Chichikov today is a talented entrepreneur or a cunning swindler. Who is Chichikov scoundrel or entrepreneur

Epochs change, making adjustments to philosophical and economic concepts. Classical literature has its own peculiarity - it is always relevant. Chichikov - an acquirer or an entrepreneur? The character that came out from the pen of N.V. Gogol has been going through more than one century: he changes his appearance, becomes more cunning, but even among contemporaries of the 21st century he is easy to meet.

Buyer or entrepreneur

One sentence of the hero of the novel caused controversy for many generations: who is he - the acquirer or the entrepreneur. Chichikov says: "...everyone acquires." The character himself admits: he is an acquirer. Some readers try to find in him the traits of an entrepreneur. Here it is important to understand the relation to two economic concepts. Any person is a buyer. The meaning of life is to acquire something, to increase one's wealth. There are many positive things about buying. The main thing is to keep the line between acquisition and greed, honest work and immorality. A new item that has appeared in personal use pleases. The entrepreneur is trying to resell it, find a profit, makes the purchased product work, generate income.

Chichikov buys dead souls. He bought them, but is not going to sell. The benefit of the acquisition is an increase in social status. He wants to stand on the same level as the rich landowners. His desire is to create around him the image of a successful, strong official. It is even difficult to imagine how the "dead souls" can be used further apart from the goal that Pavel Ivanovich set for himself. It will be a paper register of the peasants belonging to him. The landowner will be able to feel equal with others.

Entrepreneur traits

You can therefore not argue with the author. Chichikov is an acquirer, but still there is something of enterprising businessmen, swindlers and deceivers in him. With this reasoning, the concept of an entrepreneur is viewed from the negative side. In reality, it is. Entrepreneurs are different in their activities. Some make a profit for the benefit of a whole group of the population, others are based on deceit and work only for personal enrichment. What features are inherent in Chichikov?

• Resourcefulness: from the secretary's phrase: "... one died, another will be born, and everything is good for business" managed to create a whole system for improving his social position.
• Purposefulness: Pavel Ivanovich achieves the solution of the task. He moves from one landowner to another without abandoning his undertaking.
• The ability to find the right line of conduct. Chichikov speaks to each landowner in his own way. He finds a style of bargaining that ends in a purchase.
• Efficiency. Chichikov does not go over to disputes, emotional pressure. A man, observing business ethics, is moving towards his goal.

It is interesting how base desires and interests peep out from a positive trait.

Dealer - chameleon

Human activity should be correlated with moral norms and rights. Pleasing people, Pavel Ivanovich truly reveals himself as a skilled entrepreneur. He easily gets out of sticky situations. Disappears from the city in time, having completed his work. Chichikov becomes the personification of enterprising businessmen who hide under the guise of piety. They are looking for "dead souls", find an opportunity to deceive, profit, sometimes without understanding the results of their work: grief, ruin, poverty. Chichikov has a whole range of negative traits. He is a rogue. Only a cunning person will be able to come up with adventures unimaginable for a normal person, one of which is the purchase of "dead souls". He's a scoundrel. There are so many dark thoughts in the soul and in deeds that a swindler, for whom there is no value in human life, is able to keep them.

Everyone has their own attitude towards entrepreneurs. There are many images of swindlers in classical literature, but Gogol's Chichikov remains in a special place. He cannot be denied an entrepreneurial flair, but the correctness of the author's position should be recognized. The information will help you write an essay “Chichikov is an entrepreneur or purchaser”, justify your opinion.

Artwork test

"scoundrel", "purchaser". In the eleventh chapter of the first volume, the writer tells in detail about the life path of Chichikov from birth to the moment when this "hero" started buying up dead souls; how Chichikov's character was formed, what vital interests, formed in him under the influence of the environment, guided his behavior. Even as a child, his father taught him: “most of all please teachers and bosses ... hang out with those who are richer so that they can be useful to you on occasion ... and most of all, take care and save a penny, this thing is most reliable in the world .. You will do everything and break through the world with a penny."

"with a great mind on the practical side", he successfully accumulated money. Service in various institutions developed and polished his natural data in Chichikovo - a practical mind, deft ingenuity, hypocrisy, patience, the ability to "comprehend the spirit of the boss", to find a weak string in a person's soul and the ability to influence it for personal purposes.

