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    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree"
    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree"
    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree"
    Ebook41 pages32 minutes

    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535837248
    A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree"

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      A Study Guide for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Heavenly Christmas Tree" - Gale

      10

      The Heavenly Christmas Tree

      Fyodor Dostoevsky

      1876

      Introduction

      Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky embarked on an unusual experiment in form in the 1870s when he began writing and publishing Dnevnik Pisatelia (Diary of a Writer). What originally began as a column in the journal Grazhdanin (The Citizen) was transformed into an ongoing, self-published periodical in which Dostoevsky chronicled his thoughts, stories, and literary criticism. Eventually the works were collected and published in two volumes covering 1873 through 1881. In 1876 a short story appeared in the January issue of Dnevnik Pisatelia. In this story, whose title has been translated either as The Heavenly Christmas Tree or The Boy at Christ's Christmas Party, a young, homeless boy freezes to death on Christmas Eve. He awakens to find himself welcomed to a celebration around Christ's Christmas tree, as he is informed by the other children, who have hugged and kissed him. As they lead him to the tree, the child finds his own mother, who died before him. The story is considered one of Dostoevsky's minor works—if it is discussed at all—in critical analyses of his writings. While Christianity is prominently featured in this story, Dostoevsky's focus on urban poverty and suffering is equally present.

      Dostoevsky's short story The Heavenly Christmas Tree was originally translated by Boris Brasol as part ofDnevnik Pisatelia,which appeared in two volumes in 1949 under the title The Diary of a Writer. A more recent translation is Kenneth Lanz's 1994 effort The Diary of a Writer, Volume 1: 1873-1876. The work is also included in a small paperback collection of Dostoevsky's short stories, Short Stories, published by Wildside Press in 2008.

      Author Biography

      Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, on October 30, 1821 (according to the Julian calendar) or November 11, 1821 (according to the Gregorian calendar). Both the Julian and Gregorian calendars were used in nineteenth-century Europe; they differed in the way leap years were calculated. (The Gregorian calendar is now the internationally accepted, nonreligious calendar.) The second of seven children, Dostoevsky was the son of Maria Fedorovna and Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, a doctor who practiced in Moscow until 1828. During his youth, Dostoevsky attended a boarding school in Moscow. In 1828, after being granted the rank of nobleman, his father purchased a village estate in Darovoe. Following the death of Dostoevsky's mother in 1837, his father enrolled the teenager in the Military Engineering School in St. Petersburg. Two years later, his father died. After completing his education at the military

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