Resumo de The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding concerning this novelette by Dostoyevsky. Many straightforwardly equate Alexei with Dostoyevsky, and Paulina with Apollinaria Suslova, his one-time cruel mistress. But this is overhasty because there seems to me a crucial difference between Alexei and the author. Namely, the author was wracked by guilt and remorse after every debacle at the roulette table. Alexei had no such compunction. He is truly a natural gambler; throughout the novel we see him taking wild risks, for example, telling Paulina that he would throw himself from the Schlangenberg with her slightest approval. His love of gambling is less a desire to get rich - indeed he seems to shrug off his winnings as nonchalantly as his losses - or a means of building his self-esteem, but more about "an uncontrollable urge to stick my tongue at it ," (pg. 40) or plain thrill-seeking: "he feels the need for stronger and stronger ones" (pg. 147). What's particularly painful is that even though he has momentary insights into the true root of his addiction, his self-analysis on the whole is about as farcical as his "theory" of roulette. And this will become very apparent with his treatment of Paulina. Paulina's motives are more nebulous and deserve some explaining. Hysteria and extreme irrational behavior often stems from excessive pride in Dostoyevsky's psychoanalysis. This is true especially of Mme Epanchina and her daughter Aglaya in "The Idiot", certainly Katerina Ivanovna in C&P, and is a favorite theme of Dostoyevsky's. In the case of Paulina, she particularly resents having any monetary value attached to her person. This loathing has it roots in Des Grieux's reluctance to marry her without dowry. It also explains why she turns down Grandmother's generous offer, and, of course, the culminating scene with Alexei. This would help to explain some of the puzzling outbursts. Of the novel as a whole, there are pros and cons. The whole atmosphere of the novel is much lighter than the usual miasma of nerve-wracking gloom. Alexei's little fling with Blanche, sort of an upper-class call-girl, has some unexpectedly simple tenderness that's rare in his novels (usually they are more melodramatic or heightened). You can certainly get a chuckle out of Alexei's audacity elsewhere, particularly when he plays a pretty brutal prank on an extremely uptight German baron. Certainly, there are enough humorous anecdotes to keep a reader's attention. But what I find less appealing is the focus of this novel on nationality. As many people have noted, this is the most cosmopolitan of all his novels and yet this may be the one that presents his xenophobic stereotypes in a glaring manner. Alexei and the British Mr. Astley claim an innate gambling streak in the Russian national character. Whatever the truth of the claim, this at least has anecdotal value when Alexei contrasts this with a satirical view of the "German Idol" when he claims that he refuses "to consider myself as an instrument for the accumulation of capital."(pg.45). But in the process both the Russian and German character is heavily caricatured. On top of this, there's Des Grieux, an all-too-generic French villain of the sarcastically polite type, and the slanderous manhandling of the Poles and Jews. The undesirable sum effect of all of these is that it detracts from the psychology not only of the gambler, but of the other characters. My opinion is that his rampant xenophobia had prevented Dostoyevsky from properly fleshing out his characters. Personally speaking, the drama of clashing psychologies is what I relish in reading Dostoyevsky.

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