The role of the image of Vulich in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov “Hero of Our Time”

The system of images of the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", like the entire artistic structure of the novel, is subordinated, first of all, to the disclosure of the author's intention through the image of the main character. However, minor characters are valuable in their own right and have completely independent significance as full-blooded artistic types.
The theme of fate, predestination and free will is the main one in Lermontov’s work and reflects one of the facets of the author’s plan. This question arises most clearly in the story “The Fatalist”. It is no coincidence that it ends the novel and is a kind of result of the moral and philosophical quest of the hero, and with him the author.
The theme of fate can be revealed by comparing the images of Vulich and Pechorin. The main character of "Fatalist", like the main character of the entire novel, feels his own unusualness and exclusivity.
The passion for the game in the broadest sense - gambling, playing with death and playing with feelings, the stubbornness with which the lieutenant begins every time with the hope of winning, reveals in Vulich something unusually close, somewhat akin to Pechorin, with his strange game with his own life. Pechorin puts himself in great danger by kidnapping Bela, tracking down smugglers, agreeing to a duel with Grushnitsky, and neutralizing a drunken Cossack. In this respect, Vulich is Pechorin’s double.
However, in “The Fatalist” Pechorin no longer fights with people and circumstances, but with the very idea of ​​fate, trying to prove to Vulich and himself that “there is no predestination”, that “often we mistake for a belief a deception of feelings or a lapse of reason.” And here Vulich considers the “fatalist” in contrast to the “skeptic” Pechorin, and is an ideological antipode.
Thus, the heroes converge in their unanimous desire to penetrate beyond the boundaries of everyday life, to comprehend the meaning of Fate and the power of its power over man. But we see that their attitude towards fate and fate is the opposite.
In addition, Vulich is characterized by spiritual passivity, a feeling of dissolution in one’s own destiny, characteristic of the young generation of the thirties of the nineteenth century, the loss of the will to live, “the strong pleasure that the soul encounters in any struggle with people or with fate.” Hence the strange, painful game of the hero with death. All his life Vulich strived to be stronger than fate. But soon he dies because of his senseless games. A Cossack kills him.
The description of this terrible and absurd death expresses the author's irony over a certain hero and the weakness of human nature in general, but at the same time the tragedy of an entire generation of people, a special spiritual “illness” of the era, is revealed.
Pechorin also seems to be a fatalist; it is not for nothing that he also decides to “tempt fate.”
However, if Vulich, as a true fatalist, really completely entrusts himself to fate and relies on destiny, without any preparation he pulls the trigger of a pistol in the episode of the major, then Pechorin in similar circumstances acts completely differently. He throws it out the window to a Cossack killer, having thought out a plan of action in advance and provided many details.
By comparing these heroes, the author tries to solve the issue of human freedom. So, Pechorin states: “And if there is definitely predestination... why should we give an account of our actions?” Thus, the hero, unlike Vulich, expresses the position of a spiritually independent person, who in his thoughts and actions relies primarily on his own mind and will, and not on dubious “heavenly” destinies. At the same time, a person’s account of all his words and actions, first of all, to himself increases not only the measure of his personal freedom, but also his personal responsibility - for his life, for the fate of the world.
Pechorin spoke about this even after the duel with Grushnitsky, counting himself among those who have “the courage to take on the full burden of responsibility” without shifting it to circumstances. Let us also recall the conversation with Werner before the duel, in which the hero remarks: “there are two people in me: one lives in the full sense of the word, the other thinks and judges him...”
So, the image of Vulich serves to comprehensively reveal the character of the central character of the novel and, therefore, the embodiment of the entire author’s plan.
Finally, the introduction of Vulich into the system of images of the novel allows the author to most fully and reliably depict the social and spiritual contradictions of the thirties: his passivity, blind faith in the chosenness of man by fate and, at the same time, the effective position of part of this generation in an attempt to resist predestination

Lermontov's novel “A Hero of Our Time” is rightfully called not only a socio-psychological, but also a moral and philosophical novel, and therefore philosophical questions are organically included in it. The main idea of ​​the novel is the search for the place of a strong personality in life, the problem of freedom of human action and the role of fate that limits it.

The issue of free human will and predestination, fate is considered in one way or another in all parts of the novel. Pechorin is not for a minute free from the question: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born?.. And, it’s true, it existed, and, it’s true, I had a high purpose, because I feel immense strength in my soul; but I did not guess this purpose, I was carried away by the lures of empty and ungrateful passions.”

