“It will all be for the best”

“It Will All Be for the Best” is a self-reassuring expression that Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin returns to when he cannot settle on what to do. Its changing force is clearest near the end: under pressure he forgets to repeat it, reaches for it again while escaping, and then uses another version of it to sustain a decision he is already reversing.

A Reassurance Under Pressure

Golyadkin’s habitual confidence in the phrase is set against his inability to make a choice. After considering whether to give up and let events pass, he condemns that thought as cowardice; yet he still cannot determine what action to take. Needing to lose no more time, he takes a cab home. In this moment, optimism does not resolve his uncertainty: the reassuring formula sits beside self-reproach and an urgent retreat.

The Phrase in the Yard

Later, while waiting in the yard of Olsufy Ivanovitch’s house, Golyadkin is physically exhausted and soaked through. Snow that had been falling in regular clouds grows more visible, but the weather remains wet and oppressive. His heavy greatcoat chills and weighs on him, and he is so spent that he forgets to repeat the phrase he would ordinarily say at suitable moments. The lapse makes his habitual reassurance a measure of his deteriorating condition: for once, even the familiar words fail to come readily.

He tries to endure the wait by insisting that the discomfort does not matter, and he looks for the modest shelter of a private corner. But the corner he remembers from an earlier two-hour wait in the house’s back entry now seems unsafe: it may have been marked after the scandal at Olsufy Ivanovitch’s last ball. He also expects a signal from Klara Olsufyevna. The old formula of eventual betterment therefore stands against concrete fears and a plan that depends on circumstances he cannot control.

Escape, Reversal, and Renewed Hope

After paying the cabman six roubles, Golyadkin decides to leave the yard rather than wait longer. He runs out through the gate, turns left, and flees without looking back, briefly feeling light-hearted. He wonders whether the escape has kept him from trouble and thinks that perhaps everything will turn out for the best, though he has little faith in the hope he is voicing inwardly.

His flight does not become a settled course. While running toward Semyonovsky Bridge, he considers what to do, then concludes that he should return. He tells himself it will be better to try another tack: to look on as an outsider and treat what happens as not his fault. The expression thus accompanies not a resolution but a fresh turn in his wavering. Its reassurance can make retreat feel like escape, then help justify a return to the very situation from which he has fled.

Meaning and Function

The phrase’s recurrence gives verbal shape to the gap between Golyadkin’s wish for a favorable outcome and his inability to act with confidence. Its reassuring sound persists even when his body is exhausted, his judgment shifts, and he admits that he scarcely believes his own hope. Rather than announcing that events will in fact end well, the expression lets him keep moving through uncertainty—first toward home, then away from the yard, and finally back toward it.