Analysis
Dostoevsky’s 1848 “White Nights” is a short story that asks a simple set of existential questions: Is love possible, even temporarily? What is the human capacity for happiness? And, how long can one live off of the pleasure of memory alone? Like many of Dostoevsky’s works, “White Nights” explores the complex dynamics of the human condition through a focalizing interaction, using a fleeting friendship to summarize the intermingled joy and anguish that comprise one’s life.
Set in St. Petersburg in the 1840s, the story briefly takes up the question of the modern world; as the world began to rapidly change in response to technological development, so too did the lives of the common man. The narrator, an unnamed and deeply lonely man, describes feeling lost amidst the urban sprawl. All around him, he encounters others living their lives; he watches them laugh, cry, and love, yet he feels dejected and rejected by the vibrant society surrounding him. Although the narrator lingers only briefly on the pains of urban life, his complaint reflects a grower undercurrent of mid-nineteenth-century dissatisfaction; the world was changing and, in doing so, leaving many behind.
The story, then, is the tale of his life laid bare to a near stranger. After a chance encounter with a wide-eyed young woman, the narrator exposes the bleak agony of his isolated existence and expresses immense dissatisfaction at the loneliness of modern life. “White Nights” is a chronological record of this encounter and is split into five time-oriented sections, spanning the first, second, third, and fourth nights that the narrator and his female companion, Nastenka, meet, as well as the morning directly following the fourth night. In this way, Dostoevsky describes the cyclical struggle of loneliness, the joy of its abatement, and the sorrow of its return.
Although the narrative may seem simplistic and innocent, it is anything but. Through this brief, four-night period of shared infatuation, Dostoevsky examines the flighty and selfish nature of love, the brevity of happiness, and the pain of the human condition. He uses a love triangle—because the young woman is still in love with her former love but has fallen for the narrator as well—to depict the innate selfishness of human interaction. Although the narrator does not begrudge Nastenka her joy with the other man, he does consider the dullness of life without her, having viewed her presence as the necessary salve to heal his damaged heart and mundane life.
Love is often touted as pure, but Dostoevsky indicates that, like all things, it is an informed choice made with selfish intentions. Nastenka seeks stability and acceptance while the narrator seeks an outlet to listen to and validate his thoughts. Both parties see love as, in some ways, transactional, and it shows. In so doing, Dostoevsky points to the flawed nature of love; contrary to popular perception, love heals no wounds. Instead, like happiness, it is a malleable, fleeting joy that abates unexpectedly and without reason.
The narrator’s long-winded philosophical musings on the nature of his internal life as a dreamer form the emotional backdrop of “White Nights.” He is an educated man, so his monologues are lurid, filled with vivid imagery and elegant metaphors; his pessimistic speeches register with painful accuracy to modern readers, who often share his experiences with isolation and its corollary, escapism. The narrator has spent much of his life in self-reflection; as such, he describes his struggles and desires with poignant precision in an emotional appeal that draws at the heartstrings. At once, “White Nights” is a philosophical exploration of the greatest—and most painful—human experiences and an examination of an individual life spent coping with these simple but omnipresent woes.
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