The Gambler

“[H]e lost 1,200 francs in one go. He walked away with a smile, retaining his composure.”

Alexey describes the actions of the general when playing roulette. Such composure is supposed to embody the ideal of “gentlemanly” gambling, where one plays only for entertainment and does not care about the money. This contrasts with the gambling of the “riff-raff,” who care about their winnings. However, suggests Alexey, such a distinction is merely a way of ideologically justifying gambling for the rich.

“This time the Frenchman wasn’t there and the general was in an expansive mood […] he thought it necessary to remark to me once again that he didn’t wish to see me at the gaming tables.”

The general warns Alexey, for the second time, not to gamble. On the surface, given Alexey’s limited means and his later addiction to gambling, this seems like sound, well-intentioned advice. However, behind this advice is really an anxiety about the ability of roulette to make anyone rich quickly, and thereby for gambling by the poor to potentially upset the established social order.

“Well, sir, isn’t that a majestic spectacle: a century or two of uninterrupted labour, patience, intelligence, honesty, character, firmness, calculation and a stork on the roof!”

Here, Alexey is criticizing the German method of accumulating capital. He argues that such accumulation is based upon joyless and life-denying asceticism that ultimately subordinates life to capital. Alexey contrasts this unfavorably with what he says is the Russian predilection for squandering money, yet enjoying oneself at the same time.

“All I need to do up there, in my little closet of a room, is remember and imagine merely the rustling of your dress, and I’m ready to gnaw my hands off.”

Alexey describes to Polina both how much he desires her and how inaccessible she is to him. This contradiction is so extreme, he suggests, that even the memory of the sound of her dress rustling is enough to send him into paroxysms of longing. Once again, Alexey’s comments reflect his own masochistic fantasy regarding Polina as much as they do the reality of their relationship.

“Instead of all these killings and tragedies I just want to have a laugh.”

After Alexey declares to Polina that he is her “slave” and is willing do anything for her, she tells him to insult a baroness who is passing by the casino. On one level, Polina is calling Alexey’s bluff and seeing if there is any substance to his comments about obedience beyond indulgent romantic hyperbole. On another level, though, Polina is using Alexey to get back at the general and des Grieux for treating her as a bargaining chip, by deliberately provoking a scandal for them.

“Sometimes Russians abroad are too cowardly and are terribly afraid of what people will say, how they will be regarded and whether this or that is the proper thing to do […] they behave as if they were wearing a corset.”

Alexey reflects on the general’s frightened response to Alexey’s suggestion that he will go and see the baron personally. According to Alexey, the general’s behavior is symptomatic of upper-class Russians in Europe. They are, he argues, constrained by an inferiority complex before other nationalities that makes them obsessed with social convention and terrified of deviating from it.

“Miss Zelma made her appearance that evening alone; this time nobody presented himself to offer his arm.”

This quote is part of the story Astley tells Alexey to explain why the general is so concerned about a scandal involving the baron. The general wants to marry Blanche, formerly Miss Zelma, who had lost all her money the previous year and been deserted by the men she was with. This led her to ask for money from the baron, which elicited a complaint from the baroness and Blanche’s ejection from the casino. As such, the general wants to avoid drawing any attention from the baron, for it could remind people of this earlier scandal and jeopardize their upcoming marriage. The story also shows how gambling can be destructive and addictive even for those with money and status.

“Upon meeting any new face she at once took their measure with a curious glance and questioned me loudly about them all.”

Alexey describes the behavior of Grandmother, the general’s aunt, when she arrives in their hotel in Roulettenburg. On one level, her behavior, and questioning, is idiosyncratic and rude. However, it is also indicative of Grandmother’s vitality and force of personality, especially when the general’s family had considered her to be near death.

“[S]he was as happy as a child that she had prevailed, and as usually happens, she would be utterly ruined.”

Grandmother wins large amounts of money in her first foray into gambling and roulette. However, this initial success, claims Alexey, merely sets her up for disaster. The rush of her success, and its ease, will get her hooked on that experience and lead her to keep on gambling until she loses all of her money.

“I was far away from home in a foreign land, without a job and without the means for existence, without hopes—and I wasn’t at all worried.”

Alexey reflects on his situation, as Grandmother’s gambling is leading the general’s family to the brink of catastrophe. On the surface it seems that Alexey has little to be happy about and has many sources of concern. Yet, he says, his love for Polina, and his hope that she might love him back, gives his life a deep meaning and purpose that renders all these other external circumstances unimportant. Such a perspective will stand in stark contrast to his anxiety, and his abandonment of hope, caused by his addiction to gambling later in the novel.

“When I pointed out Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm in the distance, as we were approaching the casino, she absent-mindedly looked and said with complete indifference: ‘Ah!’”

Before having gambled, Grandmother had shown a keen interest in her surroundings and especially the people around her. However, following her first experience of roulette, she has now become obsessed with gambling to the exclusion of all else. As such, she scarcely notices or cares about the important personages pointed out to her. This phenomenon of gambling addiction causing a progressive disinterest in the surrounding world is a recurring theme in the novel.

“[P]erhaps I’ll settle down somehow and stop spinning, if I give myself as precise an account as possible of all that happened this month. I feel drawn to my pen again.”

