There are many ways to tell a story and Mikhail Lermontov was able to employ the use of

narrative voice and it's many uses in A Hero of Our Time. With his uses he is able to paint

a picture of the book's anti-hero, Pechorin and enlighten the reader on the character of a

disturbed man. This man is scarred in some ways from life and does not know how to deal

with the scars life has dealt him.

This inability is first shown in the narration of Maxim Maximych. Maxim recounts

his story of meeting Pechorin to the traveler, who is the main narrator at the beginning of

the book. Maxim has many tales of Pechorin but the main one being about Bela.

Bela was acquired from Bela's brother, Azamat for a beautiful horse that didn't even

belong to Pechorin but to another man in Pechorin's post. This trade says a couple things

about human behaviour. On Azamat's side there is the fact that his greed has control over

his actions which leads to him giving over family for an animal that in his eyes is a more

valuable friend than his sister. Pechorin sees this and so from the beginning of the novel

we can tell Pechorin is a master manipulator who preys on the weak of the world.

Pechorin from the beginning is persistent in having Bela love him. She at first is resistant

but slowly grows more so. But then a terrible thing comes to pass. Bela begins to die.

Pechorin realizes early on that he can not do anything to save her but he tries to anyhow.

This is in part because he wants to have a clear conscience about her death since in many

ways he changed her life forever. Maxim makes a comment on this persistence by saying:

"He was like that. He'd get something into his head and not be content till he

got it."1

This persistence is a character trait that is in the end part of his own downfall.

When Bela dies Maxim says:

"His face showed me nothing particular, and that annoyed me. If I'd been in

his place I'd have died of grief...I wanted to console him, more for decency's

sake, you understand, than anything else. But when I spoke he lifted up his

head and laughed. The laugh sent cold shivers down my spine."2

There are many reasons why Pechorin's laugh might have sent shivers down

Maxim's spine. Maxim would probably think that Pechorin is a cold man with no real

emotions. But I think that the man who could never love has lost someone that he loves

and he might not know how to handle the emotions that are welling up inside of him. At

the same time he is realizing that he can not do everything and that deep down inside he is

only human and that he can not do everything. And for someone like Pechorin, a master

politician it is a hard thing to swallow. Perhaps Maxim realizes this but from what Maxim

tells us he shows Pechorin as a cold human being in many respects but unknowingly he has

shown us a man with a soul.

Of course this soul could be debated with the story of Princess Mary that is told by

Pechorin in his journal. Princess Mary is a socialite and very popular of course. Along

comes Pechorin to steal her thunder. He tells glorious stories and insults her subtly by

stealing away her audience. She of course wants to know who this man who comes in so

bravely to challenge her popularity is.

Gradually they become friends but he still insults her sometimes by ignoring her

when she comes by. This only makes her want him more. And this is what Pechorin wants

because he watches Grushnitsky, a potential suitor to the princess, fail at playing the game

of romance. Therefore he wants to show Grushnitsky off as a phony who is really a

bumbling idiot and not a suave man.

When Grushnitsky is shown off by Pechorin he is shown as a fool. So to protect

his honour he challenges Pechorin to a duel. Pechorin finds out that the guns in the duel

will be rigged to humiliate him. Pechorin comes up with a plan of his own to defeat

Grushnitsky. What he ends up doing is killing Grushnitsky. This shocks all of the

onlookers. But in reality eliminate the bad player of the group.

When Pechorin returns to the town he finds out what he has assumed. Princess

Mary loves him. He goes to her and tells her that he does not return the love. Of course

we do not ever know if Pechorin really loved her but at the end of the book you find him

to be a dark, mean person without a soul.

As Pechorin shares some of his thoughts throughout the novel as well as the other

character's opinion of him, we are given a picture that does not make sense. We are never

given a full sense of who Pechorin really is. But perhaps that is what Mikhail Lermontov is

trying to say, that we can never really know a person, know matter how well we know

him or her.