The central problem of the novel. The problem of indifference in the work Hero of Our Time

We can say that kindness and cruelty are two sides of the same coin. An act done by one person with good intentions may be cruel to another; and cruelty can be hidden behind the cloak of kindness and courage. We find such examples in M. Yu. Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time.” Let's take a closer look at them.

1. (Kindness and cruelty as sides of the same soul) In the novel we see several situations where love and kindness towards one object turns into cruelty towards another. For example, love for someone else’s horse and the desire to get it becomes the reason for Azamat’s kidnapping of his own sister. Because of the same horse, love for his fellow robber, Kazbich himself kills both Bela’s father and herself. And Pechorin, on the contrary, out of love for Bela, is ready to kidnap both her and someone else’s horse. Moreover, he bets on Bela’s love that he will win her in a week, promising her his heart and loyalty, wanting only her happiness, however, only in words. Submissive to his nature, he quickly cools off towards her, leaving the poor girl to suffer, deprived of a family, a home, and now also love. This means that kindness and cruelty in the human heart are closely intertwined, and a person often confuses one and the other. While remaining kind to himself and his surroundings, he brutally deals with all other people, without feeling responsibility for what he does.
2. Indifference as cruelty We see for the first time in the character of Pechorin when meeting with Maxim Maksimych. When the old man joyfully greeted his comrade, Grigory only coldly said goodbye to him, wanting to leave as quickly as possible. This attitude greatly hurt the hero, because he and his young assistant went through a lot together when they served, and now his old friend doesn’t even want to know him. Further, revealing the character of the hero, Lermontov increasingly shows us this trait of his. Pechorin equally shrugs both at Mary’s confessions (first of love, then of hatred) and at the departure of Dr. Werner’s former friend. For Gregory, winning the love of Princess Mary, kidnapping Bela and his other actions are only a remedy for boredom, a desire to fill his life with at least something, as well as a thirst for power, a desire to be an object of admiration and adoration for a young inexperienced girl. For these purposes, he successfully manipulates the people around him. He does not beat or kill anyone, but his cruelty, manifested in indifference, painfully wounds those who are near him. Indeed, the most terrible type of human cruelty is indifference.
3. (Cruelty in the guise of justice). The relationship between Pechorin and Grushnitsky requires special attention within this topic. Initially, internally despising and mocking, Pechorin, nevertheless, gains confidence and becomes a comrade and friend for Grushnitsky. The beginning of the crisis in their relationship is the “luring” of Mary and the desire to hurt Grushnitsky, to show him his absurdity and narrow-mindedness. Naturally, the cadet decided to take revenge on his “comrade” for an undeserved insult. He provoked a duel, but decided to replace the pistols with ineffective weapons so that Gregory could not harm him. But Pechorin saw through the trick, changed pistols and cold-bloodedly shot his almost unarmed opponent. No matter how rational and justified it was on his part, I still think it was a cruel act. Moreover, such terrible behavior is even worse than overt aggression, because Gregory himself covers up his baseness by punishing a coward and a liar. Cruelty under the guise of justice is doubly dangerous, since the person who committed it does not consider himself guilty, which means he will never correct himself. So Pechorin was unable to correct his mistakes, so he remained an unhappy, lonely and misunderstood hero.
4. (Consequences of Cruelty). The most important moment in the hero’s story is the moment when he realizes his love for Vera and at the same time his greatest loss in his life. Tired of her lover’s indifference and neglect, the woman tells her husband everything, wanting to protect herself from new betrayals. Her husband takes her away from Pechorin. Then Gregory sets off in pursuit, but only drives the horse to death. Faith was lost forever, as was his hope for happiness. An adult man, the terror of women’s hearts, cried helplessly on the dusty road. This situation briefly allows him to take off all his masks, his boredom, all his contempt for the world, which is too simple and understandable. It is at this moment that he truly suffers, tormented by his own cruelty, returned to him like a boomerang right in his heart. This is exactly how his cruel indifference to women responds. As we see, the consequences of cruelty are very tragic, because a person remains alone, everyone leaves him.
5. (Reasons of cruelty). It is necessary to figure out where the cruelty in Pechorin’s character came from? He himself points to it, referring to fate, chance and coincidence. “I was created so stupidly,” “I have a role to play,” “I didn’t guess my purpose” - these are his justifications for the actions he committed and the life he lived stupidly. Because of this, he kidnapped and disgraced Bela, killed Grushnitsky, destroyed the lives of Princess Mary and Vera, who loved him very much, offended and scared away all his friends. But did all this cruelty really come from the will of evil fate? No. But in fact, the reasons hidden under these phrases are much deeper - this is the reluctance to take responsibility for one’s own destiny, selfishness and weakness in the face of one’s base passions. It was this tangle of wrong decisions and belief in destiny that became the reasons for such an attitude towards the people around him and towards the world as a whole.
6. Cruelty is not always obvious, and sometimes it may even seem like courage, self-sacrifice, and kindness. Let us recall, for example, Pechorin’s demonstrative nobility in front of the princess at the ball or the capture of a violent Cossack alone in the chapter “Fatalist”. Both actions would look noble and honest from the outside if we did not know the hero’s inner motives. After all, he made the first demonstration performance after he made the decision to win Mary’s love, and the second - in order to test his fate and test his plans. As we remember, playing on the feelings of a young girl was a disgusting and cruel manifestation of Pechorin’s character, who deceived her hopes in order to freely enter the Ligovsky house, where his mistress lived. Nothing good can be said about the capture of the aggressive Cossack who killed Vulich, because Grigory was cruel even to himself and did not spare his life. That’s why he went to the armed Cossack, but not because of courage, but because he did not value himself. Thus, cruelty can take any guise, so it is important to be able to distinguish it under any mask, otherwise it will be impossible to avoid the tragic consequences of a mistake.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!

