A satirical depiction of feudal Rus' in “Dead Souls” by N.V.

Indicate the main techniques of satirical depiction that N.V. Gogol uses in “ Dead souls”, and which of the Russian writers of the 19th-20th centuries are the continuers of his traditions.

Read the text fragment below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1-C2.

It would be worth describing the office rooms through which our heroes passed, but the author has a strong shyness towards all official places. If he happened to pass through them, even in their brilliant and ennobled appearance, with varnished floors and tables, he tried to run through them as quickly as possible, humbly lowering his eyes to the ground, and therefore does not know at all how everything prospers and prospers there. Our heroes saw a lot of paper, both rough and white, bowed heads, wide napes, tailcoats, frock coats of provincial cut, and even just some kind of light gray jacket, separated very sharply, which, turning its head to the side and laying it almost on the very paper, she was briskly and formally writing out some kind of protocol about the acquisition of land or the inventory of an estate seized by some peaceful landowner, who was quietly living out his life under court, who had acquired children and grandchildren under his protection, and short expressions were heard in fits and starts, uttered in a hoarse voice: “Lend me, Fedosei Fedoseevich, business for No. 368!” - “You always drag the stopper from the government inkwell somewhere!” Sometimes a more majestic voice, no doubt one of the bosses, would be heard imperatively: “Here, rewrite it!” Otherwise they’ll take off your boots and you’ll sit with me for six days without eating.” The noise from the feathers was great and sounded as if several carts with brushwood were passing through a forest littered with a quarter of an arshin of withered leaves.

Chichikov and Manilov approached the first table, where two young officials were sitting, and asked:

Let me know where things are going with the fortresses?

What do you need? - both officials said, turning around.

And I need to submit a request.

What did you buy?

I would like to know first where the fortress table is, here or in another place?

Yes, tell us first what you bought and at what price, then we’ll tell you where, otherwise it’s impossible to know.

Chichikov immediately saw that the officials were simply curious, like all young officials, and wanted to give more weight and meaning to themselves and their activities.

Listen, my dears,” he said, “I know very well that all the work on the fortresses, no matter the price, is in one place, and therefore I ask you to show us the table, and if you don’t know what’s going on with you , so we will ask others.

The officials did not answer this; one of them only pointed his finger at the corner of the room, where an old man was sitting at a table, marking up some papers. Chichikov and Manilov walked between the tables straight towards him. The old man studied very carefully.

Let me find out,” Chichikov said with a bow, “are there any issues with the fortresses here?”

The old man raised his eyes and said deliberately:

There is no work on fortresses here.

Where?

This is on a fortress expedition.

Where is the fortress expedition?

This is from Ivan Antonovich.

Where is Ivan Antonovich?

The old man pointed his finger to the other corner of the room. Chichikov and Manilov went to Ivan Antonovich.

Chichikov, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket, placed it in front of Ivan Antonovich, which he did not notice at all and immediately covered it with a book. Chichikov wanted to show it to him, but Ivan Antonovich with a movement of his head made it clear that there was no need to show it.

“Here, he will lead you into the presence!” said Ivan Antonovich, nodding his head, and one of the priests, who were right there, made sacrifices to Themis with such zeal that both sleeves burst at the elbows and the lining had long been peeling off, for which received at one time a collegiate registrar, served our friends, as Virgil once served Dante, and led them into the presence room, where there were only wide armchairs, and in them, in front of the table, behind a mirror and two thick books, sat one chairman, like the sun. In this place, the new Virgil felt such awe that he did not dare to put his foot there and turned back, showing his back, wiped like a matting, with a chicken feather stuck somewhere. Entering the presence hall, they saw that the chairman was not alone; Sobakevich was sitting next to him, completely obscured by the mirror. The arrival of the guests caused an exclamation, and the government chairs were pushed back noisily. Sobakevich also stood up from his chair and became visible from all sides with his long sleeves. The chairman took Chichikov into his arms, and the room was filled with kisses; asked each other about health; It turned out that both of them had lower back pain, which was immediately attributed to sedentary life.

H. B. Gogol " Dead souls»

Explanation.

