A Hero of Our Time

in terms of the contribution these elements make to the artistic success of the book.

The novel is mainly about one man---Grigoriy Pechorin. The book is set forth in a complex way, with several narrators involved in five separate sections, but the character of Pechorin and his adventures are at the heart of the entire book. All other characters are important mainly in terms of the light they shed on Pechorin.

Another reason that the book is complex is that Pechorin himself is a very complex man. He is more an anti-hero than a hero, as Lermontov himself makes clear in his Introduction to the novel:

A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development. You will tell me again that a man cannot be as bad as all that; and I shall tell you that since you have believed in the possibilities of so many tragic and romantic villains having existed, why can you not believe in the reality of Pechorin? (2).

Pechorin, then, has been created by the author to show not only what is villainous abou

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ool! Is the devil tickling your feet or what? I'll give you a good birching, I will. . . . One can't trust them with anything. . . . ' (133). Readers who fail to see the humor in this passage will conclude that Gogol does not love his characters, or that he even hates them and has no hope that they can change for the better. Can we really say that he believes in human goodness and has faith in God because he concludes his book on a hopeful note, when he fills so much of his work with negative portrayals. It can be fairly argued that Gogol's hope for humanity is overshadowed by his negative descriptions. However, it can also be argued that the humor and great details of his descriptions are signs of his deep fondness for human beings. In fact, Gogol knows that if he is to convince his reader that human beings must change, he must first show them to be in need of that change. This is why he shows them at their worst---so that he can conclude that they must become better, with God's help. In the stories in his collection of shorter fiction, Gogol shows the aspirations of human beings for higher purpose and shows his own compassion for their suffering. For example, in "Diary of A Madman," we read of a clerk who imagines that he is
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Approximate Word count = 3313
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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