Nikolai Gogol's "dead soul" short summaries

Dead Souls takes place in the Russia of the late 1800s, where, unlike in America, one must be born into a prosperous family in order to have opportunities. The main character, Chichikov, is clever enough to develop a scheme in which he can rise from being a petty clerk to a respected landowner. In order to do this, Chichikov moves into a new town, pretending to already be a landowner, and begins a quest to …

…now that they are dead as they did when they were alive. In the end, however, Chichikov's stubbornness surmounts Sobakevich's absurd logic and Chichikov ends up buying the souls for the price he offered. Unfortunately, as they say, "there is no such thing as a perfect crime." In the end of Dead Souls, Chichikov is stabbed in the back by the people he does business with, and does not get away with his ingenious plan