SolitaryWalker
20 Apr 2007, 10:30 PM
I call you all onto the challenge to find a literary description of a character who clearly resembles a quintissential MBTI type.
This is one of them. I am running this thread parallely to that one, and untill that is completed, I shall not divulge his type. http://www.intpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21083
But this should do it for the first of 16 endeavors.
In the meanwhile lets try and figure out his type.
''It was in one of those cheerful and contented little towns, full of nicest and kindest people, the memory of whom will never be erased from my heart, that I met Alexander Petrovich Goryachnikov, a convicted settler. He had been born in Russia, of a noble landed family, and sent to Siberia as a convict of the second class murder of his wife, and, after the expiry of the ten years' penal servitude to which the law had sentenced him, had settled down to live out the rest of his days humbly and obscurely in the little town of K. He had been assigned to a district which adjoined the town, but he lived in the the town itself, where he had the opportunity of making some sort of living by teaching children. In Siberian towns teachers who are convicted settlers are often met with; there is no prejudice against them. They teach for preference, French, which is so indispensable in polite society, and of which these remote regions of Siberia otherwise would have no understanding. I first met Alexander Petrovich at the house of Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, a worthy and hospitable old government official with five daughters of various ages, who furnished the occasion for many sanguine dreams. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, at thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance interested me. He was a puny little man, extraordinary pale and thin, and still quite young, about thirty-five years old. He was always very neatly dressed, in the western European fashion. If you talked to him, he looked at you with extraordinary fixity and attention and listened to your every word with strict politeness, as if pondering each one, or as if you were setting him riddles with your questions, or trying to to wring some secret from him; finally, he answered you briefly and clearly , but he weighed every word of his answer so carefully that you began to feel awkward and were glad when at last the conversation ended. I asked Ivan Ivanovich about him on that occassion and learned that his life was morally irreproachable, or he would not have been invited into the company of his daughter, but he was a terrible misanthrope and shunned everybody; he was very scholarly and read a great deal, but said very little indeed, and was always rather difficult to talk to. There were some who asserted that he was undoubtedly crazy, althought they did not, in practice consider this too important a defect; many people holding honorable positions in the town were prepared to show him every kindness; he could even be useful in drawing up petitions and in other ways. It was supposed that his family in Russia must be respectable, and not perhaps of the lowest rank, but it was known that he had resolutely broken off all connection with them as soon as he was sent to Siberia. In short, he was his own worst enemy. Moreover, everybody in our town knew his history, and knew that he had killed his wife in the very first year of marriage, killed her out of jealousy and then gave himself up (with considerably lightened punishment). Such crimes are always looked on as misfortunes and as deserving pity. In spite of all this, the crazy fellow obstinately avoided everybody and never put in an appearance except to give his lessons.
At first I did not pay him any particular attention; but, I hardly know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something enigmatic about him. There was not the smallest possibility of holding any conversation with him. Of course he always answered my questions, answered them in fact, as though it were a most important duty, but, when he had answered me I somehow felt reluctant to ask him any more; and after such conversations, suffering and weariness were visible in his face also. I remember walking away from Ivan Ivanovich's with him one lovely summer ending. Suddenly it occured to me to ask him to come in for a minute, to smoke a cigarette.
I cannot describe how terrified he looked; he quite lost his head, muttered some disjointed words and then suddenly, with a furious glance at me, ran off headlong in the opposite direction. I was quite taken aback. From that time on, whenever he met me, he looked at me with certain alarm. But I was not to be put off; something drew me to him, and a month later, without any excuse, I called on him. Needless to say, this was a stupid and tactless thing to do. He lodged on the outskirts of the town with an elderly woman who had a consumptive daughter, who in her turn, had an illigetimate child, a pretty , merry little girl of ten. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read when I went in. Seeing me, he was disconcerted as though I had caught him commiting a crime. In utter confusion he jumped up from his chair and stared at me wildly. We sat down at last; his eyes attentively followed every glance of mine, as though he suspected each had some peculiarly mysterious significance.
I realized that he was mistrustful to an insane degree. He looked at me with hatred and all but asked aloud how soon I would go away. I began to talk to him about our little town and about current events; he smiled bittery and remained silent, it became clear that he had not heard our most ordinary news, known to everybody else, and moreover was not interested in hearing it. I went on to talk of our country and its needs, he listened in silence, gazing so strangely into my eyes that at last I began to repent of having started the conversation. However, I almost tempted him by offering him, still uncut, the new books and magazines, fresh from the post, which I had with me. He looked hungrily at them, but instantly changed his mind and refused the offer on the grounds of having no spare time.
