The Idiot

Article written by Charles Asoluka

Degree in Computer Engineering. Passed TOEFL Exam. Seasoned literary critic.

The title of the novel, ‘The Idiot,’ serves as an ironic allusion to the central character, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. This young man’s inherent goodness and genuine simplicity often lead the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly perceive him as lacking intelligence and insight. In crafting the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky undertook the ambitious task of portraying a truly virtuous and beautiful individual.

Within the novel, Dostoevsky delves into the profound consequences that arise from placing such a unique individual at the heart of the conflicts, desires, passions, and egoism prevalent in society. This exploration encompasses not only the impact on Prince Myshkin himself but also on those who become entangled in his world.

By examining the intricate interplay between Prince Myshkin’s extraordinary nature and the complexities of the world, Dostoevsky invites readers to reflect on the nature of goodness and its place within a society driven by self-interest.

Key Facts about The Idiot

• Book Name: ‘The Idiot’ (‘Идиот‘)
• Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Type of Work: Novel
• Genre: Philosophy
• Language: Russian
• Year Published: Serially between 1868 – 1869.
• Perspective: ‘The Idiot’ is told by a third-person omniscient narrator, although the narrator occasionally breaks in to address the reader in the first person.
• Tense: ‘The Idiot‘ is written in the past tense, although when the narrator breaks in to address the reader, he sometimes uses the present tense.

Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky (also spelled Dostoyevsky) was born on November 11, 1821. Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor who served in the military before taking over the management of a hospital for the underprivileged. He lived on the same campus as the hospital with his family; thus, the young Dostoevsky was exposed to illness and deprivation at a young age. He had several siblings, but his older brother Mikhail (1820–64), who was a year older, was his favorite. His father was a strict, short-tempered parent. Both of his parents were devout Christians, but it’s possible that Dostoevsky’s portrayals of Christlike figures like the Elder Zosima and the novice Alyosha in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (1879–80) and Prince Myshkin in The Idiot (1868–69) were influenced by his mother’s teachings of a joyous and pious Christianity.

Dostoevsky left Russia to avoid his creditors, and when he started writing what would become ‘The Idiot’ in September 1867, he was living in Switzerland with his new wife Anna Grigoryevna. They were constantly forced to borrow money or pawn their goods due to their terrible poverty. They relocated between four different locations in Switzerland and Italy by the time the novel was completed in January 1869 after being evicted from their homes five times for failing to pay their rent.

Books Related to The Idiot

• Play As It Lays by Joan Didion is a brutal analysis of American life in the late 1960s, capturing the gloom of the day and reflecting it in simple prose that stings and haunts the reader. More than three decades after its initial publication, this profoundly unsettling book is still stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose. It is set in a place beyond good and evil, literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the arid wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul.
• The Trial by Franz Kafka is the horrifying story of Josef K., a respected bank officer who is unexpectedly and mysteriously imprisoned and must defend himself against a charge about which he can learn nothing. It was written in 1914 but was not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death. The Trial has reverberated with unsettling truth for generations of readers, whether taken as an existential narrative, a parable, or a premonition of the excesses of contemporary bureaucracy married to the madness of totalitarianism.
• The Plague by Albert Camus tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, survival, and resilience, and how humankind confronts death. ‘The Plague’ is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.
• The Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov looks back on the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ’30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov’s novel looks forward to the subsequent glories and passion of Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy is the tale of a high court judge with a worldly career who has never even given the certainty of his death a fleeting consideration. Eventually, death makes itself known to him, and to his startled surprise, he is forced to acknowledge his mortality. Following the release of ‘Anna Karenina,’ Tolstoy experienced a terrible spiritual crisis that culminated in this brief novel. He did not produce a single word of fiction during the nine years that followed. It is both an intensely compelling and occasionally horrifying view into the depths of death and a compelling argument for the viability of spiritual salvation.

Lasting Impact of The Idiot