Literary Devices in Fathers and Sons

In this context, the word “strain” refers to a passage of music. Thus the phrase “ringing strains” imagines the larks’ singing as music reverberating over the landscape. This is a projection of Arkady’s romantic imagination on the scene. This is an example of the pathetic fallacy, a device in which the world is perceived in terms of human values and qualities.

While the quotation marks make this look like dialogue, context is important to understand that this question is thought and not said aloud. Turgenev uses a third-person omniscient point of view, and so readers are privy to the internal thoughts and feelings of characters. Here, we can see Arkady’s mixed reaction to his father’s self-reproach: he is both concerned for his father and feels a sense of having grown up.

It becomes clear at the end of the chapter that the girl whose face appeared for a moment behind a door at the chapter’s start is the servant Thenichka. Turgenev structures the chapter to create an arc of suspense. A small mystery is introduced at the beginning of the chapter and resolved at the end. This resolution is short-lived, however, for we are immediately introduced to a related, though much larger, mystery: the sleeping infant whom Thenichka watches.

This passage represents a moment in which the narration draws attention to its own mechanisms. While the narrator tends to track a single scene, here he concludes the chapter by moving through the rooms of Marino, showing the characters in their various states of reflection. There is a peculiar, collage-like quality to this passage.

Turgenev’s narrator does not provide us with the inner thoughts of Paul Petrovich in this passage. We’ve previously been allowed access into the thoughts of Arkady, so it is a little unclear why the narrator is not consistent with his point of view here, beyond a simple tactic to try and create a sense of anxiety or apprehension to fuel the plot.

This parenthetical statement provides evidence for Turgenev’s omniscient, third-person narrative point of view. It is unclear whether or not the three gentlemen notice the young woman, so readers are left with the impression that Turgenev wants them to know that this young woman is watching the men from a distance. This adds a little tension to the scene since readers are unclear why this woman would be behaving this way.

This passage reveals the searching nature of the narrative voice in its attempts to draw meaning from surface details. With his heart pounding, Nikolai is nervous about the thought of Arkady meeting Thenichka and discovering his infant brother. At the same time, his normal complexion reveals his resilience.

This sentence marks a peculiar moment in the narration. The narrative voice is aware of the novelistic structure in which it resides, and it mentions the existence of the “following chapter.” This level of self-awareness is a mark of modern fiction and art.

In an usual act of narration, the narrator imagines what Paul might say aloud to Arkady were he to voice his thoughts. Paul wants Arkady to acknowledge Bazarov’s rudeness, if not his intellectual misguidance. This intimated thought is imagined as ironic.

It is not entirely clear why Arkady refers to Princess R. by her initial rather than her full name. Perhaps Paul never told Arkady the princess’s name. Perhaps Arkady wishes to preserve the princess’s anonymity. Perhaps Turgenev chose to underscore the princess’s mysterious nature by withholding her name from the reader.