A month after events in Roulettenburg with Grandmother and Polina, and with Alexey staying in a small German town, he sets down to document through writing what happened in the preceding weeks. This process of writing is intended to bring him some mental clarity and order following the tumultuous events of that month. Drawing on his own experience of gambling addiction, Fyodor Dostoyevsky suggests that writing may constitute a form of therapy, allowing one to gain perspective on the chaos of addiction.

“My whole life was at stake!”

What Alexey thinks in the midst of his roulette winning streak when he stakes all his money on red. On one level this thought shows Alexey’s sudden realization that he could lose everything. On a deeper level though the comment betrays Alexey’s entrapment in the world of gambling, where, in that moment, winning and losing become as important as life itself.

“I distinctly remember that I really was suddenly overcome with a terrible craving for risk without any encouragement on the part of my pride.”

Alexey reflects on his feelings and experience while gambling on his winning streak. At first, he is motivated by a desire to impress others by taking huge risks. He soon realizes though that the thrill of risking larger and larger sums of money becomes disconnected from any concern with the view of others and acquires an independent force of its own.

“Perhaps when it undergoes so many sensations, the soul is not satiated, but merely irritated by them and demands still more sensations, stronger and stronger ones until it reaches utter exhaustion.”

Alexey tries to explain the appeal and nature of high-stakes gambling. As with all addictions, he suggests, the initial rush or high does not ultimately satisfy one, but simply leads to a craving for more and greater extremes of the drug or activity, to recreate that euphoric feeling. Such a process continues with more and more risked or taken until the individual reaches a state of physical or psychological burnout.

“An enormous pile of banknotes and rolls of gold coins took up the whole table; I couldn’t take my eyes off it; there were moments when I completely forgot about Polina.”

Alexey returns with his substantial winnings of 200,000 francs to his room, where Polina is waiting. Although Alexey had initially started gambling for Polina’s sake, he is now more interested in his money, and in gambling, than he is in her. The money on his table exerts a hypnotic hold over him, and this marks the point in the novel where his love for Polina is no longer the driving force in his life.

“Buy me! Is that what you want?”

Alexey offers to give Polina 50,000 francs of his winnings so that she can return to des Grieux the money he had given her as a way of assuaging his guilt over leaving her. However, Polina interprets Alexey’s offer as being no different to that of des Grieux’s. Namely, as she sees it, Alexey is treating her like an object whose affection can be bought and bargained for.

“We’re going to Paris […] and I will show you stars in broad daylight.”

When Blanche discovers that Alexey has won a fortune at roulette, she invites him to go with her to Paris. She lures him in by saying that she will stay with him and show him the high life, in return for access to his money. Alexey agrees but finds that her promise to show him “stars in daylight,” implying some new and sublime level of experience, rings hollow. In reality, his time in Paris is spent hosting elaborate balls and wasting money, and Alexey finds the whole experience both vapid and depressing.

“So that’s what you’re like! […] even though you’re a tutor but should have been born a prince.”

At first in their time in Paris, Blanche despises Alexey because she assumes that, being of poor origins, he will be greedy with his money and will be constantly demanding explanations regarding how she wants to spend it. However, when Blanche discovers that Alexey is indifferent to her extravagant spending and how quickly she is using up his fortune, her attitude changes. She identifies such nonchalance about money with an aristocratic character and comes to like Alexey. Dostoyevsky is here satirizing the contradictory societal attitude toward money at the time, where one is expected to possess it but simultaneously be uninterested in it.

“She sent me several times to take the general out for a walk, exactly as if she were sending a lackey to walk her greyhound.”

A week after arriving in Paris, the general shows up looking for Blanche. Rather than dismiss him, Blanche uses the general for the social status of being seen with an aristocrat. However, she does not take the general, or his romantic obsession with her, remotely seriously, and treats him like a pet, having Alexey entertain him when she is away with her lover or friends. It is a sad reflection of the general’s mental decline by this point that he is oblivious to the way she is using him and that he is more in love with her than ever.

“Then I merely wanted all these Hintzes, all these hotel managers, all these magnificent Baden ladies to talk about me the next day, tell my story, marvel at me, praise me and admire me for my new winnings.”

Alexey describes his motivations for returning to gambling in the German town of Baden, after having quit his job as a lackey for a German councilor. As Alexey explains, what drove him was not, despite his poverty, the desire to win money itself, or any use that could be derived from such money. Rather, Alexey is motivated by the desire to gain respect and recognition from those people in high society who had previously ignored or dismissed him.

“[Y]ou renounced any goal whatsoever, apart from winning, you have even renounced your own memories…your dreams, your most urgent desires now don’t go further than pair and impair, rouge, noir, the twelve middle numbers.”

In the German town of Homburg, Alexey meets Astley. Astley describes to Alexey the changes that he notices in him since they were together in Roulettenburg. Alexey, says Astley, is now a shadow of his former self, whose entire life and world, once so full of possibility, has been reduced to the sole and solitary goal of gambling. Indeed, suggests Astley, Alexey is so lost to others and himself that he can longer even identify with his own past experiences in Roulettenburg.

“The Frenchman, Mr. Astley, is a finished and beautiful form.”

Looking back on their time in Roulettenburg, Alexey explains to Astley why he thinks that Polina initially fell for des Grieux and not Astley. This is due, he argues, to the national characteristics of the French, who are, according to Alexey, adept at presenting an elegant and polished persona, something that is particularly appealing to Russian women. Dostoyevsky here is commenting on, and criticizing, the superficiality of European society at the time and, specifically, the obsession with French culture on the part of the Russian upper and middle classes.