A smuggler cannot be honest because he is engaged in illegal activities. Why does Pechorin call smugglers honest? The answer can be found in the chapter “Taman”.
Grigory admits that he becomes sad at the end of the description of what happened to him in Taman. Pechorin sees the only remaining blind boy crying. Yanko and Ondine are carried away into the distance of the sea. For his work and devotion, the boy received a coin for a gingerbread. The reader feels sorry for the blind man, scared for Ondine, and offended for Pechorin.
Gregory himself understands what he has done. He compares himself to a stone thrown into a smooth spring. The epithet smooth correlates with pure, calm. Smugglers do their job to survive. Their squalid housing proves poverty and scarcity. The “peaceful circle” consists of several people, all of whom evoke only pity.
Yanko can be condemned, but his fate is also unenviable: dark night Not everyone can race across a stormy sea. What will happen to the old woman and the blind man, where will they find food for themselves?
Honest smugglers "Hero of our time", honesty, in in this case, is a concern. Yanko and Ondine tried to alleviate the plight of the disadvantaged. Pechorin intervenes in their lives and forces the smugglers to leave the city they have chosen to live. They will cope and will be able to find a new shelter for themselves, but the blind boy is unlikely to meet the same friends. The only way to be full is to break on a stone human soul, busy looking for entertainment for her mind.
In my opinion, Pechorin is a person with very deep spiritual qualities, but at the same time not devoid of the most serious human vices. His ability to analyze his actions and the world around him; his mature mind, his way of life, completely uncharacteristic young man at his age, are revealed throughout the entire work and make one feel respect for him and even, in a way, admiration.
But when meeting with smugglers, we can see in Pechorin, in my opinion, excessive curiosity and a thirst for adventure. Everything is interesting to him, important, he needs to “touch” everything. This quality of his especially surprised me at the moment when Pechorin, noticing the silhouette of a blind boy, trudged after him to find out: what could interest such a child, deprived of nature, at night on the seashore. And this curiosity ultimately resulted in Pechorin destroying the lives of the smugglers and, moreover, almost dying himself. But at the same time, his courage - not to be afraid of strange events, something illegal and to go to unfamiliar places following adventures - is also not his worst quality.
Pechorin is full of prejudices and prejudices; his opinion about the blind boy was predetermined in advance; he says: “There is always some strange relationship between a person’s appearance and his soul: as if with the loss of a member the soul loses some feeling.” It seems to me that this opinion of his is very wrong, but Pechorin, having predetermined for himself the character of a blind man, immediately treats him with some disdain.
In dangerous circumstances, when a girl (or, as Pechorin called her, “undine”) tried to drown him, qualities such as courage, determination, willingness to take risks, and willpower again appear. In relation to that girl, even passion and attraction arose in him, as a result of which he was deceived.
Perhaps this is precisely where the whole contradictory character of the hero lies. Indeed, despite his deep sound mind, he never completely obeys it. Laughing and ironizing at himself, Pechorin still cannot help but respond to the call of such an alluring, free and anxious life.
An essay on literature on the topic: What does the story with the smugglers clarify about Pechorin’s character?
Other writings:
- Pechorin's life story is told to the reader by Maxim Maksimych. Psychological portrait, sketched by the traveler, adds several characteristic touches to the story of Pechorin’s life. The memory of Maxim Maksimych captured individual confessions of the hero, thanks to which the biography of the “hero of the time” acquired extraordinary credibility. Pechorin belonged to the highest St. Petersburg Read More......
- How cunningly I disturbed the dreams of the heart in a simple-minded maiden! Involuntary, selfless love She innocently surrendered... Well, is my chest now full of melancholy and hateful boredom?... A. S. Pushkin In the novel “Hero of Our Time” Lermontov sets himself the task of describing the character Read More ......
- Pechorin is an educated secular man with a critical mind, dissatisfied with life and not seeing an opportunity for himself to be happy. In the novel it is called “ strange man”, this is what almost all the characters say about him. Pechorin is cruel and selfish. We see this already in Read More......
- Love... Such a beautiful and sublime feeling, which Pechorin treats so thoughtlessly. He is selfish, and beautiful girls who see their ideal in him suffer from this. Bela and Princess Mary, Vera and Undine - so different, but equally painfully hurt by Pechorin, Read More ......
- The main character is Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin, a young man of about twenty-five. In several places in the novel, the author gives a description of the hero’s appearance, indicating some of his character traits. For the first time Pechorin appears in the novel before Maxim Maksimych in the fortress beyond the Terek (“Bela”): “He appeared Read More ......
- Critics wrote: “Lermontov’s secret is the antithesis of omniscience, which leads to the denial of the meaning of life.” It seems to me that Pechorin is moving towards such denial. He loves to unravel other people's secrets, but does not achieve any goal that is gratifying for himself. For Pechorin, secrets disappear, they don’t exist Read More......
- The images of Pechorin and Onegin are similar not only in semantic similarity. V. G. Belinsky noted the spiritual kinship of Onegin and Pechorin: “Their dissimilarity is much less than the distance between Onega and Pechora... Pechorin is the Onegin of our time.” Novels “Eugene Onegin” and “Hero Read More ......
- “The hero of our time, my dear sirs, is like a portrait, but not of one person: it is a portrait made up of the vices of our generation, in their full development. In Pechorin’s diary we find his sincere confession, in which he reveals all his actions and deeds.” Read More......
Pechorin is a very contradictory hero. His character, with deep spiritual qualities, combines paradoxically incompatible traits, and this is why he is interesting. The chapter of Taman, and the story with the smugglers itself, for the first time confronts us with the mystery of this strange officer, which will gradually be revealed to us throughout Pechorin’s diary.
The most important thing is that the first thing that catches your eye is Pechorin’s curiosity. But does every reader understand what caused it? I did not immediately understand the reason for his behavior. But after reading the text, I figured it out. Our hero is a very smart and educated young man. On the very first day in Taman he became bored. “Taman is the worst little town of all the coastal cities of Russia,” he wrote in his diary.
And his desire to find entertainment for himself is quite understandable. It is not surprising that Pechorin, noticing the silhouette of a blind boy, trudged after him to find out what could interest such a child, deprived of nature, at night on the seashore.
The secret of the blind boy mysterious phenomenon Undines and other inexplicable things haunt his imagination. Laughing and ironizing at himself, Pechorin still cannot help but respond to the call of such an alluring, free and anxious life. In this bright moment, he reveals himself as an adventurer, heading towards danger, trying to unravel the mystery of the smugglers. The culmination of his meeting with the “mysterious gang,” in my opinion, was the scene of the frenzied fight between the undine and the officer. Each of them, trying to defeat their opponent, made incredible efforts, because their lives were at stake. The desperation and anger of the insidious girl almost destroyed the confused one, but then it was still endless loving life, Pechorina. It seems to me that it was this love for life, for the beauty and mystery of the world that helped me overcome fear now.
But still, he lost too much control over this feeling, because it almost ruined him. When the undine led him to the sea, he already suspected something was wrong, but decided to go to the end. And if not for his strength, he could well now rest at the bottom of the ocean.
How important it is that, when leaving Taman, he was upset, because “he unwittingly disrupted everyday life honest smugglers" This clearly shows that he knows how to analyze his actions and is ready to be responsible for them. And even though in the chapter “Fatalist,” Pechorin comes to disappointing conclusions: he never overcame fate, but perhaps this is the inconsistency of Pechorin’s character. He is a very intelligent and very interesting person, although often his actions are not burdened with common sense, and he himself obeys only his feelings, but for some reason his honest, poetic perception of the world, his love for life are attractive.
