The Crocodile is an outstanding piece of satire; vicious, dreamlike, scatological, and one of the funniest things Dostoevsky ever wrote. In this short work, Dostoevsky reveals full-on his hatred of communism and socialism and his contempt for the "new men" as one of them, swallowed alive by a crocodile, survives, carrying on his civil servant duties and preaching socialist theories from its belly.