“The Christmas Tree and the Wedding” is a bittersweet story written in 1848, the year of revolutions throughout Europe. The story has an undercurrent reflecting the tumultuous changes of that year. The narrator, attending a Christmas party with the Christmas tree referenced in the title, sees the Guest of Honor take an undue interest in a young girl, the daughter of his host. He orders the girl’s friend, a young boy, out of the room, but the girl keeps him close. For this, the Guest of Honor punishes the boy by not recommending him for a position the host has tried to obtain for him. Some time later, the narrator sees this awful, rotund, rather grotesque and bestial man marrying the same young girl he had seen at the Christmas party. He sees her sadness, resignation, and unhappiness in being essentially sold to the grotesque. A haunting story with no final redemption, this is Dostoevsky at his short-story best.
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart had a profound and universal influence on the twentieth-century novel. He was born in Moscow, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the study of engineering for literature, he published Poor Folk in 1846. As a member of revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, he was condemned to death in 1849. A last-minute reprieve sent him to Siberia for hard labor. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1859, he worked as a journalist and completed his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, as well as other works, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
Deaver Brown is an author and entrepreneur. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School, and his books include Crucial Conversations, Presidential Wisdom, George Washington: Farewell Address, and numerous others.