“Work is slavery, not worship, and work is inevitable killing of the soul.”
In his short story, “The Sweetheart,” Dostoyevsky tells us about a girl who published this advertisement in the newspaper:
“A girl is looking for work and does not ask for a salary. She is satisfied with her food as wages.”
Because Dostoyevsky warned the reader that he was telling a “fictional” story, it did not occur to many people that things would get so bad that some would have to look for work that would only provide them with food!
A job through which a person cannot achieve a decent life, open a house, or realize a dream.
If only the matter was not limited to the absurdity of the ridiculous wages given to the worker, but rather the slavery that the workers face at work.
At work, a person begins to work with bosses who enjoy humiliating those who work under their command.
This negative view that Dostoyevsky presents to the work would not have been possible if the conditions in Russia at that time were not so tragic. If the working conditions were healthy, the writer would have found a thousand opinions criticizing him, and his works would not have become widespread and well-known.
Was Dostoyevsky being sarcastic when he described his story as fictional, and that he wanted to say that this is the next future of humanity?