Literary portrait of Pechorin from the hero of our time. Grigory Pechorin from the novel M

Roman M.Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" was written in 1840. This is the first psychological novel in Russian literature, exploring inner world the main character is a young nobleman, military officer Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin.

Revealing the image

The image of Pechorin is revealed gradually. At first we see him through the eyes of Maxim Maksimych, a fifty-year-old staff captain. The old man tells the author that he had the pleasure of knowing a very strange man, G.A. Pechorina. He, in his words, is not a simple “guy” who has a number of inexplicable contradictions: he could hunt all day in the drizzling rain, or he could catch a cold because of an open window; capable of going after a wild boar one on one, but at the same time being frightened by the sound of a closing window. Maxim Maksimych was surprised by his ability to remain silent for hours, and sometimes talk in such a way that “you’ll tear your stomach with laughter.”

We also learn about Pechorin’s wealth, about his special purpose: “There are these people who are written in their family that extraordinary things should happen to them!”

Pechorin's problem

Pechorin's main problem is that he quickly gets bored with everything. In his youth he turned to the light, but high society He quickly became bored; Pechorin saw no point in the education he had been receiving for years. The hope of gaining interest in life in the Caucasus also turns out to be false: the whistling of bullets worries him no more than the buzzing of mosquitoes. Bela, a young Circassian, was last chance for Pechorin. But it turned out that “the love of a savage is a little better than love noble lady."

The hero's internal contradictions are also expressed in his appearance, presented to the reader through the eyes of a traveling officer - the author-storyteller, close to the hero by age and social status.

In the chapter “Maksim Maksimych” we see the main character as a slender, stately retired officer, dressed in the latest fashion. He is of average height, fair-haired, but with a black mustache and eyebrows. The author sees the secrecy of character in the carelessness of his gait and the absence of waving his arms. At first glance, Pechorin’s face seems youthful, but upon closer examination, the author notices traces of wrinkles, and there is something childish in his smile. It is significant that the hero's eyes did not laugh when he laughed. This speaks of an evil disposition or a great and difficult life experience.

Pechorin's trials

Like many others literary heroes, Pechorin undergoes tests of love and friendship, but does not withstand them: he kills a friend in a duel, causing pain to all those who love him and loved ones. He himself says that he is only capable of causing people suffering, since “he did not sacrifice anything for those he loved.” He is an individualist by nature, he does not need anyone to realize his life goals, he is able to solve all his problems on his own.

Indeed, Pechorin is cruel to many close people. Take even his meeting after a long separation with Maxim Maksimych - he treated the old man, who considered him his son, as a stranger. But it should be noted that he is also cruel to himself. There is not a single requirement for others that he would not fulfill himself. Many of his misfortunes and clashes with society occur due to his maximalism, demanding everything from life at once, but the impossibility of receiving proper satisfaction.

In my opinion, Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin is a worthy, intelligent, spiritually strong person. But he cannot find application for his immense powers and capabilities in the conditions of his contemporary society, which does not have any spiritual values.

The novel “Hero of Our Time” by M. Yu. Lermontov can be attributed to the first socio-psychological and philosophical work in prose. IN this novel the author tried to display the vices of an entire generation in one person, to create a multifaceted portrait.

Pechorin is a complex and contradictory person. The novel includes several stories, and in each of them the hero reveals himself to the reader from a new side.

The image of Pechorin in the chapter “Bela”

In the chapter “Bela” it opens to the reader from the words of another hero of the novel - Maxim Maksimych. This chapter describes Pechorin’s life circumstances, his upbringing and education. Here the portrait of the main character is also revealed for the first time.

Reading the first chapter, we can conclude that Grigory Alexandrovich is a young officer, has an attractive appearance, at first glance pleasant in any respect, he has good taste and a brilliant mind, excellent education. He is an aristocrat, an esthete, one might say, a star of secular society.

Pechorin is a hero of our time, according to Maxim Maksimych

The elderly staff captain Maxim Maksimych is a gentle and good-natured man. He describes Pechorin as quite strange, unpredictable, and unlike other people. Already from the first words of the staff captain you can notice internal contradictions main character. He can be in the rain all day and feel great, and another time he can freeze from a warm breeze, he can be frightened by the slam of window shutters, but he is not afraid to go to the wild boar one on one, he can be silent for a long time, and at some point a lot talk and joke.

