Russian literature has given us a cavalcade of both positive and negative characters. We decided to recall the second group. Spoiler alert.

20. Alexey Molchalin (Alexander Griboyedov, "Woe from Wit")

Molchalin - the hero "about nothing", the secretary of Famusov. He is faithful to the behest of his father: "to please all people without exception - the owner, the boss, his servant, the janitor's dog."

In a conversation with Chatsky, he expounds his life principles, consisting in the fact that "in my years you should not dare to have your own judgment."

Molchalin is sure that you need to think and act as is customary in the "Famus" society, otherwise they will gossip about you, and, as you know, " gossips worse than pistols. "

He despises Sophia, but is ready, for the sake of pleasing Famusov, to sit with her all night long, playing the role of a lover.

19. Grushnitsky (Mikhail Lermontov, "A Hero of Our Time")

Grushnitsky has no name in Lermontov's story. He is the "double" of the main character - Pechorin. According to Lermontov's description, Grushnitsky is “... one of those people who have ready-made pompous phrases for all occasions, who are simply not touched by the beautiful and who are importantly draped into extraordinary feelings, lofty passions and exceptional suffering. To produce an effect is their pleasure ... ”.

Grushnitsky is very fond of pathos. There is not an ounce of sincerity in him. Grushnitsky is in love with Princess Mary, and at first she responds to him with special attention, but then falls in love with Pechorin.

The case ends in a duel. Grushnitsky is so low that he conspires with friends and they do not load Pechorin's pistol. The hero cannot forgive such blatant meanness. He reloads the pistol and kills Grushnitsky.

18. Afanasy Totsky (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot)

Afanasy Totsky, having taken Nastya Barashkova, the daughter of a deceased neighbor, into the upbringing and support, eventually “became close to her,” developing a suicidal complex in the girl and indirectly becoming one of the culprits of her death.

Extremely greedy for the female sex, at the age of 55, Totsky decided to link his life with the daughter of General Epanchin Alexandra, deciding to marry Nastasya for Ganya Ivolgin. However, neither the one nor the other case worked out. As a result, Totsky "was captivated by one visiting French woman, a marquess and a Legitimist."

17. Alena Ivanovna (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment")

The old woman pawnbroker is a character who has become a household name. Even those who have not read Dostoevsky's novel have heard of her. Alena Ivanovna is not that old by today's standards, she is “60 years old”, but the author describes her as follows: “... a dry old woman with sharp and angry eyes with a small pointed nose ... Her blond, slightly gray hair was greased with oil. On her thin and long neck, similar to a chicken leg, there was some kind of flannel rags… ”.

The old woman pawnbroker is engaged in usury and profits from the grief of the people. She takes valuable things at a huge interest, treats her little sister Lizaveta, hits her.

16. Arkady Svidrigailov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment")

Svidrigailov is one of Raskolnikov's doubles in Dostoevsky's novel, a widower, at one time he was ransomed by his wife from prison, he lived in the village for 7 years. A cynical and depraved person. He is responsible for the suicide of a servant, a 14-year-old girl, possibly the poisoning of his wife.

Due to the harassment of Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov's sister lost her job. Learning that Raskolnikov is a murderer, Luzhin blackmails Dunya. The girl shoots at Svidrigailov and misses.

Svidrigailov is an ideological scoundrel, he does not experience moral torment and experiences "world boredom", eternity seems to him "a bathhouse with spiders." As a result, he commits suicide with a shot from a revolver.

15. Kabanikha (Alexander Ostrovsky, "The Thunderstorm")

In the image of the Kabanikha, one of central characters of the play "The Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky reflected the departing patriarchal, strict archaism. Kabanova Marfa Ignatievna - "a rich merchant's wife, widow", mother-in-law of Katerina, mother of Tikhon and Varvara.

The boar is very domineering and strong, she is religious, but more outwardly, since she does not believe in either forgiveness or mercy. She is as practical as possible and lives by earthly interests.

Kabanikha is sure that family life he can only survive on fear and orders: “Because of love, parents are strict with you, because of love they scold you, everyone thinks to teach good”. She perceives the departure of the old order as a personal tragedy: “This is how the old man is brought out… What will happen, how the elders will die,… I don’t know”.

