Poor Folk

Author: Dostoevsky

Translated by: Sami Al-Durubi

The faces we encounter in this, Dostoevsky's first work, will reappear in his other works. These are the faces of "the poor" and their ways of life. We share in their suffering as much as we perceive the capacity for love and sacrifice hidden within their souls.

In this novel, we will touch upon the deep insights Dostoevsky will penetrate, and the metaphysical depths his novels will reach in delving deeply into the dimensions of the human personality, especially in portraying the lives of the poor and marginalized and entering their psychological worlds, which will be the focus of most of his novels. The two protagonists in this novel are oppressed, tormented, humiliated, and insulted. Villains inflict all kinds of injustice upon them, and they endure unbearable poverty. Makar endures humiliation and hunger and sacrifices everything he can obtain, which is very little, for the sake of the poor girl he barely sees and dares not visit for fear of gossip. He willingly deprives himself to make her happy, sending her small gifts while enduring cold, hunger, and humiliation. Through the poverty Makar Devushkin experiences, Dostoevsky reveals all the surrounding poverty. When the man is about to complain and lament the torment suffered by the good people in this world, we see him retracting his complaints and laments, resigned to reality, submissive to fate's will, his only concern being to make others happy with a naivete that, in its simplicity, carries an astonishing human spirit.