To depict bureaucracy in his poem, N.V. Gogol uses satire. In Dead Souls, none of the officials have a last name, but only a rank, first name and patronymic. Gogol, using grotesque techniques, ironizing the heroes, shows that officials are essentially worthless, stupid, envious, and sometimes cowardly people, ready to even betray their colleagues if we're talking about about their careers, sometimes they don’t even look like people. “Our heroes saw... even just a light gray jacket... which, turning its head to the side and placing its elbows on the very paper, was briskly and sweepingly writing out some kind of protocol.” This is one of the techniques of satirical depiction - grotesque. Gogol also resorts to the use of hyperbole to reveal the full depth of ignorance, historical limitations, and inexpressiveness of the bureaucratic world. So, officials compare Chichikov to Napoleon; the prosecutor in “Dead Souls” dies from the first tension, and his death is an important key link in the portrayal of officials.

Dostoevsky and Chekhov continued Gogol’s traditions in depicting bureaucracy. In the stories of Chekhov and the stories of Dostoevsky, the meager inner world of Russian bureaucracy is exposed with renewed vigor. Chekhov’s story “The Death of an Official” shows an insignificant creature, completely devoid of feeling self-esteem, pathetic.

In Dostoevsky’s “Poor People,” the petty official Devushkin, while on duty, is afraid of the glances of his colleagues and does not dare take his eyes off the table. The hero is constantly afraid that he is being watched and tracked; he sees enemies everywhere. He is morbidly afraid of people, imagines himself as a victim, and therefore is unable to communicate with others on equal terms.

So gradually, from Gogol’s impersonal officials, new images grow in the works of his followers.

The image of Chichikov is depicted with that measure of psychological authenticity and with that precise sense of life’s truth, which anticipated the revelation of the essence of this then new phenomenon by decades. Back in the fifties and sixties of the last century, examples of honest acquisition and entrepreneurship were seriously exhibited, and people wrote about “honest Chichikovism.” Gogol in 1841 looked at his hero much more soberly and insightfully. Everything that has happened so far with Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov is still only, so to speak, the background of the character. But it is explored with such skill and with such insight that everything that follows in the hero’s fate is perceived by the reader as something absolutely logical and natural in the development of character. Chichikov's past exhaustively explains his present.

Desperate to make a career, Chichikov decided to radically change his life. He planned to become a landowner. This is where we come to the main phase of Chichikov’s biography. In the epic with “dead souls,” Chichikov’s devilish energy and ingenuity were most clearly revealed. He never dreamed of a career. Service interested him only as a means of enrichment. Chichikov's admiration was not caused by people of high rank, but by people with capital. For the first time in Russian literature, the psychology and philosophy of the money man, the “millionaire,” was presented with such remarkable plasticity.

This was a “new” person in Russia, arousing the greatest interest and curiosity. The landowner led a semi-subsistence economy. His granaries were bursting with an abundance of grain and everything that the land produced, but he needed money. Let us remember with what frenzy the most “economical” landowners Korobochka and Sobakevich bargained with Chichikov for every penny. City officials also need money, whose salaries clearly do not correspond to the broad lifestyle to which each of them strives. Embezzlement, bribes, and extortion are widespread. Capital becomes the true master of life.

Without family or tribe, he unceremoniously invaded secular living rooms and more and more aggressively pushed back into various areas public life noble aristocracy. The question of the power of money, the charm of a million seriously worried Russian writers at the beginning of the last century. They also noticed the character of the person captured by this charm. But this was still a figure like Pushkin’s Hermann, deceived by the “Queen of Spades” and gone crazy. In 1835, Gogol published the first version of “Portrait,” in which the theme of money took on an even more fantastic coloring and was directly connected by the writer with a devilish obsession. The reference to the devil did not explain anything, and in 1841, as we know, almost at the same time as “ Dead souls", Gogol completed a radical revision of the story.

The fantastic element was largely weakened (not without the influence of Belinsky's criticism) and realistic motives were strengthened. In this edition of the story, the hero, captured by the thirst for money, ends in madness and death. In “Dead Souls” we take a character for whom acquisition is not an external passion that destroys talent and life, but the very essence, the constant life of this character.

