Being the lowest-ranked member of the companionship and in furious yet conflicted love with the General’s daughter, Alexey seeks to gain her love through the act of gambling; he amasses a great deal of wealth through gambling; but the money, unable to buy her love, instead enables him to form a gambling addiction. In the end, it is up for Alexey to determine whether he will quit the act and pursue his love, or fall into the unforgiving grip of …show more content…
Similarly, Alexey gambles his last coin when times look grim, and was highly rewarded: “That’s what the last gulden can sometimes do! And what if I had lost heart then? What if I had not dared to risk it?...” . To Alexey, this last gulden is not just any gulden, but what is left to be expected from him until his commitment can be …show more content…
He would rather do this than make up his own mind and actually commit to something in life. Auster alludes to a similar thought-process that occurs in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, which Auster alludes to in The Music of Chance .Rousseau stated that if he were to throw a stone at a tree in the forest, and hit it from a distance, everything will be better. Instead of accepting that things will not be better, Rousseau moves closer to the tree when he misses and tries again. Similarly, the same type of self-deception occurs inside the head of Nashe: as opposed to actively searching for a purpose or creating one, Nashe removes all responsibility for himself and instead asserts it to fate. This thought, that by betting everything he has on a poker-game, will he allow himself to