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

During the 1860s, there were new, different streams of thoughts that were emerging. In Fathers and Sons, Bazarov was a nihilist, and represented the younger generation who believed in Bazarovism. Turgenev’s description of Bazarov and his attempts to change Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, a Romantic, reveals what Turgenev thought toward nihilists. Bazarov’s actions and thoughts mirror the thoughts of those young scholars during the 1860s. Throughout his novel, Turgenev’s portrayal of Bazarov create a description of Bazarovism, a different and new type of literary type and thought for Russia during the 1860s. These new literary and intellectual types of thought grew from the generational difference between the fathers and the sons. As it grew out of a difference between generations, Bazarovism is largely different from Romanticism, what the fathers believe in, and is related to nihilism.

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.

Throughout the entirety of Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the author chooses to insert lines of poetry in order to give more insight to the situations he is portraying. Out of all of the Russian poems that were referenced, this paper will be focusing on the five that, I feel, were the most crucial to the deeper understanding of the scenes in which they were placed. These poems; Lermontov’s “Do not, do not believe in yourself,” Pushkin’s “Demon,” Pushkin’s “Chill Winds Still Blow,” Tiutchev’s “Silentium,” and Nekrasov’s “Before the Rain” will be discussed. Each of these poems offers insight to the scene, which goes beyond what was explicitly written by Dostoevsky. “Do not, do not believe in yourself” gives deeper insight to the

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.

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.

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

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is quite short, but it is one of the greatest pieces of fiction in any language. In it, Leo Tolstoy examines the hollowness of bourgeois existence. Ivan Ilyich is a successful member of the state bureaucracy. Throughout his life he has carefully adjusted his conduct so as to please his superiors and to arrange a life that runs smoothly and without complication. He is the perfect example of the conforming, “other-directed” man. Only shortly before his death does he discover the horror that lies behind his seemingly successful life.

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.

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

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.

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

Imperial Russian society during the time of serfdom was characterized by constantly changing social order. The society experienced a complex social change at the threshold to emancipation. It was undergoing many changes with increasing westernization and serfdom culture that gave rise to formation of new classes (raznochintsy) during the nineteenth century. Many authors have reflected and emphasized this component of change in the structure of pre-emancipation Russian society. This paper will examine how two writers: Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev, in their novels, Dead Souls and Fathers and Sons depict the society’s constantly changing nature through the relationships between their characters and the development in their beliefs and ideas. Although both the novels explore societal change during the pre-emancipation of serfs, the emphasis of change is different in both the novels. In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev oversees shifting values prevalent in the society. He explores the shift in generational values by depicting the difference in beliefs of characters like Bazarov and Nikolai. On the other hand, in Dead Souls Gogol focuses on issues of morality in society. He depicts a struggle for morality and portrays a corrupt society through the landowners and the protagonist, Chichikov, in his book.

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

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