The Double

Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1846

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

Klara Olsufyevna celebrates her birthday with a lavish party. The narrator apologizes for not being able to adequately describe the splendor of the party. In the back stairs, Golyadkin stands “huddled up” (150) and watches the party from the outside for several hours. He thinks about entering to talk to Klara. By the time he does, however, someone else already pushed past him. Golyadkin curses to himself and waits until the person has fully moved past, then slips through the entrance “almost unnoticed” (153). He heads directly to Klara, so focused that he does not notice that he has stepped on a woman’s dress, knocked into a man, and almost caused the waiter to spill a tray.

When Golyadkin reaches Klara, he congratulates her on her birthday. He stumbles over his words and feels the whole party turning to stare at him. Filippovich shakes his head disapprovingly, taking Klara by the arm and leading her away from Golyadkin. A butler appears at Golyadkin’s arm, informing Golyadkin that “a certain gentleman from somewhere or other” (156) has asked to speak to him. Golyadkin does not believe that any such person exists. He begins a long, rambling speech about the dangers of the chandelier above the partygoers, describing how it could fall on their heads. Golyadkin watches as Klara steps off the dancefloor. He decides to approach her again, heading across the room and inviting her to dance with him. Klara takes his hand, seemingly used to such gestures rather than having any particular interest in dancing with Golyadkin. He leads her to the dancefloor and falls flat on his face. Klara shrieks as the dancers lift Golyadkin to his feet and hustle him from the room. Golyadkin is thrown into the street, where he runs away into the darkness.

Chapter 5 Summary

Golyadkin runs into the night, muttering about his various unseen “enemies” (159) as he loses his galoshes in the slushy, muddy street. Gripped by a “strange, vague feeling of anguish” (162), Golyadkin turns suddenly and sees a man wearing clothes just like his own. The sight of the man frightens Golyadkin, who notices that the other man has a similarly frightened expression.

After walking away, Golyadkin spots the man again. He questions his mind when he sees the man pausing briefly beneath a streetlight; the man looks very familiar, to the point where Golyadkin is convinced that he knows the man’s name and the name of his father. Rather than approach him, however, Golyadkin feels disturbed by the man. The man vanishes from sight, and Golyadkin runs home through the dark streets in terror and shock.

Then, he spots the man again. The man seems to have been running along the same streets, mirroring Golyadkin’s actions. Golyadkin follows this strange man, who leads Golyadkin to his own house. The man knocks at Golyadkin’s door. Petrushka welcomes him inside. Golyadkin then enters his own house, heading immediately to his bedroom. Inside, the man is sitting on Golyadkin’s bed, smiling. Golyadkin now sees that the man is “identical to him in every way” (167).

Chapter 6 Summary

Golyadkin wakes up convinced that his unnamed enemies have played a terrible joke on him. Next door, he can hear Petrushka talking. Golyadkin wonders why the servant is so late in bringing his breakfast. Rather than shout out to the servant, however, Golyadkin feels suddenly hesitant. He cannot describe why, but he is frightened. Soon, the servant enters. Petrushka does not make eye contact with Golyadkin, deepening Golyadkin’s agitation.

Golyadkin thinks he is sick and should not go to work, but he goes to his office anyway. He talks to no one. Golyadkin watches as his double enters the office and bows extravagantly to Filippovich. When Golyadkin looks around the office, no one seems surprised by his double. Instead, a colleague named Anton Antonovich chats amiably about Golyadkin’s double with Golyadkin himself. Antonovich dismisses Golyadkin’s paranoia, saying doubles are common. He claims that his aunt “saw herself doubly” (175) the day that she passed away.

The workday ends, and Golyadkin has calmed himself. He feels content enough to walk home but, as he takes to the streets, he realizes that the double is walking beside him. The double begins to chat, describing the pull he feels toward Golyadkin. Golyadkin wants the double to disappear, but he responds politely to the man’s comments, even inviting the double into his apartment.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

In this section, Golyadkin invites himself to Klara’s birthday party, again highlighting Tension and Anxiety in Duality and Delusion and Conspiracy. Though he fantasizes about declaring his love for Klara, he waits outside the party for hours before convincing himself to sneak in when no one is watching, demonstrating his paranoia stemming from alienation. Once inside, Golyadkin behaves awkwardly, offending people with his physical presence as much as his awkward conversation. Through his exaggerated physical awkwardness, Golyadkin demonstrates that he quite literally does not fit in, almost caricaturizing himself in his extreme awkwardness. However, Golyadkin is hyper-fixated on his conversation with Klara, which inures him to everything that is happening. Whether standing on the toes of old women or knocking into waiters carrying trays, he feels physically out of place at the party where he is an uninvited guest. While Golyadkin forces himself to enter the party, taking his doctor’s advice to socialize to an extreme, Klara enjoys being the center of a lavish party in high society. The narrator struggles to describe the luxurious celebrations, again aligning with Golyadkin, offering sympathy and even camaraderie. Through Klara, however, Golyadkin again highlights Tension and Anxiety in Duality: She is his opposite, an adored member of society, and Golyadkin’s desire for her also speaks to his wishes for himself.

Golyadkin breaks social convention by entering the party uninvited and ignoring Klara’s exhaustion when asking her to dance. He intrudes into a social space where he is not welcome, and as he tries to explain himself, his words turn into a jumbled, erratic flurry of nonsense, furthering a sense of caricature in his person. The real Golyadkin is revealed as a public embarrassment, seemingly unable to control his body and words amongst Saint Petersburg’s elite. Klara screams at his behavior, and Golyadkin is dragged away. This dramatically embarrassing scene creates tension between the sympathetic narrator’s defense of Golyadkin and the other characters’ perception of him, furthering Tension and Anxiety in Duality even in the novel’s form.

After Golyadkin’s extreme social faux pas, the double first appears, demonstrating Delusion and Conspiracy. As Golyadkin scuttles home in embarrassment and confusion, he glimpses a man who is his exact likeness. In times of peril, Golyadkin desires a form of self-annihilation: He wishes that he could remove himself from the world and become a detached observer, watching—and not interacting with—those around him. The double appears in this dark moment, allowing Golyadkin to glimpse some version of himself skipping strangely through the streets. The mixture of fascination and abhorrence is, ironically, like the attitudes directed at him by other people. In this moment, Golyadkin is able to view someone else as others view him—with a mixture of morbid curiosity and profound uncanniness which unsettles and obsesses him. After this initial night, however, the interactions between the double and the other characters reinforce Golyadkin’s alienation.

The appearance of the double becomes his obsession, while others barely seem to recognize the similarity between the two men. The resulting aura surrounding the double is of supernatural mysticism. He could be a real double of Golyadkin, he could be a supernatural entity, he could be a normal person onto whom Golyadkin is projecting his insecurities, or he could even be a figment of Golyadkin’s imagination. Golyadkin never receives confirmation of the exact nature of the double—what matters is the effect that the double elicits from Golyadkin, as well as the double’s ability to highlight the very nature of alienation as a feeling of being outside of oneself. Additionally, Golyadkin’s colleague, Antonovich, mentioning his aunt seeing her double shortly before she died foreshadows the tragedy to follow the arrival of the double, as Golyadkin will be removed from Saint Petersburg and placed in a psychiatric hospital. In this sense, the double is an ominous warning of an extreme ending through the othering of Golyadkin from society.