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

The Psychology of The gambler In Fyodor Dostoyevskys The Gambler, we are presented with a novel whose protagonist is what we would call now a line of work gambler. The gambling mania of the storys hero, Alexei Ivanovitch, is a mirror of Dostoyevskys accept gambling compulsion. The heroine, Polina Alexandrovna, represents a woman Dostoyevsky had as a real lover. Polina is the stepdaughter of the General, who Alexei working for as a servant. The General shows paranoia over gambling from the outset of the story. He censures Alexei with respect to his care of the children, I suppose you would like to take them to the cassino to play roulette? Well, excuse my speaking so plainly, but I know how addicted you are to gambling. Though I am not your mentor, nor wish to be, at least I have a aright to require that you shall not actually compromise me (Dostoyevsky 1-2). The theme of gambling and its mental impact on the characters pervades The Gambler. Because of his own gambling addict ion and his intimate cognition of the class-conscious casino society of his era, Dostoyevsky does an excellent job of cover the psychological science that compels the problem gambler. BODY 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 depicting and honest disclosure of human emotion and sentiments. The story revolves around Roulettenberg, a German spa town where the rich gamble. We get the inner deportment of Alexei as it is portrayed in his diaries. He is poor but educated, and he is very aware of his class in society. He is conflicted, however, because he both(prenominal) covets and ridicules the lifestyle of the aristocracy with all its pretensi... ...ostoyevsky 70). Thus, Dostoyevsky does an excellent job at showing how individual consciousness and the environment in which it develops both lead to problem gambling. WORKS CITED Anonymous. Easy 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. hold Gutenberg. Jun 30, 2000 1-101. McKay, C. The Gambler, (Review). eGambling. Available http//www.camh.net/egambling/issue6/review, 1-5. Note All numbers, symbols, letters, etc. found within aside are actual rascal numbers from the hard copy of the source. rime following are the electronic summon numbers from that source as it prints from the World Wide Web (WWW) If there are no page numbers in parenthesis then only electronic page numbers are available at the Internet site.