The nobles grow anxious, entertaining rumors about the newcomer’s identity and motives-Chichikov may elope with the governor’s daughter, or he may be a government spy. When Chichikov gets overly confident, showing too much interest in the governor’s daughter at a ball, Nozdryov loudly declaims Chichikov’s intent to purchase dead souls from everyone, which alarms Chichikov. The cruel and capricious Nozdryov, an elaborate liar and compulsive gambler, refuses to cooperate.

Nozdryov’s servants almost beat Chichikov, who escapes only because the bellicose Nozdryov is arrested. The dreamy Manilov is easily taken in by Chichikov’s fine manners, while the cunning Sobakevich sees Chichikov’s scheme as a moneymaking enterprise. Most of the nobles in town at first regard Chichikov as trustworthy and charming, and his scheme proceeds mostly smoothly. In the novel’s first part, Chichikov meets many landowners, in scenes that illuminate the conditions of Russia’s landed aristocracy. The narrator frequently comments on the author’s choices, fate, and responsibilities, adding metaliterary analysis to descriptions of the plot and its development. Throughout every episode, Gogol’s intrusive, digressive narrator offers commentary on each character, the text’s structure, and Chichikov’s fitness as a protagonist. He can then mortgage these “dead souls” and get rich. He seeks to do so not by conventional means, but by purchasing peasants who have died since the last census, and thus are only alive on paper. This guide is based on the 2017 English translation by Donald Rayfield, and all citations refer to the ebook location numbers.ĭead Souls is the tale of Chichikov, an itinerant mid-rank bureaucrat desperate to make his fortune. Gogol is regarded as one of Russia’s literary giants, alongside Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Gogol’s fame as a satirist grew with his 1836 play, The Government Inspector, which, along with Gogol’s other plays is still regularly performed in theaters. In adulthood, he moved to the imperial capital of Saint Petersburg, where he worked as a minor civil servant and wrote his first collection of stories in 1831, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, which depict Ukrainian life. Gogol was born in 1809 in what is now Ukraine, to a minor noble family. The work-intended to be a trilogy-remains incomplete, ending mid-sentence, as Gogol burned the original conclusion to the second part before his death in 1852.

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