You’re right! In all probability the callousness in tone was the point. It’s also a common device in Russian literature of the time to gloss over such brutalit

You’re right! In all probability the callousness in tone was the point. It’s also a common device in Russian literature of the time to gloss over such brutality and hardship. It’s a bit of a trope at how commonplace suffering was made to seem in stories and other writing by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and other contemporaries. See also: God Sees the Truth, But Waits