Death's Head

Author: Gogol
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Foreign Masterpieces of Long Novels - Second Batch. Karamazov arrives in a city, connects with officials such as the governor, tax director, and police director, and buys serfs who have died but not yet had their records canceled—dead souls—to pose as living serfs and mortgage them to the supervisory committee, aiming to and get rich. When his schemes are on the verge of being exposed, he flees. The work follows Karamazov as he visits the estates of provincial landlords, showcasing the daily lives and spiritual worlds of the Russian provincial gentry: the dreamy yet astonishingly lazy Manilov, the narrow-minded, superstitious Krobochka obsessed with saving money, the dissolute Nosedrev who indulges in pleasure-seeking, fighting, and boasting, the greedy, savage, and slanderous Sobakevich, and the miser Pлюшкин, among others. These characters serve as windows, revealing the empty spirit, decadent morals, petty ambitions, and animalistic greed of the landlord aristocracy who, and exposing the inevitable decline and fall of serfdom. The book, with its portrayal of Russia's "pathological history," shook the entire society and is considered the foundational work of Russian realism.