And yet, a detailed answer to the question about the degree of human freedom in the world, about the role of fate in his life and about the existence of predestination is posed in the final part of the novel - the philosophical story “Fatalist”.

A fatalist is a person who believes in the predetermination of all events in life, in the inevitability of fate, fate, fate. In the spirit of his time, which reconsiders the fundamental questions of human existence, Pechorin tries to resolve the question of whether the purpose of man is predetermined by a higher will or whether man himself determines the laws of life and follows them.

The story begins with a philosophical debate about the existence of predestination, which sets up the plot of “The Fatalist.” Pechorin’s opponent in it is Lieutenant Vulich, presented as a person associated with the East: he is a Serb, a native of a land under the rule of the Turks, endowed with an oriental appearance. He is not only a fatalist, but also a player, and this, from the point of view of the debate about predestination, is very important. Gambling, which he is passionate about, makes winning completely dependent on chance. This allows you to associate issues of winning or losing with fate - fortune. It is significant that Pechorin is also fond of playing cards.

But the player can perceive himself in a romantic spirit - as a person entering into a duel with Rock, a rebel placing hope in his own will. Or maybe, on the contrary, like the fatalist Vulich, he believes that everything depends on Fate, mysterious and hidden from view. Moreover, both positions do not equally exclude personal courage, activity and energy.

It is from these positions - romantic and fatalistic - that Pechorin and Vulich make a bet. Vulich, who believes that “man’s fate is written in heaven,” boldly decides to test his fate: he shoots himself with a loaded pistol - but the pistol misfires. When he cocks the hammer again and shoots at the cap hanging over the window, the bullet pierces it.

Pechorin’s remark at the end of this episode is interesting: “You are happy in the game,” he says to Vulich. “For the first time in my life,” he answers. And indeed, it turns out that this was the first and last case of his luck. After all, that same night, returning home, he was killed by a drunken Cossack. And again we must return to the bet of Pechorin and Vulich. After all, this death was predicted by Pechorin even before Vulich’s shot: “You will die today!” - Pechorin tells him. And it was not for nothing that Vulich “flared up and became embarrassed” when, after the happy ending of the bet, Pechorin, who claims that he now believes in predestination, says: “I just don’t understand now why it seemed to me that you must certainly die today.” Everything that follows serves as an illustration of the thesis: “You can’t escape fate.”

It would seem that the dispute is over, the bet and what followed only confirmed the existence of predestination and fate. Moreover, Pechorin himself tests fate, deciding to disarm the drunken Cossack, the murderer of Vulich. “...A strange thought flashed through my head: like Vulich, I decided to tempt fate,” says Pechorin.

Thus, as the action of “Fatalist” develops, Pechorin receives triple confirmation of the existence of predestination and fate. But his conclusion sounds like this: “I like to doubt everything: this disposition of mind does not interfere with the decisiveness of character; on the contrary, as for me, I always move forward more boldly when I don’t know what awaits me.”

He feels within himself, in his time, liberation from the blind faith of his ancestors, accepts and defends the revealed freedom of will of man, but at the same time knows that his generation has nothing to bring to replace the “blind faith” of previous eras. And yet, the problem of the existence of predestination, posed by Lermontov in this story, is mainly of a philosophical nature. It forms part of the writer’s philosophical concept of the relationship between East and West, which is reflected in all of his work. Belief in predestination is characteristic of a person of Eastern culture, faith in one’s own strength is characteristic of a person of the West.

Pechorin, of course, is closer to a person of Western culture. He believes that belief in predestination is a trait of people of the past; to modern people they seem ridiculous. But at the same time, the hero thinks about “what willpower this faith gave them.” His opponent, Lieutenant Vulich, is presented as a person associated with the East: he is a Serb, a native of a land under Turkish rule, endowed with an oriental appearance.

The story seems to leave open the question of the existence of predestination. But Pechorin still prefers to act and control the course of life with his own actions. The fatalist turned into his opposite: if predestination exists, then this should only make human behavior more active. To be just a toy in the hands of fate is humiliating. Lermontov gives exactly this interpretation of the problem, without unequivocally answering the question that tormented the philosophers of that time.

