Master of his own fate
The first thing that struck me about "The Queen of Spades" by Alexander Pushkin is its elegant simplicity. In less than thirty pages, Pushkin has managed to portray a complex character and tell an enthralling psychological tale. The romantic in the story is not Tomskii but Hermann, who is at the same time the calculating German and the imaginative and obsessive Russian. Hermann is established as an outsider on the very first page. In addition, his resolve to find the secret of the cards signifies a certain kind of arrogance: he believes that he can - and must - s…
