Grinev in p. Essay on the topic: “Characteristics of Pyotr Andreevich Grinev from the novel A
"Captain's daughter". Pyotr Grinev is a young man of seventeen years old, who from an early age was enrolled in the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment, which predetermined the hero’s life path. A minor is a young nobleman who does not have the necessary education, confirmed by an appropriate written certificate from a teacher. Such young men could not enter the civil service or obtain documents confirming the right to marry.
Plot and biography
The narration is told from the perspective of the aged Grinev. The hero retells the turbulent events of the past for his own descendants.
The hero's childhood and youth took place in the Simbirsk province on the estate of his parents. Peter's father is a retired officer, a man of strict character. When my son turned sixteen, he assigned him to military service. Young Peter, according to his father, ran around the maidens and climbed in dovecotes, that is, he spent his life in idleness, was not assigned to work and did not receive a systematic education.
Going to his place of duty, Grinev gets caught in a snowstorm on the way and meets an unknown fugitive Cossack in the steppe, who leads the hero and his old servant Savelich to the inn. In gratitude for the service rendered, the young officer gives the Cossack a hare sheepskin coat. Subsequently it turns out that this Cossack is the leader of the Peasant War. Grinev’s dream, described in the second chapter of the story, is important here. In this dream, Grinev sees the role of Pugachev in his own destiny.
The place where the hero is going to serve is the border Belogorsk fortress. Arriving at the service, the hero sees Masha there, the daughter of the commandant of the fortress, Captain Ivan Mironov, and falls in love with her. Among Peter's colleagues there is another officer who has a love interest in Masha - Alexey Shvabrin. This man challenges the hero to a duel and wounds him. Grinev's father learns about the duel and the reasons that provoked it. However, Masha does not have a dowry, and Peter’s father clearly demonstrates his attitude towards this fact, refusing to approve his son’s marriage.
The situation gets worse when Masha's parents die during the Pugachev uprising. In the fortresses captured by Pugachev's troops, nobles are executed, and the Mironovs become victims of this wave. Masha remains an orphan. When the young officers are given a choice - to go over to the side of the rebels or die, the duelist Shvabrin takes the oath to Pugachev, but Grinev refuses to do so. The hero is about to be executed, but the situation is saved by an old servant who turns to Pugachev, and the leader of the uprising recognizes in Grinev the young man with whom he crossed paths in the winter. This saves the hero's life.
Grinev is not filled with gratitude to Pugachev, who pardoned him, refuses to join the rebel army and leaves for the besieged city of Orenburg, where he continues to fight against Pugachev. Masha Mironova, meanwhile, is forced to remain due to illness in the Belogorsk fortress, where she finds herself at the mercy of the defector Shvabrin, who is going to marry the girl against her will. Masha writes a letter to Grinev, and the hero leaves the service without permission, in fact deserts, in order to save his beloved. The same Pugachev helps the hero resolve this situation on the spot, in the Belogorsk fortress.
Shvabrin denounces Grinev, and the hero again ends up in prison, this time in government prison. Decisive Masha gets to Empress Catherine II herself and tells her that Grinev was slandered, thus achieving the release of the groom.
By the way, the story “The Captain’s Daughter” inspired contemporaries so much that the painter Ivan Miodushevsky in 1861 painted a picture based on Pushkin’s story (as they would now say, “fan art”), which was called “Presenting a letter to Catherine II” and depicted the corresponding moment from the text. The painting is in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Image and characteristics
The hero is shown in the story as a rather colorless and inexpressive person, a person devoid of bright feelings and colors. Some critics were of the opinion that Pushkin created Grinev in such a way as to “shade off” the image and actions of Pugachev, who is depicted in the work as a powerful, colorful figure. At the same time, the actions of the young hero, despite the inexpressiveness of his character, portray him as a person with courage and fidelity to duty.
The hero grew up in a landowner family typical of that time. He was taught science by a Frenchman who pretended to be a teacher, but was actually a hairdresser. As a result of such training, the hero knew basic literacy, “could very sensibly judge the properties of a greyhound dog,” and could speak a little French. Young Peter was raised by his stern father and servant Savelich, who instilled in the boy ideas of honor and behavior appropriate for a young nobleman. In such circumstances, the character of young Grinev was formed.