The image of Pechorin based on the novel by Mikhail Lermontov 8220 Hero of Our Time 8221

Belinsky saw in Pechorin’s character “a transitional state of spirit, in which for a person everything old is destroyed, but nothing new is yet there, and in which a person is only the possibility of something real in the future and a perfect ghost in the present.”

The novel “Hero of Our Time” became a continuation of the theme of “extra people”. This theme became central to the novel in verse by A.S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”. Herzen called Pechorin Onegin's younger brother. In the preface to the novel, the author shows his attitude towards his hero.

Just like Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin” (“I am always glad to notice the difference between Onegin and me”), Lermontov ridiculed attempts to equate the author of the novel with his main character. Lermontov did not consider Pechorin a positive hero from whom one should take an example.

The novel shows a young man suffering from his restlessness, in despair asking himself a painful question: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born?” He does not have the slightest inclination to follow the beaten path of secular young people. Pechorin is an officer. He serves, but is not cured. Does not study music, does not study philosophy or military affairs. But we cannot help but see that Pechorin is head and shoulders above the people around him, that he is smart, educated, talented, brave, and energetic. We are repelled by Pechorin's indifference to people, his inability for true love, for friendship, his individualism and selfishness. But Pechorin captivates us with his thirst for life, the desire for the best, and the ability to critically evaluate his actions. He is deeply unsympathetic to us because of his “pathetic actions,” the waste of his strength, and the actions by which he brings suffering to other people. But we see that he himself suffers deeply.

Pechorin's character is complex and contradictory. The hero of the novel says about himself: “There are two people in me: one lives in the full sense of the word, the other thinks and judges him...”. What are the reasons for this dichotomy? “I told the truth - they didn’t believe me: I began to deceive; Having learned well the light and springs of society, I became skilled in the science of life...” admits Pechorin. He learned to be secretive, vindictive, bilious, ambitious, and became, in his words, a moral cripple.

Pechorin is an egoist. Belinsky also called Pushkin’s Onegin “a suffering egoist” and “a reluctant egoist.” The same can be said about Pechorin. Pechorin is characterized by disappointment in life and pessimism. He experiences constant duality of spirit. In the socio-political conditions of the 30s of the 19th century, Pechorin could not find a use for himself. He is wasted on petty adventures, exposes his forehead to Chechen bullets, and seeks oblivion in love. But all this is just a search for some way out, just an attempt to unwind. He is haunted by boredom and the consciousness that such a life is not worth living.

