Crocodile - Dostoevsky

In this funny tale, titled The Crocodile, the reader feels an influence from Gogol on Dostoevsky. It reminds of Gogol's story about the wondrous adventure of "The Nose". This is recognized by Dostoevsky himself. Just as Gogol imagined, for the sake of laughter, a nose that takes on a human face, Dostoevsky also asked, when he saw a crocodile that was brought to Petersburg: What might a person do if this animal swallowed him alive? And so Dostoevsky composed a funny tale that includes a criticism of the ideas that were in vogue around 1860. The hero of the story, a liberal employee, feels comfortable in the crocodile's stomach. He can put there a new economic theory, and give lectures on natural history in the salon of his wife, to whom the crocodile is taken. And the senior official Timothy Semyovich, to whom the man's wife turns terrified and terrified, answers her that the crocodile cannot cut its stomach, because its owner is a foreigner, and because Russia is in need of foreign capital. This story aroused interest because Dostoevsky was accused of attacking the philosopher Chernyshevsky and the left-wing newspaper The Voice, which Dostoevsky denied.