The hero’s father believes that in order to develop a personality, a young man needs to “pull the strap” and smell gunpowder. For this purpose, the father sends the hero not to St. Petersburg, to the guard (which he was looking forward to), but to Orenburg, from where Peter goes to the border Belogorsk fortress - to meet severe trials and unexpected love. The twists and turns of fate and an affair with Masha eventually transform the young, frivolous hero into a mature and responsible man.
Film adaptations
The image of Pyotr Grinev has been embodied on the screen more than once. The last film adaptation of The Captain's Daughter was released in 2005. The animated film, directed by Ekaterina Mikhailova, uses puppets.
In 2000, a historical film called “Russian Revolt” was released based on this story by Pushkin. The role of Grinev is played here by a Polish actor, and voiced by. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
During the Soviet era (1958), the story was filmed by director Vladimir Kaplunovsky. In this version, the role of Grinev was played by.
“The Captain's Daughter” was also filmed abroad. Two films were released in Italy - La figlia del capitano in 1947 and La tempesta (The Tempest) in 1958. Another film called “Volga on Fire” (“Volga en flammes”) was released in France in 1934. It was shot by Russian director Viktor Turzhansky, who emigrated to France after the revolution.
Quotes
“I could not help but marvel at the strange combination of circumstances: a children’s sheepskin coat, given to a tramp, saved me from the noose, and a drunkard, wandering around inns, besieged fortresses and shook the state!”
“God knows you; but whoever you are, you are telling a dangerous joke.”
“God forbid we see a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless!”
“The best and most lasting changes are those that come from the mere improvement of morals, without violent political changes, terrible for humanity.”
“It is our duty to defend the fortress until our last breath.”
), Pyotr Andreevich Grinev is a young officer who found himself at his place of service in the midst of a riot and accidentally encountered Pugachev himself.
Grinev himself says that he “lived as a teenager” until he was sixteen years old. But it is clear that by nature he was not stupid and gifted with extraordinary abilities, because in the Belogorsk fortress, having no other entertainment, he took up reading, practicing French translations, and sometimes writing poetry. “The desire for literature awakened in me,” he writes. – Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov several years later highly praised his literary experiments.
Here's everything we know about the education of Pyotr Andreevich Grinev; Now let's talk about his upbringing. The concepts of upbringing and education are often combined into one whole, whereas, in essence, these are two different areas, and sometimes the question even arises: what is more important for a person - education or upbringing? In this case, it was the upbringing given to Grinev by his parents, instilled in him from childhood with words, instruction, and most importantly by example, that made him a man, created strong foundations that showed him the straight and correct path in life.
What example did he see in his parents’ house? We can judge this by individual words scattered throughout the story. We learn that Grinev’s parents were honest, deeply decent people: his father, adhering to strict rules himself, did not allow drunken and frivolous behavior in his house, among his servants and subordinates. The best evidence of his principles is the instructions he gives to his son: “serve faithfully to whom you swear allegiance; obey your superiors; Don’t chase their affection; don’t ask for service; do not dissuade yourself from serving; and remember the proverb: take care of your dress again, but take care of your honor from a young age.”
A. S. Pushkin. Captain's daughter. Audiobook
The main thing in these instructions is loyalty to the oath. We see the importance Grinev the father attached to her by his terrible grief when he learned about the accusation of treason against the empress and participation in Pugachev’s rebellion being brought against his son. It is not the exile of his son to Siberia for eternal settlement, with which the empress, “out of respect for the merits of his father,” replaced the execution that threatened him, plunges the old man into despair, but the fact that his son is a traitor. “My son participated in Pugachev’s plans! Good God, what have I lived to see!” he exclaims: “The Empress is saving him from execution! Does this make it any easier for me? It is not the execution that is terrible: my ancestor died on the execution site, defending what considered it a shrine of my conscience "... "But a nobleman should betray his oath" ... "Shame and disgrace to our family!" – In fact, Pyotr Andreevich Grinev, as we know, never betrayed his oath; his father’s instructions given to him before leaving apparently sank deeply into his soul; in all the difficult and dangerous moments of his life, he never betrayed the requirements of duty and honor.
