Fathers and Sons

            
            
             To what extent are the traditional conflicts between successive generations at the heart of this novel?.
             The main conflict we have in the novel, "Fathers and Sons" is between Bazarov and Pavel. This is kind of like youth versus older authority. This kind of conflict has been happening for decades because it is basically a fight for dominance. The father type figure, Pavel, is stuck on traditional values like love and aristocratism and Bazarov is the son type character with these new ideas of nihilism. The same kind of things happen nowadays when parents talk about things that were important in those days (like Pavel with love, aristocratism) and the newer generation who talk about things that are important for our days (like Bazarov and the new idea of Nihilism, it was unheard of by Pavel and was a new concept)!.
             Pavel believes that Russia needs structure from such things as institution, religion, and class hierarchy. He is a true aristocrat and emulator of western manners; he spent his youth hopelessly in love with a princess. Some brief affairs with her resulted in nothing but a painful lifetime of unfulfillment. In middle age, living as a bachelor on his widowed brother's estate, he sees his former lover in the countenance of the young housekeeper, the mother of his brother's infant son. On the other hand Bazarov believes that current structure of society as concerned with 'art' and 'parliamentism' while ignoring real life issues such as food, freedom, and equally.
             The reason that Pavel and Bazarov are always fighting is because they have totally different views on life. Bazarov is a total nihilist, "We base our conduct on what we recognize as useful. the most useful thing we can do is to repudiate - and so we repudiate". Pavel will say something but Bazarov will disagree with anything he says unless it is proven by a scientific statistic!.
             The base concept of nihilism is to deny or negate.