Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin

The character of Eugene Onegin reflects a unique and authentic literary period which created its own canons and ideals. Eugene Onegin does not possess heroic features, but represents an idealized character of a man typical for his period of time. An extremely valuable thing he does is to reveal the existence of a kind of common basis of feeling; that is to say, in literature readers come in contact with exÐ'¬pression of feeling in a way that is rarely possible in actual life.

The events of the book vividly portray that Eugene Onegin deserves his fate rejecting Tatiana’s love and killing Lensky. A dandy, deprived strict moral values and norms, he goes on the booze. Through this character, Pushkin depicts the gap between expected, traditional, usual things and reality people try to escape. He shows that perception of the world was limited by traditions and values imposed by their society. “Tatyana leaves Onegin kneeling, / looks at him with a steady gaze” (Pushkin). This remark shows that Tatyana is deeply hurt by Onegin who ruins her life and Olga’s happiness. The surface of her story is limpidly clear and beguilingly placid, but Pushkin’s use of it is to enforce by close logic an impossible and often very shocking proposition driven with distinct and startling imagery. Onegin deserves his fate because his desire to possess love of Tatiana is nothing more than dissatisfaction of the past that resulted in losses and hopelessness.

On the other hand, I sympathize with this character because love becomes a vein sacrifice that is painful and sorrowful causing terrible sufferings and emotional burden for people. Quite early Onegin explores the meaning and significance of money and social status in life which brings him no good: “Onegin, my good friend, was littered / and bred upon the Neva's brink’ (Pushkin). On the other hand, Pushkin’s contribution to the pessimism which characterizes so much of the important writing of the ninetieth century was to probe the inner recesses of human behavior to see by what instincts people are governed. Onegin proposes a view of man's essential nature: greedy and rakish. In practice it is possible and desirable to create new law and values, because new environment forces people to change their personal priorities and morals. Social ideology and way of life typical for many young people of his age is the main cause of his suffering and fate. “Onegin swiftly came to know / his tale of youthful love, narrated / with deep emotion through and through, / to us, though, not exactly new” (Pushkin). Everything