Over the short period of time described in the story (about two years), we see how a boy who “lived as a teenager,” chasing pigeons, making a paper kite from a geographical map, under the influence of extraordinary events and strong experiences, turns into an adult, decent and honest. . At the beginning of the story, his behavior is still purely boyish: playing billiards with Zurin, innocent lies to the general when explaining the expression “hedgehog gloves,” etc.; but love for Marya Ivanovna, and most importantly the terrible incidents of the Pugachev rebellion, contribute to the fact that he quickly matures. He tells everything that happened to him completely sincerely; does not hide the fact that sometimes he did stupid things - but his personality appears all the more clearly before us.
Grinev is not stupid and very likeable. The main traits of his character: simplicity (he never shows off), directness and innate nobility in all actions; when Pugachev, due to Savelich’s intervention, pardoned him when he was on the verge of death, he can not kiss the hand of the robber who pardoned him: “I would prefer the most severe execution to such humiliation.” Kissing the hand of Pugachev, who gave him life, would not have been a betrayal of the oath, but it was contrary to his innate sense of nobility. At the same time, the feeling of gratitude to Pugachev, who saved his life and saved Marya Ivanovna from Shvabrin, never leaves him.
With great masculinity in all of Grinev’s actions, his relationships with people show warmth and kindness. In difficult moments of his life, his soul turns to God: he prays, preparing for death, in front of the gallows, “bringing to God sincere repentance for all sins, and begging Him for the salvation of all loved ones.” At the end of the story, when he, innocent of anything, unexpectedly ended up in prison, chained, he “resorted to the consolation of all those who mourned and, having for the first time tasted the sweetness of prayer poured out from a pure but torn heart, calmly fell asleep,” not caring that will be with him.
Pushkin described the events of the Pugachev uprisings based on his own vision of Russia’s historical past. The characters presented by the author should help the reader recreate in his imagination the pictures of those days.
The image and characterization of Pyotr Grinev in “The Captain's Daughter” clearly shows that even in a difficult life situation one cannot give up.
Childhood and youth of Pyotr Andreevich Grinev
“Andrei Petrovich (Petit’s father) served under the count in his youth, and retired as prime minister.” The young man's mother came from a poor noble family. Peter was the only child in the family. Nine children born before him died.
Petrusha grew up as a mischievous boy and shirked his studies. I was glad when the French teacher was in a drunken stupor and did not require him to complete assignments.
“I lived as a teenager, chased pigeons, played leapfrog with the yard boys.”
The father tried to raise Petrusha according to military rules. The boy dreamed that he would go to serve in St. Petersburg, where he would begin a cheerful independent life. His parent sends him to a village located near Orenburg.
Conscience does not sleep
It may seem that Grinev is quite eccentric. On the way, he loses a hundred rubles in billiards and demands Savelich to repay the debt. The guy does not respond to the driver’s warning that a snowstorm will soon begin, but orders him to continue driving.
After such actions he realizes that he made a mistake. I am ready to make reconciliation and be the first to ask for forgiveness. This happened with Savelich.
"Well! That’s enough, let’s make peace, I’m guilty, I see that I’ve done something wrong.”
After the duel with Shvabrin, Peter quickly moves on from his offense.
“I forgot to him both our quarrel and the wound he received in the duel.”
Openness, ability to get along with people, show respect for them
In the Belogorsk fortress, Grinev immediately makes friends with Lieutenant Shvabrin, not yet understanding what kind of person he really is. He often visits the commandant's family. They are glad to see him. Conversations are held between them on all sorts of topics. The guy respects the Mironovs. He never takes advantage of his noble origin and does not divide people into social classes.
Love and devotion.
In love with Masha Mironova. Sincere feelings inspire him. Writes poems in her honor. When Shvabrin speaks obscene speeches about her, he immediately challenges him to a duel to defend the honor of his beloved. After receiving his father’s refusal to bless the marriage, he finds no place for himself and cannot imagine life without his beloved. Ready to go against the wishes of my parents.
