He is a bit of a non-entity. Or, rather, he is everyman. Rather than succumb to ideals and principles and become a sort of tragic hero, like Bazarov, he takes the conventional course of marrying the least interesting woman he can find.
Interesting, because I felt that Katya was the wisest of the characters in the book.
She understands herself, her abilities and limitations, and she deals well with the people around her. I liked her very much.
The only interesting thing about Arkady is the people he surrounds himself with. He is like a hub. Bazarov, Nikolai and Pavel Petrovich, Ondintsova, they are all interesting. Arkady just takes on the flavour of whoever he approaches. He is a sponge.
He's a puppy, just a kid for all of his great 22 years (that little bit made me giggle).
*MySmiley*
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
Russian Book Club: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
- 17/10/2010 01:39:16 AM
867 Views
Bazarov
- 17/10/2010 02:12:03 PM
687 Views
*NM*
oh, and
- 17/10/2010 06:42:38 PM
576 Views
Re: oh, and
- 18/10/2010 12:09:10 AM
556 Views
Arkady
- 17/10/2010 02:15:54 PM
543 Views
Well, that makes sense
- 17/10/2010 05:12:09 PM
549 Views
Re: Well, that makes sense
- 18/10/2010 12:04:05 AM
572 Views
See, I liked Arkady
- 17/10/2010 06:08:57 PM
507 Views
Re: Arkady
- 22/10/2010 07:09:14 PM
583 Views
Oh...Rebekah, I was going to mention that I saw your post only much later because I was very drunk.
- 17/10/2010 05:13:41 PM
576 Views
Good book.
- 17/10/2010 06:37:16 PM
589 Views
I loved it. Great book.
- 18/10/2010 10:49:27 PM
527 Views
I think it's very relevant. It's also unusually un-Russian.
- 18/10/2010 11:54:03 PM
500 Views
Yeah... the Russian nobility at the time seems to have been kind of un-Russian, really.
- 20/10/2010 04:03:34 PM
554 Views
It felt very Russian to me as well
- 20/10/2010 04:12:50 PM
516 Views
There was little of the usual ... histrionics that happen in Russian novels.
- 22/10/2010 07:02:12 PM
563 Views
I really wish I'd bought a properly annotated version.
- 22/10/2010 07:07:16 PM
580 Views
The answer to that is to just read a great book on Nineteenth Century Russian history.
- 22/10/2010 10:55:06 PM
580 Views
Not just Russian, though, there's a lot of mentions of other European history.
- 22/10/2010 11:19:28 PM
525 Views
Nikolai and Pavel - I love them.
- 22/10/2010 07:14:11 PM
662 Views
Perhaps it's Pavel's "The Chap"-ish nature that makes the novel seem less Russian to me.
- 22/10/2010 10:53:56 PM
651 Views