Throughout the novel, Pechorin shows himself as a person accustomed to looking “at the suffering and joys of others only in relation to himself” - as “food” that supports his spiritual strength; it is on this path that he seeks consolation from the boredom that haunts him, tries to fill the emptiness of your existence. And yet Pechorin is a richly gifted nature. He has an analytical mind, his assessments of people and their actions are very accurate; he has a critical attitude not only towards others, but also towards himself. His diary is nothing more than self-exposure.

He is endowed with a warm heart, capable of deeply feeling (the death of Bela, a date with Vera) and worrying greatly, although he tries to hide his emotional experiences under the mask of indifference. Indifference, callousness is a mask of self-defense.

Pechorin is, after all, a strong-willed, strong, active person, “lives of strength” lie dormant in his chest, he is capable of action. But all his actions carry not a positive, but a negative charge; all his activities are aimed not at creation, but at destruction. In this, Pechorin is similar to the hero of the poem “Demon”. Indeed, in his appearance (especially at the beginning of the novel) there is something demonic, unsolved. In all the short stories that Lermontov combined in the novel, Pechorin appears before us as a destroyer of the lives and destinies of other people: because of him, the Circassian Bela loses her home and dies, Maxim Maksimovich is disappointed in friendship, Mary and Vera suffer, Grushnitsky dies at his hand, “honest smugglers” are forced to leave their home, the young officer Vulich dies.

The image of Pechorin is the image of a complex, restless man who has not found himself; a person with great potential, but nevertheless unable to realize it. Lermontov himself emphasized that in the image of Pechorin a portrait is given not of one person, but of an artistic type that absorbed the features of a whole generation of young people at the beginning of the century.

Arguments for the final essay in the following areas: “Indifference and Responsiveness”, “Goal and Means”. M.Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time".

Part 3. Indifference and responsiveness.

Why is indifference dangerous?

Goal and means. What means cannot be used to achieve a goal?

The relationship between goals and means.

What do false goals lead to?

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov did not think of his hero as a role model.

He emphasized that Pechorina is a collective image, and not a specific person.

This is a certain type that reflects the characteristic features of the younger generation of the beginning of the century before last.

How does the reader see Pechorin?

“A Hero of Our Time” presents a young man experiencing mental anguish due to restlessness, in deep loneliness searching for the meaning of his own existence and his purpose. Pechorin does not want to choose the beaten paths typical of the youth of high society.

He is an officer who serves, and does not try to curry favor. He does not play music, is not interested in philosophical teachings, and does not study the art of war. At the same time, it is obvious to the reader that he is well educated, not devoid of talents, energetic and courageous.

Pechorin is endowed with such negative qualities as selfishness, indifference to the people around him, and the inability to sincerely love and be friends. At the same time, he is attractive in his own way: life boils in him, the hero craves it, strives for the best, objectively, even with a dose of healthy self-criticism, evaluates himself. But his actions are petty and insignificant, he brings suffering to everyone around him, which does not arouse the reader’s sympathy, but the hero himself suffers from these shortcomings. He is an extremely controversial person.

Pechorin knows how to be closed and ambitious, and remembers the harm caused for a long time. He claims to have become a moral cripple. Not only Pushkin’s Onegin, but also Lermontov’s character can be safely called a “reluctant egoist” (V. G. Belinsky).

The contradictory character of the main character

Pechorin constantly feels his duality. In the social and political situation that developed in the first half of the 19th century, he cannot realize himself. He spends his life on meaningless adventures, goes to the Caucasus, tempting fate by participating in the war, and tries to forget about his troubles next to beautiful women. But everything he does does not bring results, becoming only a way to escape from problems.

It is inextricably followed by melancholy and the understanding that such a life is worth nothing. Throughout the entire narrative, Pechorin views the suffering and tragedies of those around him as an opportunity to support his own spiritual strength, only this allows him to temporarily forget about the incessant melancholy and fill the emptiness of a meaningless life. At the same time, the main character of the work is a richly gifted person.