Thus, the philosophical story “Fatalist” plays the role of a kind of epilogue in the novel. Thanks to the special composition of the novel, it ends not with the death of the hero, which was announced in the middle of the work, but with a demonstration of Pechorin at the moment of emerging from the tragic state of inaction and doom. Here, for the first time, the hero, disarming the drunken Cossack who killed Vulich and is dangerous to others, performs not some far-fetched action designed only to dispel his boredom, but a generally useful act, moreover, not associated with any “empty passions”: the theme of love in “Fatalist” turned off completely.

The main problem is given first place - the possibilities of human action, taken in the most general terms. This is precisely what allows us to end on a positive note the seemingly “sad thought” about the generation of the 30s of the 19th century, as Belinsky called the novel “A Hero of Our Time.”

Nevertheless, the path of search has already been indicated, and this is Lermontov’s enormous merit not only to Russian literature, but also to Russian society. And today, when deciding the question of fate and its role in a person’s life, we involuntarily remember Lermontov and the hero of his novel. Of course, it is unlikely that any of us living in our time will undertake such a deadly experiment, but the very logic of solving the question of fate, proposed in “Fatalist,” I think, may be close to many. After all, “who knows for sure whether he is convinced of something or not?.. And how often do we mistake a deception of feelings or a lapse of reason for conviction!..”

Even Lermontov’s last disastrous duel seems accidental and childish, an unexpectedly tragic consequence of a schoolboy prank common among cadets. But all of us, following the wonderful, heroic grandmother Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva, love the difficult, brilliant child of Russian literature, and from childhood we have grown close to him with a sick, caring soul. For we see how the young poet is lonely, unhappy and defenseless, that he was all in struggle. And we know that no one else in Russia could write amazing, heartfelt lines of melancholy and faith:

It’s solemn and wonderful in heaven!
The earth sleeps in a blue glow...
Why is it so painful and so difficult for me?
Am I waiting for what? Do I regret anything?

In the fate of every great writer there is a certain mystery, prophetic absurdities and coincidences, strange dangers, traps and omens. It was no coincidence that Lermontov wrote the story “Fatalist”; he was interested in various kinds of predictions, signs (remember Grushnitsky’s fall before a duel) and Lavater’s physiognomic fortune-telling. This “mysterious young man” accomplished the seemingly impossible: with his personal will he extended the life of romanticism and at the same time created works of enormous realistic power and depth, revived the Russian novel (“Hero of Our Time”) and drama (“Masquerade”), made those tired of romantic readers' poems to learn by heart "Demon" and "Mtsyri". The critic V.P. Botkin was right when he wrote to Belinsky with amazement and delight: “Titanic forces were in the soul of this man!”

My essay tells more and more about the fate not so much of the heroes of the novel, but about its author. This is natural. All of Lermontov's work is autobiographical.

There is such an episode in the chapter “Fatalist”. Pechorin in the dark comes across something thick and soft, but at the same time lifeless. A pig lies on the road, cut to pieces with a saber by a drunken Cossack who was being pursued by two other Cossacks. In the middle of the night, they come running to Pechorin with the news that a Cossack has hacked Vulich to death, and then locked himself in an empty hut and no one is able to lure him out of there. Among those gathered is the killer's mother.

Pechorin is ready to try his luck. Esaul distracts the Cossack, and Pechorin jumps out the window of the house. A shot is fired, it misses, the Cossack is captured.

In this scene, Pechorin finds the strength to challenge fate in a way. True, this challenge is made based on precise calculation: rushing out the window of the hut where the Cossack killer has locked himself, Pechorin clearly understands that his chances are increased both by the speed of his actions and by the fact that the killer is distracted by the captain. But his calculation is also based on predestination: Pechorin was predicted to “death from an evil wife,” and the one who is destined to be hanged will not drown.

The fatalism that Pechorin speaks of with irony - “there were once wise people who thought that the heavenly bodies took part in our insignificant disputes ...” - is ultimately confirmed by Vulich’s behavior. But Pechorin would not have been himself if he had not carried out his own experiment, rushing into the house of an armed Cossack, towards the shot. All this is compositionally connected and significant. How significant are the words of the hero, where the complexity of his character is clearly expressed: “I like to doubt everything: this disposition of mind does not interfere with the decisiveness of character - on the contrary, as for me, I always move forward more boldly when I don’t know what awaits me. After all, nothing worse can happen than death - and you can’t escape death!”

