Cover 7

Bobok

2012

Ratings2

Average rating3.5

15

a short story by Dostoevsky, first complaining about how people are not interested in his ideas, how “abuse is accepted as wit”, and how publishers refuse his writings. He then goes out for a walk and joins this funeral, sits at the cemetery and listens to the dead converse. It's amazing! Bobok means a small bean but by it, he means possibly nothingness after death. We have a little life after death (the dead say that life continues with inertia after we die) but only for 3-6 months and then Bobok.
“... for life and lying are synonymous”. “you don't show your own wisdom by shutting someone else in a madhouse.”
the dead stop after he sneezes, and he concludes they are hiding something from the living and vows to continue to visit cemeteries and listen to more dead people to find out and get some reassurance.
in the end, he is not worried about Bobok but rather about the depravity, the debauchery that continues after death.

April 6, 2024Report this review