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A Hero of Our Time

Name: A Hero of Our Time
Author: Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov

1840 · 19th Century · Novel · Russian

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Abstract

Written: 1838-1840
Setting: 1830s; The Caucasus: frontier forts, Taman and the spa of Pyatigorsk
Author: Mikhail Lermontov (trans. J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray)
Country: Russia
Language: Russian
Genre: Russian psychological novel
Form: Novel in five linked stories
Recommended: Grades 10–12 (Cynical antihero, a duel and a seduction plot; best for grades 10-12.)

Frame. A traveller crossing the mountains of Georgia hears an old officer's tale and later obtains the private diary of the man it concerns.

Abduction. At a remote fort a restless lieutenant buys a chieftain's daughter with a stolen stallion, wins her, wearies of her, and sees her killed by a vengeful horseman.

Reunion. Years on, the veteran rushes joyfully to greet his former comrade and receives a cool handshake, a hurt that ends the friendship.

Smugglers. The diary tells of a moonlit night on the Black Sea coast when a mysterious girl lures the officer into a boat and tries to throw him overboard.

Spa. At a fashionable resort he courts a young princess for sport, rekindles an old affair, and shoots a jealous rival on a cliff edge; another officer's gamble with a pistol raises the riddle of destiny.

Reading. Lermontov's portrait of a brilliant, empty man opened the way for the great Russian novelists and gives students much to debate about responsibility and character. Classes can trace how each narrator brings the reader closer to the hero's mind, and ask whether understanding him makes his cruelty easier or harder to forgive.

Main characters

Pechorin: A gifted, bored young officer who brings misery to others.
Maksim Maksimych: A kind, simple veteran of the Caucasus.
Bela: A Circassian girl abducted for Pechorin.
Princess Mary: A spa visitor whom Pechorin makes fall in love with him.
Grushnitsky: A vain young man who becomes Pechorin's rival.
Vera: A married woman still devoted to Pechorin.
Vulich: A Serbian gambler who tests fate.

Summary

A Hero of Our Time, published in 1840, is Mikhail Lermontov's only completed novel and one of the founding works of Russian prose fiction. It is made up of five linked stories about Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, a young officer serving in the Caucasus, told from different points of view. In this 1912 English translation by J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray the stories appear as Bela, Maksim Maksimych, Taman, The Fatalist and Princess Mary, followed by the author's preface to the second edition. In Bela, a travelling narrator hears from the kindly old staff captain Maksim Maksimych how Pechorin, stationed at a frontier fort, arranged the abduction of a local prince's daughter, Bela, by trading her brother a famous horse belonging to the bandit Kazbich. Pechorin wins Bela's love, soon tires of her, and she is mortally wounded by Kazbich. In Maksim Maksimych the narrator witnesses Pechorin meet his old comrade again and treat him with cold indifference, which deeply hurts the captain. The narrator then publishes extracts from Pechorin's journal. In Taman, Pechorin stumbles on a band of smugglers in a seaside town, and a girl tries to drown him. In Princess Mary, the longest story, set at the spa of Pyatigorsk, he amuses himself by making the young Princess Mary fall in love with him to spite his acquaintance Grushnitsky, while renewing an affair with Vera, a married woman he once loved. Grushnitsky and his friends plot against him; in a duel on a cliff edge Pechorin kills Grushnitsky, loses Vera, coldly rejects Mary, and is sent to a remote fort. In The Fatalist, a Serbian officer, Vulich, tests predestination by firing a pistol at his own head; it misfires, but he is killed that same night by a drunken Cossack, whom Pechorin then captures. In his preface Lermontov explains that his hero is a portrait of the vices of his generation, not of one man. The novel is a sharp psychological study of boredom, pride and wasted talent.

Virtues in this work

Friendship: Maksim Maksimych shows loyal, simple friendship that Pechorin fails to return.
Fortitude: Pechorin faces death in the duel without flinching, though for poor ends.

Plot or Argument

Bela
An old captain describes how Pechorin seized a local princess, won her and then grew tired of her.
Maksim Maksimych
Pechorin meets the captain again and wounds him with his coldness.
Taman
Pechorin's journal tells how he blundered into a band of smugglers.
The Fatalist
An officer's wager on predestination ends in a strange death.
Princess Mary
At a spa Pechorin toys with a young princess and kills a rival in a duel.