14. Lady (Ivan Turgenev, "Mumu")

We all know sad story about the fact that Gerasim drowned Mumu, but not everyone remembers why he did it, but he did it because the tyrannical lady ordered him to do so.

The same landowner had previously betrayed the washerwoman Tatiana, in whom Gerasim was in love, for the drunkard shoemaker Kapiton, which ruined both of them.
The lady, at her discretion, decides the fate of her serfs, in no way taking into account their wishes, and sometimes even with common sense.

13. Lackey Yasha (Anton Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard")

Lackey Yasha in the play by Anton Chekhov " The Cherry Orchard"- the character is unpleasant. He openly adores everything foreign, while he is extremely ignorant, rude and even boorish. When his mother comes to him from the village and waits for him all day in the room, Yasha dismissively declares: "It is very necessary, she could come tomorrow as well."

Yasha tries to behave decently in public, tries to seem educated and well-mannered, but at the same time, alone with Firs, he says to the old man: “You are tired, grandfather. If only you would die as soon as possible.

Yasha is very proud to have lived abroad. With a foreign veneer, he wins the heart of the maid Dunyasha, but takes advantage of her location for his own benefit. After the sale of the estate, the footman persuades Ranevskaya to take him back to Paris with her. It is impossible for him to remain in Russia: "the country is uneducated, the people are immoral, moreover, boredom ...".

12. Pavel Smerdyakov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

Smerdyakov is a character with speaking surname, according to rumors, the illegitimate son of Fyodor Karrmazov from the city holy fool Lizaveta the Smerdish. The surname Smerdyakov was given to him by Fyodor Pavlovich in honor of his mother.

Smerdyakov serves as a cook in the house of Karamazov, while he cooks, apparently, well. However, this is a "man with foulbrood". At least Smerdyakov's reasoning about history testifies to this: “In the twelfth year there was a great invasion of the Emperor Napoleon of France the first, and it’s good, if we were then conquered by these very French, an intelligent nation would have conquered a very stupid one, sir and annexed it. There would even be completely different orders. "

Smerdyakov is the murderer of Karamazov the father.

11. Peter Luzhin (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment")

Luzhin is another of Rodion Raskolnikov's doubles, business man 45 years old, "with a cautious and grumpy face."

Having escaped "from rags to riches", Luzhin is proud of his pseudo-education, behaves arrogantly and primly. Having made an offer to Duna, he anticipates that she will be grateful to him all her life for the fact that he "brought her to the people."

He also wooes Duna by calculation, believing that she will be useful to him for his career. Luzhin hates Raskolnikov, because he opposes their union with Dunya. Luzhin puts a hundred rubles in Sonya Marmeladova's pocket at her father's funeral, accusing her of stealing.

10. Kirila Troekurov (Alexander Pushkin, "Dubrovsky")

Troekurov is an example of a Russian master spoiled by his power and environment. He spends time in idleness, drunkenness, voluptuousness. Troekurov sincerely believes in his impunity and unlimited possibilities (“This is the power to take away property without any right”).

The master loves his daughter Masha, but passes her off as an old man she does not love. The serfs of Troyekurov are similar to their master - the Troyekurov hound is insolent to Dubrovsky the elder - and thus quarrels old friends.

9. Sergei Talberg (Mikhail Bulgakov, "White Guard")

Sergei Talberg is the husband of Elena Turbina, a traitor and opportunist. He easily changes his principles, beliefs, without much effort and remorse. Thalberg is always where it is easier to live, so he runs abroad. He leaves his family, friends. Even Talberg's eyes (which, as you know, are the "mirror of the soul") are "two-story", he is the complete opposite Turbin.

Thalberg was the first to put on a red armband at a military school in March 1917 and, as a member of the military committee, arrested the famous General Petrov.

