The novel’s protagonist is a mid-ranking middle-aged civil servant. Vain, scrupulously well dressed, and finicky about his personal effects, Chichikov grew up with a father who insisted his son only value material possessions rather than people. After a successfully corrupt career in public administration and the imperial customs service, Chichikov embarks on a grand fraud project that exploits the tsarist-era tax code. Chichikov plans to buy serfs who have died after the last census was taken—these “dead souls” are still legally alive, and so can be mortgaged for the value of living peasants. He visits the great estates of provincial Russia, buttering up the aristocrats he encounters armed mostly with his gift for reading people and telling them what they want to hear. Chichikov is an astute observer, easily able to discern whom to bribe and how best to flatter his targets.

In the second part of the novel, Chichikov has two encounters that force him to contemplate reforming his life. He dreams of becoming a respectable member of society, either as a wealthy landowner with a family or a philanthropic doer of good deeds. However, instead, Chichikov compounds his ongoing dead souls scam by forging a fraudulent will in hopes of acquiring wealth quickly.