The characterization of Pechorin in the chapter “Bela” has practically no psychological analysis. The narrator does not analyze, evaluate or even condemn Gregory, he simply conveys many facts from his life.

The tragic story of Bel

When Maxim Maksimych tells the traveling officer sad story which happened before his eyes, the reader becomes acquainted with the incredible cruel egoism of Grigory Pechorin. On a whim, the main character steals the girl Bela from her home without thinking about her later life, about the time when he will finally get tired of her. Later, Bela suffers because of Gregory’s emerging coldness, but cannot do anything about it. Noticing how Bela is suffering, the staff captain tries to talk to Pechorin, but Grigory’s answer causes only misunderstanding in Maxim Maksimych. He can’t wrap his head around how a young man, for whom everything is going very well, can still complain about life. It all ends with the girl's death. The unfortunate woman is killed by Kazbich, who previously killed her father. Having fallen in love with Bela as his own daughter, Maxim Maksimych is amazed at the coldness and indifference with which Pechorin suffered this death.

Pechorin through the eyes of a traveling officer

The characterization of Pechorin in the chapter “Bela” differs significantly from the same image in other chapters. In the chapter “Maksim Maksimych” Pechorin is described through the eyes of a traveling officer who was able to notice and appreciate the complexity of the protagonist’s character. Behavior and appearance Pechorin is already attracting attention. For example, his gait was lazy and careless, but at the same time he walked without swinging his arms, which is a sign of a certain secrecy in his character.

The fact that Pechorin experienced mental storms is evidenced by his appearance. Gregory looked older than his years. The portrait of the main character contains ambiguity and inconsistency; he has delicate skin, a childish smile, and at the same time deep. He has light blond hair, but a black mustache and eyebrows. But the complexity of the hero’s nature is most emphasized by his eyes, which never laugh and seem to scream about some hidden tragedy of the soul.

Diary

Pechorin appears by itself after the reader encounters the thoughts of the hero himself, which he wrote down in his personal diary. In the chapter “Princess Mary,” Grigory, having a cold calculation, makes the young princess fall in love with him. As events unfold, he destroys Grushnitsky, first morally, and then physically. Pechorin writes all this in his diary, every step, every thought, accurately and truly assessing himself.

Pechorin in the chapter “Princess Mary”

The characterization of Pechorin in the chapter “Bela” and in the chapter “Princess Mary” is striking in its contrast, since in the second mentioned chapter Vera appears, who became the only woman who managed to truly understand Pechorin. It was her that Pechorin fell in love with. His feeling for her was unusually reverent and tender. But in the end, Gregory loses this woman too.

It is at the moment when he realizes the loss of his chosen one that a new Pechorin is revealed to the reader. The characterization of the hero at this stage is despair, he no longer makes plans, is ready for stupid ones, and having failed to save his lost happiness, Grigory Alexandrovich cries like a child.

Final chapter

In the chapter “Fatalist,” Pechorin reveals one more side. Main character doesn't value his life. Pechorin is not stopped even by the possibility of death; he perceives it as a game that helps to cope with boredom. Grigory risks his life in search of himself. He is courageous and courageous, he has strong nerves, and in a difficult situation he is capable of heroism. You might think that this character was capable of great things, having such a will and such abilities, but in reality it all came down to the “thrill”, to the game between life and death. As a result, the strong, restless, rebellious nature of the protagonist brings people only misfortune. This thought gradually arises and develops in the mind of Pechorin himself.

Pechorin is a hero of our time, a hero of his own, and of any time. This is a person who knows habits, weaknesses and, to some extent, he is an egoist, because he thinks only about himself and does not show concern for others. But in any case, this hero is romantic, he is opposed to the world around him. There is no place for him in this world, his life is wasted, and the way out of this situation is death, which overtook our hero on the way to Persia.

The fate presented in Lermontov's novel individual, depicted in all its specific socio-historical, national conditionality and at the same time in the individual uniqueness of a sovereign, spiritually free generic being, at the same time acquired a universal meaning.

Pechorin, says the preface to the novel, is the type of “modern man”, as the author “understands” him and as “he has met too often.” At the same time, this is not a “mass” type, but a “typical exception”, a type of “strange person”. Calling Pechorin the Onegin of his time, Belinsky paid tribute to the unsurpassed artistry of Pushkin’s image: “Pechorin is the Onegin of our time,” but at the same time he believed that “Pechorin is superior to Onegin in theory, however, this advantage belongs to our time, not to Lermontov.” .

