The Double

Summary

The Double is Fyodor Dostoevsky's second published work, a short novel that appeared in the journal Notes of the Fatherland in 1846, shortly after his debut with Poor Folk. Subtitled 'A Petersburg Poem', it follows Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, a titular councillor in a government office, through a few days in which his hold on reality gives way. Golyadkin wakes on a damp November morning, admires the money in his pocket-book, hires a carriage and livery for his servant Petrushka, and drives about the city in borrowed splendor. He visits his doctor, Krestyan Ivanovitch Rutenspitz, and speaks confusedly of enemies who wish him harm. That evening he tries to enter a birthday ball for Klara Olsufyevna, daughter of his patron, the state councillor Olsufy Ivanovitch, but he has not been invited; after slipping in and making a spectacle of himself, he is put out of the house. Walking home in a snowstorm along the Fontanka embankment, Golyadkin meets a man who looks exactly like him and follows him to his own lodgings. The next day this second Golyadkin is given a post in the same department. At first the newcomer appears humble and grateful, and Golyadkin takes him in and confides in him. Soon, however, 'Golyadkin junior' takes credit for his work, flatters their superiors, mocks him in public and wins the favor that the original cannot. Golyadkin writes letters of protest, imagines plots against him and reads a note he believes Klara has sent him as an invitation to elope. At the end he returns to Olsufy Ivanovitch's house, where the assembled guests watch as Krestyan Ivanovitch leads him to a carriage and drives him away, it is implied, to an asylum. The novel's narration stays close to Golyadkin's anxious thoughts, repeating his phrases and leaving the reader uncertain how much of the double is real. Contemporary critics, including Vissarion Belinsky, found it long and tedious, and Dostoevsky revised it in 1866. Later readers have seen it as an early study of divided identity and social humiliation, and Dostoevsky himself wrote that its idea was among the most serious he ever had.

Top Lessons

• Who is the double?

  The novel never settles whether Golyadkin junior is real. Readers can consider how Dostoevsky uses uncertainty to show a mind under strain.

• Rank and humiliation

  Golyadkin longs for respect in a world governed by rank and patronage. The double succeeds by flattery where he fails.

• Narrative voice

  The narrator repeats Golyadkin's phrases and follows his thoughts closely. Students can examine how style conveys anxiety.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The novel is an early and detailed literary portrait of persecutory delusion and disintegrating identity, told from close inside the patient's perspective, with a physician who advises 'cheerful company' and finally removes the patient to an institution.

• Chapter I

  Golyadkin's confused consultation with Dr. Rutenspitz, in which he complains of enemies and the doctor prescribes a change of habits.

• Chapter V

  The meeting with the double on the Fontanka in a snowstorm.

• Chapter XIII

  Golyadkin is led away by the doctor, apparently to an asylum.