The Diary of a Madman Madness

So this is the first time Poprishchin is saying something obviously crazy. If you were Gogol writing this story, how would you make sure the people reading it believed the crazy guy? Well, Gogol himself makes the crazy guy say something totally sensible like "I confess, I was very surprised" and then shows him trying to make sense of it (but in a really silly way). Notice the paradox here: how rationally he's discussing a clearly crazy idea. Hey, have you heard the one about the two cows who walked into a grocer's?

Poprishchin might be hallucinating about dogs speaking, but that doesn't mean he doesn't realize he's kind of… different. The problem is that he would rather believe the hallucinations than worry about being different. And they're one of the reasons why psychiatrists think Gogol did a really good job making Poprishchin seem convincingly mad. Check out "Brain Snacks" for more on that.

Come on now, 'fess up: sometimes, when you look into the eyes of your uncle's dog Duke, you also wonder if he's actually smarter than all of us. If he could speak, what would he say, you wonder. We all have thoughts like this sometimes, and there's nothing unusual about that.

Poprishchin doesn't stop there, though. When he starts to hallucinate and doesn't know what to make of it, he remembers these very usual suspicions, and then starts to use them to rationalize his hallucinations.

Dogs actually do notice every human step. But Poprishchin observes this and sees a secret meaning: the dogs are psyching us out.

We're still close to the beginning of the story here. Poprishchin had just one crazy episode before this, but we still had a tiny glimmer of hope somewhere in our heads that he might go back to being normal. But then we get to this part and he claims he just found a bundle of letters in the dog's box. And there go our hopes for his sanity.

But then, wait, he's describing the whole thing in that totally matter of fact way again. So maybe it is actually happening. Is this all real or is he crazy? Gogol, are you playing with us?

Great job noticing that, huh? He just burst into a woman's apartment saying he needs a word with her dog, rummaged through the dog's basket, took some stuff, got bitten, and stormed out without saying anything. And this is what he has to say about it? Well, at least he acknowledges she might have taken him for a madman.

But what's really clear here is that he doesn't think he's acting that strangely. The woman is frightened but he thinks that's only because she's stupid. (Remember how he calls her stupid a few lines before this?)

Applying literary analysis to imaginary letters seems pretty crazy.

Gogol is being spot on again about Poprishchin's mental breakdown. Schizophrenia isn't just about hallucinations. It also makes you withdrawn and preoccupied with your thoughts—sometimes so much so that the "real" world seems unreal. Take that last sentence: he says, "it seems" he threw two plates on the floor. He didn't notice himself doing it, but Mavra later told him he did it. And then, he says, "which proceeded to break," as if he himself didn't have any role to play in it.

This is the first entry in the diary with a crazy date. This is Gogol's way of showing that Poprishchin is really crazy at this point, so that we don't go thinking that he actually becomes the king of Spain. And then look at the way Poprishchin breaks the news: first, "he has been found." Passive voice means we don't know who found the king.

And then, "I learn[ed] of it." Okay, so we assume that means someone found the king and then told Poprishchin about it, right? But then he says, "I confess, it came to me suddenly in a flash of lightning." Riiiiight. So, that's when we get the truth: Poprishchin himself did the "finding."

Gogol writes so brilliantly from the perspective of a madman. And that last mention of an insane asylum: do you think Gogol is doing some foreshadowing or is he just having some fun?

So those wheels of logic are still turning in Poprishchin's head. But the fact that he is being logical doesn't mean he's connected to reality. Get that? Gogol seems to be showing something really important here: logic does not equal truth.

Cool fact: This one sort of works if you write "Spain" in the Cyrillic alphabet (Испания), and then read it as if you were reading something in the Latin alphabet. Also remember to squint a little. You don't see it? Well, we won't insist on this one. But there's something else to notice here: Poprishchin playing with words and extracting meanings that aren't there, another common symptom of schizophrenia.

Look at how these sentences connect to one another in a chain of reasoning with connectors like "that's why," "so that," again "that's why," "for the same reason," and "for" (as in because). Poprishchin is again trying to be logical in some way, but his logic has nothing to do with reality. Many people suffering from schizophrenia are able to construct very complicated logical arguments to explain pretty bizarre delusional beliefs.

Poprishchin might be mad, but he is smart enough to know that he shouldn't respond to this guy (who is probably an evil asylum guard). And then we get a chilling dose of reality: the mentally ill used to get beaten up and tortured in asylums.