Gambit Roulette: Difference between revisions

 

 

* In ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'', many of the elements of Smerdyakov's plan to kill Fyodor Karamazov were ''obviously beyond his control''. The book offers a good example of a [[The Chessmaster|Chessmaster]] attempting to manipulate events and people he realistically doesn't understand fully. The kicker though? He still pulls it off with a bit of improvisation.

* In ''The Possessed'', [[Complete Monster]] Petr Stepanovic's labyrinthine plan, involving dozens of different characters, is mostly successful - he manages to manipulate people left and right, even if he is shown to completely misunderstand the motivations of some of them, like Stavrogin and Kirillov. Another interesting subversion of the trope is that the more complex parts of the plan (like persuading several persons to kill another man with a flimsy reason) go off like clockwork, and the apparently simpler details (like persuading a suicidal nut to... kill himself) almost fall apart on several occasions.