And maybe my impression isn't accurate, but he fit into the slot between the Nikolay/Pavel and Bazarov characters. He helped break down what I initially hated about Bazarov, because we see his process of learning that he can't get to Bazarov's state. And he's still young, so his "spongeness" seems natural, rather than existing because simply he doesn't have a mind of his own.
Agreed.
To be honest, I didn't get the sense at all that Katya was uninteresting. She was overshadowed by Anna, and Arkady got to "find" her, so to speak. Same way he learned not to take everything Bazarov said by rote. I do agree that Arkady was the thinking everyman, and I felt that that was what Turgenev thought a man should grow into.
And agreed here as well. Bazarov's initial view of Katya wasn't necessarily more accurate than his other views. Certainly, Katya's personality isn't really fleshed out much, but then neither is Arkady's, but she didn't seem uninteresting or unintelligent to me. Just a bit shy and overshadowed by her sister, but less in denial and more able to admit to her feelings.
Russian Book Club: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
- 17/10/2010 01:39:16 AM
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Bazarov
- 17/10/2010 02:12:03 PM
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*NM*
oh, and
- 17/10/2010 06:42:38 PM
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Re: oh, and
- 18/10/2010 12:09:10 AM
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Arkady
- 17/10/2010 02:15:54 PM
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Well, that makes sense
- 17/10/2010 05:12:09 PM
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Re: Well, that makes sense
- 18/10/2010 12:04:05 AM
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See, I liked Arkady
- 17/10/2010 06:08:57 PM
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Re: See, I liked Arkady
- 18/10/2010 10:51:59 PM
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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
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Good book.
- 17/10/2010 06:37:16 PM
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I loved it. Great book.
- 18/10/2010 10:49:27 PM
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I think it's very relevant. It's also unusually un-Russian.
- 18/10/2010 11:54:03 PM
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Yeah... the Russian nobility at the time seems to have been kind of un-Russian, really.
- 20/10/2010 04:03:34 PM
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It felt very Russian to me as well
- 20/10/2010 04:12:50 PM
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There was little of the usual ... histrionics that happen in Russian novels.
- 22/10/2010 07:02:12 PM
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I really wish I'd bought a properly annotated version.
- 22/10/2010 07:07:16 PM
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The answer to that is to just read a great book on Nineteenth Century Russian history.
- 22/10/2010 10:55:06 PM
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Not just Russian, though, there's a lot of mentions of other European history.
- 22/10/2010 11:19:28 PM
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Nikolai and Pavel - I love them.
- 22/10/2010 07:14:11 PM
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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
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