The Idiot

The Idiot is Dovstoyevsky's attempt to portray 'a perfectly beautiful man' - one who is truly honest and compassionate and therefore a ridiculous figure because those qualities require him to transcend social decorum. At the same time, there is the feeling of (self) deception which intensifies as the book progresses and the Prince's thoughts become increasingly confused and unreliable.

The parallels between The Idiot / The Prince and Christ are apparent, with the reference to Hans Holbein's portrait of Christ 'who has suffered inhuman torture, has been taken down from the cross and given over to corruption. His swollen face is covered with bloody wounds and he looks terrible...' The essential question of Christ and his resurrection, his role as saviour for mankind, is raised by Ippolit: 'how could they believe looking at such a corpse, that this sufferer would resurrect?' (p408).

Every chapter has a scene which reminds one of Christ and his disciples - the foul-mouth, lower class hoodlum gang that follows him. They serve as the voice (and perhaps, body) of 'Russia', raising questions about the state of the Russian person, but ironically, falling into those same categories questioned - the 'political man' over the 'practical man', the self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent liar and comic. Ippolit is perhaps the best embodiment for all of them - acting as the voice of 'morality', the consumptive critic who speaks the truth but at the same time, seeks love and attention and sympathy for his declarations. He stands in contrast to the Prince who speaks only to point out the unsaid truth. Yet the Prince is painfully aware of how ridiculous the truth sounds in public when spoken seriously without the need for a self-satisfying response. The Prince is the sacrificial lamb in social spaces. He is also the figure of redemption - characters flock to him in hope of saving themselves through their confessions. He is continuously attacked yet comforted by the people whom he loves and pities. The Prince absorbs the almost worthless, desperate sufferings of Russian society - that is the 'inhuman torture' that he endures. He can't 'save' them because they wouldn't let him; the need for self-destruction (and perhaps, therefore grandeur and history) is greater than anything else.

As mentioned in the Introduction, The Idiot is less descriptive, especially with regards to the external landscape, and much more of a banter, an ongoing dialogue among characters. A sense of dark, murky ambiguity is felt throughout the book. There is a sense of something being masked by the loud and noisy crowd and which never adequately emerges, even though the Prince acts as that voice of 'revelation'. Time and space are both condensed and open. Events either take place inside a closed room or during a walk (to Nastasya's house, the Prince's house etc). In Chapter 1, everything from the introduction of characters to the pivotal climax of Natasya's party takes place within a single day. Three months have gone by in Chapter 2; the story wanders along in a lost and vague manner before culminating in the sudden and unexpected attack on the Prince by Rogozhin. The Prince is then visited by the boorish crowd led by Ippolit, and a list of unclear, unsubstantiated accusations are hastily thrown upon the Prince.

The final chapter floods the reader with a series of quick, unexpected turn and twist of events. The Prince finds himself in a position to praise (or ironically critique) high society, which leads to a disastrous and symbolic moment when he breaks the vase by accident. The denouncement of Catholicism seems to be more of an ironic comment on the hypocrisy of the Russian Christian believers, than on the Roman Catholics. '(Catholicism) has proclaimed that Christ cannot reign without an earthly Kingdom...They have manipulated the people's honest, most just, most pure, most ardent feelings...usurping the lost moral authority of religion to save humanity, not through Christ but by force...' The 'Russian body', the force of the people and society, overcomes and overwhelms any sense or inclination towards faith and goodness. The more the Prince tries to unveil the instinctive 'good' of the people, the more he is mocked at. The book ends with a kind of failed trinity: the Prince, Rogozhin and Nastasya. The death of Nastasya - The arrest of Rogozhin, the Prince's 'double' - The complete mental breakdown of the Prince - embody the convulsions of the times, the illnesses of society, the nihilistic tendencies of the people in contrast to the desires for redemption.