Why is Pecherin an extra person? Why is Pechorin “an extra person”? Ability to manage and lead

At the beginning of the 19th century, works began to appear, the main theme of which was the conflict between man and society. A modern image appears - a “superfluous person”, rejected, and not only by people.

In the work “Hero of Our Time” this image appears, named Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. He comes from an influential family of nobles, which is why he has always been surrounded by rich people since childhood. But soon he got tired of the rich society with meaningless fun for money, that is, various balls, dinners, masquerades and so on. Gregory was more interested in science.

Pechorin's inner world was empty, the reason for this was his development. From birth, he was forced to live an empty life and his future was also empty. He wrote in his diary that if he was modest, he was accused of lying; he became secretive because no one gave him affection; he became angry because he was insulted; he was ready to love everyone, but no one understood him and he began to hate everyone.

In the work, Pechorin is shown as a victim of the nobles. As a result of this, with early years he became a soulless, rude and selfish person, each time he gradually moved away from society.

Throughout the entire work, Pechorin tries to fight the emptiness inside. However, his attempts are unsuccessful. Everything he started was a failure. Pechorin knows this and suffers because of it. His torment is shown in the endless confrontation between humanism and cynicism. He wrote all these sufferings in his diary, in his internal struggle he deprived himself of everything necessary for existence. All these sufferings made him an “extra person” among people.

Pechorin is also exhausted in the moral aspect. He does not want to meet people or talk with interesting interlocutors. Pechorin has no close friends, and he doesn’t like anyone. Pechorin justifies himself by saying that friendship is not based on equality, but on the fear of losing freedom. As a result of this, we can conclude that Pechorin pays attention only to his freedom. He loves freedom so much that he dreams of power and wants to subjugate everything and everyone.

Doctor Werner and Vera are Pechorin's closest people. They are similar to the doctor in their loneliness, mental disorder and mentality. Vera is the first girl in the world whom he loves admiringly and nobly, but soon they encounter obstacles that he is unable to solve. Fiery passion and icy indifference are always fighting in his heart. Pechorin's egoism reveals his ineffectiveness in everything, since he does neither good nor evil, paying attention to his aspirations and problems. This suggests that he has withdrawn into himself.

Option 2

Grigory Pechorin - main character novel by M.Yu. Lermontov “Hero of Our Time”. The author put into this hero the image of the entire Russian youth intelligentsia of the 19th century. The image is collective, and Lermontov assigns Grigory Pechorin the status of an “extra” person. It is necessary to understand why exactly this is so.

Pechorin is a representative of the noble intelligentsia. By nature he is a very active person, with enormous vitality and energy. However, the hero cannot find his place in life. Any business that Pechorin would not take on is soon thrown at him. Despite his young age and mental strength, Gregory stops being interested in what most young people are interested in. He quit his literary studies, he was bored with entertainment and secular society. Out of the hopelessness of his situation, the hero simply sets off on a journey.

As a business-oriented person, Pechorin could invest time and energy into an important matter. But he can't find his life path. Wasting himself in vain, Pechorin becomes disillusioned with life itself, but for him it is just beginning. Unsatisfied with the way he lives, the hero causes pain to other people around him. Because of Pechorin, Bela dies and Grushnitsky dies. Everywhere Grigory Pechorin steps, grief occurs.

However, it cannot be said that Pechorin himself became such. Society is the reason for his spiritual devastation. After all, it was in society that the hero tried to maintain honesty and kindness. However, the soulless and devastated society did not believe and did not understand kindness. Pechorin had to become what he became.

Tossing from one to another, from selfishness to unconditional love to those around him, Pechorin contradicts himself. The burning desire for action and at the same time their insignificance do not give the hero a peaceful life. Every time he analyzes his own actions, which, however, does not bring any positive results. Despite his active work, Pechorin simply becomes unable to positively influence the situation. This makes him redundant and lonely wherever he is. It is not for nothing that the author leads Pechorin to death. After all, such a person has no place in life.

It’s not for nothing that the novel is called “A Hero of Our Time.” Pechorin shows not just one person, but the entire youth of the nineteenth century. With the rich inner world, but with emptiness of soul and indifference to life.

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In the 19th century, the image of a person superfluous to society appears in Russian literature. That's exactly what it is main character novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time" Grigory Pechorin.

