Dead Souls And The Idiot Comparison

Anton Chekhov said “In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential.” (Chekhov) These particulars are not always given to the reader with a description, the author may put clues about the personality of a character through describing other things pertaining to the character. An example of this is, how the use of literary devices to describe a character’s home may give the reader insight into the character’s personality. In both the poem Dead Souls written by Nikolai Gogol, and the novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the literary devices used to describe character’s homes gives the reader an indication of the characters personality and convictions.

In Dead Souls, we are introduced to a variety of landowners,

As the narrator first begins to describe the property the reader senses an innate wrongness. The home is described as being “ inordinately long” (Gogol, 110) which gives the sense that something is wrong with Plyushkin himself. The home’s structure is also not uniform, in someplace it is two storeys and in some in is one. This implies to the reader that the landowner is not stable and does not have a clear view of what he wants. The home’s windows are described as follows: “only two were open, the others being shuttered to even boarded up”(Gogol, 110). The windows indicate that Plyushkin is incrementally closing himself off to other people and that he is a very secluded individual, by his own volition. Futhermore, the use of the words “overgrown”(Gogol,110) and “untended”(Gogol,110) to describe the estate’s garden, foreshadow Plyushkin’s own unkempt appearance and suggest that Plyshukin is a neglectful man. These adjectives are also akin to Plyushkin’s own life, devoid of family, he has begun to fall apart as a person. Additionally, the garden is continually personified; it is described as “meandering”(Gogol,111), “yawning”(Gogol,111), and “reaching”(Gogol,111), this description leads the reader to think that nature is in control on the estate and Plyushkin, the master of the house, is simply existing on the land, without meaning, since his purpose on the land has been uprooted by the greenery. As the

When the narrator introduces the reader to Rogozhin’s home, the reader has an earlier understanding of who Rogozhin is, through the protagonists interactions with him. One of the first details given to the reader, is that the home has “extraordinarily few windows” and that a portion of these windows “have gratings”. The reader can infer from this that Rogozhin is a private person, just as he has few windows to peer into his home, he allows very little information about himself to be released. The windows being covered by bars illustrates that Rogozhin’s private nature may not something he chooses, but is something that is forced upon him. The idea of the bars over the windows suggests that Rogozhin is a prisoner in his own mind, unable to articulate what he is feeling or what he wants, causing him to lash out, which could be the root of his violent behaviour. As the narrator begins to describe the inside of the home, it is described that the walls are “covered with red paint” (Dostoevsky, 221). The colour red brings to mind passion and desire, which are two qualities driving Rogozhin through the novel. Furthermore, red, resembling blood, foreshadows the violence that Rogozhin will commit. Since Rogozhin is a private man, and he is not be freed from whatever is binding him to his private nature, these qualities of passion, desire and violence are what Rogozhin’s self