“The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
In a world filled with crooks, thieves, murderers, and corrupt sinners, being a genuinely nice person can be seen as an idiot. That’s who Prince Myshkin is, the idiot.
After spending 4 years exiled in a sanatorium in Switzerland, from an illness (epilepsy) that caused him to lose memory and ability to reason, the prince returns to St. Petersburg bringing a legal document showing entitlement to a significant inheritance. And he was immediately confronted by the extreme contrasts of life at the Russian capital city. He smiles at strangers, willingly give away his last Ruble, and believes that honesty is the best act. And his childlike innocence and kindness were immediately ridiculed.
Yes, this is a story where a man with a truly kind soul is being tested against the psychological, social, and political cruelty of the Russian society. It is not only about how he respond to such world, but also how the dark world respond to him.
But the prince is not in any shape or form a perfect person. He has no sense of danger and no survivorship skill, he trusts untrustworthy people, get easily manipulated, quick to believe in the lies told by everyone, and never think about doing things that will benefit him (like pursuing more education – and instead proud of his lack of education). He is also genuinely an idiot, where he can sacrifice himself to be the scapegoat in someone else’s matter that has nothing to do with him, in order to calm down a situation and maintain harmony.
But perhaps his biggest tragedy is not his naivety. Instead, it’s his ability to actually see clearly and understand too much. He can see general Epanchin’s greed during his business deal, spot Nastasya Filipovna’s self loathing beneath her glamour exterior, understand the despair behind Rogozhin’s violent outbursts and forgive him when others judge. It is a tragedy because his clear understanding of any situation don’t really contribute much.
For example, the prince becomes the intermediary between disputing factions but his pacifist solutions only delay the inevitable violence. Or that time when he is trying to save Nastasya from her abusive patron only to trigger a love triangle that ends in murder. Or that one occasion where he caught a liar trying to scam him out of his money, but he ended up still giving the money anyway. Which led Dostoevsky to ponder, if Jesus Christ returns tomorrow we would probably not crucify him, but instead we would ridicule him for his good nature, call him an idiot, and lock him up in an asylum.
In writing this character Dostoevsky was aiming to create a “wholly virtuous man”, in which he projects the workings of the human mind and our complex and complicated nature. It is said to be the closest character Dostoevsky created that resembles his personality and circumstance, especially the parts where he’s living in Switzerland and having epileptic episodes.
Indeed, Dostoevsky was living in Switzerland during the time he wrote this 12th novel of his (in around 1867-1871), where he exiled himself and his wife to get away from his creditors. They were living in a dire poverty during this period and had to constantly borrow money or pawn their possessions, while more often than not he gambled his wife’s money away (an addiction that cripples a lot of his finances throughout the years and ruins most of his adult life). And by the time the novel was completed in January 1869, they had moved between 4 different cities in Switzerland and Italy, and had been evicted from their lodgings 5 times for failure to pay rent.
Prior to this Dostoevsky became famous after publishing his first novel Poor Folk (1845), then The Double (1846), The Landlady (1847), and White Nights (1848), before getting involved in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle, a Russian literary discussion group that was banned due to their position of opposing the tsarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. This got him into trouble and he was eventually captured and sentenced to death by a firing squad in 22 December 1849. But the firing was overturned at the last minute and he was instead sent to Siberia for 4 years of hard labour and followed by 6 years of compulsory military service in exile. He would not write again for the next 10 years.
This near-death experience and the exile left a profound impression on Dostoevsky, and it shows in his next novels, including in The Idiot in the way the prince talks in depth about the subject of capital punishment. Dostoevsky’s suffering also reflected in the way he sees the world as a dark place filled with evil people, hence the incredible range of casts in this novel with twisted characters and psychological depths.
The novel does not have a happy ending, however, but instead it has a realistically appropriate one that concludes the story with a full circle. After being left at the altar by Nastasya, the prince eventually finds Nastasya murdered by Rogozhin but yet, somehow, stupidly, he spends the night comforting the killer. This last selfless act destroyed the prince, where he succumbs into a mental breakdown with his mind shattered by the world’s cruelty and doctors pronounce him incurable. And so the prince ended up back in the sanatorium in Switzerland, where he completely withdraw himself from society.
THE CHAOS THEORY 