In "Dead Souls" Gogol posed the most pressing and painful questions of modern life. The very title of the poem had enormous revealing power; it carried, according to Herzen, “something terrifying”, “he could not name it otherwise; not the revisionists - dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs....
Nurdin is a man who failed to protect friendship and love, who retreated before deceit and hypocrisy. The benevolent viewer is personified by the Old Man, a character who seems to stand outside the plot. Nurdin tells the Old Man about his life.
