Fyodor Dostoevsky ranks among the most accomplished and respected figures in the history of literature. Almost a century and a half after his death, the major works for which he has become known--"The Brothers Karamazov," "Crime and Punishment," Demons", and "The Idiot" (Dostoevsky 1991, 1993, 1994, 2001, respectively)--continue to be widely acclaimed for their in-depth character studies and probing exploration of hidden psychological spaces. His mature fiction is often seen as the quintessential example of philosophical writing in a literary form. Getting to grips with Dostoevsky's corpus is no easy matter. His major novels are, in the best Russian tradition, extremely lengthy, multilayered, and complex. A helpful route into his thought, however, and one that holds considerable educational promise, lies in some of his shorter works. This article pays attention to two such examples: "Notes from Underground" (Dostoevsky 2004)--a novella described by Walter Kaufmann as ''one of the most revolutionary and original works of world literature'' (Kaufmann 1975, 13)--and ''The Dream of a Ridiculous Man'' (Dostoevsky 1997), a short story published just a few years before Dostoevsky's death. A key theme in these two texts is the suffering experienced by their respective central characters. Examining the fictional lives of the Underground Man and the Ridiculous Man (as they have become known), and taking into account the conditions Dostoevsky himself had to endure, Peter Roberts argues that suffering can have educative value.