The Duel
Translated by George Allen Unwin
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This book offers a devastatingly honest critique of military life and the destructive power of social codes, making it a timeless exploration of individuality crushed by an oppressive institution.
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Book Summary
In a provincial Russian garrison, idealistic young officer Romashov becomes entangled in a doomed affair with Shurochka, the wife of a fellow officer. Pressured by a rigid code of honor, he is forced into a duel that exposes the brutality, hypocrisy, and futility of military life, leading to his tragic death.
Sublieutenant Romashov, a sensitive and dreamy young officer, struggles with the tedium and cruelty of garrison life. After being publicly humiliated by his colonel, he seeks solace in daydreams of glory and in the company of Shurochka Nikoläiev, a beautiful and ambitious woman married to a fellow officer. Their flirtation leads to anonymous letters and a scandal, forcing Romashov to agree to a duel with her husband. As the duel approaches, Romashov undergoes a profound existential crisis, questioning the value of military honor and the brutality of the institution. Shurochka, desperate to protect her husband's career, manipulates Romashov into accepting a sham duel, promising no harm will come to him. However, the duel ends tragically when Nikoläiev shoots Romashov, who dies from internal bleeding. The novel exposes the hypocrisy, corruption, and dehumanizing nature of the Russian military, where officers are drunk, cruel, and obsessed with a hollow code of honor, while soldiers are treated as beasts of burden. Romashov's intellectual awakening and moral sensitivity set him against the system, leading to his inevitable destruction.
Reading guide
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Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
- Setup
- Escalation
- Breaking point
Sublieutenant Romashov
Romashov drifts through garrison life half-dreaming, mocked as 'little Romashov' and nagged by his own sensitivity in a world of drinking, cards, and casual cruelty. His affair with Shurochka, his superior's wife, gives him a taste of tenderness and torment at once, while his hatred of Nikoläiev hardens into something neither man can control. Watching him try to be honest in a society that rewards posturing is what makes the early chapters ache.
Shurochka
Shurochka reigns over the regiment's social world with charm, wit, and an appetite for admiration she never quite satisfies. Her marriage to Nikoläiev is a career arrangement as much as a bond, and she plays Romashov's devotion against her husband's pride with unnerving composure. In the dark rooms and drunken picnics of the garrison, she is the force that makes private feeling and public honor impossible to separate.
Lieutenant Nikoläiev
Nikoläiev is the regiment's rising man, absorbed in examinations and advancement, and he wears his marriage to Shurochka like a decoration. When Romashov's attentions to her become visible, his jealousy curdles into a cold, procedural fury that the officers' code of honor is only too ready to serve. His quarrel with Romashov turns a private humiliation into the regiment's public business.
Nasanski
Nasanski has read everything, lost everything, and now drinks to keep his hallucinations at bay, drifting through the regiment as a cautionary tale. He sees through the code of honor with painful clarity and urges Romashov to refuse the duel, arguing that killing a man is a wound time never closes. His tenderness toward Romashov, and his own disintegration, give the novel its sharpest counterweight to military bravado.
Colonel Shulgovich
Shulgovich rules his officers through rage, inspection, and the threat of disgrace, and Romashov overhears him reducing a drunken captain to a trembling wreck. Yet the same scene ends with the Colonel pressing three hundred rubles into the man's hand, a contradiction that defines him. His authority sets the terms of every quarrel in the garrison, including the one that will demand a duel.
Captain Osadchi
Osadchi usually keeps to himself, but at the officers' picnic he erupts into a vision of war as blood, fire, and hanged men, toasting the 'joyful, bloody cruelty of old times.' His coldness toward Romashov is personal and unexplained, and his presence makes the regiment's violence feel less like ritual and more like appetite. He is the garrison's darkest mirror, showing what the code of honor looks like when the mask comes off.
Critique of Military Life
The book exposes the brutality, absurdity, and dehumanizing nature of military service, portraying officers as corrupt, drunk, and cruel, and soldiers as oppressed slaves, while questioning the very purpose of the army in peacetime.
Honor and the Duel
The duel serves as a central plot device, revealing the rigid code of honor that forces men into deadly conflict, often manipulated by social pressure and personal betrayal, ultimately leading to senseless death.
Love and Betrayal
Romashov's affair with Shurochka Nikoläiev illustrates the destructive power of forbidden love, as she manipulates him for her husband's advancement, leading to emotional torment and the fatal duel.
Class and Social Hierarchy
The narrative highlights rigid social divisions within the military and provincial society, where officers despise civilians, senior officers tyrannize juniors, and soldiers are treated as subhuman, while the wealthy train passengers represent an unattainable world.
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