Dead Souls

Dead Souls Euro Paper During the Nineteenth century in Russia, many people had serfs and land, which was a form of wealth just like the feudal system in Europe. There were also some people who tried to exploit the wealth like Pavel Ivanovich in the book Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. Some major points in the book include the Social class based around the amount of serfs and land a person owned, the poverty of serfs, and the ways wealthy children were treated. Pavel tries many times to buy a landowner’s dead peasants because even if he gets the dead souls, they are still worth money and power. Nikolai Gogol was born on March thirty-first 1809 near Poltava Ukraine which at the time was in the Russian Empire. He died March fourth 1852. He worked as a humorist, novelist, and a dramatist. His career as a writer made him most famous with his books Dead Souls and The Overcoat. When he was twelve, he went to high school which was located …show more content…
Throughout the book Pavel Ivanovich travels throughout the countryside to find someone who would be willing to sell him dead peasant souls. The reason for this was because during this time the more peasants you had, the more power you had so if he got the dead souls, he would theoretically have more power in society. Many of the people he asked were freaked out or disturbed at this because they thought about what could someone possibly do to make dead peasants useful. It also showed how hard navigating was without cars or modern technology because with wooden wheels, they often broke and roads were not paved so mud would be a problem after a storm. One last important thing that I saw throughout the novel was the use of the word God. Now during this time specifically, God was still an important figure but in this book you can see how it is used both positively and negatively with the characters in the