Love In Ivan Turgenev's Fathers And Children

Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children is about the partition between the two generations conflicting in Russia in the 17th century. It follows the opposing divisions involving the liberals and the nihilists. The liberals believed in freedom and equality in terms of views and authority. The nihilists refused all moral values, thinking that there was no purpose to life. One of these values being known as “love”. Love is the feeling of affection or attraction for another person or thing. Since nihilists are known for rejecting everything and seeing no true purpose to anything, they wouldn’t see any principle to the concept of love.
Two of the main characters in the story, Yevgeny Vasil'evich Bazarov, otherwise known as Bazarov, and Arkady
“Still I say that a man who stakes his whole life on a woman’s love and, when that one card gets beaten, turns sour and sinks to the point where he’s incapable of doing anything at all, then that person is no longer a man, not even a male of the species.” (Turgenev 27). Bazarov makes his view of love very clear in this scene and also seems to foreshadow his demise. He says that someone who gives up everything after failing in the game of love, is weak. This would be an obvious notion from Bazarov since a nihilist has no respect for anyone or anything. Ironically, Bazarov clearly explains exactly what ends up happening to him in the story. He is the card that is beaten by Anna Sergeevna when she does not tell him whether or not she shares the same feelings as him, when he expresses his love for her. He tries to hide his sadness and frustration by engaging in a romantic manner with Fenichka Nikolayevna, the servant who becomes Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov’s wife at the end. When this fails as well, Bazarov knows he can no longer hide his feelings and need to love and appears to be a changed