What Is to Be Done? · Chapter
XXVIII explained
Lopukhóf returns to Petersburg in mid-June, stays three weeks, then leaves for Moscow on factory business.
What happens
Lopukhóf returns to Petersburg in mid-June, stays three weeks, then leaves for Moscow on factory business. On July 21 he departs, and on July 23 a misunderstanding occurs at a hotel near the Moscow railroad station involving a stranger who does not get up, followed by a scene at the Kamennoï Ostrof dacha. The narrator hints that Lopukhóf is the one who supposedly shot himself, but suggests it is a trick.
Characters to notice
- Dmitri Sergéitch Lopukhóf
Returns to Petersburg in mid-June, stays three weeks, leaves for Moscow on factory business, and is implied to be the one who faked his suicide.
Key passages
“I saw long ago that it was Lopukhóf,” says the sapient reader, in triumph at his perspicacity.”
The clever reader claims to have known all along that Lopukhóf was the one who shot himself.
The narrator mocks the reader's assumption about Lopukhóf's suicide.
“There is no need of asking; it is only a trick of his, but he caught himself in a net, the rascal,” says the sapient reader.”
The reader insists it is merely a trick by Lopukhóf, though he has trapped himself.
Highlights the reader's suspicion that the suicide is a deception.