The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Page #2

"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that explores themes of existentialism, morality, and the nature of happiness. The narrative follows a disillusioned and cynical man who contemplates suicide but has a transformative dream. In this dream, he encounters a utopian world where he witnesses the profound interconnectedness of humanity and the possibility of a pure, compassionate existence. Through his encounters, he grapples with questions of purpose, redemption, and the potential for change, ultimately leading to a profound epiphany about love and the value of life. The story serves as a reflection on the human condition and a critique of nihilism, emphasizing the importance of hope and empathy.

• Novel

								

to call some one, to find something to help her mother. I did not go with
her; on the contrary, I had an impulse to drive her away. I told her first
to go to a policeman. But clasping her hands, she ran beside me sobbing and
gasping, and would not leave me. Then I stamped my foot, and shouted at
her. She called out "Sir! sir!..." but suddenly abandoned me and rushed
headlong across the road. Some other passer-by appeared there, and she
evidently flew from me to him.

I mounted up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat where there are
other lodgers. My room is small and poor, with a garret window in the
shape of a semicircle. I have a sofa covered with American leather, a table
with books on it, two chairs and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can
be, but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the candle,
and began thinking. In the room next to mine, through the partition wall, a
perfect Bedlam was going on. It had been going on for the last three days.
A retired captain lived there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen
of doubtful reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss with old cards.
The night before there had been a fight, and I know that two of them had
been for a long time engaged in dragging each other about by the hair. The
landlady wanted to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain.
There was only one other lodger in the flat, a thin little regimental lady,
on a visit to Petersburg, with three little children who had been taken ill
since they came into the lodgings. Both she and her children were in mortal
fear of the captain, and lay trembling and crossing themselves all night,
and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright. That captain, I know
for a fact, sometimes stops people in the Nevsky Prospect and begs. They
won't take him into the service, but strange to say (that's why I am
telling this), all this month that the captain has been here his behaviour
has caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his
acquaintance from the very beginning, and he, too, was bored with me from
the first; but I never care how much they shout the other side of the
partition nor how many of them there are in there: I sit up all night and
forget them so completely that I do not even hear them. I stay awake till
daybreak, and have been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all
night in my arm-chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. I
sit--don't even think; ideas of a sort wander through my mind and I let
them come and go as they will. A whole candle is burnt every night. I sat
down quietly at the table, took out the revolver and put it down before
me. When I had put it down I asked myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and
answered with complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall shoot myself.
I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain, but how much
longer I should go on sitting at the table I did not know. And no doubt I
should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl.

II

You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If
any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if
anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to
do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me. I had
felt pity that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why, then,
had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that occurred to me at
the time: when she was calling and pulling at me, a question suddenly arose
before me and I could not settle it. The question was an idle one, but I
was vexed. I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an
end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have mattered to me. Why
was it that all at once I did not feel that nothing mattered and was sorry
for the little girl? I remember that I was very sorry for her, so much so
that I felt a strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do
not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the moment, but the
sensation persisted at home when I was sitting at the table, and I was very
much irritated as I had not been for a long time past. One reflection
followed another. I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being
and not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and feel
shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill myself, in two
hours, say, what is the little girl to me and what have I to do with shame
or with anything else in the world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely
nothing. And can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall
completely cease to exist immediately and so everything else will cease
to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of pity for the child nor
the feeling of shame after a contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at
the unhappy child as though to say--not only I feel no pity, but even if I
behave inhumanly and contemptibly, I am free to, for in another two hours
everything will be extinguished. Do you believe that that was why I shouted
that? I am almost convinced of it now. It seemed clear to me that life and
the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now
seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be
at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist
for any one when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is
extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a
phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this
world and all these people are only me myself. I remember that as I sat and
reflected, I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after another
quite the other way, and thought of something quite new. For instance, a
strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on
the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and
dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as
one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding
myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had
done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never,
under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the
moon--should I care or not? Should I feel shame for that action or not?
These were idle and superfluous questions for the revolver was already
lying before me, and I knew in every fibre of my being that it would happen
for certain, but they excited me and I raged. I could not die now without
having first settled something. In short, the child had saved me, for I
put off my pistol shot for the sake of these questions. Meanwhile the
clamour had begun to subside in the captain's room: they had finished their
game, were settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and
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