Pechorin has an analytical mind, he absolutely correctly evaluates people, their actions and motives; he knows how to critically evaluate not only his surroundings, but also himself. His diary entries are a real self-exposure.

Pechorin is capable of strong feelings (for example, after the death of Bela or during a meeting with Vera), hides deep emotional upheavals under the guise of indifference and callousness, which he wears as protection. He is able to act as a strong-willed person, but his decisions and actions only bring destruction.

Pechorin's resemblance to the hero of the poem "Demon"

The destructive nature of Pechorin’s actions makes him similar to the hero of the poem “The Demon,” also written by Lermontov. Even in his appearance there is something demonic and mysterious.

Pechorin appears as a true destroyer who plays with the destinies of the people around him: the death of the beautiful Circassian Bela, the disappointment of Maxim Maksimovich, the pain of Mary and Vera, the tragic death of Grushnitsky and officer Vulich, even the smugglers leave their home due to his fault.

V. G. Belinsky believed that the hero has a “transitional state of mind,” when the old has already been completely lost, and the new has not appeared. A person has only the probability of receiving something genuine in the distant future.

M. Yu. Lermontov began work on his work back in 1838. Two years later, the first publication of the novel was published, in which he no longer fantasized about what life is and what it is like. Mikhail Lermontov described it as he saw it in reality.

Pechorin is a controversial personality

The image of Pechorin in the novel “Hero of Our Time” by Lermontov is an ambiguous image. It cannot be called positive, but it is not negative either. Many of his actions are reprehensible, but it is also important to understand the motives for his behavior before making a judgment. The author called Pechorin a hero of his time not because he recommended emulating him, and not because he wanted to ridicule him. He simply showed a portrait of a typical representative of that generation - a “superfluous person” - so that everyone could see what a social system that disfigures the individual leads to.

Qualities of Pechorin

Knowledge of people

Can Pechorin’s quality of understanding the psychology of people and the motives of their actions be called bad? Another thing is that he uses it for other purposes. Instead of doing good and helping others, he plays with them, and these games, as a rule, end tragically. This is exactly the ending of the story with the mountain woman Bela, whom Pechorin persuaded her brother to steal. Having achieved the love of a freedom-loving girl, he lost interest in her, and soon Bela fell victim to the vengeful Kazbich.

Playing with Princess Mary also did not lead to anything good. Pechorin's intervention in her relationship with Grushnitsky resulted in the princess's broken heart and Grushnitsky's death in a duel.

Ability to analyze

Pechorin demonstrates his brilliant ability to analyze in a conversation with Dr. Werner (chapter “Princess Mary”). He quite accurately logically calculates that Princess Ligovskaya was interested in him, and not her daughter Mary. “You have a great gift for thought,” Werner notes. However, this gift again does not find worthy use. Pechorin might have been able to make scientific discoveries, but he became disillusioned with the study of science because he saw that in his society no one needed knowledge.

Independence from the opinions of others

The description of Pechorin in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” gives many a reason to accuse him of spiritual callousness. It would seem that he acted badly towards his old friend Maxim Maksimych. Having learned that his colleague, with whom he had eaten more than a pound of salt, was staying in the same city, Pechorin did not rush to meet him. Maxim Maksimych was very upset and offended by him. However, Pechorin is essentially to blame only for not living up to the old man’s expectations. “Am I really not the same?” - he reminded, nevertheless hugging Maxim Maksimych in a friendly manner. Indeed, Pechorin never tries to pretend to be someone he is not, just to please others. He prefers to be rather than seem, he is always honest in expressing his feelings, and from this point of view, his behavior deserves all approval. He also doesn’t care what others say about him - Pechorin always acts as he sees fit. In modern conditions, such qualities would be invaluable and would help him quickly achieve his goal and fully realize himself.

