The Gambler

Summary

The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1866. Dostoevsky, deep in debt and bound by a contract with the publisher Fyodor Stellovsky that threatened the rights to his future work, dictated it in about four weeks to a young stenographer, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, whom he married the following year. The novel draws on his own gambling at German spas and on his relationship with Apollinaria Suslova. The narrator, Alexey Ivanovitch, is a young Russian tutor in the household of a retired general staying at the spa town of Roulettenburg. The General is heavily in debt to a Frenchman, the Marquis de Grieux, and hopes to marry the fashionable Mademoiselle Blanche, whose interest depends on his expected inheritance from a rich elderly relative in Moscow, known as Granny. Alexey is in love with the General's stepdaughter, Polina Alexandrovna, who treats him with a mixture of intimacy and contempt and sends him to play roulette on her behalf. A reserved Englishman, Mr. Astley, watches events and befriends Alexey. Everyone awaits news of Granny's death, but she arrives at the hotel in person, carried in her chair, scorns the General's circle and throws herself into roulette. After an early win, she loses a large part of her fortune within days and returns to Moscow. The General's hopes collapse. Polina, humiliated by de Grieux, comes to Alexey's room at night; he rushes to the casino, wins about two hundred thousand francs and offers her money, which she throws in his face before leaving for Mr. Astley's care. Alexey goes to Paris with Mademoiselle Blanche, who spends his winnings and then marries the General. In the final chapters, set some time later, Alexey has become a wandering gambler, at times in debt and once imprisoned for it. Mr. Astley tells him that Polina loved him and gives him money, but Alexey intends to return to the tables, telling himself that tomorrow everything will change. The novel offers a close portrait of compulsion and of the Russian abroad, and its narrator's restless confession anticipates the psychological intensity of Dostoevsky's major novels.

Top Lessons

• The psychology of compulsion

  Alexey describes the thrill of the wheel and his belief that one turn could change everything. The novel shows how risk can become a need.

• Money and relationships

  Almost every relationship in the book depends on money, debts or inheritances. Students can trace how money shapes love and loyalty.

• Russians abroad

  Alexey compares Russians, French, Germans and English. The novel uses a spa town to study national manners and pride.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The novel is an early literary study of compulsive gambling, showing escalating risk, chasing losses and the narrator's belief in a coming win, decades before gambling was described as a medical disorder.

• Chapters IX–XII

  Granny's rapid losses at roulette despite warnings.

• Chapter XVII

  Alexey's reflections on his life as a gambler and his intention to play again.