It must be said that it was not for nothing that Lermontov was compared to Pechorin. He doubted the fairness of the social forms by which Russian society lived. By attacking his contemporaries, he also attacked himself, as he was while he was walking along the same road with everyone.

Lieutenant Vulich had “the appearance of a special being, unable to share thoughts and passions with those whom fate gave him as comrades.” It is he who practically, with the help of a loaded pistol, proves to Pechorin the predetermination of fate. This is not an argument in favor of Vulich's fatalism, but simply part of his philosophy of life. In Pechorin, two contradictory attitudes organically merge. The first of them is “man proposes, but God disposes,” the second is “water does not flow under a lying stone.” There is a struggle against predestination with the help of himself. This balance, however, is very precarious; it is not for nothing that the novel ends not with a fleeting, but with an ever-increasing sense of a big question, the answer to which here, in this life, is unlikely to be found.

The ambiguity of Pechorin's character, the inconsistency of this image, was revealed not only in the study of his very spiritual world, but also in the correlation of the hero with other characters; the mysterious Pechorin, unlike anyone else, becomes a more or less typical person of his time; general patterns are revealed in his appearance and behavior. And yet the mystery does not disappear, the “oddities” remain.

The narrator will note Pechorin’s eyes: “they didn’t laugh when he laughed!” In them, the narrator will try to guess “a sign of either an evil disposition or a deep sown sadness”; and will be amazed at their brilliance: “it was a brilliance like the brilliance of smooth steel, dazzling, but cold”; and shudder from the “insightful, heavy” gaze...

Lermontov shows Pechorin as an extraordinary, intelligent, strong-willed, brave person. In addition, he is distinguished by a constant desire for action; Pechorin cannot stay in one place, surrounded by the same people. Is this why he cannot be happy with any woman? Pechorin creates adventures for himself, actively interfering in the fate and lives of those around him, changing the course of things in such a way that he leads to an explosion, a collision. He brings into people's lives his alienation, his desire for destruction.

Lermontov did not seek to pass a moral verdict on Vulich or Pechorin. He only showed with great power all the abysses of the human soul, devoid of faith, imbued with skepticism and disappointment.

Vulich is a minor character in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time". The article provides information about the character from the work, a quotation description.

Full name

Not mentioned. Most likely, I didn’t know him well enough to call him by name in my journal.

He was a Serb by birth, as was clear from his name. Lieutenant Vulich's appearance corresponded completely to his character

Age

Unknown.

Relation to Pechorin

Neutral. The characters were unfamiliar.

Vulich's appearance

Lieutenant Vulich's appearance corresponded completely to his character. Tall stature and dark complexion, black hair, black penetrating eyes, a large but correct nose, belonging to his nation, a sad and cold smile that always wandered on his lips - all this seemed to agree in order to give him the appearance of a special being, unable to share thoughts and passions with those whom fate gave him as comrades.

They said, however, that the colonel's wife was partial to his expressive eyes; but he was seriously angry when it was hinted at.

Social status

Lieutenant Vulich's appearance corresponded completely to his character.

Further fate

Killed by a drunken Cossack.

- Vulich was killed.
I was dumbfounded.

Vulich was walking alone along a dark street: a drunken Cossack ran into him

Vulich's personality

Vulich is an extremely secretive person, expressing only one inclination - to play.

he didn’t trust his spiritual and family secrets to anyone;

He almost didn’t drink wine at all, he never chased after young Cossack girls.

to give him the appearance of a special being, incapable of sharing thoughts and passions with those whom fate gave him as comrades.

There was only one passion that he did not hide: the passion for the game. At the green table he forgot everything and usually lost; but constant failures only irritated his stubbornness.

Vulich's originality

Vulich was known as a very original person. He often did things that no one understood.

all this seemed to be coordinated in order to give him the appearance of a special being

When Lieutenant Vulich approached the table, everyone fell silent, expecting some original trick from him.

Soon everyone went home, talking differently about Vulich’s quirks

Vulich's courage

And at the same time, Vulich is a very brave, sometimes reckless person.

He was brave, spoke little, but sharply;

there was a heavy firefight there. Vulich did not care about bullets or Chechen sabers: he was looking for his lucky punter.

the minute he touched the table, Vulich pulled the trigger... misfire! (he shot himself on a bet with)