Gregory is an intelligent nobleman, an advanced person, but he is a representative of that generation that cannot find its place in this life. He cannot stay still, he is active. The hero constantly tries to do something, but gives up everything: literature, entertainment and secular society, which he also quickly got tired of. And then Pechorin simply set off on a journey. Enormous spiritual forces are concentrated in him, which he could direct in the right direction, but the hero wastes them, besides causing pain to others - he ruins the lives of smugglers, kills Grushnitsky in a duel, and through his own fault Bela dies. Wherever the hero goes, he leaves grief behind him.

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Grigory became this way not of his own free will. It was society that made him this way. He tried to tell the truth, but they did not believe him and he began to lie. He tried to love the world, but he was not understood, and then he became evil. Pechorin appears before us in the image of a man who has experienced a lot and is already devastated, albeit outwardly very young.

The main reason for the hero's troubles is his extremely contradictory nature. He rushes between two extremes - feeling and reason. Cannot find a certain balance between his own selfishness and human compassion. But still, his main contradiction is the ability to act and the insignificance of his actions.

Pechorin made himself the object of his own observations. It’s as if two people live in it: “one acts, and the other judges his actions.” He constantly analyzes his every action, which does not allow the hero to live in peace.

It is all these contradictions that make Grigory Pechorin an unnecessary person. A person who cannot properly use his enormous abilities. No wonder M.Yu. Lermontov called his novel “Hero of Our Time” this way, because Gregory is a collective image of all the youth of the writer’s generation. And with the death of Pechorin, the author shows that such a hero has no place in the world.

Updated: 2018-01-21

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At the beginning of the 19th century, works appeared in Russian literature, main problem which is the conflict between man and the surrounding society. Created new image- “an extra person”, rejected, spiritually unclaimed by society.
In the novel A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov creates the image of such a person. This image is Pechorin.
Pechorin was born into a rich noble family, so youth was in the circles of influential people. However, he soon became bored with the “light” of society with its empty entertainment, “which can be obtained for money” - balls, festive dinners and, of course, masquerades with their tedious conversations and lack of practical activities. Pechorin was drawn to education and science, but quickly decided for himself that “you are more likely to find happiness in ignorance and wealth,” and “he did not want fame.” This hero is internally devastated. The reason for his emptiness can be found by learning about his upbringing. From the very beginning of his life, he was doomed to an empty future. Proof of this can be found by reading his diary: “I was modest - I was accused of guile: I became secretive. I felt good and evil deeply. Nobody caressed me. Everyone insulted me. I became vindictive. I was ready to love the whole world - no one understood me and I learned to hate.
Pechorin is portrayed in the novel as a victim of noble people. Thus, from childhood he became a cruel, vindictive and cynical person, he gradually moved away from people, lost faith in life and love.
Throughout the novel, the hero tries to fight his inner emptiness. But all his efforts end in failure. All the things he starts are doomed to failure. He understands this and suffers greatly from it. His suffering is expressed in a constant struggle between humanism and cynicism. Pechorin describes all this in his diary. In the struggle with himself, he “exhausted the heat of the soul and the constancy of the will” necessary for an active life. All this makes Pechorin a “superfluous person” in social terms.
He is also weak psychologically. Pechorin does not want to make new acquaintances, communicate with smart people. He is burdened by spiritual and emotional intimacy. He has no friends and doesn't love anyone. He explains this by the fact that friendship is never based on equality, and by the fear of losing personal freedom.
From this we can conclude that this hero values ​​only his independence. He is so freedom-loving that he has a strong desire to subordinate everything and everyone to his will, even love.
The closest people to Pechorin are only Doctor Werner and Vera. He shares a feeling of loneliness with Dr. Werner. They are also united by mental unsettlement, as well as a similar mindset.
About Vera we can say that she is “the only woman in the world.” He loves her selflessly and unselfishly. However, in these relationships problems arise that are difficult for him to solve.
Pechorin constantly battles fiery passion and cold indifference.
Thus, Pechorin's extreme selfishness shows his uselessness in all respects. Focusing on his own problems and aspirations, the hero does no good to anyone and does not bring happiness, we can conclude that he has withdrawn into himself.
Even he himself admits that he “became a moral cracker.”

A person who does not fit into the traditional understanding of what a person’s personality should be can be considered superfluous. Any era, any society has such unwritten, but nevertheless serious and often mandatory rules, failure to comply with which entails special consequences, unique sanctions, which often result in suffering for a person. However, in any society there have always been people who can be considered superfluous. A person is very individual, it does not happen that absolutely all people fit certain rules without any exceptions. It seems that this can be said with confidence about the main character of Lermontov’s work “Hero of Our Time” Pechorin.