Constantly thinks about Masha, worries about her. When Shvabrin held her in the fortress by force, Grinev was eager to go save her alone.
“Love strongly advised me to stay with Marya Ivanovna and be her protector and patron.”
Bravery and bravery of a real warrior
When Pugachev attacked the fortress and brutally dealt with those who were against his power, Grinev did not give up. He did not become a traitor, like Shvabrin, did not bow to the impostor, did not kiss his hands. The Raskolnik spared him, because once upon a time he gave him a warm sheepskin coat in gratitude for saving him from a strong snowstorm.
Peter tells the rebel the truth. When the liar demands to go over to his side, to promise not to fight against a gang of villains, the young man will sincerely answer that he cannot do that. He is not afraid of Emelyan’s anger, and this is what wins his respect.
CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER
Grinev Petr Andreevich (Petrusha) - the main character of Pushkin’s last major work, a provincial Russian nobleman, on whose behalf (in the form of “notes for the memory of posterity” compiled in the era of Alexander I about the era of the Pugachev rebellion) the story is told. The historical story “The Captain's Daughter” brings together all the themes of Pushkin’s work of the 1830s. The place of an “ordinary” person in great historical events, freedom of choice in cruel social circumstances, law and mercy, “family thought” - all this is present in the story and is associated with the image of the main character-narrator.
Initially, Pushkin, as in the unfinished story “Dubrovsky,” was going to put at the center of the story a renegade nobleman who moved from one camp to another (here the real officer of Catherine’s era, Shvanvich, served as his prototype); or a captured officer who flees from Pugachev. There was also a prototype here - a certain Basharin, this is the name that the hero was supposed to bear, later renamed Bulanin, Valuev - and, finally, G. (This name in a different vowel - Granev - is found in the plans for the unfinished "Roman on the Caucasian Waters", 1.831.) This name is also taken from the actual history of the Pugachevism; it was worn by a nobleman who was arrested on suspicion of treason and later acquitted. Thus, the idea of a story about a man who, by the will of Providence, found himself between two warring camps was finally determined; about a nobleman who remains unshakably faithful to his oath, does not separate himself from the class in general and from class ideas about honor in particular - but who at the same time looks at the world with an unbiased mind.
Having closed the plot chain precisely on G. (and “delegating” the role of the renegade nobleman to Shvabrin), Pushkin reproduced the principle of the historical prose of Walter Scott, in whose novels (especially from the “Scottish” cycle - “Waverley”, “Rob Roy”, “Puritans” ) this type of hero occurs constantly - as well as the situation itself: two camps, two truths, one fate. Such is the immediate “literary predecessor” of G., Yuri Miloslavsky from the “Walter Scott” novel of the same name by M. N. Zagoskin (with the huge difference that Miloslavsky is a prince, and not an “ordinary” person). Following Grinev, other characters in “The Captain’s Daughter” acquire Walter Scottian features. The image of the faithful servant G. Savelich (whose name coincides with the name of the “patriotic” coachman, a witness of the Pugachev rebellion in M. N. Zagoskin’s “Walter Scott” novel “Roslavlev”) goes back to Caleb from the novel “Lammermoor Unplaced”; episode, in which Grinev’s fiancée Marya Ivanovna Mironova seeks from Catherine II an acquittal for her lover, repeats the episode with Jenny Gine from “Edinburgh Dungeon” and others.
The genre of “notes for posterity” made it possible to depict the story in a “homely way” - and assumed that the hero’s life would unfold before the reader from childhood, and the hero’s death would remain outside the immediate scope of the story (otherwise there would be no one to write the notes).