8. Alexey Shvabrin (Alexander Pushkin, "The Captain's Daughter")

Shvabrin is the opposite of the protagonist of Pushkin's story "The Captain's Daughter" by Pyotr Grinev. V Belogorsk fortress he was exiled for murder in a duel. Shvabrin is undoubtedly smart, but at the same time he is cunning, impudent, cynical, and mocking. Having received a refusal from Masha Mironova, he spreads dirty rumors about her, in a duel with Grinev he wounds him in the back, goes over to the side of Pugachev, and when captured by the government troops, spreads rumors that Grinev is a traitor. In general, he is a trash person.

7. Vasilisa Kostyleva (Maxim Gorky, "At the bottom")

In Gorky's play At the Bottom, everything is sad and sad. This atmosphere is diligently maintained by the owners of the hostel where the action takes place - the Kostylevs. The husband is a disgusting cowardly and greedy old man, Vasilisa's wife is a calculating, resourceful adaptation, forcing her lover Vaska Ash to steal for her sake. When she finds out that he himself is in love with her sister, he promises to give her up in exchange for the murder of her husband.

6. Mazepa (Alexander Pushkin, "Poltava")

Mazepa is a historical character, but if in history the role of Mazepa is ambiguous, then in Pushkin's poem Mazepa is definitely negative character... Mazepa appears in the poem as an absolutely immoral, dishonest, vindictive, spiteful person, as a treacherous hypocrite for whom there is nothing sacred (he “does not know what is holy”, “does not remember benevolence”), a person who is accustomed to achieving his goal at any cost.

The seducer of his young goddaughter Maria, he betrays her father Kochubei to public execution and - already sentenced to death - subjects brutal torture to find out where he hid his treasures. Without equivocation, Pushkin denounces the political activity of Mazepa, which is determined only by the lust for power and the thirst for revenge on Peter.

5. Foma Opiskin (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants")

Foma Opiskin - extremely negative character... Acquaintance, hypocrite, liar. He painstakingly portrays piety and education, tells everyone about his supposedly ascetic experience and sparkles with quotes from books ...

When he gets his hands on power, he shows his true essence... “The low soul, coming out of oppression, itself oppresses. Thomas was oppressed - and he immediately felt the need to oppress himself; they broke over him - and he himself began to break over others. He was a jester and immediately felt the need to turn on his jesters as well. He boasted to the point of absurdity, broke down to the point of impossibility, demanded bird milk, tyrannized without measure, and it got to the point that kind people, having not yet witnessed all these tricks, and listening only to tales, they considered it all a miracle, an obsession, were baptized and spat ... ”.

4. Victor Komarovsky (Boris Pasternak, "Doctor Zhivago")

Advocate Komarovsky is a negative character in Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago. In the fates of the main characters - Zhivago and Lara, Komarovsky is an "evil genius" and a "gray eminence". He is guilty of the ruin of the Zhivago family and the death of the protagonist's father; he cohabitates with Lara's mother and with Lara herself. Finally, Komarovsky tricked Zhivago away from his wife. Komarovsky is smart, calculating, greedy, cynical. Overall, bad person... He himself understands this, but it suits him perfectly.

3. Judas Golovlev (Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, "Lord Golovlevs")

Porfiry Vladimirovich Golovlev, nicknamed Judushka and Blood Drinker, is "the last representative of the extinct family." He is hypocritical, greedy, cowardly, calculating. He spends his life in endless slander and litigation, brings his son to suicide, while imitating extreme religiosity, reading prayers "without the participation of the heart."

Towards the end of my dark life Golovlev gets drunk and runs wild, goes into a March blizzard. In the morning they find his numb corpse.

2. Andriy (Nikolay Gogol, "Taras Bulba")

Andriy - younger son Taras Bulba, the hero of the story of the same name by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Andriy, as Gogol writes, from an early youth began to feel "the need for love." This need brings him down. He falls in love with panochka, betrays his homeland, friends, and father. Andriy confesses: “Who said that my motherland is Ukraine? Who gave it to me in my homeland? The Fatherland is what our soul is looking for, what is dearer to it than everything. You are my fatherland! ... and I will sell everything that is, I will give it, I will ruin it for such a fatherland! "
Andrii is a traitor. His own father kills him.

