White Nights

is a short story by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The story is one of his earliest works, first published in 1848. Like many of Dostoyevsky’s works, the story is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator living in Saint Petersburg and suffering from loneliness. The story is considered one of his best short stories, and has been shown on cinema screens in Russia, Italy, France, America, India, and Iran. The central theme of the story is the relationship between the narrator, the unnamed main character, and his newly found girlfriend, Nastenka. The narrator falls in love with Nastenka, but does not confess his love to her, while Nastenka is deeply in love with another man who refuses to answer her letters. Both escape their despair into a friendly relationship, the narrator from his loneliness and Nastenka from her tepid relationship with her lover. Nastenka asks the narrator to help her write letters to her lover, not knowing that the narrator loves her very much too. She even tells him: “I love you, because you did not fall in love with me.” Because of his intense love for her, the narrator begins to feel alienated in her company, because he has to pretend that he does not love her. When her lover does not respond to her letters, Nastenka feels desperate, especially since her lover lives in the same city. She turns to her friend to console her, which prompts the narrator to confess his love for her. Nastenka initially feels confused, which the narrator did not expect, and then feels that after this incident he will not be able to continue his friendship with her, so he insists on not seeing her again, but she asks him to stay. The two go out into the street, and she tells him that their relationship might one day turn into a romantic one, and she clearly wants his friendship in her life, so the narrator feels reassured that he has at least managed to maintain her friendship. While they are walking down the street, they come across a man. The man turns to Nastenka and calls her, and it turns out that he is her lover whom she has been corresponding with. She jumps into his arms happily, and returns to the narrator to give him a quick kiss, but she continues her night in the company of her lover, leaving the narrator alone and with hurt feelings. Summary of events This short story is divided into six chapters; Four Nights, Nastenka’s Story, and the Morning: The first night The narrator tells about his experience of walking the streets of St. Petersburg, expressing his love for that city at night, and his comfort in it. But that comfort disappears when day comes, when the people he used to meet at night disappear. His feelings were linked to theirs: whenever they were happy, he was happy, and whenever they were desperate, he was desperate. The new faces he sees during the day make him feel lonely. Whenever he walks the city streets, the houses come to him and tell him if they are being renovated, demolished, or painted a new color