I took my leave at last, feeling an intolerable weight fall from my heart as I went out. I was ashamed, and it now seemed to me extraordinarily stupid to have pestered a man who made it his chief concern to hide himself as securely as possible from the whole world. But the thing was done. I remember that I saw hardly any books in his room, which meant that people were wrong when they said that he read a great deal. But once or twice, going past his windows very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What could he be doing , sitting up till dawn? Was he writing, and if so, what?
Circumstances took me away from our town for about three months. Returning home after the beginning of winter, I heard that Alexander Petrovich had died in autumn, died alone without calling in a doctor. He was already almost forgotten in town. His room was empty. I lost no time in making myself known to his landlady, with the intention of finding out from her what her lodger had done with his time and whether he had not been writing something. For twenty copecks in silver she brought me a basketful of papers left behind by the dead man. The old woman confessed that she had already used tow of the notebooks. She was a sullen, silent peasant and it was difficult to get any sense out of her. She could tell me nothing really new about her lodger. According to her he hardly ever did anything, and for months together did not open a book of taste a pen in his hand, but then he would walk up and down his room all night, thinking, and sometimes talking to himself. He took a great fancy to her little granddaughter Katya, and made a lot of fuss of her, especially after he learned that she was named Catherine; every time St.Catherine's day came around he had a requiem said for somebody. He could not bear visitors; he left the house only to give lessons to children, he looked suspiciously even at her, the old woman, when she went into his room once a week to tidy up a bit, and in the whole three years he had hardly ever said a single word to her. I asked Katya whether she remembered her teacher. She looked at me without a word, turned her face to the wall and burst into tears. So even he had been able to make someone love him.
I took his papers with me and spent a whole day going through them. Three-quarters of them were blank sheets, meaningless fragments, or pupils' copy-books. But there was one fairly bulky notebook filled with small-hand-writing, but unfinished, abandoned and perhaps forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, although a rather disconnected one, of the ten years' penal servitude undergone by Alexander Petrovich. In places it was broken by some narrative, some kind of strange and terrible reminiscences, written in cramped irregular characters, as though under some compulsion. I read through these fragments a few times and almost convinced myself that they had been written in madness. But the prison memoirs 'Scenes from the House of the Dead', as he himself called them somewhere in the manuscript---appeared to me to be not without interest. The comptely strange world, unknown until that time, the strangeness of some of the facts, some particular notes on those lost souls, attracted me, and I read with curiosity. I may, of course, be mistaken. As a test, I have picked out two or three chapters to begin with; let the public judge'
This is one of them. I am running this thread parallely to that one, and untill that is completed, I shall not divulge his type. http://www.intpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21083
But this should do it for the first of 16 endeavors.
In the meanwhile lets try and figure out his type.
''It was in one of those cheerful and contented little towns, full of nicest and kindest people, the memory of whom will never be erased from my heart, that I met Alexander Petrovich Goryachnikov, a convicted settler. He had been born in Russia, of a noble landed family, and sent to Siberia as a convict of the second class murder of his wife, and, after the expiry of the ten years' penal servitude to which the law had sentenced him, had settled down to live out the rest of his days humbly and obscurely in the little town of K. He had been assigned to a district which adjoined the town, but he lived in the the town itself, where he had the opportunity of making some sort of living by teaching children. In Siberian towns teachers who are convicted settlers are often met with; there is no prejudice against them. They teach for preference, French, which is so indispensable in polite society, and of which these remote regions of Siberia otherwise would have no understanding. I first met Alexander Petrovich at the house of Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, a worthy and hospitable old government official with five daughters of various ages, who furnished the occasion for many sanguine dreams. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, at thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance interested me. He was a puny little man, extraordinary pale and thin, and still quite young, about thirty-five years old. He was always very neatly dressed, in the western European fashion. If you talked to him, he looked at you with extraordinary fixity and attention and listened to your every word with strict politeness, as if pondering each one, or as if you were setting him riddles with your questions, or trying to to wring some secret from him; finally, he answered you briefly and clearly , but he weighed every word of his answer so carefully that you began to feel awkward and were glad when at last the conversation ended. I asked Ivan Ivanovich about him on that occassion and learned that his life was morally irreproachable, or he would not have been invited into the company of his daughter, but he was a terrible misanthrope and shunned everybody; he was very scholarly and read a great deal, but said very little indeed, and was always rather difficult to talk to. There were some who asserted that he was undoubtedly crazy, althought they did not, in practice consider this too important a defect; many people holding honorable positions in the town were prepared to show him every kindness; he could even be useful in drawing up petitions and in other ways. It was supposed that his family in Russia must be respectable, and not perhaps of the lowest rank, but it was known that he had resolutely broken off all connection with them as soon as he was sent to Siberia. In short, he was his own worst enemy. Moreover, everybody in our town knew his history, and knew that he had killed his wife in the very first year of marriage, killed her out of jealousy and then gave himself up (with considerably lightened punishment). Such crimes are always looked on as misfortunes and as deserving pity. In spite of all this, the crazy fellow obstinately avoided everybody and never put in an appearance except to give his lessons.