1. Fyodor Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov")

He is voluptuous, greedy, envious, stupid. By the time he reached maturity, he began to drink a lot, opened several taverns, made many of his fellow countrymen debtors ... He began to compete with his eldest son Dmitry for the heart of Grushenka Svetlova, which paved the way for the crime - Karamazov was killed by his illegitimate son Peter Smerdyakov.

1. The meaning of the terms "hero", "character"

2. Character and character

3. The structure of the literary hero

4. Character system

1. The meaning of the terms "hero", "character"

The word hero has a rich history. Translated from Greek "heros" means a demigod, a deified person. In pre-Homeric times (X-IX centuries BC), the heroes in Ancient Greece the children of a god and a mortal woman or a mortal and a goddess were called (Hercules, Dionysus, Achilles, Aeneas, etc.). Heroes were worshiped, poems were composed in honor of them, temples were erected for them. The right to the name of the hero gave the advantage of the clan, the origin. The hero served as an intermediary between the earth and Olympus, he helped people to comprehend the will of the gods, sometimes he himself acquired the wonderful functions of a deity.

Such a function, for example, is received by the beautiful Helen in the ancient Greek temple legend-fairy tale about the healing of the daughter of a friend of Ariston, the king of the Spartans. This nameless friend of the king, as the legend tells, had a very beautiful wife, being very ugly in infancy. The nurse often carried the girl to Elena's temple and prayed to the goddess to save the girl from ugliness (Elena had her own temple in Sparta). And Elena came and helped the girl.

In the era of Homer (VIII century BC) and up to the literature of the V century BC. inclusively, the word "hero" is filled with a different meaning. It is not only a descendant of the gods that turns into a hero. Any mortal who has achieved outstanding success in earthly life becomes it; any person who has made a name for himself in the field of war, morality, travel. Such are the heroes of Homer (Menelaus, Patroclus, Penelope, Odysseus), such is Theseus Bacchilis. The authors call these people "heroes" because they became famous for certain exploits and, thereby, went beyond the historical and geographical.

Finally, starting from the 5th century BC, not only an outstanding person, but any “husband”, both “noble” and “worthless”, who got into the world of literary work, turned into a hero. The hero is also a craftsman, messenger, servant and even a slave. Aristotle scientifically substantiates such a decrease, desacralization of the hero's image. In "Poetics" - the chapter "Parts of the tragedy. Heroes of tragedy "- he notes that the hero may no longer be distinguished by" (special) virtue and justice. " He becomes a hero simply by falling into tragedy and experiencing the "terrible".

In literary criticism, the meaning of the term "hero" is very ambiguous. Historically, this meaning grows out of the above meanings. However, in theoretical terms, it reveals a new, transformed content, which is read at several semantic levels: artistic reality works, actually literature and ontology as a science of being.

V artistic world of creation, a hero is any person endowed with external appearance and internal content. This is not a passive observer, but an actant, a person who actually acts in the work (translated from Latin “actant” means “acting”). The hero in the work necessarily creates something, protects someone. the main task the hero at this level is the assimilation and transformation of poetic reality, the construction of artistic meaning. At the general literary level, the hero is artistic image a person who summarizes the most specific traits reality; residing repeated patterns of being. In this regard, the hero is the bearer of certain ideological principles, expresses the author's intention. He models a special imprint of being, becomes the seal of the era. Classic example- this is Lermontovsky Pechorin, "the hero of our time." Finally, at the ontological level, the hero forms special way knowledge of the world. He must bring people the truth, acquaint them with the variety of forms human life... In this regard, the hero is a spiritual guide, guiding the reader through all circles of human life and showing the way to the truth, God. Such is Virgil D. Alighieri (" The Divine Comedy»), Faust I. Goethe, Ivan Flyagin N.S. Leskova ("The Enchanted Wanderer") dr.

The term "hero" is often adjacent to the term "character" (sometimes these words are understood as synonyms). The word "character" French origin, however, has Latin roots. Translated from Latin"Regzopa" is a person, a person, a mask. The ancient Romans called "persona" the mask worn by the actor before the performance: tragic or comic. In literary criticism, a character is a subject of a literary action, a statement in a work. The character represents social image a person, his external, perceptible person.