Without justifying or blaming Pechorin, Belinsky notes that the “instinct of truth” is very strong in him, but that due to the duality of his character, he does not stop at slandering himself and society. Having weighed the merits and demerits of Pechorin’s character, Belinsky concludes: “But the court does not belong to us: for every person the court is in his affairs and their consequences.”

The validity of this thought of Belinsky is confirmed by the merciless judgment of himself that Pechorin conducts, weighing and evaluating the life he lived in vain: “... My high purpose was true... But I did not guess my purpose...” In these words of Pechorin is the key to understand the reasons for the tragedy of his generation of “smart unnecessary things”, the tragedy of the Russian people of the post-Decembrist period.

Starting from the second half of the 19th century, Pechorin’s definition of “superfluous person” became established, although neither Lermontov himself nor Belinsky gave him such a definition, primarily because such a term did not exist in their time. For them, Pechorin is “a hero of the time, modern man, strange man." The typological essence of the image of the “superfluous man” in Russian literature is interpreted very contradictorily.

Herzen most accurately defined the meaning and characteristics of the “superfluous man” type for Russian society and Russian literature of the Nicholas era. “The sad fate of an extra person, lost person, only because he developed into a man, then appeared not only in poems and novels, but on the streets and in living rooms, in villages and cities. Our literary flankers are now poking fun at these weak dreamers who broke without a fight, these idle people who did not know how to fit into the environment in which they lived.”

According to Herzen, Pechorin becomes “superfluous” because in his development is underway further than most, developing into a person, and more precisely, into a personality, which in the conditions of impersonal reality Nikolaev Russia was, according to Herzen, “one of the most tragic situations in the world.”

According to Lermontov, the tragedy of his time is not only that “people suffer patiently,” but also that “the majority suffer without realizing it.” In this sense, Pechorin captures the act of intensive development of social and personal self-awareness in Russia in the 30s. Belinsky wrote: “By introducing society to itself, that is, by developing self-awareness in it, it satisfies its most important and most important need at the present moment.”

Lermontov's concept of personality expanded and deepened the possibilities of artistic typification. Pechorin is a typical character, but of a special kind. On the one hand, he is a product of certain social circumstances and environment and in this sense represents a firmly defined social type of “hero of his time”; on the other hand, as a person with his extra-class value, he goes beyond the limits of the circumstances and social roles that gave birth to him, that is, beyond social type, generated a certain era and a specific environment, acquiring universal significance. Pechorin’s personality is broader, more holistic and more redundant than that life content, which accommodates his social roles, his social status generally. The combination of certainty and elusiveness and not closedness in the personality and character of Lermontov’s hero gave Belinsky the basis to say: “He is hiding from us as an incomplete and unsolved creature as he appears to us at the beginning of the novel.”

When the novel “A Hero of Our Time” was published, protective criticism, informed sharply negative assessment Nicholas 1, assured readers that there was nothing Russian in the novel, that its “vicious” hero was copied by the author from Western European novelists. It got to the point that soon after the poet’s fatal death, Baron E. Rosen expressed his “joy” that Lermontov was killed and would no longer write a “second Pechorin.” There were many half-hints and direct hints in the reviews of such “critics” that the author portrayed himself in the hero of the novel.

Is the “Hero of Our Time” social, undoubtedly, social - objectively and subjectively. Objectively, because all the actions of Pechorin’s psychology are determined by time, the conditions of existence of his generation of the environment; many of Pechorin’s actions and character traits are dependent - to a greater or lesser extent - on public relations and morals, as he himself admits. Subjective because the social issue is present in the novel as one of the objects of research. Next to central figure sometimes “simple man” Maxim Maksimych is put, then “children of the mountains”, then “ honest smugglers“- the social-experimental nature of this series of comparisons would seem to be undeniable.

And yet it doesn’t stop there artistic task writer. The depth of the concept of the work lies in the fact that the different sides public life are placed here in direct dependence on the person himself, as is the fate of each individual person- from socio-historical circumstances.