G.’s “backstory” is simple: he is the son of Prime Major Andrei Petrovich Grinev, who lives after retirement on a small (300 souls) estate in the Simbirsk province. Petrusha is raised by a serf “uncle”, Savelich, taught by Monsieur Beaupré, a former hairdresser and hunter of Russian liqueur. . Pushkin transparently hints that his father’s early resignation was connected with the palace coup during the time of Anna Ioannovna. Moreover, it was originally intended (and from a plot point of view it would have been much more “beautiful”) to explain the resignation by the events of 1762, Catherine’s coup, but then the chronology would have been completely disrupted. Be that as it may, the hero’s father seems to be “excluded” from history; he cannot realize himself (and therefore gets angry every time he reads the court address-calendar, which reports awards and promotions of his former comrades). This is how Pushkin prepares the reader for the idea that Pyotr Andreevich could have lived a very ordinary life, without revealing the qualities inherent in him, if not for the all-Russian catastrophe of the 1770s. and if not for his father's will. At the age of seventeen, a minor who had been enlisted in the guard as a sergeant even before birth, G. went straight from the nursery to serve - and not in the elite Semyonovsky regiment, but in the provinces. (Another “rejected” version of fate - if G. had ended up in St. Petersburg, by the time of the next palace coup in 1801 he would have been an officer of the regiment that played a key role in the anti-Pavlovsk conspiracy. That is, he would have mirrored the fate of his father.) First he ends up in Orenburg , then to the Belogorsk fortress. That is, where and when in the fall of 1773 the Pugachevites ran wild, a “Russian revolt, senseless and merciless” would break out (G.’s words). (Something similar should have happened to the hero of Pushkin’s unfinished story from another era - the young ensign from “Notes of a Young Man”, who in May 1825 is on his way to the Chernigov regiment, where in January 1826 the Decembrist uprising of the “Vasilkovskaya Council” will break out. )
From this moment on, the life of a provincial nobleman merges with the flow of all-Russian history and turns into a magnificent set of accidents and mirror-repeated episodes that make us remember both the poetics of Walter Scott and the laws of constructing a Russian fairy tale. In an open field, Grinev's wagon is accidentally overtaken by a snowstorm; by chance a black-bearded Cossack stumbles upon her, who leads the lost travelers to housing (this scene is connected with the episode with Yuri, his servant Alexei and the Cossack Kirsha in M. N. Zagoskin’s novel “Yuri Miloslavsky”). By chance, the guide turns out to be the future Pugachev.
The linkage of all subsequent meetings of G. and the turns of his fate is just as random.
Once in the Belogorsk fortress, 40 versts from Orenburg, he falls in love with the daughter of captain Ivan Kuzmich Mironov, eighteen-year-old Masha (in which some features of the heroine of A.P. Kryukov’s story “The Story of My Grandmother”, 1831, the captain’s daughter Nastya Shpagina are repeated) and fights because of her in a duel with Lieutenant Shvabrin; injured; in a letter to his parents, he asks for blessings for his marriage with a dowry-free woman; Having received a strict refusal, he remains in despair. (Naturally, Masha will eventually settle with G.’s parents, and Shvabrin, having gone over to Pugachev’s side, will play the role of an evil genius in the hero’s fate.) Pugachev, having captured the fortress, accidentally recognizes Savelich, remembers the hare sheepskin coat and half a ruble for vodka, donated after the snowstorm him with Petrusha from the bottom of his heart, and he pardons the barchuk a moment before his execution. (Mirror repetition of the episode with the sheepskin coat.) Moreover, he lets him go on all four sides. But, having accidentally learned in Orenburg that Masha, hidden by the Belogorsk priest, is now in the hands of the traitor Shvabrin, G. tries to persuade the general to allocate fifty soldiers to him and give the order to liberate the fortress. Having received a refusal, he goes on his own to Pugachev’s lair. Falls into an ambush and accidentally remains unharmed; accidentally ends up in the hands of Pugachev, precisely at the moment when he is in a good mood, so that the bloodthirsty corporal Beloborodov does not manage to “torture” the nobleman. Pugach is touched by the story about the girl forcibly held by Shvabrin; goes with the hero to Belogorskaya - and, even having learned that Masha is a noblewoman, G.’s bride, does not change her gracious decision. Moreover, he half-jokingly offers to marry them - and is ready to take on the responsibilities of an imprisoned father. (So, by chance, a dream that G. had right after the snowstorm comes true: his father is dying; but it is not his father, but a black-bearded man, from whom for some reason he needs to ask for a blessing and who wants to be imprisoned by his father; an axe; dead bodies; bloody puddles. )