This young man grew up in a good family and learned early enough what high society and what rules prevail in it. However, for some reason he was not able to quickly become like the members of this society, although he had every opportunity for this. It is worth noting that this impossibility became the reason for Pechorin’s peculiar alienation; he ceased to consider himself a full-fledged part of the society in which he had to live. He had many problems, mainly related to the lack of normal mutual understanding between him and all those around him. They thought extra things about him, he reciprocated them.

At first Pechorin wanted people to love him, but he didn’t get it. For this reason, he gradually became embittered and began to hate almost all the people around him. Pechorin had almost no friends, because he was afraid of losing his inner freedom and becoming dependent on someone. Realizing that there could be no equality in the society of that time, he avoided any communications and quietly moved away from the whole society. Isolation from the outside world made Pechorin evil, so he wanted to subjugate everything that was around him. He can well be called a person who combines in his soul difficult things to combine - cold indifference and fiery passion. All this, of course, made him a superfluous person.

On the one hand, it’s a pity that such unnecessary people exist. They feel bad themselves, and society is deprived of such a useful person, thanks to his talents. On the other hand, to be an extra person is to be different from everyone else. This is inevitable, it is typical for any time with its own unique, but at the same time stupid rules that exist for the convenience of people, but cause harm and trouble to some of them. Pechorin fully deserves to be called an extra person, but there is something piquant and interesting in this status and name that makes a person special.

The problem of the hero is central to the novel, as indicated by its title - “A Hero of Our Time.” However, when the novel was created, it was called differently - “One of the heroes of the beginning of the century.” The difference between these names is fundamental. If Lermontov had left the draft title, his hero would have been placed among many other heroes. Pechorin, as the author states in the final version of the title, generalizes the type modern hero, absorbing the features of characters from previous literature, starting with German writers Goethe and Schiller, English - Byron and Walter Scott, French romantics R. Chateaubriand and V. Hugo and, of course, Russian writers A.S. Griboyedova, A.S. Pushkin and others.

Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin is a representative of his time, a type of hero who reflected the epochal changes that took place in the world by early XIX century. These changes affected the worldview of the new man, his life values, brought the relationship between the individual and society to a different level, made the inner life of a person deeper. Lermontov's hero became in this regard a hero, embodying the traits of a new man.

Naturally, a situation arose in society when some of the most talented individuals were ahead in their development and behavior of a significant part of society, which was inert and lagging behind the pace of change. They often could not find themselves in common life, their views and positions aroused suspicion, and conservative society often rejected them from itself, thus protecting their usual way of life. In these circumstances, literature about “superfluous people” was born. At first, the heroes were romantic individuals who were expelled by society or fled from it, which explains the prevalence of the motives of flight and exile in romanticism. Later, the reasons for the break between the individual and society began to be portrayed more objectively, that is, realistically, taking into account the social nature and psychology of man.

A lot of works have been written about “superfluous people”. Goethe’s Werther or Byron’s Childe Harold can also be considered “superfluous,” but in Russian literature this is a special type of hero. The term “extra people” arose much later than the literary phenomenon itself. More precisely, the phenomenon was noted by Pushkin in the draft versions of “Eugene Onegin,” and the phrase became popular after the story “The Diary of an Extra Man” (1849) by I.S. Turgenev.

“Superfluous people” in Russian literature have traditionally been represented as a triad of heroes - Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin. The “superfluous man” is a type of hero-nobleman, alienated from his social environment, that is, a figure reflecting historical realities. However, calling these heroes “superfluous people”, it should be remembered that similar definition greatly simplifies the complexity and richness of these images.

Tendency to perceive literary image narrowed, that is, to project it onto the conditions and circumstances of the real personal life of the reader and critic, appeared immediately after the release of the novel “A Hero of Our Time.” The hero was simply not “recognized”, perceiving him as a glorification of immorality and pride or slander against a respectable society and its morality. More subtle readers, such as V.G. Belinsky, saw Pechorin as a “disease of the times,” but did not fully realize that Pechorin was not an individual person, but a literary type. This perception of the novel by his contemporaries prompted Lermontov to write an “explanation” in the preface to the second lifetime edition of 1841: “The Hero of Our Time, my dear sirs, is definitely a portrait, but not of one person: this is a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation in their full development "

When analyzing the image of the main character of the novel, one should proceed from the consideration that Pechorin is a person in the broadest sense of the word. In this hero we will certainly discover traits characteristic of our behavior, behavior both as private people and as members of society, that is, in a socio-historical context, as well as actions and life choice, inherent in a person of any historical time. It is at these levels that we should understand the image of Pechorin, and if we prefer one level of reading to another, we will certainly distort the thought that the author put into his work.