The Gambler

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1866

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Roulette and Numbers

Roulette, the game at the center of the narrative, symbolizes anxiety over the potential upheaval of social class and wealth. A game of chance that offers potentially significant payoffs, roulette represents a way in which the rigid order and hierarchy of 19th-century society, in which wealth is usually inherited, might be overturned. For characters like Alexey, and even Polina, roulette symbolizes hope and freedom from the confines of social hierarchy.

Several characters demonstrate obsessions with the numbers and calculations surrounding roulette and their winnings from the game. When Alexey first goes to the roulette tables to play for Polina, he observes an odd behavior on the part of many players. As he says, “They sit with slips of paper […] note down the numbers that come up, count, figure their chances, calculate, finally […] lose as much as we mere mortals who play without calculating” (144). In other words, Alexey observes the peculiar significance that gamblers give to specific numbers and sequences of numbers. He also observes their attempts to “calculate” winning bets based on this. Of course, no such calculation makes a difference. No one number is any more likely to come up than another, and the amount of times numbers have shown before, or in what sequence, makes no difference to their present likelihood of arriving.

Such a point is highlighted by Grandmother’s obsession with “zero.” Most gamblers shy away from betting on this number because it emphasizes both the arbitrary, skill-less nature of roulette and the fact that the game is rigged. As Alexey explains to Grandmother, “there are thirty-six chances against it” (199), but one is only paid 35 to one when it comes up. Still, Grandmother continues, at first, to win huge amounts by staking exclusively on this number. On the other hand, it is a sign of Alexey’s descent into the madness of gambling addiction that he loses this insight. Describing his gambling at the novel’s end, he says, “I play for the smallest stakes and wait for something; I make calculations, I stand for days on end by the gaming table and observe the play” (265). Alexey has started to fetishize numbers themselves. Ignoring reality, he lends to the numbers and their sequences some mystical significance, believing that sufficient insight into their patterns will save him.

Names, Titles, and Roles

As he is trying to convince Alexey not to confront the baron, des Grieux says to him, “forgive me, I have forgotten your name, Monsieur Alexis? …isn’t that right?” (169). Des Grieux intentionally “forgets,” then gets wrong, Alexey’s name to undermine him by suggesting how insignificant he is. This confusion and ambiguity over names, titles, and roles run throughout The Gambler and serve to highlight social hierarchies and the anxieties surrounding them. “The general,” one of the novel’s central characters, is never given a definite name. He is known only by a role that he no longer occupies, with even his wife-to-be, Blanche, not clear whether her new surname will be “Zagoryansky, Zagoziansky” or “Sago-Sago” (262). Alexey is a “tutor,” “outchitel,” despite never doing any tutoring, and “Grandmother” is in fact the general’s aunt and is entered into the hotel’s book as “Princess Tarassevitcheva” (190). This is even though, as Alexey says, “Grandmother had never been a princess” (190). Even Polina is travelling under an adopted European name that is different from her Russian name, Praskovya.

Then there are des Grieux and Blanche. As Astley observes about the former, “[…] he took the name des Grieux only recently. I know here a certain individual who has met him under a different name” (176). Clearly, des Grieux has changed his name, just as he has fabricated the title of Marquis. Meanwhile, Blanche has undergone numerous changes of second names, from Barberini to Zelma, to de Cominges. Only when she is getting married is it revealed that her real surname is “du Placet” (262).

All these changes of, and ambiguity surrounding, names serve a symbolic role in The Gambler. With them, Fyodor Dostoyevsky aims to highlight both the arbitrariness of names and the statuses tied to them and how quickly such status can change. This confusion of names also serves another symbolic function. It symbolizes society’s obsession with superficial appearance over substance, and individuals’ concomitant desires to deceive others about who and what they are.

Notes and Letters

Letter and notes appear continually throughout The Gambler. Polina gives Alexey a letter via des Grieux, telling him, regarding his proposed confrontation with the baron, to “please, stop and calm yourself” (171) as “there are particular circumstances here, which perhaps I will explain to you later” (171) for her wanting this. A few days later, Alexey then sends Polina a note. He tells her, after the impending catastrophe caused by Grandmother’s gambling, that if she needs “anything at all” (230) his life is at her disposal, and he will be waiting for her. Finally, along with the letter Polina sends to Astley via Alexey, there is des Grieux’s letter to Polina. In it, des Grieux explains how the loss of “almost all my money in loans to your stepfather” (235), due to the loss of his inheritance, means that financial circumstances demand that he leaves her.

On one level, these letters are an important device for driving the narrative forward. They explain why Alexey calls off his confrontation with the baron, how Polina ends up in Alexey’s room, and how both Alexey and Polina discover the mercenary nature and intensions of des Grieux. However, on another level, they also reflect and symbolize the problems of communication the characters face. In an age when the open expression of emotion, and especially of romantic feelings, was discouraged or prohibited, letters serve a crucial substitutive role. They allow individuals to express desires and thoughts that might otherwise have to be repressed. At the same time, letters allow for evasion or concealment. As seen with des Grieux, writing allows people to avoid directly telling others uncomfortable truths and allows for the maintenance of a “respectable” or noble self-image despite selfish or petty behavior.