The Queen Of Spades Sparknotes

“When considering the subject matter of many of Pushkin’s writings one is struck by the fact that certain intellectual demands are made on the reader, “ and they become apart of a character’s flaws and struggles (Fennell 386). In the “The Queen Of Spades”, Hermann finds trouble managing to keep his sanity while searching for a the magic three words, and through him we witness the deterioration of man that was once stable. Caryl Emerson, a Slavic language and literature professor at Princeton University, noticed the specific way in which Pushkin wrote by using the method of fragmentary code. This way of writing leaves readers with a specific uncertainty. She went onto describe them as, “codes that tantalize, but do not quite add up” (Rosenshield 76). Throughout the story we see the deterioration of Hermann
Through his imagination, a tool he used throughout the story, led him to believe he was talking to a ghost. Meanwhile all he was doing was feeding himself the answer he wanted to hear. At that point he was so emotionally distressed after not getting the answer out of the countess before her death that he would’ve done anything to get it. Another reason why he created the ghostly figure was too create a security blanket to fall back on. In the beginning Hermann is timid and will go at all lengths to make sure he will not jeopardize his structured life. As a result, after taking the risk of leaving his safe world it is only natural for him to try to revert back to it, and the only way he feels he could do that is by getting the answer from the countess herself. Since she’s dead he created the next best thing, her ghost. After her arrival he finally feels like all the stress has paid off. The ghost brings Hermann comfort and lets him arrive to a kind of grace period in the story. In this part of the story, between the ghost scene and before the defeat of his last faro game, he feels