Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky (A Nasty Story)
State Councillor Pralinsky stars in a story of nasty irony. Having firmed up a new philosophy of treating people nicely, he crashes the wedding of a fellow bureaucrat in an attempt to transform theory into practice and winds up only making a fool of himself which forever taints his reputation.
Ivan Matveich (The Crocodile)
Another of the author’s tragic bureaucrats is Ivan Matveich. He suffers an even greater indignity as he is swallowed whole by the titular reptilian metaphor for the reptilian characteristics of bureaucratic efficiency…at swallowing whole the lives of those who prey to its giant snapping jaws.
Ivan Ivanovitch (Bobok)
The Ivan in this story is an adman and translator frustrated that he is not a journalist and writer of novels who ironically comes across a great true story that the process of telling seems certain only to confirm suspicions already in place concerning the state of his sanity. Ivan writes in his diary about the experiences in a cemetery of hearing a conversation between the recently buried which reveals that the depravity of living merely continues into the afterlife.
Mr. Prokharchin (Mr. Prokharchin)
The primary interest of this very example of Dostoevsky’s short fiction skills is its basis in fact. A real-life historical analogue stoked the interest of the author to produce this somewhat slight account of the story a man living in extreme frugality who turns out to be an example of the miser secretly protecting great wealth.
Julian Mastakovich (A Christmas Tree and a Wedding)
Julian Mastakovich is fat with flesh and money. He is the richest among the rich townspeople attending a Christmas party and the narrator takes note of his taking note of a pretty 11-year-old girl whose dowry he has calculated will be worth 500,000 rubles when she turns 16. Mastokovich eventually stigmatizes the entire party by chasing away a poor young boy in the process of pressing his unwanted attention on the young girl. The narrator then flashes forward five years to describe the wedding part aspect of the title: the marriage ceremony taking place between Mastokovich and the pretty girl from the Christmas party who has recently turned 16.