Released by Pugachev, G., Masha, Savelich are ambushed by government troops (a mirror repetition of the episode with the Pugachevites); By chance, the detachment commander turns out to be Za-urin, to whom G., on the way to his duty station, before the snowstorm, lost 100 rubles at billiards. Having sent Masha to her father's estate, G. remains in the detachment; after the capture of the Tatishchevo fortress and the suppression of the rebellion, he was arrested on the denunciation of Shvabrin - and cannot avert accusations of treason from himself, since he does not want to interfere with Masha in the trial. But she goes to St. Petersburg and accidentally runs into the queen while walking in Tsarskoe Selo; accidentally does not recognize her - and innocently tells about everything (a mirror repetition of the episode of G.’s “petition” for Masha before Pugachev). Ekaterina accidentally remembers the heroic death of Captain Mironov (and, perhaps, Mashina’s mother, Vasilisa Egorovna). If not for this, who knows, the empress would have been able to approach the matter so impartially and justify G.? By chance, officer G., released in 1774 and present at the execution of Pugachev, who recognized him in the crowd and nodded (another mirror repetition of the episode with the gallows in Belogorskaya), did not die in numerous wars of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. and composes notes for youth; By chance, these notes fall into the hands of a “publisher”, under whose mask Pushkin himself is hiding.
But the fact of the matter is that all the “accidents” of the plot are subordinated to a higher law - the law of the free choice of the individual in the circumstances offered to him by history. These circumstances can develop one way or another, successfully or unsuccessfully; the main thing is not this, but how free a person is from their power. Pugachev, in whose hands there is enormous power to decide human destinies, is not free from the element that set him in motion; the Orenburg general, who refuses to send G. to fight for the Belogorsk fortress, is not free from his caution; Shvabrin is not free from his own fear and his own spiritual meanness; G. is free to the end and in everything. For he acts at the behest of his heart, and his heart is freely subordinate to the laws of noble honor, the code of Russian chivalry, and the sense of duty.
These laws are unchanged - even when it is necessary to pay off a huge billiard debt to Zaurin, who played not too honestly; and when you need to thank a random guide with a sheepskin coat and half a dime. And when should Shvabrin be challenged to a duel, having listened to Grinev’s “poems” in honor of Masha and spoke contemptuously about both them and her. And when the Pugachevites lead the hero to execution. And when Pugachev, who has pardoned the hero, extends his hand for a kiss (G., naturally, does not kiss the “villain’s hand”). And when the impostor directly asks the captive whether he recognizes him as sovereign, whether he agrees to serve, whether he promises at least not to fight against him, and the captive three times, directly or indirectly, answers “no.” And when G., once already saved by fate, returns alone to the location of the Pugachevites - to help out his beloved or die with her. And when, arrested by his own government, he does not name Marya Ivanovna.
It is this constant readiness, without risking in vain, to nevertheless pay with his life for his honor and love, that makes the nobleman G. completely free. Just as his serf servant Savelich is freed to the end (albeit in other forms) by personal devotion to G. That is, following the unwritten code of peasant honor, that universal principle that can be inherent in any class and which is essentially religious, - although Savelich is not too “churchy” (and only exclaims every minute “Lord Master”), and G. in the Kazan prison tastes for the first time “the sweetness of prayer poured out from a pure but torn heart.” (Here Pushkin’s contemporary had to not only remember the “eternal source” of the prison theme in European culture - the episode of the imprisonment of the heavenly patron of G., the Apostle Peter - Acts 12, 3-11 - but also recognize the paraphrase of the notes of the Italian religious writer and public figure of the 1820s Silvio Pellico, who in the book “My Prisons” - a Russian translation enthusiastically reviewed by Pushkin, 1836 - spoke about how he first turned to God in prayer in an Austrian prison.)
This behavior turns the most simple-minded of the heroes of The Captain's Daughter into the most serious of its characters. This seriousness of Grinev’s image is shaded by the slight grin with which the author describes the “living space” of other heroes. Pugachev reigns in a hut covered with gold paper; the general plans defense against the Pugachevites in an apple orchard insulated with straw; Catherine meets Masha as if “inside” a pastoral: swans, parks, a white dog, “copied” by Pushkin from the famous engraving by the artist Utkin, depicting Catherine in a “homely way”... And only G. and Savelich are surrounded by the open space of fate; they are constantly rushing beyond the fence - whether of the noble Orenburg, or the Pugachev fortress; to a place where they are not protected from circumstances, but are internally free from them. (In this sense, the prison for G. is also an open space.)
