The Gambler (Dostoevsky)/Chapter 14

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Gambler. Chapter 14

A desperate wager to win Polina’s freedom

1866

Summary of a Chapter
from the Collection “The Gambler”

The original takes about 20 minutes to read

Microsummary

After Polina revealed De Griers’s rejection, the narrator rushed to the Casino, recklessly won one hundred thousand florins, and returned to throw the fortune before her as proof of his love.

Chapter Summary

Polina unexpectedly entered the narrator’s hotel room late at night. Pale and emotionally exhausted, she asked him to light a candle and placed an open letter from De Griers on the table for him to read.

De Griers wrote that financial difficulties and the Grandmother’s arrival had destroyed his hopes for a future with Polina. Because the General’s debts had cost him almost all his money, he intended to sell the property mortgaged to him and leave at once.

Claiming that he wished to behave honorably, De Griers released the General from part of a fifty-thousand-rouble mortgage. This arrangement was supposed to allow Polina to recover money that her stepfather had squandered and to end De Griers’s obligations toward her.

Polina said that she had expected nothing better. She had long understood De Griers’s motives and had deliberately treated him with contempt while waiting to see what he would do. She declared that she hated him and wished she could repay the money and humiliate him.

The narrator proposed recovering the mortgage document, appealing to the Grandmother, or challenging De Griers to a duel. Polina rejected dependence on anyone. When he mentioned Mr. Astley, she angrily asked whether he wanted her to leave him for Astley, revealing that she had turned to the narrator himself.

Overwhelmed by the realization that Polina might love him, the narrator told her to wait for one hour and rushed to the Casino. He became convinced that an apparently impossible stroke of luck was destined to provide the fifty thousand francs he needed.

Starting with twenty ten-gülden pieces, he bet without a system. Successive wagers on Passe, the middle twelve numbers, and red rapidly increased his money, although several reckless losses nearly ruined him. A chance bet on the first twelve numbers restored his fortune.

He continued in a feverish state, barely aware of his calculations or mistakes. After winning thirty thousand florins and forcing one roulette bank to close, he moved to another table, won another thirty thousand, and impulsively gave five hundred gülden to a grateful pale woman.

At trente-et-quarante, despite knowing almost nothing about the game, he repeatedly backed red during an extraordinary winning run. His desire for risk intensified until he learned that he had accumulated one hundred thousand florins. He gathered the money and ignored warnings to leave town before losing it again.

Carrying bulging pockets of notes and gold, he hurried through the dark Avenue toward the hotel, exhilarated by success, power, and the thought of Polina. He found her still waiting on the sofa, stopped before her, and flung his entire burden of wealth onto the table.

Characters

Alexei Ivanovich — narrator, a young Russian man employed by the General, passionately devoted to Polina and driven into reckless, ecstatic gambling by his desire to help her.

Polina Alexandrovna — young Russian woman, the General’s proud and financially vulnerable stepdaughter, formerly attached to De Griers and emotionally drawn to Alexei.

Marquis De Griers — adult French man, the General’s creditor and Polina’s former suitor, calculating and concerned with preserving his money and reputation for honor.

The General — middle-aged or older Russian military man, Polina’s frivolous stepfather and De Griers’s heavily indebted associate, whose financial misconduct endangered Polina’s property.

Antonida Vasilevna (the Grandmother) — elderly wealthy Russian woman whose arrival and gambling losses destroyed the General’s expectations of an inheritance and helped prompt De Griers’s departure.

Quotes

Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one’s head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality.

“For a long time I have hated him. Even in earlier days he was not a man; and now!—Oh, how gladly I could throw those fifty thousand roubles in his face, and spit in it, and then rub the spittle in!”

Also, I remember that—oh, strange sensation!—I suddenly, and without any challenge from my own presumption, became obsessed with a *desire* to take risks.

This summary is based on the translation by C. J. Hogarth, first published in Poor Folk; The Gambler (London: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1915). Illustrations were created using AI.