A Hero Of Our Time

Maksim Maksimych is the 50-year-old officer in the Russian military who the narrator meets during his journey through the Caucasus. “Maksimych” is a colloquial form of the patronymic “Maksimovich,” which indicates that Maksim Maksimych has a folksy, down-to-earth nature. His last name is never specified.

The narrator refers to Maksim Maksimych by his first name and patronymic as a sign of respect for someone older than himself, and this also indicates that though they are friendly, they are still on formal terms. Maksim Maksimych has served in the Caucasus for many years and acts as an expert guide for the young, inexperienced narrator.

Maksim Maksimych is a key character because he connects the narrator with Pechorin and establishes the reader’s first impressions of Pechorin before he enters the story. Maksim Maksimych’s stories about Pechorin pique the narrator’s interest, heightening the anticipation of Pechorin’s appearance.

Maksim Maksimych is a foil for Pechorin, whose cold reception upon their last meeting crushes him. Seeing Maksim Maksimych’s profound disappointment and sadness after Pechorin acts dismissively toward him is the first indication that Pechorin does not care about the feelings of those around him, and that this can—or at least, should—have serious consequences.

Pechorin is the protagonist of Books 3-5 and the character to whom the title, A Hero of Our Time, refers. He is a young officer in the Russian army who is stationed in the Caucasus. Pechorin only appears once in the novel’s present day, when he encounters the narrator and Maksim Maksimych at a military outpost on his way to Persia. At this time, he is about 30 years old.

The narrator describes Pechorin as youthful, with fair, aristocratic, even feminine features and an enigmatic look in his eyes that the narrator suspects signals “constant grief” (44). Pechorin dies in Persia sometime later, and the narrator publishes his journals upon hearing of his death. Books 3-5 are told from Pechorin’s first-person, past-tense point of view. He is 25 years old when the action in the story takes place, and the diaries are a real-time record of his experiences as an officer in the Caucasus.

Contradictions define Pechorin. He is intelligent but only uses his intelligence to scheme against others for entertainment. He is brave, but his bravery comes from his desire to tempt fate rather than save or help others. He wants to be liked but cannot help alienating others with his arrogance. He is capable but cannot find a way to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Pechorin is a tragic figure because he is inherently lonely: His restless, self-sabotaging nature makes it impossible for him to form real bonds with another person. His manipulative and selfish tendencies sometimes harm others, as when he wins Bela only to neglect her, or brings misery to both Princess Mary and Grushnitski by sowing disharmony and toying with their feelings. Despite the harm he causes,

Pechorin refuses to take any of the consequences of his behavior seriously: He eventually moves on from Bela’s death with seemingly no regrets and regards both Grushnitski’s death at his hand and Princess Mary’s misery with indifference. Since nothing moves him, Pechorin cannot mature or grow in any meaningful way—instead, he ends up trapped in an endless, self-destructive cycle.

Lermontov intended Pechorin as an example of what was wrong with the Russian society of his day: When people have no moral grounding, they end up destroying themselves and those around them, which has consequences for society at large. Pechorin is therefore representative of a “hero” in “our time” because he exposes the lack of true heroism and purpose in Lermontov’s Russia.

Grushnitski is a 21-year-old cadet in the Russian military and Pechorin’s acquaintance. He has dark features and an affected air: “[H]e is one of those people [...] who drape themselves majestically in extraordinary sentiments, exalted passions and exceptional sufferings” (62). Grushnitski’s taste for “exalted passions and exceptional sufferings” signals his Romantic sensibility, suggesting that he is someone who has embraced the spirit of the age and wishes to channel the right kind of “pose” in society. Pechorin dislikes Grushnitski because he is self-important and self-absorbed, but he admits that Grushnitski is not malicious.

However, Grushnitski becomes the unfortunate target of Pechorin’s schemes because he is in love with Princess Mary, whom Pechorin has decided to woo despite not intending to seduce or marry her. Pechorin repeatedly makes a fool out of Grushnitski, which turns Grushnitski against him. By the time they face each other in a duel, Grushnitski has become cynical, mean, and vengeful, completing his transformation into another “superfluous man.” He insults Princess Mary after she rejects him, and conspires with his comrades to trick Pechorin during their duel.

Grushnitski dies in his duel with Pechorin after refusing Pechorin’s offer of amnesty and vowing vengeance upon him. Grushnitski is a caricature of the young, status-seeking society man and a parody of the Byronic hero.

Princess Mary is the young, beautiful woman at the center of Pechorin and Grushnitski’s love triangle. She meets Pechorin in the spa town of Pyatigorsk while vacationing there with her mother, the elder Princess Ligovski.

Princess Mary is kind-hearted and falls in love with Pechorin even though his dismissive attitude troubles her. Like Grushnitski, she ends up hating Pechorin because he manipulates her emotions. As a character, she shows the life Pechorin could have lived married to a respectable, wealthy, intelligent, attractive, kind woman if he were not so bent on alienating others and remaining alone.