![]() ![]() This spoof is partly Gogol satirising the bureaucratic tardiness of the census, partly poking fun at the idea that social status can be based on ownership of dead names on paper, and partly having a go at the greed and stupidity of the landowners – because when Chichikov offers to buy up these souls, he is met with the suspicion that he is ripping them off or breaking the law, and there is hard bargaining to get a better deal for them. The dead souls are serfs who are registered in the census as part of a landowner’s property, but though the landowner still has to pay tax on them, are (obviously) no longer alive. It’s the story of Chichikov, who travels around provincial Russia on a quest to buy ‘dead souls’. ![]() Dead Souls is Nikolai Gogol’s masterpiece, and it’s very droll indeed. ![]()
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