![]() At the beginning, Herman seems to be a straight-laced army officer. Meanwhile, I got the sense that in the story, Herman is simply overly curious and wants to find out the compelling secret of the magic cards. The film, to reinforce this point, portrays Herman as power hungry from the outset. “The Queen of Spades” is ultimately about Herman’s tragic fall, which is a direct result of his greed and hunger for wealth. Irrelevantly, one line that I absolutely loved in this story, because of its ambiguity, was when Herman was given the instructions from Lisa to escape from the house: “The young man pressed the cold, inert hand, then went out.” Did he press Lisa’s hand, which was “cold and inert,” because she is grieved and terrified? Or as he crossed through the Countess’s chamber on the way out did he squeeze her hand, which is “cold and inert,” because it’s dead? And did he then choose the Queen of Spades with the same hand? If she is next to the ace, nine or ten of spades, she may be a widow,” and “Although spades aren’t negative cards, they do point to areas of responsibility or where watchfulness is recommended.” One website said spades are “the leaf of the cosmic tree, representing life” and “the power of darkness.” Another website says: “Queen of Spades: This spade card represents a dark-haired woman who could be either a friend with much common sense or a business rival. In the end, “it was not the ace he had selected, but the Queen of Spades.” So Herman with his own hand allows the Queen to have the last laugh, while dooming himself to shocked insanity, which in his case is probably worse than death. At the funeral, Herman looks at the Countess in her coffin, where, “it seemed to him that the rigid face returned his glance mockingly, closing one eye.” Again when he loses at faro, “as he stared at the card it seemed to him that the queen winked one eye at him mockingly.” But before this happens, the dealer tells him, “Your Queen is killed.” Here “Killed” is ironic, since Herman killed his Queen with shock. The Queen represents the Countess, obviously. The first night of gambling, Herman says, “The tray wins.” The importance of this phrase is false foreshadowing Pushkin uses subliminal wording to allude to the outcome of the third round of faro, as if egging us on to believe Herman will win three times. What’s more interesting than the numbers here is the wording that Pushkin cushions around the numbers. The number 3 signified that the Countess would trick Herman on his third round of faro, while the number 1 and the Ace foreshadowed the wrong card, and represented the one, lowly man, the “some one,” beat by the Queen. The other numbers are used as a broth to mix the important numbers into, to distract and add a tasty element. (I counted “some one” as a number, because I think the numbers represent characters. Numbers appear everywhere in this story and of the most common numbers, (1, 3, 7, and 12), 1 appears about 24 times and 3 appears about 16 times.
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