"He became a noticeable person. Everything turned out to be in him that is necessary for this world: both pleasantness in turns and actions, and glibness in business affairs." All this distinguished Chichikov in his further service; this is how he appears to us during the purchase of dead souls. "Irresistible strength of character", "agility, insight and clairvoyance", all his ability to charm a person, Chichikov puts into play in order to achieve the desired enrichment. Widely applying all his practical ingenuity, courtesy and resourcefulness, Chichikov managed to charm both the provincial town and the estates. He knows how to approach everyone in a special way, subtly calculating his moves and adapting the manner of address and the very tone of speech to the character of the landowner. The reader is struck by the inexhaustible variety of shades and subtleties of his treatment of Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, with the personalities of the provincial society, etc. Chichikov's internal "many-sidedness", elusiveness is emphasized by his appearance, given by Gogol in indefinite tones. “In the britzka sat a gentleman who was not handsome, but not bad-looking either, neither too fat nor too thin, one cannot say that he was old, but not so much that he was too young.” Chichikov's facial expression is constantly changing, depending on who and what he is talking about.

“I tried to tell him (his face) a lot of different expressions: now important and sedate, now respectful, but with a certain smile, then simply respectful without a smile; several bows were released into the mirror, accompanied by obscure sounds, somewhat similar to French, although in French Chichikov did not know at all. Chichikov is outwardly tidy, loves cleanliness, is dressed in a good, fashionable suit, is always carefully shaved, and perfumed; he always wears clean underwear and a fashionable dress "of brown and reddish tones with a spark" or "the color of Navarino smoke with flames." And this external neatness, cleanliness of Chichikov, strikingly contrasting with the internal dirt and uncleanliness of this hero, fully completes the image of a "scoundrel", "acquirer", a predator who uses everything to achieve his main goal - the profit of acquisition. Gogol satirically castigates his hero, a "scoundrel", a representative of those predators, of whom there were many in the 1930s, when bourgeois-capitalist forces had already begun to develop within the framework of the feudal-serf system. The language of "Dead Souls" is exceptionally rich and original.

less than in their actions, deeds. But the speech of the author-narrator unites the various stylistic tones of the work. Simple and at the same time solemn, inspired, sublime and exciting, it makes the whole work a poetic creation, integral and complete, one with all the different voices resounding in it - from Manilov to the postmaster telling the story of Captain Kopeikin. Gogol, having developed his own special, original genre of the poem, corresponding to all its content, achieved an amazing unity of style and sound.

"Dead Souls" created a new type of prose, in which the opposite elements of creativity - laughter and tears, satire and lyrics - inseparably merged. Never before have they met in the same work of art. The epic narrative in "Dead Souls" is continually interrupted by the author's excited lyrical monologues, evaluating the character's behavior or reflecting on life, on art. The true lyrical hero of this book is Gogol himself. We hear his voice all the time. The author-narrator is, as it were, an indispensable participant in all the events taking place in the poem. He is invisibly present everywhere. He closely monitors the behavior of his characters and actively influences the reader. Moreover, the author's voice is completely devoid of didactics, because this image is perceived from within, as a representative of the same reflected reality as other characters in Dead Souls. The image of the author is precisely the character created by the artist, having his own character and language, having his own attitude to life, his own complex spiritual and moral world.

This lyrical character gives the whole story a kind of emotional coloring. The lyrical voice of the author reaches the greatest tension on those pages that are directly dedicated to the Motherland, Russia. Such an important topic for him as the future of Russia, its own historical fate and place in the fate of mankind is woven into Gogol's lyrical reflections. Passionate lyrical monologues of Gogol were the expression of his poetic dream of correct reality. They revealed a poetic world, in contrast to which the world of human self-interest and baseness was even more clearly exposed.