However, the hero and the character are not the same thing. The hero is something whole, complete; character - partial, requiring explanation. The hero embodies an eternal idea, is destined for the highest spiritual and practical activity; the character simply denotes the presence of a person; "Works" as an extra. The hero is the masked actor, and the character is only the mask.

2. Character and character

A character easily turns into a hero if he gets an individual, personal dimension or character. According to Aristotle, character is related to the manifestation of the direction of "will, whatever it may be."

V modern literary criticism character is the unique personality of a character; his internal appearance; that is, everything that makes a person a person, that distinguishes him from other people. In other words, the character is the same actor who plays behind the mask - the character. The character is based on the inner "I" of a person, his self. The character shows the image of the soul with all its searches and mistakes, hopes and disappointments. It denotes the versatility of human individuality; reveals her moral and spiritual potential.

The character can be simple or complex. The simple character is solid and static. He endows the hero with an unshakable set of values; makes it either positive or negative. Positive and negative characters usually divide the character system of the work into two warring factions. For example: patriots and aggressors in the tragedy of Aeschylus ("Persians"); Russians and foreigners (Englishmen) in the story of N.S. Leskov "Levsha"; The “last” and “multitudes” in the story by A.G. Malyshkina "The Fall of Dyr".

Simple characters are traditionally combined in pairs, most often on the basis of opposition (Shvabrin - Grinev in “ Captain's daughter"A.S. Pushkin, Javert - Bishop Myriel in "Les Miserables" by V. Hugo). Opposition sharpens the merits of positive heroes and belittles the merits of negative heroes. It does not arise only on an ethical basis. It is also formed by philosophical oppositions (such is the opposition of Joseph Knecht and Plinio Designori in the novel by G. Hesse "The Glass Bead Game).

A complex character manifests itself in a constant search, internal evolution. It expresses the diversity mental life personality. He opens as the lightest, high aspirations human soul, and its darkest, basest impulses. In a complex character, on the one hand, the prerequisites for human degradation are laid (“Ionych” by AP Chekhov); on the other hand, the possibility of his future transformation and salvation. Complex character is very difficult to define in the dyad "positive" and "negative". As a rule, it stands between these terms or, more precisely, above them. It condenses the paradox, the contradictory nature of life; concentrates all the most mysterious and strange that constitutes the secret of man. Such are the heroes of F.M. Dostoevsky R. Musil, A. Strindberg and others.

3. The structure of the literary hero

Literary hero- the person is complex, multifaceted. He can live in several dimensions at once: objective, subjective, divine, demonic, book (Master MA Bulgakov). However, in his relations with society, nature, other people (everything that is opposite to his personality), the literary hero is always binaric. He gets two forms: internal and external. He goes in two ways: introverting and extroverting. In the aspect of introversion, the hero is “thinking in advance” (let's use the eloquent terminology of CG Jung) Prometheus. He lives in a world of feelings, dreams, dreams. In the aspect of extra-version, the literary hero is "acting and then pondering" Epitemeus. He lives in real world for the sake of its active development.

To create external appearance the hero "works" his portrait, profession, age, history (or past). The portrait gives the hero a face and figure; teaches him a complex distinctive features(fatness, thinness in the story of A.P. Chekhov "Fat and Thin") and bright, recognizable habits (a characteristic wound in the neck of partisan Levinson from A.I. Fadeev's novel "The Defeat").

Very often, a portrait becomes a means of psychologizing and testifies to some character traits. As, for example, in famous portrait Pechorin, given through the eyes of a narrator, a certain itinerant officer: “He (Pechorin - PK) was of average height; his slender slender waist and broad shoulders proved a strong build, capable of enduring all the difficulties of nomadic life<…>... His gait was casual and lazy, but I noticed that he did not wave his arms - a sure sign of secrecy. "

The profession, vocation, age, history of the hero pedal the process of socialization. The profession and vocation give the hero the right to socially useful activities. Age determines the potential for certain actions. The story of his past, parents, country and place where he lives, gives the hero a sensually tangible realism, historical concreteness.