Social motivation for mass deviations from humanity. From moral highest ideals is emphasized by Lermontov with the help of his characteristic compositional technique. Creating close up psychological portrait of Pechorin, the writer in monologues and diary retrospectively sketches a picture of the hardening of the hero’s soul, but at the same time he creates the image of a “common man”, on the one hand, correcting Pechorin’s behavior, as D.E. Maksimov rightly noted, and on the other hand, personifying his fate is the moral justification of Pechorin.

Overall, A Hero of Our Time combined a philosophical concept with a lively analytical depiction national life, as deep moral and psychological contradictions.

The first readers of “A Hero of Our Time” were struck by its unusual artistic form. Belinsky was the first critic to establish how, from several stories, the reader gets the “impression of an entire novel.” He sees the “secret” of this in the fact that Lermontov’s novel “is the biography of one person.” Belinsky says about the extraordinary artistic integrity of the novel: “There is not a page, not a word, not a line that was thrown in by chance: here everything follows from one main idea and everything returns to it.” Modern Explorer B.T. Udodov writes about the composition of the novel: “The composition of “A Hero of Our Time” is not linear, but concentric. And not only because everything in her gravitates towards one the central character. All parts of the novel are not so much separate aspects of a single whole, but rather closed circles that contain the essence of the work in its entirety, but not in its entire depth. The overlay of these circles on top of each other does not so much expand the scope of the narrative as deepen it.”

The problem also causes a lot of controversy artistic method. This issue has been one of the most controversial for several decades.

“In the study of Lermontov’s work,” noted I.E. in the early 70s. Wooseok, “the problem of his artistic method is one of the most difficult.” There are different points of view regarding artistic method. So, B.M. Eikhenbaum, thinking about artistic evolution Lermontov, wrote: “It is customary to speak in general terms that apply equally to Pushkin and Gogol “from romanticism to realism.” This formula is clearly insufficient... It appears as if realism was the same destination for everyone - you just had to find the way to it, and romanticism was just an inevitable “passage” to this gathering point.”

The debate about the “Hero of Our Time” method flared up especially hotly at the V All-Union Lermontov Conference in 1962, where three reports were devoted to this topic. In one of them the method was interpreted as realistic work(V.A. Maikov), in another - as realistic with elements of romanticism (U.R. Fokht), in the third - as romantic (K.N. Grigoryan). Later, a work appeared that attempted to substantiate the fourth point of view on the "Hero of Our Time" method as a synthesis of romanticism and realism.

The very fact of the possibility of such heteroglossia and such contrasts, the presence of real, conspicuous differences in creativity and creative method Lermontov speaks volumes. Real contradictions in reality have given rise to art world Lermontov.

– organize the research activities of students in order to identify the individuality inherent in Pechorin.

Objective: To develop students’ ability to analyze a work of art; analysis of the psychological portrait of Pechorin.

Knowledge, abilities, skills: Ability to conduct literary analysis, work in groups.

Equipment: Projector, computer, interactive whiteboard.

Technologies, methods, used in the lesson: Information and communication technologies. The lesson is accompanied by presentation materials in Power Point 97-2003 format.

Lesson progress

I. Updating knowledge

The novel was written in the period 1837–1840. It consists of five independent stories, which are combined common heroes and a common name.

In “A Hero of Our Time” we see a whole gallery of heroes, the description of which depends on the genre of the story and the task that the author set for himself in this part of the novel. For example: “Taman” is an action-packed and at the same time lyrical story; “Princess Mary” – diary; “Fatalist” – notes made by the hero some time after the events described.

II. Working on the topic (teacher's word)

Portrait as one of the means artistic expression always took enough important place V literary work, since the image of the hero is part of his image. However, a portrait is not only a description of his appearance, but also an introduction to his life, his feelings and actions. It helps reveal the hero's inner world. A portrait is what makes it possible to present the hero to the reader as a person. The pre-Pushkin era is characterized by a picturesque portrait: short, with a small number of details. It was dominated only by details that directly spoke only about the personality of the hero. In his works, Pushkin, along with a pictorial portrait, creates psychological portraits, which became widespread in the literature of the 19th century. He is the founder of new portrait trends: complex, visible, invisible portraits. One of the followers of the Pushkin tradition is Lermontov, which is most clearly and fully manifested in his novel “A Hero of Our Time.”

The meaning of portraits in works

The portrait, as one of the means of artistic expression, has always occupied a fairly important place in literary works, since the image of the hero is part of his image.

It helps reveal the hero's inner world.

