The characters of Pechorin and Bazarov, the protagonists of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, are both men who are, in a certain sense, condemned. One wanders the world willingly, waiting for and ultimately meeting an unnoticed end, and one finds oneself fatally and irrevocably infected. The two are similar not only in the fact that they live and die with contempt and indifference, but above all in the fact that they do it to themselves. Both men are driven, consciously or unconsciously, to self-destruction, and the great hand in their fate is, ultimately, love. One man is loved but cannot love in return, and another loves a woman who cannot love him in return; and whatever reasons the two men claim to believe, nothing drives them more strongly to their ends than their tormented encounters with love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Pechorin's relationship with Vera could be described as that of a man who cannot help himself. From the very moment Vera is introduced, the master manipulator lets it slip to his reader that she has real control over him; seeing her for the first time, already thinking of her, he finds himself shouting her name “involuntarily” (87). This woman clearly has a hold on him, and the reader senses it immediately, even if Pechorin himself goes to great lengths to hide it. Indeed, immediately after recounting their surprising meeting and its “long-forgotten emotion” (87), he begins a monologue about his absolute power in matters of love: “It has always perplexed me that I have never been a slave to the women I loved,” he says. “In fact, I have always mastered them, heart and soul, without even trying” (89). Here Pechorin tries to convince himself of something and, if he succeeds, the reader too. He admits that his dominance in affairs of the heart confuses him, in an academic way, but the cool way in which he examines the phenomenon gives the distinct impression that he is not very bothered by it. This is something recognizable in Pechorin throughout the novel; when he addresses the idea of ​​commitment, he soliloquys about marriage. When he is accused of heartlessness, he offers an almost biographical explanation. In short, whenever Pechorin is faced with a matter of the heart, indeed of the soul, he makes sure to examine everything in the most soulless way possible. This reflection on Vera is no exception and, in line with his routine, Pechorin brings up several ideas as to why he never lets himself be dominated by a woman. Is it the women's fault, you say? Is it the strength of his strong personality? He's not sure and he doesn't care, but he seems more attached to one of his theories: he doesn't want to love so much as to be loved. "I'm past that stage in life where all you seek is happiness and when your heart feels the need to love someone with passion and intensity. Now all I want is to be loved, and by very few people at that. I think I would be content with even one lasting attachment: such is the pathetic way of the heart” (89) There is an air of confession in this passage that suggests, for once, that this is indeed the way Pechorin thinks of himself. himself. He states his thesis bluntly and bluntly, even going so far as to imagine how he might one day be happy. It is very unlike Pechorin to even consider contentment for himself - the whole novel, after all, is basically about it. how unhappy he is - but here he finds himself revealing what may well be the last dream he has left. This is "the pathetic way of the heart", he says, suggesting, even in passing, that he too has a heart. Why then Pechorin is dissatisfied withTrue? If his only goal is simply to be loved by someone else, no other woman could serve him better than Vera. In the midst of Princess Marya's seduction he asks himself, “Why this womanly coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary will ever love anyone” (102). He even goes so far as to say that Vera not only loves him more, but also understands him more than any other woman he has ever known - and, as such, that he "could never deceive her" (89) as he does all other women. . You might think that such an arrangement would be ideal in love, since we all want to find someone who knows us and loves us. Pechorin, however, seems to be more troubled by this than anything else. “I really can't understand why she loves me so much,” he says, “especially because she's the only woman who's ever really understood me and all my petty weaknesses and unhealthy passions. Can evil be so attractive” (101)? Confused, bored and even a little disgusted, he pushes Vera away, chasing another girl who he admits he doesn't care about, because he can't understand how anyone could care about him. It is this perception that Pechorin has of himself that pushes him onto such a violent path. After all, he states more than once that he considers himself evil, that all he wants is affection for himself, and that the only thing he can offer is