Saint Petersburg is the urban setting of the novel’s final flight and removal, a city whose familiar streets offer Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin no refuge from his mounting fear. In its thawing night, he hides, watches for pursuers, and imagines appealing to his superiors; the journey that carries him away from the city ends in an unknown landscape and a frightening encounter with Krestyan Ivanovitch Rutenspitz.

The City as a Space of Concealment

During the night’s anxious waiting, Golyadkin hears someone descend the stairs and leave for the street. He shrinks behind a stove, then cautiously pokes his nose from behind his hiding place before withdrawing it at once. When footsteps return, he recognizes the approaching figure as the man he calls his intriguer. The scene makes the city’s ordinary thresholds—stairs, street, and hiding place—part of a tense routine of surveillance: Golyadkin is both concealed from view and unable to stop watching for danger.

The figure carries a huge green portfolio belonging to His Excellency. That specific object links the private scene of pursuit to the hierarchy of the government service, where Golyadkin’s anxieties about intrigue and authority converge. The city is not merely a backdrop to his suspicion; its streets connect the people and institutions from which he feels threatened.

Liteyny Street and the Appeal to Authority

Later, Golyadkin comes to himself on Liteyny Street in terrible weather, with thawing snow and rain falling. The conditions recall the midnight when his troubles began, turning the city’s present into an echo of an earlier crisis. The remembered resemblance does not reassure him: he calls the night a scene of death and scans a street corner for what might be a cab, uncertain where he is or how to proceed.

As he moves through the city, he rehearses a plea to His Excellency. He imagines kneeling and placing his fate in the hands of his superiors, asking them to protect his dignity, honour, name, and reputation from the man he describes as an impersonator. His insistence that he is himself, apart from the other man, makes the imagined appeal a struggle over identity as well as employment. He also fears that the affair could cost him his government post or expose him to arrest, and repeatedly invokes the danger of an unlawful abduction without parental consent. The speech remains a plan in his thoughts, not an appeal shown reaching its intended listener.

Beyond the Familiar Streets

The final journey carries Golyadkin away from the crowded streets and into an unfamiliar, deserted road bordered by dark patches of copse. After the carriage has left the city behind, he sees two fiery eyes in the darkness and recognizes the figure beside him as Krestyan Ivanovitch—yet insists that this is not the old Krestyan Ivanovitch, but another, terrible one. The change of setting makes his removal feel like a passage out of the known world, while the familiar name attached to the frightening presence preserves the uncertainty that has governed his perception.

The city’s role in the ending is therefore one of transition rather than rescue. Golyadkin’s planned appeal to authority never becomes the scene that resolves his predicament; instead, a carriage takes him onto a road he does not know, where Krestyan Ivanovitch tells him that he will receive free quarters, wood, light, and service. Saint Petersburg’s streets have been the last recognizable stage of his attempt to explain himself, but they do not prevent his departure or determine what awaits him.