At first I did not pay him any particular attention; but, I hardly know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something enigmatic about him. There was not the smallest possibility of holding any conversation with him. Of course he always answered my questions, answered them in fact, as though it were a most important duty, but, when he had answered me I somehow felt reluctant to ask him any more; and after such conversations, suffering and weariness were visible in his face also. I remember walking away from Ivan Ivanovich's with him one lovely summer ending. Suddenly it occured to me to ask him to come in for a minute, to smoke a cigarette.
I cannot describe how terrified he looked; he quite lost his head, muttered some disjointed words and then suddenly, with a furious glance at me, ran off headlong in the opposite direction. I was quite taken aback. From that time on, whenever he met me, he looked at me with certain alarm. But I was not to be put off; something drew me to him, and a month later, without any excuse, I called on him. Needless to say, this was a stupid and tactless thing to do. He lodged on the outskirts of the town with an elderly woman who had a consumptive daughter, who in her turn, had an illigetimate child, a pretty , merry little girl of ten. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read when I went in. Seeing me, he was disconcerted as though I had caught him commiting a crime. In utter confusion he jumped up from his chair and stared at me wildly. We sat down at last; his eyes attentively followed every glance of mine, as though he suspected each had some peculiarly mysterious significance.
I realized that he was mistrustful to an insane degree. He looked at me with hatred and all but asked aloud how soon I would go away. I began to talk to him about our little town and about current events; he smiled bittery and remained silent, it became clear that he had not heard our most ordinary news, known to everybody else, and moreover was not interested in hearing it. I went on to talk of our country and its needs, he listened in silence, gazing so strangely into my eyes that at last I began to repent of having started the conversation. However, I almost tempted him by offering him, still uncut, the new books and magazines, fresh from the post, which I had with me. He looked hungrily at them, but instantly changed his mind and refused the offer on the grounds of having no spare time.
I took my leave at last, feeling an intolerable weight fall from my heart as I went out. I was ashamed, and it now seemed to me extraordinarily stupid to have pestered a man who made it his chief concern to hide himself as securely as possible from the whole world. But the thing was done. I remember that I saw hardly any books in his room, which meant that people were wrong when they said that he read a great deal. But once or twice, going past his windows very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What could he be doing , sitting up till dawn? Was he writing, and if so, what?
Circumstances took me away from our town for about three months. Returning home after the beginning of winter, I heard that Alexander Petrovich had died in autumn, died alone without calling in a doctor. He was already almost forgotten in town. His room was empty. I lost no time in making myself known to his landlady, with the intention of finding out from her what her lodger had done with his time and whether he had not been writing something. For twenty copecks in silver she brought me a basketful of papers left behind by the dead man. The old woman confessed that she had already used tow of the notebooks. She was a sullen, silent peasant and it was difficult to get any sense out of her. She could tell me nothing really new about her lodger. According to her he hardly ever did anything, and for months together did not open a book of taste a pen in his hand, but then he would walk up and down his room all night, thinking, and sometimes talking to himself. He took a great fancy to her little granddaughter Katya, and made a lot of fuss of her, especially after he learned that she was named Catherine; every time St.Catherine's day came around he had a requiem said for somebody. He could not bear visitors; he left the house only to give lessons to children, he looked suspiciously even at her, the old woman, when she went into his room once a week to tidy up a bit, and in the whole three years he had hardly ever said a single word to her. I asked Katya whether she remembered her teacher. She looked at me without a word, turned her face to the wall and burst into tears. So even he had been able to make someone love him.
I took his papers with me and spent a whole day going through them. Three-quarters of them were blank sheets, meaningless fragments, or pupils' copy-books. But there was one fairly bulky notebook filled with small-hand-writing, but unfinished, abandoned and perhaps forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, although a rather disconnected one, of the ten years' penal servitude undergone by Alexander Petrovich. In places it was broken by some narrative, some kind of strange and terrible reminiscences, written in cramped irregular characters, as though under some compulsion. I read through these fragments a few times and almost convinced myself that they had been written in madness. But the prison memoirs 'Scenes from the House of the Dead', as he himself called them somewhere in the manuscript---appeared to me to be not without interest. The comptely strange world, unknown until that time, the strangeness of some of the facts, some particular notes on those lost souls, attracted me, and I read with curiosity. I may, of course, be mistaken. As a test, I have picked out two or three chapters to begin with; let the public judge'