Preview

Alexander Pushkin "The Queen of Spades" Hermann and Greed

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
437 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Alexander Pushkin "The Queen of Spades" Hermann and Greed
The Queen of Spades: Hermann and Greed

The Queen of Spades is a complicated story about greed, the supernatural, love, desires and secrets. The card game in the story The Queen of Spades is one of the oldest games of chance. What I will try to determine is whether the Countess' seemingly real ghost is authentic only in so much as Hermann's consuming madness produces it, as well as to designate the origin of Hermann's madness.

Hermann is a young German soldier in the Tsar's army who dreams of becoming a member of the Russian elite. After an evening at a friend's, he learns the story of an old countess who is known to hold an invincible secret at playing cards. This Countess resides with her niece, Lisa. Hermann decides to manipulate Lisa and allows her to fall in love with him so that he may be introduced to the Countess. Once introduced, Hermann basically threats the Countess to reveal her secret. Not much time afterwards, the Countess appears in one of Hermann's dream and reveals to him a winning card combination on the one condition that he marry Lisa. After becoming very happy Hermann decides to reject Lisa and use her secret to become rich. But little does he know what is going to happen.

The Countess lays out the conditions that are harmful to Hermann in the end. The Countess tells him that after using the secret he is forbidden to ever use it again. He is given the key to eternal fortune and then told he can only use it once. It is human nature to consume resources until they are depleted of all value and only then to move on. The condition set by the Countess goes against everything that Hermann would want to manipulate for his own advantage. Hermann's madness is the product of the last card game. When he loses all the money after choosing the wrong card, he goes insane and spends the rest of his life saying "Trey, seven, ace!" The shock of the loss and Hermann's vision of the Countess' face in the card cause Hermann to go mad. I feel there is a lot to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym both hate each other. Both of there family's have hated each other for generations. They live in a dark forest where Gradwitz patrol's wanting to see his enemy to appear. The only reason why they are hating is because they both want to take part in some piece of land in the forest, but Georg has legal possession of it from the court. Gradwitz comes a pond Georg in the forest where they both hurt each other and gets set in a trap. Both of them talk madly at each other whether there men are going to come and murder one person. But it all ends when they get tried of battling each other over words. They set out to try to make truths with each other. Finally they become friends and try to call out for help. But…

    • 149 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Life is full of searches; searches that heal the soul, and searches that tear it apart. In the book, All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Werner, a young, German boy of the age 13, lives in a Children’s House with his sister and other children who’s parents have deceased due to working in the mines. Werner is very smart for his age. His passion is radios. He goes house to house, working on radios of all kinds for people of all classes. Because of his education and knowledge, he has been accepted into an academy for Hitler Youth called the National Political Institute of Education #6. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is 12 when her and her father, a locksmith at the Paris Museum of Natural History, sojourn to Saint-Malo to get away from the bombings taking place in Paris. Marie-Laure went blind when she was six years old. At the time she lost her vision, her father had created a miniature of their neighborhood to guide her as she ventures around town. Within the pages of this book, I feel as though a locksmith searches for the key to protection and future for his blind daughter, Marie-Laure searches for meaning and understanding of the world around her, and Werner searches for a way to please his sister and himself as he Heils Hitler.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The love story in this movie is between young Susanne Wallner and Dr. Hans Mertens ("Wolfgang Staudte."). Dr. Hans Mertens was a doctor in the war, but after the war he seemed to be too damaged to return to work. He then became a useless, drunk, inconsiderate man. He didn’t care for anyone else’s thoughts or feelings.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jules and Jim

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Catherine’s face appears to Jules and Jim like a Medusa’s head, that is to say, a face with powers to turn to stone the men who look at it. Freud…the spectre of castration that Jules and Jim face in the presence of the statue…an inaccessible goddess (67)…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With the winter over, Elli’s birthday comes. She was now thirteen. Many wonderful things were happening. Jancsi Novack, her crush, said hello to her, she passed examinations, and she wrote for application forms to the Jewish Gymnasium in Budapest. Later that night, the Nazis returned to Elli’s house. They raided the whole entire house, tearing it to pieces. They took whatever they would like from the store, plus the family’s most precious belongings. A couple of nights later, Elli heard voices in the kitchens, which she came to find out is her Bubi. He had news for the family. The Germans invaded Budapest! Nobody knew anything about it. When the father came home from the synagogue the next morning, they thought something is wrong with Bubi because no one had heard anything about this invasion. They thought it was a false alarm, and they urged Bubi to return and finish his classes. They asked their neighbor, Mr. Kardos, who also had a son in Budapest, and he had heard nothing. They send Bubi on a train at 1 o’clock. At 1:20, Mr. Kardos returns to the family, saying he had news from his son that the Germans have invaded Budapest. Father felt horrible for sending his son back. The next morning, the town received the news. Two days late. Jews are being arrested on sight everywhere. They are herded into trains, which are locked and taken away. During that night, Bubi returned from Budapest.…

    • 1143 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Griffin explores Heinrich Himmler and the secrets that are hidden within him. Throughout his childhood Himmler's secrets and thoughts were hidden, overshadowed by a mask or barrier formed by his upbringing and culture.…

    • 1547 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shirley Jackson is the author to two gruesome short stories titled, “the Lottery” and “the Possibility of Evil”. Both stories are known for their shocking turn of events and internal messages about humanity itself. Shirley Jackson has a very unique style of writing using different forms of literary devices. There are many similarities in these short stories and also many differences that contribute to the devices Shirley used in both; such as mood, foreshadowing, and imagery.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Shakespeare Major Paper

