Autumn

Autumn is the novel’s opening season and a recurring measure of Golyadkin’s shifting sense of reality and fortune. It first appears as a damp, dirty presence that pins him to his Petersburg room; later, as frost and the first snow, it becomes material for his hopeful self-reassurance, even as anxiety continues beneath it.

The Season of Awakening

Golyadkin wakes a little before eight on a damp autumn day, after a long sleep. For two minutes he lies still, uncertain whether he is awake or continuing in a confused dream. The familiar objects in his small room—the smoke-grimed green walls, mahogany furniture, red-painted table, reddish sofa patterned with little green flowers, and clothes flung into a heap—help restore the ordinary world around him.

The dingy window makes autumn feel less like a neutral date than an affront: the day peers into the room with a hostile, sour grimace. Its weather confirms that Golyadkin is not in the land of Nod but in Petersburg, in his fourth-floor flat on Shestilavotchny Street. He briefly closes his eyes as though regretting the return from his dream, then leaps out of bed and checks his face in the looking-glass. The season thus accompanies a movement from uncertainty toward the everyday, while leaving his return to reality tinged with reluctance.

Frost, Snow, and Self-Reassurance

Later, frost and the first flakes of snow reshape the season’s emotional register. After the office closes at four, Golyadkin leaves last and feels so elated that he considers taking the longer way along Nevsky Prospect. He calls the change in his affairs destiny and welcomes the brighter weather, the frost, and the little sledges. In his thoughts, the Russian is especially suited to frost, and the first autumn snow suggests the prospect of hunting hares.

This cheerful catalogue does not settle his feelings. The narrator says that something is still fretting in Golyadkin’s brain; at times a gnawing at his heart leaves him unable to find relief. He tries to reason himself into composure by treating the other man as merely someone like him, whose presence at the office need not matter so long as he does not interfere. The appeal of frost and snow therefore sits beside—not in place of—his anxiety. Autumn offers a temporary language of optimism, but no assurance that his distress has passed.