unhappiness for others. Of course, not everything that Pechorin supposedly "reveals" can be taken at face value; his oscillation between apparent candour and complete indifference characterizes him as a showman who keeps a mystery to himself. Yet there is at least one moment in his story that is undoubtedly sincere because, if nothing else, Pechorin admits for the first time that here he finds himself both shameful and ridiculous. The event occurs after Pechorin's duel with Grushnitsky, when he receives a farewell letter from Vera. The letter is sincere, tragic and full of insights; Vera knows how he regarded her, "like a chattel" (142), and how much love he had to give him. Even now, now that her reputation has been ruined by Pechorin, she says she still loves him and, most remarkable of all, proves that she actually knows him much better than anyone else, better even than himself. “No one,” he says, “is so persistent in his desire for love. In no one is evil so attractive… And no one can be so sincerely unhappy as you, because no one tries so hard to persuade himself that he is not” (142). Here Vera gives, like lightning, Pechorin's reason for her unhappiness. Despite everything he says, what Pechorin really wants is to love, not simply to be loved. Being loved alone is not enough, as only Vera can demonstrate to him, because Vera is the only woman who can love him better than all. Her letter and her departure trigger something in Pechorin, perhaps even making him realize that she has identified the force behind his downfall, his apparent inability to love. Ironically, this seems to push Pechorin to his most desperate and sincere act in the novel, and he pursues her "like a madman" (143), hoping only for a glimmer of farewell. But here too forces beyond his control are at work; his horse falls beneath him and his legs fall beneath him. He can do nothing as Vera turns away from him forever. His fate, therefore, is sealed, and he knows it consciously or unconsciously, because after abandoning himself to the pain he returns to his old self. He gets up, dusts himself off and continues as before. Vera is therefore both his salvation and his damnation; it offers him the possibility of the fulfillment he seeks, but it offers him the ability to understand this possibility only when it is too late. “My position, as you will no doubt agree, is ridiculous” (81). This is how Bazarov speaks about his unfortunate love for Anna Sergeevna. There's a lot here, certainly, that smacks ofridiculous; Bazarov is, after all, a nihilist, a man “who does not bow to any authority, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect this principle is surrounded.” Much of his time in the novel is spent flaunting his lack of faith and ridiculing others for theirs; he doesn't believe in aristocracy, he doesn't believe in feeling, he doesn't believe in beauty, and he certainly doesn't believe in love. While Arkady waxes sentimental towards Anna, Bazarov comes forward with much bluster about her indifference. “'If you like a woman,' he used to say, 'try to achieve your goal; if that's impossible, well, it doesn't matter, turn your back on her, there are plenty of fish in the sea'” (71). This more or less describes Bazarov's attitude to love before meeting Odintsova, and perhaps even after, for a certain period. But he soon discovers that how he can conquer her is impossible, that he would never achieve his goal: to his great amazement, however, he lacked the strength to turn his back on her. His blood ran hot as he thought of her; he could have easily taken his blood, but something else had taken root in him that he had never been able to admit, something he had always laughed at, something that rankled his pride. (71)In short, Bazarov is in love. As a nihilist, he cannot possibly justify this within himself, and therein lies the root of his problem. Thus, regardless of what comes next, regardless of Anna's rejection of him and her premature death, a part of Bazarov has already died, and this in the very act of falling in love. Even so, Bazarov is far from hopeless at this point. He is disconcerted, even ashamed of his feelings for Odintsova, but not so much as to give them up completely. His confession of love for her, however desperate, reveals that he still has some hope about how she might react. He may no longer live as a nihilist, yes, but wait for his response before going any further; in his pause there is the admission that he might have been willing to live another kind of life, more similar to those lived by his fathers before him. But horribly, tragically, he is denied this possibility of happiness; Odintsova and Bazarov, as both often admit, are too similar. It is therefore not surprising that Odintsova regards Bazarov's love with her own terror and even disgust. When he comes towards her, she hesitates briefly, "but the next moment he was standing far away, in a corner, and looking at Bazarov from there" (80). Although