    • 2842 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Throughout many of Shakespeare’s plays, one of the central themes with which he provides his readers is the topic of madness and insanity. In Karin S. Coddon’s, “Such Strange Desygns”: Madness, Subjectivity, and Treason in Hamlet and Elizabethan Culture, the author depicts the reasons behind the psychosis of Shakespeare’s characters and what led to their insanity. The author expresses insight for not only the themes of madness in Hamlet but also helps explain the aspect of madness in one Shakespeare’s other plays, Macbeth. Through her analysis, Coddon successfully offers her readers a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s choice to portray his characters in this way and provides the causes and effects of insanity within his plays.…

    • 2842 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative, which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified -- have tortured -- have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror -- to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place -- some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crucible Thesis Paper

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages

    One character that has gone practically insane from the idea that the devil is the cause of the loss of seven of her eight children during childbirth is Mrs. Ann Putnam. Her inability to birth many children has put her on the fritz and this becomes quite clear throughout Act I. Mrs. Putnam proves her desperation when she mentions, “I sent my child- she should learn from Tituba who murdered her sisters.” In her hysteria, she resorts to black magic to discover the supernatural occurrence of her children’s deaths. This hysteria driven action sets the rest of the play’s chaos in motion.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tell Tale Heart

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A widely acclaimed author named Edgar Allan Poe is known for his bizarre stories on murderers, madmen and mysterious women. In his short story, “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator leads us through his thoughts on himself and the actions he took on the old man. The narrator cunningly devised a plan to kill an old man because of his vulture-looking eye. For him, the eye was very disturbing and he decided to forever get rid of it. He doesn’t even find himself mad for doing so. Isn’t it funny how the insane never admit to them being crazy? “The Tell Tale Heart” shows us a fine example of how insane people view themselves and what we think of them as. Thus, this essay will elaborate on the differences between the narrator’s perception of himself and the reader’s perception of him.…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fact that the ‘paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago’ suggests that this ritual holds significant power within the village. The lottery’s importance is further demonstrated by the metaphorical ‘black box’, which represents death and hence foreshadows the dark outcome at the end. The ‘three legged stool’ that holds the box ironically alludes to the Christian Trinity as the latter represents purity and holiness, thus conveying how the power of tradition can fool people into behaving in an inhuman manner. The villagers’ regressive mindset is exemplified through Old Man Warner, who argued that quitting the lottery is ‘nothing but trouble’. The apathetic and complacent nature of the crowd is also shown through their swiftness with which they turn against Tessie when she was marked by the symbolic ‘black dot’. Even her husband ended up participating in the stoning, exposing the danger of conforming to social expectations as he went from joking with his wife to ‘forcing the slip of paper out of her hand’. Although family ties form the lottery’s basic structure, these relationships mean nothing against old customs. The Lottery therefore serves as a didactic tale, an indirect warning to societies ruled by outdated…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Maria Braun is a vulnerable young woman who becomes self-confident, independent and competent survivor and is portrayed to be Sensual and tough. She marries a soldier in the middle of World War II and spends a half of day and the whole night with him. That's how long her marriage lasts before she loses him to the war and then to prison. But she is not let down by these events. Instead she carries on with her life progresses and the day comes when she becomes a successful businesswoman. While climbing up the ladder of success she never forgets her husband. The thought is always in her mind that she is doing everything for her husband. Maria begins with a nothing and slowly rises to become the pure and real embodiment of the German economic miracle. Her character is intended to be the manifestation of post-war German neurosis. Maria is can be compared to Germany which is trying to rebuild itself after the destructions of war. Like Germany, Maria has no other choice but to move forward ahead. In the beginning of the film it is shown that the Germans became emotionless, either because of their refusal to mourn, or because they are in denial of their past. Maria sets aside her private life and her feelings and works towards reaching her main goal, which is to achieve wealth, typically characteristic of the Economic Miracle that happened Germany in the post-World War era. Although some might believe that there was a decline in moral values, but monetary profits increased manifolds. But in the process, just like Maria, the Germans forgot their past. Just like Germany, Maria too, surrounded herself in wealth, by losing her mind and soul, in an unsuccessful attempt to cope with her past.…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Anton Chekov’s “The Lottery Ticket”, greed is often the temptation loved ones employ to manipulate each other. The couple is portrayed as “middle-class [people]… [who] [are] well satisfied with [their] lot”(p1). When the wife and husband discover their ticket might have been a win, “[they] began laughing and staring in silence”, both were in shock; “the possibility of winning bewildered them”(p1). As the thought of money lingered in their minds, their emotions of greed began to arise between the couple. The temptation of money started to manipulate one another, Ivan knew his wife “had her own daydreams, her own plans [and] her own reflections”, however, “[he] pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its St. Martin's…

    • 184 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Prisoner of Zenda

    • 2471 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The story unfolds with Rose (Rudolf Rassendyll`s sister-in-law), telling Rassendyll that he needs to get himself a job. Rudolf`s brother (Robert), finds an interesting job for him as an “attaché” to Sir Jacob Borrodaile. Borrodaile will be the Ambassador of Ruritania in six months` time. Ruritania, located in central Europe is the only country, Rudolf has not visited. So, he feels happy with the idea. Rudolf decides to witness the coronation of King Rudolf the Fifth in Strelsau, the capital of Ruritania.…

    • 2471 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays