his adult life. The misleading nature of Ivan Ilyich’s existence is demonstrated from the very beginning of novella which accurately describes the illusory reality the main character is living in. The reader might be curious why the normal and ordinary life could be horrible. It is not much possible that Tolstoy was against ordinariness itself, but rather to show the reader that the main character Ivan Ilyich never reaches anything meaningful and exciting in his life. Ivan becomes kind of a prisoner of social milieu, he does everything that is expected of him: he goes to law school just like his father did, he finds a job, gets promoted, earns enough money to enjoy his life, fulfills his duty. He becomes kind of a spiritual zombie. Tolstoy describes main character’s absence of “real” life in a subtle but authentic way, showing that Ivan is not much different from the people in his circle. As an inventor of his own illusion, or the “lie”, in which main character lives, Ivan is not showing much curiosity, moreover he is not in search of any kind of truth. He simply exists in his undisturbed, tranquil environment, until something unpredictable happens to him. During one of his ordinary actions, while hanging the new curtains in his new house, he slips, falls down, banging his side against the window frame. This

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864/2008) comes across as a diary penned by a self-described “spiteful” and “unattractive” anonymous narrator (p. 7). The narrator’s own self-loathing characterized by self-alienation is so obvious, that he is often referred to by critics as the Underground Man (Frank 1961, p. 1). Yet this Underground Man is the central character of Dostoyevsky’s novel and represents a subversion of the typical courageous hero. In this regard, the Underground man is an anti-hero, since as a protagonist he not only challenges the typical literary version of a hero, but also challenges conventional thinking (Brombert 1999, p. 1).

Eugene Onegin travels throughout the world only to discover that the most precious thing in it is the modest, shy Tatiana’s heart—which he had arrogantly set aside in order to pursue…vain, vague notions of conquest and glory? His final effort to win over Tatiana was no base attempt to seduce a married woman but a cathartic, absolutely necessary act to try to atone for his earlier wrong. At long, long last the young woman’s heartbreaking letter—heartbreaking to her, to Onegin, to us—gets the response from its original recipient it deserves. Tatiana’s rejection of his overtures had nothing to do with revenge, but was the ultimate validation of her character and worth. A physical relationship between the two is impossible not just because she

Lermontov stated that “it simply amused him to paint the contemporary person, one that he understands, and to his misfortune has come across too often.” This is a clear indication that the book and its titular character are meant to be negative representations of the contemporary person. His expressed displeasure with the contemporary individual is reflective of his resentment for Russian high society. This resentment is evidenced by Lermontov’s eulogy for Pushkin, in which Lermontov blamed the pressures of high society as the cause of Pushkin’s death. The social ills perceived by Lermontov are coalesced into the character of Pechorin, which is the kind of “hero” Lermontov believed represented his

I have chosen to go into Criminal justice as my major along with minoring in Spanish. I feel that focusing on these studies will help me in the future as I work to become a lawyer. In my law career I plan on specializing in criminal law so that is where my education in Criminal Justice will come in handy and give me an understanding of my career field. The minor in Spanish is to help better my foreign language abilities, which I find will be useful in the future. It will allow me to more easily communicate with clients or witnesses who may only speak Spanish.

Sixty-three years before Faulkner received his Nobel Prize, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote the novel titled the “Death of Ivan Ilych”. In this story, Tolstoy tells us of the life of the protagonist Ivan Ilych Golovin. An unremarkable man in most every way, Ivan is a judge, who values material possessions and social standing above all else. Ivan’s passion lies with his career and the material objects his salary provides. His family is nothing more than an