The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

The narrative has the form of a monologue spoken by the ridiculous man. At times it resembles a dramatic monologue, and this formal device introduces the theme of Language, Lying, and Communication. The man’s story can be divided into three parts: the misery of his nihilist past, the turning point when his suicide is thwarted by the encounter with the girl, and the salvation he experiences as a result of his dream-vision of a good world. The idea that ties the story and its structure together is the narrator’s experience of being ridiculous. He is ridiculous both before and after his transformation, even though he has apparently completely changed. In the beginning of the story, as the narrator recalls his youth, he explains that being ridiculous used to bother him, especially the fact that other people who laughed at him didn’t understand that he was well aware of it himself: “But not one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd, it was myself, and what I resented most of all was that they did not know that” (226).