Gogol realized that something dark and inevitable was approaching the country, and expressed this feeling in a poem. Rumors spread in the city of NN that Chichikov was a “millionaire,” and Gogol made a very important remark on this occasion: “... in one sound of this word, bypassing every money bag, there is something that affects both scoundrels and neither this nor this affects people, and good people, in a word, it affects everyone.” If this one word gives rise to a “tender disposition towards meanness,” then, therefore, “a million” marches across the country and creates the environment for the emergence and development of the Chichikovs - people for whom the desire for a million becomes their nature, meanness becomes their character. Thus, in the structure of the poem, which depicts Rus' “from one side,” the addition of “scoundrel” appears.

“No, it’s time to finally hide the scoundrel too. So, let’s harness the scoundrel!” - the author exclaims in the final chapter of the first volume, before moving on to the story of the dark origin of his hero. Gogol’s study of the character of the “scoundrel” follows a moral and psychological line and is supplemented by references to Chichikov’s personal qualities and the circumstances of his upbringing and environment, unfolded in his biography. Chichikov perfectly comprehended the “great science of being liked.” He made an irresistible impression on all the officials of the provincial city.

Moreover, everyone discovered their own in him. To the governor he seemed a well-intentioned man, to the prosecutor - efficient, to the gendarmerie colonel - learned, to the chairman of the chamber - respectable, to the chief of police - amiable, etc. Even Nozdryov, who, due to his special disposition towards Chichikov, called him to his face a brute and a scoundrel, somehow concluded that he was “occasionally occupied with learned subjects,” loved to read and had a “satirical mind.” Most of all, the beautiful-hearted Manilov is fascinated by Chichikov.

It was curious to recreate the portrait of Chichikov based on these reviews of him - the result would be that virtuous man about whom Gogol himself wrote in the chapter on Chichikov that “it’s time to finally give rest to the poor virtuous man,” “because they turned a virtuous man into a horse.” This contrast between the external appearance of character and his true essence undoubtedly underlies the comic nature of Chichikov’s image, his moral and psychological portrait.

This is exactly how Chernyshevsky defined the comic: it is “internal emptiness and insignificance, hiding behind an appearance that has a claim to content and real meaning.” The insignificant strives to hide itself and has the pretense of appearing significant. This claim is always a source of humor. Gogol's laughter at Chichikov is full of irony. But the satirical essence of this image is not only ironic. In the writer’s mind, Chichikov is not at all a petty swindler who turned out to be necessary to hold the plot together, but an independent figure who plays a historical role in his own way. Gogol saw, as already noted, the indomitable energy of the Chichikovs in their desire for capital, for the “million”.

I saw that the Chichikovs, striving for a “million,” freed themselves from everything human in themselves and were merciless towards people who stood in their way. I saw that their moral insensitivity and callousness give rise to the complete amorphism of their actions. In this sense, Chichikov surpasses all the officials’ guesses about him. If the opportunity arises to reach a million by making counterfeit notes or robbery (but only in “legal” forms), Chichikov will not fail to take advantage of it. He goes (in the second volume) to forge a will!

Gogol also saw the ever-increasing scope of Chichikov’s “turnovers,” who started with his parents’ half-ruble in copper. For all this, in fact, the last chapter of the first volume with the biography of the hero was written. Chichikov will not rest until he conquers a million, and with it power over the world of “dead souls” - the power that he had already felt in the city of NN, which mistook him for a “millionaire.” In this regard, the comparison of Chichikov with Napoleon, a contender for world domination, is also interesting.

The reduction of Napoleon to Chichikov emphasized this idea. On the other hand, Chichikov’s likening to Napoleon expressed the extent of the danger that, according to Gogol, the Chichikovs’ activities posed for society. For all their dissimilarity and diversity, both of them, Chichikov and Napoleon, are in some ways very similar to each other. So, Chichikov has such character traits that How to Write an Essay 159 are not found in the people of local Russia - energy, will. The Chichikovs are contrasted with the Manilovs and Plyushkins. But what social ideas and moral values ​​will they themselves, these predatory money-grubbers, establish? With brilliant artistic insight, Gogol showed not only the decomposition of the feudal-serf system, but also the terrible threat that the world of the Chichikovs, the world of capitalist predation, brought to the people.

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Satire in N. V. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”

1. The meaning of the poem “Dead Souls”.
2. Irony and satire in the work.
3. Image of landowners.
4. Satire in the depiction of officials.
5. Irony in the depiction of ordinary people.

