Demons (Penguin Classics)

Product Information

That night Stavrogin leaves Skvoreshniki in secret and makes his way on foot to Fillipov's house, where Shatov lives. He describes in detail the profound inner pleasure he experiences when he becomes conscious of himself in shameful situations, particularly in moments of committing a crime. He travelled abroad as a tutor with a merchant's family, but the employment came to an end when he married the family's governess who had been dismissed for 'freethinking'. The most important in the entire book is Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, a mysterious young troublemaker and freethinker, who, though not part of the revolutionary circle, experiments with these dangerous ideas, yet shies back from drawing the logical conclusion – that is, until the very tragic end.

One is reminded of how Lenin and Stalin, in building the totalitarian Bolshevik regime, sought to bind their comrades to them by making them complicit in the murder of millions. Generally awkward, gloomy and taciturn, Shatov becomes emotional and loquacious when aroused by an affront to his convictions. The character I identified with the most is the character most like Dostoevsky himself, the pitiful Shatov, who is also modelled on the unfortunate Ivanov. Though childlike, mentally unstable and confused, she frequently demonstrates a deeper insight into what is going on, and has many of the attributes of a " holy fool". In this dialogue there is an alternation in his speech between the stern, worldly voice of rational self-possession and the vulnerable, confessional voice of the lost and suffering soul.Having devoted my energy to studying the question of the social organization of the future society which is to replace the present, I have come to the conclusion that all creators of social systems from ancient times to our year 187- have been dreamers, tale-tellers, fools who contradicted themselves and understood precisely nothing of natural science or of that strange animal known as man. Although a good and conscientious man he is completely incapable of responding effectively to Pyotr Stepanovich's machinations.

He tells the story of the conspiracy in great detail, and the rest of the crew, with the exception of Pyotr Stepanovich who left for Petersburg after Kirillov's suicide, are arrested. Paranoia grips the town, but all is revealed when Lyamshin, unable to bear it, makes a groveling confession to the authorities. Though dismayed, Stepan Trofimovich accedes to her proposal, which happens to resolve a delicate financial issue for him.

As they clumsily weight the body and dump it in the pond, one of the participants in the crime—Lyamshin—completely loses his head and starts shrieking like an animal. She is "a classic kind of woman, a female Maecenas, who acted strictly out of the highest considerations". During this time, he appears to have abandoned his former convictions, becoming a devout believer and defender of Russian traditions. A renegade from revolution, he went to the opposite extreme, and became a loyal advocate of the most tyrannical and backward regime in the whole of Europe. According to Frank, Marya represents "Dostoevsky's vision of the primitive religious sensibility of the Russian people", and the false marriage, her rejection of Stavrogin, and her eventual murder, point to the impossibility of a true union between the Christian Russian people and godless Russian Europeanism.

In the end, Stavrogin hangs himself in what he believes is an act of generosity, and Stepan Verkhovensky is received into the church on his deathbed. Nikolai Vsevolodovich addresses himself to Dasha with congratulations on her impending marriage, of which, he says, he was expressly informed. When he was a child she took him and his sister Darya Pavlovna under her protection, and they received tutoring from Stepan Trofimovich.

The fratricidal bloodletting among different revolutionary factions during the Russian Civil War, Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, and the eventual collapse of the USSR in 1991 (succeeded by Putin’s Russian nationalist regime) make this part of the book seem almost prophetic.

News begins to spread of a strange and terrible murder: a certain Captain, his sister and their serving maid have been found stabbed to death in their partially burned down house on the edge of town.For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. He describes his marriage to Marya Lebyadkina as a deliberate attempt to cripple his own life, largely as a consequence of his inability to forget this episode and the fear he experienced in its aftermath. Meanwhile, Stepan Trofimovich, oblivious to the unfolding horrors, has left town on foot, determined to take the high road to an uncertain future. Dostoevsky's nihilists are portrayed in their ordinary human weakness, drawn into the world of destructive ideas through vanity, naïveté, idealism, and the susceptibility of youth.