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Fathers and Songs by Ivan Turgenev Essay

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Fathers and Sons is a novel written by Russian author Ivan Turgenev and originally published in 1862. Emerging in tsarist Russia during the realism period of literature, Turgenev examines the subject of changing generations in his novel. In Fathers and Sons the new generation is represented by the characters Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov and Evgeny Vasilich Bazarov, recent university graduates and self-proclaimed nihilists. Nihilism, a term popularized by Turgenev himself, is a broad philosophical school of thought that debases traditional values of life. Fathers and Sons was both written during and set in a time when nihilism movements in Russia were gaining a strong following. Throughout the novel Turgenev uses a combination of …show more content…

“Yes,” interposed Pavel Petrovich, “yes; you were convinced of all this, and decided not to undertake anything seriously, yourselves.” “We decided not to undertake anything,” replied Bazarov grimly. (48)
When Bazarov begins to expound on his philosophy, nihilism is not presented as wholly detrimental. He simply disavows frivolity, values practicality and thinks life to be simply "a question of getting bread to eat" (48). But Bazarov and Arkady make no attempt to improve conditions as they see them. They believe that the society that has been built is superficial and antiquated and must be brought down, but have no plans to undertake any sort of reconstruction: "'We shall destroy, because we are a force,’ observed Arkady." (49). Turgenev shows nihilism to be a destructive force only, incapable of engineering anything better than that which it seeks to destroy.
However, throughout the novel, Arkady is fraught with internal conflict over his philosophy, and begins to slowly stray from his tenets. When staying at his father's, Arkady makes a point of a defending Pavel to Bazarov. Pavel is very much the opposite of Bazarov (who is Turgenev's embodiment of nihilism), acting always with an air of

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