The inner appearance of the hero is made up of his worldview, ethical beliefs, thoughts, affections, faith, statements and actions. The worldview and ethical convictions endow the hero with the necessary ontological and value orientations; give meaning to its existence. Attachments and thoughts outline the manifold life of the soul. Faith (or lack thereof) determines the presence of the hero in the spiritual field, his relationship to God and the Church (in the literature of Christian countries). Actions and statements indicate the results of the interaction of the soul and spirit.

Literature: L.Ya. Ginzburg "On the literary hero". M., 1979.

With a literary hero, the writer expresses his understanding of a person, taken from a certain point of view in the interaction of features selected by the writer. In this sense, the literary hero simulates a person. Like any aesthetic phenomenon, the person depicted in literature is not an abstraction, but a concrete unity. But a unity that is not reducible to a particular, isolated case (as a person can be in a chronicle narrative), a unity that has an expanding, symbolic meaning, which is therefore capable of representing an idea. The writer models a certain complex of ideas about a person (ethical-philosophical, social, cultural-historical, biological, psychological, linguistic). The literary tradition, inherited narrative forms and the author's singular intentions build from this complex an artistic image of a person.

As in life, when reading a work of fiction, we instantly classify an unfamiliar hero as one or another social, psychological, everyday category: this is a condition for communication between a person and a character. There are physical formulas for recognition (red-haired, fat, lanky), social formulas (man, merchant, artisan, nobleman), moral and psychological (good-natured, merry fellow, miser).

A fully literary hero is learned retrospectively. But the character is not only the result: the artistic value arises in the process of the reading itself (the sharpness of the first reading).

The very first meeting should be marked by recognition, some kind of instantly emerging concept (typological and psychological identification of the character). The exposition gives the original formula of character, which can either be destroyed or, on the contrary, be developed. The hero of an epic, a knightly romance, a courtly romance - a hero, a knight, an ideal young nobleman - all of them express the norms and ideals of the environment, Byronic hero destroys them.

The Byronic hero is recognizable from the very first pages (Benjamin Constant "Adolf"). For example, a publisher met a man who was very silent and sad. His first phrase: “I don’t care if I’m here or elsewhere,” - speaks of the romantic nature of the hero.

Literary hero as a character

Any hero in a literary work is a character, but not every character is recognized as a hero. The word “hero” usually denotes the main character, the “bearer of the main event” (M. Bakhtin) in a literary work, as well as the point of view of reality, himself and other characters that is significant for the author-creator. That is, this is the other, whose consciousness and deed express for the author the essence of the world he creates. The persons of the second plan are perceived as service ones, necessary not by themselves, but for illumination and understanding of the “persons of the first plan”. The reader can argue with the heroes, since in the process of reading there is a feeling of full rights and special independence of the hero (Tatiana, unexpectedly for the author, got married).

How does the hero differ from other characters:

significance for the development of the plot (without his participation, the main plot events cannot take place);

the hero is the subject of utterances that dominate the speech structure of works.

A literary character is a series of successive appearances of one person within a given text. Throughout one text, the hero can appear in a variety of forms: mentioning him in the speeches of other characters, the author's or narrator's narration about events related to the character, the image of his thoughts, experiences, speeches, appearance, scenes in which he takes part in words, gestures, actions, etc. That is, there is a mechanism of gradual build-up of the hero's image.

Repetitive, more or less stable features form the character's properties.

Who it literary character? We devote our article to this issue. In it we will tell you where this name came from, what literary characters and images are, and how to describe them in literature lessons at will or at the request of the teacher.

Also from our article you will learn what an "eternal" image is and what images are called eternal.

Literary hero or character. Who is this?

We often hear the term "literary character". But what we are talking about, few can explain. And even schoolchildren who have recently returned from a literature lesson often find it difficult to answer the question. What is this mysterious word "character"?

It came to us from ancient Latin (persona, personnage). Meaning - "personality", "person", "face".

So, a literary character is a protagonist It is mainly about prose genres, since images in poetry are usually called " lyrical hero".

It is impossible to write a story or a poem, a novel or a story without actors. Otherwise, it will be a senseless set, if not words, then, possibly, events. The heroes are people and animals, mythological and fantastic creatures, inanimate objects, for example, Andersen's steadfast tin soldier, historical figures and even entire nations.