A portrait is what makes it possible to present the hero to the reader as a person.

Lermontov does not describe the heroes in detail, but such portraits are quite colorful and can say a lot about the hero, for example, Bel: “ tall, thin, black eyes, like those of a mountain chamois, and looked into your soul" or Kazbich: " He had the most robber's face: small, dry, broad-shouldered... And he was as clever as a devil! The beshmet is always torn, in patches, and the weapon is in silver. And his horse was famous throughout Kabarda...»

In the story central place occupies a psychological portrait of Pechorin, which emphasizes the inconsistency in the external and internal world of the hero. Very important for understanding the inner world and revealing the image of Pechorin is artistic description nature in the novel. His thoughts, feelings and mood are directly related to the description of the landscape. When Pechorin goes to the place of the duel, in the face of impending danger, he is overcome by a thirst for life and a love of nature. He cannot fully enjoy the beauty at the hour of sunrise. But here he is on his way back. “I had a stone in my heart,” he writes. The sun seemed dim to me, its rays did not warm me.” This is how nature appears to Pechorin in his difficult mental state. The landscape in the novel is nowhere presented as an independent picture not connected with the action. It is closely connected with the experiences of the characters, expresses their feelings and moods. This is where passionate emotionality and excitement in the descriptions of nature are born, creating a feeling of musicality in the entire work.

The system of narrators in the novel

(The proposed form of the table is filled out with the participation of students.)

The change of narrators in the novel allows the reader to see the portrait of the hero from three points of view:

Description of the portrait of Pechorin in the chapter “Maksim Maksimych” (student’s answer, based on home preparation)

These descriptions allow us to partially penetrate into the inner world of Pechorin.

Portrait of Maxim Maksimych (student’s answer, based on home preparation) :

The portrait is realistic. The portrait of Maxim Maksimych is the last portrait presented by the narrator, a passing officer; all other descriptions will be given by Pechorin himself in his diary - “Pechorin's Journal”, where he himself will be the narrator.

“He was wearing a frock coat without epaulettes and a Circassian shaggy hat. He seemed to be about fifty years old; his dark complexion showed that he had long been familiar with the Caucasian sun, and his prematurely gray mustache did not match his firm gait and cheerful appearance.”

Question: V.G. Belinsky considers Maxim Maksimych a “purely Russian type” and ends his characterization of this image with the following appeal to the reader: “Isn’t it true, you got so used to him, fell in love with him so much that you will never forget him, and if you meet him under the rough appearance - a warm heart, under the simple, bourgeois speech - the warmth of the soul, then “this is Maxim Maksimych”? And may God grant you to meet Maxim Maksimych on the path of your life!”

Students' answer - Maxim Maksimychi in your life.

Portrait of Grushnitsky (teacher’s word, description of the water society using the example of Grushnitsky)

Grushnitsky’s portrait is rather a parody of a romantic one, since the hero himself is anti-romantic, and his penchant for romanticism is brought to the point of caricature: “ He is well built, dark and black-haired, and barely 21 years old. He throws his head back when he speaks, and constantly twirls his mustache with his left hand, because with his right he leans on a crutch.”. There are many details in his portrait: a thick soldier’s overcoat, a crutch, a limp. These life details do not fit into the romantic portrait of Grushnitsky. The description of this hero’s appearance is the first in a series of those found in the second part of Pechorin’s diary, in “Princess Mary.”

Women's portraits

The portrait of Princess Mary is romantic, and so is the image of the heroine. The main detail of her portrait is her “velvet eyes.” But her description is not without features of realism: she is dressed " according to strict rules of taste: nothing superfluous". There is another one in the story female image- the image of Vera, whose portrait also gravitates towards the romantic: “ A woman was sitting on a stone bench straw hat, wrapped in a black shawl, head down on her chest; the hat covered her face". And the black mole adds even more romanticism to the portrait of the heroine.

Question: Pechorin through the eyes of a woman? (Vera, Princess Mary, Bela) – Students' response based on the work they read

Portrait of Werner

The image of Werner is compared with Pechorin, and not opposed, like other characters. “Werner was short and thin, and weak, like a child; one of his legs was shorter than the other, like Byron... His small black eyes, always restless...”

