Literature offers us a gallery of dependent characters. Alexey Ivanovich, the player who gave his life to roulette. Luzhin escaping into the world of chess pieces, obsessed with the idea of Lady Macbeth’s power, Humbert obsessed with the ever-elusive youth. Let’s take a look at the two most common dependencies.
We know quite a lot about addiction – and not only about drug addiction and alcoholism, but also about bulimia, shopaholism and gambling addiction. Cinematography often addresses the topic of non-chemical addictions: these topics are covered, for example, in Nymphomaniac by Lars von Trier and Obsession by Damien Chazelle.
But in classical literature, other types of addiction are more common.
pathological hoarding
The morbid addiction to things knows no bounds. The brightest carrier of this disease is the character of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” Stepan Plyushkin. He was a zealous owner, a kind husband and a caring father, year after year his estate grew richer, and neighbors came to him to learn how to run a household. What happened to Plyushkin that he appears to the reader in a shabby frock coat and with an unknown rag tied around his neck? Why does the flour in its cellars turn to stone, and the stacks and haystacks turn into manure?
The character’s wife dies, and it is in this that Gogol sees the cause of his illness: “Plyushkin has become more restless and, like all widowers, more suspicious and stingy.” The stingier he is, the more lonely – the children run away, the youngest daughter dies. And the more lonely he is, the stingier. He is unable to part with a single thing in the house, it is a pity for him to sell the harvest and dead souls, it is a pity to finish eating a moldy piece of the pie. He gives a button to his beloved grandson – this is the absolute pinnacle of his generosity.
Plyushkin’s English weather brother is Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol in Prose
Semyon Plyushkin’s English brother-weather is Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ story-parable (“Dead Souls” – a poem of 1842, “A Christmas Carol in Prose” – 1843). He experienced a different drama – a lonely childhood away from home and relatives. Year after year, he spent Christmas Eve in the school boarding house, where it was always cold, gloomy, smelled of mold and the roof was leaking.
Throughout the text there is a short and very important scene for understanding the character of the hero: a sister comes to the boarding house for the teenager Scrooge. Through tears of happiness, she says: “Home! At all! Forever! Father has become so kind, not at all the same as before, and at home now it’s like in paradise.
We remain in the dark about what Scrooge Sr. did before, whether he was a despot or a drunkard, a brawler, a player or a spendthrift. But in adulthood, Ebenezer Scrooge prefers books, bills, money and IOUs to human society and hard work around the clock to festivities. Scrooge, like Plushkin, does not give money to anyone and does not spend it on himself. In any frost in his office and apartment there is no heating, he dine once a day in a penny tavern and “uses himself with liquid oatmeal at night for a cold.” He accumulates money pointlessly and aimlessly – that’s all.
In the story of Smeagol, two Old Testament stories converged – the Golden Calf and Cain
A hundred years later, John R. R. Tolkien absolutized the idea of dependence on a thing when the eye of the hobbit Sméagol fell on the Ring of Omnipotence. Here two Old Testament stories came together – the Golden Calf and Cain. Unable to part with the ring, Smeagol killed his brother Deagol and became Gollum – a creature living in underground caves all alone, eating carrion and ready for anything, just not to be separated from his “charm”.
Gollum and the Ring’s relationship begins with a murder and seemingly has nowhere to grow. Gollum belongs to the Ring from the first second – all, to the bottom, entirely. He never makes an attempt to get rid of the Ring or tell others about it, he sacredly observes the first rule of addicts – the rule of silence. He is not cured even by the forced separation from the subject of addiction: for years he hears the call of the Ring. The crescendo of their story resounds when Gollum, who is cowardly by nature and madly clinging to his life, becomes so obsessed with the Ring that he perishes with it.
All three heroes their good creators tried to cure. In the third part of Dead Souls, Gogol planned to send Plyushkin on foot to Siberia in search of his runaway and cursed daughter – this journey would become a symbol of the spiritual path. Tolkien left Gollum for a whole month in the company of Frodo and Sam on the way to Orodruin – and a month of common fear, deprivation, support and kindness returned human feelings to him, but this was not enough. Only Scrooge managed to be fully healed – Dickens gives his hero a new life for Christmas, full of gratitude, generosity and happiness.
LOVE ADDICTION
The most frequent case of female dependence in literature is love. A good example is Anna Karenina. A faithful and virtuous wife, Anna meets Vronsky and tightly “sticks”, merges with him. Whether she herself is in love is a moot point. But it is quite clear that Anna is dependent on feeling: she is loved, she has someone who looks at her with delight and admiration.
Tolstoy does not write about sex addiction. On the contrary, the scene of intimacy ends with the phrase: “An impossible, terrible and all the more charming dream came true, but turned into a feeling of physical humiliation for Anna.” In the name of happiness, to feel loved, Anna leaves her husband, child, home, high society and her entire past life.
Anna parted ways with Vronsky many times. Similar desperate and unsuccessful attempts are made by people trying to stop drinking. Half-dead, Anna reconciles with her husband and returns home, but soon the full cycle of addiction is repeated. As soon as family life – now with Vronsky – dulls love, and the fire of adoration in his eyes dims, Anna becomes unbearable to live.
Such a model of behavior is uniquely dependent, neurotic. And such cases in classical literature, unfortunately, are not uncommon. As, however, in life.