Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" is a masterpiece of Russian literature - a satirical and superbly exaggerated epic about life in the dark provinces. In this novel, Gogol wanted to show the world the richness of the Russian soul and therefore filled it with a huge number of interesting and lively characters, positive and negative. The main character of the book, Chichikov, is a merchant of "dead souls" - dead serfs who still bring profit to those who are smart enough to trade them.