Question: Is Werner a friend of Pechorin or...? Students' response based on the work they read

III. Lesson reflection:

Thus, we can conclude that in Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” romantic portraits predominate, which is due to the writer’s creative method. The portrait of the main character Pechorin is psychological, which is determined by the genre of the work. It is he who serves as a means of characterizing the hero along with other means of psychological analysis.

The significance of the novel “A Hero of Our Time” in the subsequent development of Russian literature is enormous. In this work, Lermontov, for the first time in the “history of the human soul,” revealed such deep layers that not only equated it with the “history of the people,” but also showed its involvement in the spiritual history of mankind through its personal and tribal significance. In an individual personality, not only his specific time-specific socio-historical characteristics were highlighted, but also universal ones with the help of vivid artistic details.

IV. Homework: essay-composition “My Pechorin”.

The novel “A Hero of Our Time” was a continuation of the theme “ extra people" This theme became central to the novel in verse by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”. Herzen named Pechorin younger brother Onegin. 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 positive hero, from which we should take an example. The author emphasized that in the image of Pechorin a portrait is given of not just one person, but artistic type, which absorbed the features of a whole generation of young people at the beginning of the century. Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” 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. Pechorin 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 repulsed by Pechorin's indifference to people, his inability to true love, to 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 in every sense of this word, another thinks and judges it...” What are the reasons for this duality? “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. More Pushkin's Onegin Belinsky called him 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 still 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 “The 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, forced to leave home“honest smugglers”, the young officer Vulich dies. Belinsky saw in Pechorin’s character “a transitional state of spirit, in which for a person everything old is destroyed, but the new is not yet there, and in which a person is only the possibility of something real in the future and a perfect ghost in the present.”

Pechorin was of average height, slender, of strong build. Quite a decent man, about thirty years old. Despite his strong build, he had a “small aristocratic hand.” His gait was careless and lazy. He had a hidden character. “His skin had a kind of feminine tenderness; his blond hair, naturally curly, so picturesquely outlined his pale, noble forehead, on which, only after long observation, one could notice traces of wrinkles. Despite his light hair color, his mustache and beard were black.”

he had a slightly upturned nose, dazzling white teeth and brown eyes. His eyes did not laugh when he laughed. Their shine was like the shine of “smooth steel,” dazzling and cold. He was very good-looking and had one of those “original faces that are especially popular with secular women.” Pechorin – “ inner man" His personality is dominated by the romantic complex inherent in Lermontov’s heroes, dissatisfaction with reality, high anxiety and a hidden desire for better life. Poetizing these qualities of Pechorin, his sharp critical thought, rebellious will and ability to fight, revealing his tragically forced loneliness, Lermontov also notes the sharply negative, frank manifestations of Pechorin’s individualism, without separating them from the personality of the hero as a whole. The novel clearly expresses Pechorin's selfish individualism.

The moral inconsistency of Pechorin’s behavior towards Bela, Mary and Maxim Maksimovich. Lermontov highlights the destructive processes occurring in Pechorin: his melancholy, fruitless tossing, and fragmentation of interests. Comparing the “hero” of Pechorin’s era with those who could not at all lay claim to this title - with “ natural person"Beloy and s" a simple person“Maxim Maksimovich, deprived of Pechorin’s intellect and his vigilance, we see not only intellectual superiority, but also the spiritual ill-being and incompleteness of the main character. Pechorin's personality in its egoistic manifestations, arising primarily from the conditions of the era, is not exempt from its individual responsibility, the judgment of conscience.

Pechorin treats people cruelly. So, for example: first he kidnaps Bela and tries to please her. But when Bela falls in love with Pechorin, he leaves her. Even after Bela’s death, his face does not change and he laughs in response to Maxim Maksimovich’s consolations.

After a long separation, cold meeting with Maxim Maksimovich, who considers Pechorin his best friend, and is very upset by this attitude towards himself.

With Princess Mary he acts almost the same way as with Bela. Just to have fun, he begins to court Mary. Seeing this, Grushnitsky challenges Pechorin to a duel, they shoot, and Pechorin kills Grushnitsky. After this, Mary confesses her love to Pechorin and asks to stay, but he coldly says: “I don’t love you.”

And the trial leading to retribution is carried out on Pechorin, in which evil, breaking away largely from its “good” sources, destroys not only what it is aimed at, but also his own personality, which is naturally noble and therefore cannot withstand its internal evil. Retribution falls on Pechorin from the people.