She is wary of his questions but eventually agrees to sell him the names, after he pressures her about it. He mentions this to her and she is shocked. During a discussion over breakfast, Chichikov realizes that many of Korobochka's serfs have died and that he might be able to buy a list of their names from her. His carriage flips over during a thunderstorm and they are forced to stay the night in the village where they got stuck.Ĭhichikov and his coachman, Selifan, find a small country homestead and learn that it belongs to a widowed landowner named Korobochka. Subsequently, Chichikov sets off for Sobakevich's estate but is thrown off course by inclement weather. The two have a lengthy conversation and Chichikov successfully convinces Manilov to sell him the names of his dead serfs. He showers Manilov with compliments about his family and land. Chichikov finds that Manilov is very pliable and easily susceptible to his charm. In the meantime, he speaks to other local officials and develops a positive reputation in the town. He is invited to visit estates belonging to two men, Sobakevich and Manilov, in a few days' time. These individuals take a liking to him, as he is skilled at conversation and flattery. He uses this information to pursue relationships with various landowners during a party thrown by the governor of the province. He then speaks with a local bar manager and learns about the people of high status in town. In English, the words ' pack rat' and hoarder are used for such people.Chichikov comes to town with his servants and settles into a plain hotel room. Sometimes the terms 'Plyushkin symptom' or 'Plyushkin syndrome' are used to describe such people. Today in Russia, the name 'Plyushkin' is semi-humorously applied to people who collect and amass various useless things, a behavior known as compulsive hoarding.

When Chichikov meets Plyushkin, he mistakes him for the steward due to his ignoble dress. When his daughter Aleksandra Stepanovna visited him several times with gifts and grandchildren, but received no money in return, she stopped visiting. The younger daughter died and the other two siblings left home. Plyushkin had two daughters and a son, but upon the death of his wife he became a suspicious miser. His surname is from the Russian word for ' cinnamon bun' (плюшка) or may be from ' plush' (плюш). At the same time, his estate is incredibly inefficient the cut wheat rots on the ground and any potential income is lost. He is a landowner who obsessively collects and saves everything he finds, to the point that when he wants to celebrate a deal with the protagonist Chichikov, he orders one of his serfs to find a cake that a visitor brought several years ago, scrape off the mold, and bring it to them. Stepan Plyushkin (Russian: Степан Плюшкин) is a fictional character in Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls. Plyushkin, drawing by Pyotr Boklevsky (1895).

Gogol souls