It is G. and Savelich together - these two characters, the serf and the nobleman, cannot be separated from each other, just as Sancho Panza cannot be separated from Don Quixote. This means that the point of the story is not to “switch over” to one of the sides of the historical conflict. And it’s not about renouncing allegiance to any “authority” (cf. Shvabrin’s image). And it’s not even about “leaving” the narrow limits of class ethics, rising to universal human principles. It’s about discovering what is universal within one’s “camp,” one’s environment, one’s class, one’s tradition—and serving it not out of fear, but out of conscience. This is the guarantee of G.’s utopian hope (and Pushkin, who is prompting him, who rethinks Karamzin’s thesis) that “the best and most lasting changes are those that come from the mere improvement of morals, without any violent upheavals.”
The image of G. (and the “Walter Scott” poetics of chance and mirrored repeating episodes itself) turned out to be extremely important for the Russian literary tradition, right up to Yuri Andreevich Zhivago from the novel by B. L. Pasternak.
The narration in “The Captain's Daughter” by Pyotr Andreevich Grinev, who talks about his youth, plunged into the cycle of historical events. Grinev appears in the novel, therefore, both as a narrator and as one of the main characters of the events described.
Pyotr Andreevich Grinev is a typical representative of the provincial Russian nobility of the second half of the 18th century. He was born and raised on the estate of his father, a landowner in the Simbirsk province. His childhood passed as it did for most poor provincial nobles of that time. From the age of five he was given into the hands of the serf Savelich. Having mastered the diploma under the guidance of his uncle in his twelfth year, Grinev comes under the supervision of Monsieur Beaupre, a French tutor, discharged from Moscow “along with a year’s supply of wine and Provençal oil” and who turned out to be a bitter drunkard.
Describing his student years with good-natured humor, Grinev says: “I lived as a teenager, chasing pigeons and playing leapfrog with the yard boys.” It would be a mistake, however, to think that we are looking at an undergrowth like Mitrofanushka from Fonvizin’s comedy. Grinev grew up as an intelligent and inquisitive teenager and subsequently, having entered the service, writes poetry, reads French books and even tries his hand at translations.
The healthy environment of family life, simple and modest, had a decisive influence on Grinev’s spiritual make-up. Grinev's father, a retired prime minister who had gone through a harsh school of life, was a man of strong and honest views. Seeing off his son to the army, he gives the following instructions: “Serve faithfully to whom you swear allegiance; do not ask for service, do not refuse service; Don’t chase your boss’s affection; take care of your dress again, and take care of your honor from a young age.” Grinev inherited a sense of honor and a sense of duty from his father.
The first steps in life of young Grinev reveal his youthful frivolity and inexperience. But the young man proved with his life that he had internalized the basic rule of his father’s morality: “take care of your honor from a young age.” Over the course of two years, Grinev experiences many events: meeting Pugachev, love for Marya Ivanovna, a duel with Shvabrin, illness; he almost dies during the capture of the fortress by Pugachev’s troops, etc. Before our eyes, the character of the young man develops and strengthens, and Grinev turns into a mature young man. A sense of honor and courage save him in life’s adversities. With intrepid courage, he looks into the eyes of death when Pugachev orders him to be hanged. All the positive aspects of his character are revealed: simplicity and uncorrupted nature, kindness, honesty, loyalty in love, etc. These properties of nature captivate Marya Ivanovna and evoke sympathy from Pugachev. Grinev emerges from life's trials with honor.
Grinev is not a hero in the usual sense of the word. This is an ordinary person, an average nobleman. This is a typical representative of those army officers who, in the words of historian V.O. Klyuchevsky, “made our military history of the 18th century.” Pushkin does not idealize him, does not put him in beautiful poses. Grinev remains a modest ordinary person, retaining all the features of a realistic image.