Egor
Chichikov is a character whose life story is given in all details. From the eleventh chapter we learn that Pavlusha belonged to a poor noble family. The protagonist's father left him a legacy of half a copper and a covenant to study diligently, please teachers and bosses, and, most importantly, save and save a penny. all lofty concepts only hinder the achievement of the cherished goal. That is why Pavlusha makes his way in life by his own efforts, without relying on anyone's patronage. He builds his well-being at the expense of other people: deceit, bribery, embezzlement, fraud at customs - the tools of the protagonist. No setbacks can break his greed. And every time, committing unseemly acts, he easily finds an excuse for himself. Each chapter expands our understanding of Chichikov’s capabilities and leads to the idea of ​​his amazing variability: with Manilov he is sugary-amiable, with Korobochka he is petty-persistent and rude, with Nozdrev he is assertive and cowardly, with Sobakevich he bargains cunningly and relentlessly, Plyushkin conquers with his "generosity". In Chichikov's character there is also Manilov's love for the phrase, for the "noble" gesture, and the petty stinginess of Korobochka, and the narcissism of Nozdrev, and the rude stinginess, the cold cynicism of Sobakevich, and the hoarding of Plyushkin. Chichikov is a kind of mirror of each of the landlords listed above, because he has all the qualities that form the basis of their characters. But at the same time, Chichikov is different from his counterparts on the estates, he is a man of the new time, a businessman and an acquirer, he has all the qualities necessary for this. However, he is also a “dead soul”, because the “shining joy” of life is inaccessible to him. Our hero pacifies his blood, which "played strongly", gets rid of human feelings almost completely. The idea of ​​success, enterprise, practicality obscure all emotional impulses in him. True, Gogol notes that in Chichikov there is no stupid automatism of Plyushkin: “In him there was no attachment to money for the sake of money, he was not possessed by stinginess and stinginess. No, they did not move him, - he imagined life ahead in all contentment, so that finally later, over time, he would certainly taste all this, that's what the penny was saved for. “Selflessness”, patience and strength of character of the protagonist allow him to constantly be reborn and show tremendous energy to achieve his goal. Chichikov knows how to adapt to any microcosm, even the appearance of the hero is such that he will suit any situation: “not handsome, but not bad-looking”, “not too fat, not too thin”, “middle-aged man” - everything in him is indefinite , nothing stands out. However, oddly enough, our hero is the only character capable of manifesting the movements of the soul. At the end of the poem, the author outlines some prospects for the spiritual rebirth of the protagonist. The overcoming of evil lies, according to the writer, not in social reconstruction, but in the inexhaustible potential of the Russian people. Unfortunately, the second volume of "Dead Souls" was burned, and the third was not written, so the reader could not find out how Gogol leads Chichikov to a moral revival.

Peter
scoundrel businessman

Heraclius
both

Svyatoslav
Merzlikin ON

Arseniy
Entrepreneur with wicked intentions

Valery
and a scoundrel and an entrepreneur

Ostromir
Now he seems to be an entrepreneur.

Anisim
enterprising swindler

Arkady
A scoundrel and an entrepreneur are similar concepts in many respects, honest merchants can be counted on the fingers, since the law "you can't deceive - you can't sell" is in effect

Dmitriy
Connected Entrepreneur

Emelyan
normal approach to business ... shadow economy))))) ... many people live like that

Vissarion
the first literary businessman - this is his genius

Mstislav
In those days, a scoundrel, now he would be an entrepreneur

Sections: Literature

Target. Analyzing chapter 11 of the poem, draw the attention of students to one of the extraordinary phenomena in the history of Russian culture of the 19th century: the unconditionally positive heroes of the 18th century, who embodied the moral ideal of the era of classicism, were replaced by "strange characters", immoral and enterprising.

Tasks.

• Describe the attitude of the writer towards his character.
• Find out the meaning of the image of the main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov.
• Discuss the ratio of enterprise, ingenuity in the search for ways to enrich and give a moral assessment of these properties.

Equipment: electronic presentation, handout cards with excerpts from chapter 11 of the poem and questions for analysis.

The class is preliminarily divided into 3 groups, in each group there is one speaker, one co-speaker, the rest complement.

During the classes

1. Introductory speech of the teacher.

In the 19th century, the undoubtedly positive heroes of the last century, who embodied the moral ideal of the era of classicism, were replaced by “strange” characters, immoral and enterprising. The appearance of such a hero as Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov was a real revolution in Russian literature. A strange hero and a strange poem. This is evidenced by the well-known correspondence between V. G. Belinsky and K. Aksakov, who compared Dead Souls with the Iliad and considered Gogol the Homer of the new time. Why was such a hero possible? And who is he, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a clever "combinator", a hero-acquirer or a scoundrel, as the author calls him? Or maybe in Russia one phenomenon is unthinkable without the other?

1. In Father Pavlusha's advice, what moral values ​​are opposed to money? Is it possible to agree with such a system of values, why is it dangerous?
2. Is the father's instruction consistent with the moral code of Christianity? What moral laws of the Bible disagree with Father Pavlusha's advice?
3. What is the moral assessment of the author of the instruction himself, Father Pavlusha? Justify your answer.
4. Does the father of his son teach meanness or entrepreneurship, speaking about the power of a penny?

3. Work in groups.

Main question:

How did Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov learn the instructions of his father?

Group 1. Analysis of the episode about the aged assistant.

1. Can the punishment of a bad boss be considered immoral?
2. Is it possible to protect good by punishing evil with evil?
3. How to evaluate the act of Chichikov in relation to the daughter of an elderly clerk - enterprise or meanness?