Classification of literary heroes

They can confuse any literary connoisseur with their number. And it is especially difficult for secondary school students. Especially because they prefer to play their favorite game instead of performing homework... How to classify heroes if the teacher or, even worse, the examiner requires it?

The safest option is to classify the characters according to their importance in the work. On this basis, literary heroes are divided into major and minor. Without the main character, the work and its plot will be a set of words. But with a loss minor characters we will lose a certain branch storyline or the expressiveness of events. But in general, the work will not suffer.

The second variant of the classification is more limited and is not suitable for all works, but for fairy tales and fantastic genres. This is the division of heroes into positive and negative. For example, in the tale of Cinderella, poor Cinderella herself - positive hero, she evokes pleasant emotions, you sympathize with her. And here are the sisters and angry stepmother- clearly heroes of a completely different warehouse.

Character characteristics. How to write?

Heroes literary works sometimes (especially in a literature lesson at school) they need a detailed description. But how do you write it? The option "there was such a hero. He is from a fairy tale about this and that" is clearly not suitable if the assessment is important. We will share with you a safe bet writing a description of a literary (and any other) hero. We offer you a plan with brief explanations of what and how to write.

• Introduction. Name the work and the hero you will be talking about. You can also add here why you want to describe it.
• The place of the hero in the story (novel, story, etc.). Here you can write whether he is major or minor, positive or negative, person or mythical or historical person.
• Appearance. It will not be superfluous with quotes, which will show you as an attentive reader, and even add volume to your characterization.
• Character. Everything is clear here.
• Actions and their characteristics in your opinion.
• Conclusions.

That's all. Save this plan for yourself, and it will come in handy more than once.

Notable literary characters

Although the very concept of a literary hero may seem completely unfamiliar to you, if you tell you the name of a hero, you will most likely remember a lot. Especially it concerns famous characters literature such as Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes or Robin Hood, Assol or Cinderella, Alice or Pippi Longstocking.

Such heroes are called famous literary characters. These names are familiar to children and adults from many countries and even continents. Not knowing them is a sign of narrow-mindedness and ignorance. Therefore, if you have no time to read the work itself, ask someone to tell you about these characters.

The concept of the image in literature

Along with the character, you can often hear the concept of "image". What is it? The same as the hero or not? The answer will be both positive and negative, because a literary character may well be literally, but the image itself does not have to be a character.

Often we call this or that hero an image, but in the same way, nature can appear in a work. And then the theme of the examination sheet can be "the image of nature in the story ...". What should be done in this case? The answer is in the question itself: if we are talking about nature, you need to characterize its place in the work. Start with a description, add character elements such as "the sky was frowning", "the sun was burning mercilessly", "the night scared its darkness", and the characterization is ready. Well, if you need a characterization of the hero's image, then how to write it, see the plan and tips above.

What are the images?

Our next question. Here we highlight several classifications. Above, we examined one - the images of heroes, that is, people / animals / mythical creatures and images of nature, images of peoples and states.

Also, images can be so-called "eternal". What " eternal image"? This concept calls a hero, once created by an author or folklore. But he was so" characteristic "and special that after years and epochs other authors write their characters from him, perhaps giving them other names, but the essence of this is not Such heroes include the fighter with Don Quixote, the hero-lover Don Juan and many others.

Unfortunately, modern fantasy characters do not last forever, despite the love of the fans. Why? Why is this funny Don Quixote Spider-Man better, for example? It is difficult to explain this in a nutshell. Only reading the book will give you the answer.

The concept of "closeness" of the hero, or My favorite character

Sometimes the hero of a work or movie becomes so close and loved that we try to imitate him, to be like him. This happens for a reason, and it is not for nothing that the choice falls on this character. Often the favorite hero becomes an image that already reminds us in some way. Perhaps this is a similarity in character, or the experience of both the hero and you. Or this character is in a situation similar to yours, and you understand and sympathize with him. This is not a bad thing anyway. The main thing is that you imitate only worthy heroes. And there are plenty of them in the literature. We wish you to meet only with good heroes and imitate only positive features their character.