“Dead Souls” is a medical history written by a master.
A. I. Herzen

“Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol - immortal satirical work Russian literature. However, this sharp and funny poem does not at all lead to joyful and cheerful thoughts. A special feature of Gogol’s talent is that he easily, harmoniously and subtly combined tragic and comic principles in his works. That is why the comedic and satirical moments of the work only highlight the overall tragedy of the picture of life in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. Satire dominates the text of the poem for the reason that the author considered it the most in an effective way fight against social vices and shortcomings. How much this satire helped in the framework of perestroika in Russia is not for us to decide.

The general picture of the life of Russians, full of irony and light mockery, begins with a description of the city to which Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov arrives. Here are houses, lost against the backdrop of the vast expanses of the streets, and half-erased, half-washed-out signs with ridiculous boots and bagels, with the only surviving inscription: “Foreigner Vasily Fedorov.” The description of the city is detailed and full of subtle but important details. It gives an idea of ​​the life and customs of its inhabitants. For example, it turns out that non-residents are alien to lies. So, after the scene in which Chichikov walks through the garden, where the trees have just been planted and they are no taller than a cane, the hero comes across a note in the local newspaper, where there is a message about the appearance of a garden consisting of “shady broad-leaved trees.” The pathos and pathos of these lines only emphasize the wretchedness of the real picture of what is happening in the city, where for just a couple of rubles a day a traveler can get “a quiet room with cockroaches peeking out like prunes from all corners” or have a snack in the dining room with a dish that was two weeks old.

In the same spirit of rather evil irony, landowners and bureaucratic brethren are depicted. So Manilov is called “very courteous and polite, and these are his favorite words, the very characteristics that he so lacks. Judging by the sweetness of his gaze, his eyes are compared to sugar, causing the reader to associate with disgusting sugariness. It is no coincidence that Sobakevich’s appearance is correlated with a bear - through this image the author brings the character closer to an animal devoid of aesthetic and spiritual principles. And the interior of Sobakevich’s office is described in such a way as to highlight the main characteristics of the owner: “The table, armchairs, chairs - everything was of the heaviest and most restless nature.” Nozdryov becomes ridiculous in the eyes of the reader after the phrase calling people like him good comrades is followed by the following line: “... despite all this, they can be beaten very painfully.”

In addition to irony, which is quite evil and sharp, the text of the work is also full of comedic situations, where laughter becomes softer and less evil. Many readers must have remembered the scene about how Manilov and Chichikov could not enter the room for several minutes, persistently conceding to each other the right to be the first to cross the threshold of the room. The scene of Chichikov’s visit to Korobochka is also interesting to consider, where in the dialogue between the club-headed Nastasya and the cunning businessman, Korobochka’s confusion, her stupidity and feeble-mindedness, and amazing thriftiness alternately appear.

However, not only landowners and officials are satirically depicted in the work. The depiction of peasant life is also associated with satire. A funny situation is connected with the coachman Selifan and the yard wench Pelageya, who explains the way, but does not distinguish between right and left. This laconic passage will tell the reader a lot - about general level illiteracy among the common people, about darkness and underdevelopment - the natural consequences of a long stay in a state of serfdom. The same motives are visible in the episode with Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai, who, rushing to disassemble the horses, became entangled in the traces. Even Chichikov’s serf Petrushka, a man considered to be educated, looks like a living laughingstock, since all his learning consists only in the ability to put words together from letters, without thinking too much about their meaning.

Through sarcasm, such characteristic features of the landowners of that time as bribery, embezzlement, dishonesty, and squalor of interests are highlighted. Hence the thought to ponder: will they bring people like this benefit the state by occupying high positions in the bureaucracy?

In the depiction of perhaps the most disgusting character in the work - Plyushkin - the grotesque is widely used. Plyushkin represents the last degree of degradation, consisting in the complete death of the soul. Even appearance The hero begins to succumb to the spiritual crisis, because his belonging to a certain gender becomes more and more difficult. The fate of his children and grandchildren is indifferent to him. And he himself abstracted himself from the world around him behind the high wall of his own egoism. All emotions and feelings disappeared from his soul forever, leaving only boundless, impossible stinginess. And this hero is the most terrible example of an official’s crime against his people and the state.

The many-sided evil, picturesquely depicted by Gogol in the poem “Dead Souls” convinces the reader that the main problem and the main disease that infected the Russian body was serfdom, which acted equally mercilessly both against those in power and against ordinary peasants.