The House of the Dead (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- First Published: 1861
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Autobiographical
- Time of Work: The late 1840’s to the early 1850’s
- Setting: A prison in Siberia
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: Class conflict, Prisoners, Prisons, Crime or criminals, Nineteenth century, Siberia or Siberians
- Locales: Siberia
Characters Discussed
Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov (peh- TROH-vihch gohr-YAN-chih-kov), the narrator of the main body of the work, a former convict and nobleman. He has a philosopher’s curiosity about the characters of people, sometimes speaking in the voice of a social reformer but more often simply awed and fascinated by the human soul itself. His incarceration has changed his life, but he writes a dispassionate memoir. He has found in the prison his ideal observatory, examining there the many strange specimens to be found among the souls of men. Goryanchikov supposedly...
[The entire page is 958 words long]
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