Characters

Pechorin, protagonist
A gifted, bored young officer who brings misery to others.
Maksim Maksimych, staff captain
A kind, simple veteran of the Caucasus.
Bela, princess
A Circassian girl abducted for Pechorin.
Princess Mary, young noblewoman
A spa visitor whom Pechorin makes fall in love with him.
Grushnitsky, cadet
A vain young man who becomes Pechorin's rival.
Vera, former love
A married woman still devoted to Pechorin.
Vulich, officer
A Serbian gambler who tests fate.

Lessons

The superfluous man
Pechorin has talent and energy but no purpose, so he turns them against other people.
- What does Pechorin want?
- Why does he hurt those who love him?
- Is he to blame, or his society?
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Point of view
Lermontov shows Pechorin first through others' eyes and then through his own journal.
- How does our view of Pechorin change?
- Why does the novel not run in chronological order?
- Which narrator do you trust most?
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Fate and freedom
The Fatalist asks whether our deaths are written in advance.
- What does Vulich's wager prove?
- How does Pechorin respond?
- Do you believe in fate?
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Context

Lermontov wrote under Tsar Nicholas I, when censorship was strict and many educated officers served in the long wars of conquest in the Caucasus. Byron's influence on Russian Romanticism was strong.

Composition

The stories appeared partly in a journal and were collected in 1840; Lermontov added his preface in 1841.

Reception

Critics argued over whether Pechorin was a slander on Russian youth; the novel became a model for later Russian psychological fiction.

Isolation / Alienation Identity Self Fate / Free Will Love Desire Honor Shame

Comparisons

Fathers and Sons
Turgenev's portrait of a younger generation.
Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky's study of a proud, alienated young man.

Quotes

“ambition is nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will.”

— Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, Princess Mary, trans. J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray (1912).Quote card

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“And if predestination really exists, why are free will and reason granted us? Why are we obliged to render an account of our actions?”

— Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, The Fatalist, trans. J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray (1912).Quote card

Troilus and Criseyde, Medical lens
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Essays and Aphorisms, On Human Nature, 'Free-will and Fatalism'
while our several actions are in no wise free, every man's individual character is to be regarded as a free act Schopenhauer's compatibilism, borrowed from Kant: empirical necessity, transcendental freedom.
The Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 2.11–2.30
Krishna's argument that the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead, because the self is eternal.
The Collar, Lesson: Sons, not slaves
Sons, not slaves. The speaker has been arguing as a servant who wants to be let go, but the voice calls him Childe. The ending changes the relationship he thought he was in, from a hired hand counting his wages to a son addressed by his father.
The Innocence of Father Brown, The Blue Cross
Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? Flambeau asks how a celibate simpleton could know so much about thieves' tricks.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

How Maksim Maksimych describes Pechorin.
The captain's hurt at the reunion.
Pechorin's own analysis of his motives.
The conditions of the duel on the cliff.
Vulich's wager and its outcome.

Key terms and names

Superfluous man: A Russian literary type: a talented man with no useful role in society.
Byronic hero: A proud, moody, rebellious hero modeled on Lord Byron's characters.
Frame narrative: A story presented inside another story by a different narrator.
Fatalism: The belief that events are fixed in advance and cannot be changed.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension How does Pechorin obtain Bela?
Comprehension Why does Grushnitsky challenge Pechorin?
Comprehension What happens to Vulich?
Interpretation Why does the author call Pechorin a hero of our time?
Interpretation What does Pechorin's journal reveal that others cannot see?
Big Question Can boredom make a person cruel?

Faith Connections

Ecclesiastes 1:14 (Scripture)
All is vanity and vexation of spirit; Pechorin finds the world empty.
Matthew 16:26 (Scripture)
What profit is it to gain the world and lose one's soul?

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A generation with gifts but no purpose turns its energy into cruelty and self-destruction.

Rhetorical device: irony. The title calls Pechorin a hero while showing him as a portrait of vices.

Debate: Resolved: that Pechorin is responsible for the harm he does.

Memory Work

ambition is nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will.
Princess Mary, trans. J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray (1912). Pechorin's frank confession of his love of power.

Writing Prompts

Essay: How does Lermontov's use of several narrators shape our judgment of Pechorin?

Comparison with Fathers and Sons: Compare Pechorin with Bazarov in Fathers and Sons.

Creative Prompts

Essay
Is Pechorin a villain, a victim, or both?
Fiction
Write a journal entry by Princess Mary after the duel.
Classroom
Debate whether Vulich's wager proves anything about fate.