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We have no idea what he is talking about. With that last crazy sentence, Gogol abruptly rescues us from becoming a puddle of tears about Poprishchin's terribly sad fate. And it seals the deal on the question of whether our hero is totally, irredeemably mad. Gogol could have made this last entry completely crazy, from beginning to end, but he ...
Poprishchin eavesdrops further on the dogs’ conversation, and hears that Medji has written Fidèle a letter. He ends that day’s diary entry by making a “note” of where Fidèle lives, and claims he will visit soon. In the next day’s diary entry, Poprishchin recalls scenes from his office.
Everything is told exclusively from the point of view of the protagonist, and conclusions about him and what is happening to him can only ever be inferred from the solipsistic and increasingly fantastic narrative of events and thoughts recorded in his diary. [1]
- An Ill Friend
- Clear Vision
- Eat People
- The Executioner
- A Man-Eat-Man World
- Save The Children
The narrator learns that one of his two good friends is sick. His two good friends are brothers. He stops by his friends' house on his journey home. The healthy brother greets him and gives him good news. He tells the narrator that the sick brother has recovered and left home. However, during his illness, the sick brother had become a madman. The m...
The rest of the narrative consists of passages from the madman's diary. In the first entry, the madman realizes that he can see more clearly than ever before when he sees a very bright moon in the sky. He is paranoid about his neighbor Chao's dog whom he believes looked at him twice. When the moon goes away, the madman knows it is a bad omen. He no...
The madman can no longer sleep because he is up at night going over everything that has happened during the day. He recalls a woman disciplining her son. The woman told her son that she wanted to take several bites out of him. While she spoke to her son, she seemed to be looking at the madman. Even the people in his home act as if they do not know ...
The madman's doctor Mr. Ho comes to visit the madman in his home. The madman is sure that Mr. Ho is the executioner. When the doctor takes his pulse, the madman is sure that it is in guise of checking to see if he is plump enough to eat. When the doctor tells him to rest, he is sure that his neighbors and family are waiting for him to fatten up. As...
The madman is confined to his home. He puzzles over the life of a cannibal. He figures cannibals must be constantly wanting to eat their fellow humans, while always having to fear that their fellow humans will eat them. A young man visits the madman in his home. The madman tries to talk to the visitor about cannibalism. When the young man evades hi...
The madman recalls his sister. The madman's sister died when she was only five years old. He is sure now that his brother ate her. He wonders if his brother mixed her flesh in with their food. He worries that he might have eaten her without knowing it. He hopes that there are still children that are not cannibals and pleads, "Save the children."
The “madman” begins to see conspiracy to cannibalism everywhere. When he is served a dish of vegetables and fish, he suspects that the fish is actually human flesh, and vomits up the meal. When a doctor arrives to examine him, he questions the doctor’s intentions.
When the diary ends with the madman’s realization of his own part in the cannibalism and of the urgency of saving the children, one expects him to change the system by changing himself as the...
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After Poprishchin reads that Sophie is set to marry the Kammerjunker, he tears the letters apart. A few weeks pass before Poprishchin writes again in his diary, but his anger at the revelation of Sophie’s love for the Kammerjunker has not subsided.