Conclusion: the story with the povytchik is the first moral threshold that Chichikov crossed. Then it went on knurled.

Group 2. Analysis of the episode “Fighting Bribes” (from the words “You need to know that at the same time ...” to the words “The petitioner is right, of course, but now there are no bribe-takers ...”)

1. Who and what is more immoral - a person or the state, the bureaucracy that does not respect the interests of the individual, or the official himself, who uses social vices for personal enrichment?
2. How did Chichikov manage to turn the fight against bribes to his advantage? Enterprise or meanness manifested in this episode?
3. Can deception be moral?

Conclusion: Gogol's officials rob both the state and petitioners. Embezzlement, bribery, robbery of the population are everyday and quite natural phenomena. Gogol shows the immorality of officials even through the description of the public places where they serve. “There is a large three-storey stone house on the square, all white as chalk...” The author ironically explains: “... white as chalk, probably to represent the purity of the souls of the positions placed in it.” These "pure souls" desire only one thing: to live widely at the expense of "the sums of their dearly beloved fatherland." The writer ridiculed greed, meanness, indifference to other people's troubles, bribery, narrow-mindedness - problems that are relevant in our time.

Group 3. Analysis of the episode “Serving as an Attorney” (from the words “From the orders he got ...” to the words “That's two hundred thousand capital”).

1. Can Chichikov be called a smart person?
2. Are intelligence and talent subject to moral evaluation?
3. How to characterize a society that values ​​wealth in human souls?

Conclusion: Chichikov is an expected and natural phenomenon in the Russian bureaucratic world, devoid of moral qualities. Pavel Ivanovich is a figurative generalization of a wide range of phenomena in Russian reality.

Questions to the class:

• What final assessment of the hero does the writer himself give? Read out.

“So, here is our hero, what he is! But they will perhaps demand a final definition in one line: who is he in relation to moral qualities? That he is not a hero, full of perfection and virtue, is evident. Who is he? so a scoundrel? Why is a scoundrel, why be so strict with others? Now there are no scoundrels among us, there are well-meaning, pleasant people, and those who would put their physiognomy under a public slap in the face to general disgrace, only two or three people can be found, and even they are now talking about virtue. It is most fair to call him: the owner, the acquirer. Acquisition is the fault of everything; because of him things were done, to which the light gives the name of not very clean”

• What meaning does the writer put into the words “acquisition”, “acquirer”?
• Why are scoundrel and acquirer contrasted in this passage?
• Can one thing exist without the other?
• How can one explain the fact that Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a scoundrel hero, an entrepreneur and an acquirer, is sitting in a britzka that is rushing across the expanses of Russia?

Teacher's conclusion. Chichikov's path is fruitless. This futility is expressed through the wisdom of the popular saying about a deed not worth a damn. This proverb first appears long before the finale of volume 1, and with it Gogol sums up the Chichikov case. And this traditional popular conclusion contains both a sentence to the hero and the possibility, according to the author, of the coming revival. Not without reason, in the second volume, Murazov repeats to himself: “Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov is a mysterious person for me. After all, if with a kind of will and perseverance, but for a good deed! Sorry Pavel Ivanovich. After all, the hero spends all his outstanding practical mind, will to overcome obstacles, knowledge of people, perseverance in achieving the goal on immoral, and sometimes simply immoral deeds. An entrepreneur, of course, must be a dexterous, energetic, practical person, but such concepts as conscience, loyalty to the word, honesty and nobility have always been included in a kind of “code of honor” of the Russian merchant. The only pity is that they were increasingly replaced by the bourgeois Chichikovs, whose ideal instead of conscience has become a penny.

4. Homework (optional)

1. Essay-reasoning “Is it possible to revive Chichikov?”
2. Draw up the Code of Honor for the Modern Entrepreneur.
3. Composition reasoning “Is Chichikov a bright strong personality or an ordinary little person?”
4. Prepare a series of illustrations for chapter 11.
5. Make a system of questions for the analysis of chapter 11.

Literature

1. Voropaev Vladimir “A matter taken from the soul”, magazine “Literature at school”, No. 4, 1998.
2. Zolotareva I.V., Mikhailova T.I. Lesson developments in Russian literature, Moscow 2004
3. Pudovkina I. “The world of man in the poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls", newspaper "Literature", No. 12, 2001
4. Chizhova L.A. “Who is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov - a scoundrel or an entrepreneur?”, Didakt magazine, No. 5, 1996.