The Psychology of The Gambler Essay -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Gambler

The Psychology of The Gambler In Fyodor Dostoyevskys The Gambler, we argon presented with a novel whose protagonist is what we would call today a worry gambler. The gambling mania of the storys hero, Alexei Ivanovitch, is a mirror of Dostoyevskys own gambling compulsion. The heroine, Polina Alexandrovna, represents a woman Dostoyevsky had as a real lover. Polina is the stepdaughter of the General, who Alexei works for as a servant. The General shows paranoia over gambling from the outset of the story. He censures Alexei with respect to his supervise of the children, I suppose you would like to take them to the Casino to play roulette? Well, excuse my speaking so plainly, but I know how accustom you ar to gambling. Though I am non your mentor, nor wish to be, at least I have a right to require that you shall not unfeignedly compromise me (Dostoyevsky 1-2). The theme of gambling and its psychological impact on the characters pervades The Gambler. Because of his own gambling add iction and his intimate knowledge of the class-conscious gambling casino society of his era, Dostoyevsky does an excellent job of showing the psychology that compels the problem gambler. trunk Using diary entries as his literary vehicle, Dostoyevsky takes us inside the minds of his characters in a way that makes us voyeurs because of his realistic portrayal and honest apocalypse of human emotion and sentiments. The story revolves around Roulettenberg, a German resort hotel town where the rich gamble. We get the inner life of Alexei as it is pictured in his diaries. He is poor but educated, and he is very awake(predicate) of his class in society. He is conflicted, however, because he both covets and ridicules the lifestyle of the magnanimousness with all its pretensi... ...ostoyevsky 70). Thus, Dostoyevsky does an excellent job at showing how individual cognisance and the environment in which it develops both lead to problem gambling. WORKS CITED Anonymous. unproblematic come , easy go...Maybe. The Wager. Vol. 5, No. 43, Harvard Medical School, Nov 1, 2000 1-3. Dostoyevsky, F. The Gambler, (1866). Trans. By C. J. Hogarth. Project Gutenberg. Jun 30, 2000 1-101. McKay, C. The Gambler, (Review). eGambling. Available http//www.camh.net/egambling/issue6/review, 1-5. timber All numbers, symbols, letters, etc. found within pargonnthesis are actual page numbers from the hard copy of the source. Numbers following are the electronic page numbers from that source as it prints from the World considerable Web (WWW) If there are no page numbers in parenthesis then only electronic page numbers are available at the Internet site.