Bravery

Bravery and fearlessness are character traits thanks to which one could say “Pechorin is a hero of our time” without any ambiguity. They appear both on the hunt (Maksim Maksimych witnessed how Pechorin “went to kill a boar one on one”), and in a duel (he was not afraid to shoot with Grushnitsky on conditions that were obviously unfavorable for him), and in a situation where it was necessary to pacify the raging drunken Cossack (chapter “Fatalist”). “... nothing worse will happen than death - and you cannot escape death,” Pechorin believes, and this conviction allows him to move forward more boldly. However, even the mortal danger that he faced every day in the Caucasian War did not help him cope with boredom: he quickly got used to the buzzing of Chechen bullets. Obviously, military service was not his vocation, and therefore Pechorin’s brilliant abilities in this area did not find further application. He decided to travel in the hope of finding a cure for boredom “with the help of storms and bad roads.”

Self-love

Pechorin cannot be called vain, greedy for praise, but he is quite proud. It hurts him very much if a woman does not consider him the best and prefers someone else. And he strives with all his might, by any means, to win her attention. This happened in the situation with Princess Mary, who first liked Grushnitsky. From Pechorin’s analysis, which he himself does in his journal, it follows that it was important for him not so much to achieve the love of this girl as to recapture her from his competitor. “I also confess that an unpleasant, but familiar feeling ran slightly through my heart at that moment; this feeling was envy... It is unlikely that there will be a young man who, having met a pretty woman who has attracted his idle attention and suddenly clearly distinguishes another person equally unfamiliar to her, I am unlikely, I say, to find such a young man (of course, he has lived in the great world and accustomed to pampering his pride), who would not be unpleasantly struck by this.”

Pechorin loves to achieve victory in everything. He managed to switch Mary’s interest to himself, make the proud Bela his mistress, get a secret meeting from Vera, and outplay Grushnitsky in a duel. If he had a worthy cause, this desire to be first would allow him to achieve enormous success. But he has to give vent to his leadership inclinations in such a strange and destructive way.

Selfishness

In an essay on the topic “Pechorin - a hero of our time,” one cannot help but mention such a trait of his character as selfishness. He does not really care about the feelings and fates of other people who have become hostages of his whims; all that matters to him is the satisfaction of his own needs. Pechorin did not even spare Vera, the only woman he believed he really loved. He put her reputation at risk by visiting her at night in the absence of her husband. A striking illustration of his disdainful, selfish attitude is his beloved horse, which he drove, and was unable to catch up with the carriage with the departing Vera. On the way to Essentuki, Pechorin saw that “instead of a saddle, two ravens were sitting on his back.” Moreover, Pechorin sometimes enjoys the suffering of others. He imagines how Mary, after his incomprehensible behavior, “will spend the night without sleep and cry,” and this thought gives him “immense pleasure.” “There are moments when I understand the Vampire...” he admits.

Pechorin’s behavior is the result of the influence of circumstances

But can this bad character trait be called innate? Is Pechorin initially vicious or was he made so by the conditions of his life? This is what he himself told Princess Mary: “... this has been my fate since childhood. Everyone read on my face signs of bad feelings that were not there; but they were anticipated - and they were born. I was modest - I was accused of deceit: I became secretive... I was ready to love the whole world - no one understood me: and I learned to hate... I told the truth - they didn’t believe me: I began to deceive... I became a moral cripple.”

Finding himself in an environment that does not correspond to his inner essence, Pechorin is forced to break himself, to become what he really is not. This is where this internal contradiction comes from, which left its mark on his appearance. The author of the novel paints a portrait of Pechorin: laughter with unlaughing eyes, a bold and at the same time indifferently calm look, a straight figure, limp, like that of Balzac’s young lady when he sat down on the bench, and other “inconsistencies.”

Pechorin himself is aware that he makes an ambiguous impression: “Some people consider me worse, others better than I really am... Some will say: he was a kind fellow, others – a scoundrel. Both will be false.” But the truth is that, under the influence of external circumstances, his personality underwent such complex and ugly deformations that it is no longer possible to separate the bad from the good, the real from the false.

In the novel “A Hero of Our Time,” the image of Pechorin is a moral, psychological portrait of an entire generation. How many of its representatives, not finding a response to the “beautiful impulses of the soul” in those around them, were forced to adapt, become the same as everyone around, or die. The author of the novel, Mikhail Lermontov, whose life ended tragically and prematurely, was one of them.

Work test