The House of the Dead: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Fyodor Dostoevski

First published: Zapiski iz myortvogo doma, 1861–1862 (Buried Alive: Or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia, 1881; better known as The House of the Dead)

Genre: Novel

Locale: A prison in Siberia

Plot: Autobiographical

Time: The late 1840's to the early 1850's

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 was put in prison for murdering his young wife out of jealousy, but it soon becomes clear that Goryanchikov is, as the author himself was, a political prisoner. It also becomes clear (as the details of the author's own incarceration reveal) that the narrator is an autobiographical figure.

Sushilov (sew-SHIH-lov), a prisoner who works as Goryanchikov's servant, a literal glutton for punishment. He is pitiable, humble, and even downtrodden, although none of the prisoners has trampled on him. Without being asked, he binds himself to Goryanchikov and takes on every dull and ignoble personal duty that prison life allows. For his efforts, he receives the inconsequential money that Goryanchikov can, intermittently, pay him and the privilege of serving this (only nominally, given his incarceration) superior person. For these privileges, he is painfully, ridiculously grateful. It is known around the prison that Sushilov had “changed places”; that is, he was paid to exchange his identity and lighter sentence for that of another prisoner. This practice was not unheard of in the Russian prison system of the time. Sushilov's exchange is notorious among the prisoners, however, because he exchanged simple banishment for an indefinite period of hard labor in a military prison, for the price of one silver ruble and a red shirt. Sushilov is incorruptible. His is a pure nature, an example of how humble and utterly selfless humans can be.

Aley (AH-lay), a young Tartar prisoner, a youth of inner and outer beauty. Affectionate, warm, and capable of great tenderness of feeling, it is only his strong feeling for duty that has brought him to the prison. His paternalistic elder brothers had, without announcing their purpose, commanded that he join them in a raiding party. Asking no questions (such was his filial devotion), Aley obeyed, ending up, like them, in prison. The narrator is heartened to find a young man of such natural superiority in the prison and is cheered by his straightforward acts of friendship. Aley is also clever, curious, and quick to learn. Goryanchikov is confident that the quality of Aley's character will be proof against corruption in any circumstance. Later, writing his memoirs and remembering Aley, he does not worry about him. He only wonders, wistfully, where he is.

Akim Akimovich (ah-KIHM ah-KIH-moh-vihch), a prisoner who assists Goryanchikov in his first days in the prison. He is naïve, illiterate, extraordinarily moralistic, captious, exacting, and quarrelsome, with a highly Teutonic punctilio. He is phenomenally honest; he will intervene in any injustice, regardless of whether it is a concern of his. He is simple to the last degree; he tries seriously, for example, to argue the prisoners out of their habitual stealing. At the time of his arrest, he had been the commander of a fortress in the Caucasus and had caught a neighboring princeling in an act of treachery. Having brought him to the fortress, Akimovich read him a detailed lecture on how a friendly prince ought to conduct himself in the future and, in conclusion, shot him. Fully aware of the irregularity of his action, he reported it at once to the authorities and was tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Many years later, still considering himself the injured party, he is unable to understand that he did anything he should not have.

Aristov (ah-RIH-stov), the prison's foremost informer. He had been an informer and a blackmailer before his time in prison and had sold the lives of ten men to ensure the immediate gratification of his thirst for the coarsest and vilest pleasures. He had become so addicted to these pleasures that, though an intelligent man, he had taken foolish chances and was sent to prison. The narrator calls him a lump of flesh with teeth and a stomach who, for the smallest gross pleasure, is capable of the most cold-blooded violence; he is an example of the lengths to which the purely physical side of a human can go, unrestrained by any internal standard or discipline.

Orlov, a criminal among criminals. He is an uncommonly evil evildoer, a cold-blooded murderer of old men and children, a man of terrifying strength of will and proudly conscious of that strength. He is contrasted with fleshy and torpid criminals, such as Aristov. In Orlov, one sees only boundless energy, thirst for action, thirst for vengeance, and thirst for the attainment of his goals. He has a strange arrogance, frank and without presumption, as if there were no authority on earth to which he would submit. Orlov has been sentenced to flogging, and this punishment he hurries along, shortening an interim period of recuperation to get on with his plan to escape. Here, however, he overestimates himself, and he dies from his punishment.