Anna continues to doubt her rejection of Bazarov even after this scene, her decision has already been made in the end. For the sake of serenity, independence, and the kind of woman Anna considers herself to be, she sacrifices her feelings for Bazarov, and in doing so seals his fate. From this moment on Bazarov is on the road to the end. Bazarov the nihilist fell with his love for Anna, and Bazarov the romantic fell with her rejection. Before Anna "romantic" was for him the most ridiculous and meaningless word - in a conversation with Arkady, he exchanges it for "nonsense" - but now he finds it inevitably real. Before, he often protested his indifference towards nature (a trait, coincidentally, that he shares with Anna) but now he suddenly feels a sort of mocking interest in it. Upon arriving home, he notices his father's birch grove and then barks at a servant to fill his pipe. His father mentions “the trees Horatio loved” (92) and Bazarov asks what kind they are, before stifling a yawn. Lying under a haystack with Arkady Bazarov points out an old poplar tree which as a child he believed had magical powers - and a short time later provokes Arkady into a fight. He also finds an ant crossing the ground moving, comparing the ant to itself and the fly todrags to Anna: “Look! Here is a heroic ant dragging away a half-dead fly. Come on, brother, shoot! Don't pay attention to his resistance; take advantage of the fact that as an animal you have the right to feel no compassion, unlike us, the self-destructive creatures that we are!” (98)This quote is interesting not only for its connection to nature, and not only for the obvious anguish it contains, but also because Bazarov finds himself admitting that he, as a human being, simply feels more than he ever could hear an insect. He laments his fate and curses a half-dead fly, but also seems to recognize that he is suffering out of compassion and that his suffering will lead him to destroy himself. Arkady also seems to get his hint, because his response to Bazarov is here full of fear and concern: “You shouldn't say that, Evgeny! When did you try to destroy yourself?" Bazarov raised his head. “This is the only thing I am proud of. I have not destroyed myself and no woman will destroy me. Amen! Finished. You will never hear another word from me about it." (98) In the end, of course, Bazarov is unable to keep his promise. Trapped between two worlds, no longer belonging to either, his behavior becomes increasingly reckless. When Pavel Petrovich challenges him to a duel, Bazarov accepts even though he recognizes that a duel cannot have a specific purpose. “From a theoretical point of view,” he says, “the duel is ridiculous; but, from a practical point of view, well, that's a different matter. The nihilist in him would never have allowed himself to be drawn into something literally useless, but his newfound romanticism pushes Bazarov to engage in something very dangerous. After agreeing to the duel, Bazarov tries to turn to the microscope only to find that he cannot concentrate; the coolness that reflection requires is no longer his - and, significantly, Bazarov has a nightmare about the duel in which Pavel appears to him as a forest, an image of nature that presents itself as the kind of love life he never wanted drive. Bazarov's death is, of course, the final act of self-destruction. Whether he realizes it or not, the end Bazarov faces is in fact a sort of suicide; his reckless and voluntary autopsy on a highly contagious corpse, carried out when Bazarov was out of practice and terminated when he cuts himself through apparent carelessness, is more the work of Bazarov than anyone else. The fact that his death occurs in an act of scientific research is also significant, as it signals his attempt to return to the fact-based existence he had previously conducted. And the fact that Bazarov cuts himself, instead of being cut by another, is significant, if only on a symbolic level; his morbid calm after the event suggests that he has long since accepted a fate of oblivion. (“Never miss an opportunity to practice your trade!” (145) he cheerfully tells his horrified father.) This is not to say, of course, that Bazarov doesn't cry even a little; lying feverish, he reflects that a man older than him would have had time “to get used to the idea of ​​leaving his life behind” (148). Yet Bazarov is, in many senses, already an old man; he is consumed in his own way, even if his body remains young. “If you know too much, you will die too soon,” (82) he comments early in the novel – and, whether or not he can face all this on his deathbed, part of Bazarov realizes that the so-called knowledge he has gathered, about to faith, love and their power over him, made his death inevitable - and he acquired it, in large part, because of his love for Anna. His last appearance in Bazarov is a poetic testimony to his role in his destiny. Replying to his message, she immediately goes to him; The parents of.