Poor Folk: Devushkin, the Emergence of the Narrator

This paper began with an analysis of the character and letter format of Makar Devushkin, the main character of Dostoevsky’s debut work, Poor Folk. This novel is an epistolary novel composed of 55 letters exchanged between Devushkin, about 47 years old, and Varenka, a poor orphan girl about 18 years old, and one of Varenka’s memoirs. The author proudly mentioned the originality of the work in a letter he sent to his brother Mikhail when he was writing it. Looking at the background of the work’s creation, it was found that one of its originality was the combination of the epistolary novel genre of 18th century sentimentalist literature and the character types of 19th century Russian ‘Natural School’. Varenka chooses to marry Vykov and leaves for the countryside to escape poverty. But Devushkin begs her to continue exchanging letters. The paper analyzes why Devushkin cannot give up writing letters. The first object of analysis in the paper was to analyze Devushkin’s purpose in writing the letter. Another interesting part of the work is Devushkin’s last letter, which has a change in format that is different from other letters. In Devushkin’s last letter written on September 30, the date of writing, the name of the recipient, and the signature of the sender were omitted. This is a big difference from the other letters in the work. Letter format analysis was the second analysis subject of the paper. Through text analysis, it was determined that Devushkin’s letter writing was a means of writing and that the reason he insisted on writing letters was because he had a desire to become a writer. Devushkin's last letter deviated from the format of a letter. Due to this deviation, Devushkin, the letter writer, turned into the novel's narrator. As the novel ends with the words of the narrator Devushkin, his words are directed not to Varenka but directly to the reader, and the message of the work is delivered to the reader with greater resonance.