The Idiot

“I knew nothing then, and know still less now.”

One of Myshkin's defining traits is his lack of cynicism. While the other characters bluster and lie their way through conversations, keen to seem more intelligent or deserving than they truly are, Myshkin is forthright and modest. He admits that he knows nothing and this admission shocks those around him. To them, he seems too innocent and too honest for this world so they assume that he must be suffering from a mental health condition.

“But what sort of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that I'm considered an idiot?”

Self-awareness is a frequent refrain when Myshkin discusses the way the world perceives him. While others think that he is a fool, he questions how this can be the case if he is able to perform any amount of self-examination or self-reflection. Myshkin is aware of his own status in the world; the world, rather than Myshkin, has a problem with attempting to figure out who he really is.

“You'll learn how Rogozhin loves!”

Rogozhin boasts that people will soon learn about the way in which he loves but, as will be demonstrated over the course of the novel, his manner of love is brutal and violent. Nastasya will learn how Rogozhin loves, suffering beatings and then death at his hands. The intense, burning passion of Rogozhin's love turns his words into a threat rather than a boast as the true violence hidden inside his character becomes apparent.

“Everyone asserted afterwards that it was also from this moment that Nastasya Filippovna went crazy.”

To some extent, the events in the novel are predetermined. The characters are so fixed in their ways and so unable to change that their fates become an inevitability. Myshkin has trouble with social expectations; Nastasya can never unlearn her internalized self-hatred; and Rogozhin has no idea how to mediate his fits of passion. Even in Part 1, Nastasya seems destined to go "crazy" (135) and characters in the future will seek a discreet point at which they can be sure that this was the moment that caused the problem, rather than the problem being a part of the society.

“The surest thing of all is that your pity is maybe still worse than my love.”

Rogozhin and Myshkin embody two competing types of love toward Nastasya. Rogozhin's love is intense, passionate, and violent. Myshkin's love is piteous and empathetic. Even early in the novel, the men cannot decide which of these types of love is preferable or good. Instead, they allow the competition to unfurl toward its tragic conclusion.

“But this time it so happened, as if by design, that he had told the truth and, as if by designed, had forgotten that truth himself.”

General Ivolgin is a delighted liar. He enjoys lying on every and any occasion, often simply for his own amusement and often to an audience who knows full well that he is lying. On one occasion, however, he happens to accidently tell the truth. His intent was to lie, and, by coincidence, his lie happened to be truth. In this instance, the truth (and the way General Ivolgin arrived at the truth) is more absurd than any lie.

“Yes, I'm an idiot, a real idiot!”

Myshkin spends most of the novel being told that he is an idiot. Eventually, he internalizes this criticism and, when he makes the slightest mistakes, takes this as proof of his idiocy. In truth, the reason for the accusation of idiocy is typically a failure of manners or etiquette. Myshkin lacks social graces, so he is deemed to be a fool. Unlike the other characters, however, his capacity for reflection and self-awareness suggests that he is far more intelligent than any properly mannered person in the novel.

“It's either all too innocent, or all too clever… you, however, know which.”

Myshkin is constantly sincere in his desire to be polite and moral. Despite no evidence to the contrary, the world assumes that he is acting in a cynical or self-interested manner. He is accused of being "too innocent, or all too clever" (219) even though he is trying to be polite. The frequency of this accusation reflects the deeply cynical nature of the world itself, which cannot tolerate Myshkin's worldview.

“I'm afraid… As if something's hovering in the air, trouble flitting about like a bat, and I'm afraid, afraid!”

The characters in the novel live in a cynical world. This cynicism is so ingrained in their personalities that any attempt to be sincere or polite (like Myshkin) is dismissed as an even deeper form of cynicism. At the same time, they are aware of the worrying state of the world, but they are unable to describe it. Instead, all they sense is a looming dread which makes them afraid. They are lost in their own cynicism, unable to diagnose their problems because these problems have become such a foundational part of their identity.

“She needs a buffoon like you.”

The more time characters spend with Myshkin, the more his personality feels refreshing in a deeply self-interested world. They dismiss him constantly, but, as they come to discover, his unconventional outlook may be a solution to the problems they face. This line acknowledges that his foolishness is an example of his ability to overcome society's self-interest.

“Without that wall he won't be able to die eloquently, and he wants very much to die eloquently.”

Ippolit knows that he is going to die so all he has left is the ability to set the terms of his own inevitable death. He is an eloquent young man, so he wants to die in the way that he lived: "eloquently" (261). Unfortunately for Ippolit, however, he lacks any agency. He fails to kill himself, fails to die at the expected time, and he causes trouble for many characters before he dies, harming their impression of him as an intelligent, eloquent young man.

“I'm a woman, but I wouldn’t run away for anything.”

Aglaya is a confident, defiant young woman. She lives in a patriarchal society which has ruined the reputation of her rival, Nastasya, so Aglaya refuses to be bound to such gendered expectations. She internalizes these expectations (in that she frames her courage in terms of her womanhood), but she stands firmly in opposition of the cowardice of men and the patriarchal society they have built. Aglaya recognizes herself as a woman in a man's world, but she is still prepared to fight for her desires.

“The more she torments you, the more she loves you.”

Throughout the novel, almost every character assumes that Myshkin is less intelligent and perceptive than he really is. His lack of social etiquette and manners, they assume, means that he lacks mental acuity. However, he is the only character who can provide such insightful, useful diagnoses of the other characters. Myshkin’s perceptiveness and emotional insight make the novel’s title—and the other characters’ insults—ironic.

“There is greater wealth, but less force; the binding idea is gone; everything has turned soft, everything is overstewed, everyone is overstewed! We're all, all, all overstewed!”

Lebedev is not of the same social class as most of the rich, aristocratic characters. He is closer to the material conditions of the majority of Russian people, rather than be insulated from the problems of the world by his wealth. More pointedly than the other characters, he recognizes that the society is flawed and broken. Without a guiding idea or social cause, he worries, everything will be "gone" (290). Given Myshkin's treatment by the cynical, self-interested characters, his view of the world seems vindicated.

“You have no tenderness, only truth, that makes it unfair.”

Ippolit's words contain one of the key principles of the Saint Petersburg elite. A false dichotomy is created between tenderness and truth. The two concepts are not necessarily opposite from one another; a person can tell a kind, well-meaning lie but also a kind or well-meaning truth. Similar, aggressive truths and lies exist. The unfairness perceived by the characters is only true for those who expect only tenderness, irrespective of truth. In a cynical and self-serving world, the characters would prefer their cosseted tenderness over the blunt truth told by Myshkin. They would rather live in their dream worlds than deal with uncomfortable truths.

“Are you happy or not?”

Rogozhin, as blunt as ever, demands an answer to Nastasya's question. He does not want to know whether Myshkin is happy or not, as he already knows the answer. However, he wants the questioned to be asked and answered as a formal exercise. Rogozhin's mocking is a satire of the social etiquette that Myshkin lacks. Rogozhin amuses himself by forcing the truthful Myshkin to confront his own uncomfortable truths.

“A profound and continual awareness of his talentlessness and at the same time an unsuperable desire to be convinced that he was an independent man, painfully wounded his heart, even almost form the age of adolescence.”

Ganya is a man who is painfully aware of his own limitations. He lives on the fringes of a social circle in which every person is more charming, wealthier, more attractive, or more privileged in some other fashion. He tries desperately hard to make up for his short comings in some way, but he constantly fails. Every effort becomes a damning reminder of his own limitations and the inherently stratified nature of the society into which he is desperate to ingratiate himself.

Now, now, now, Aglaya. What are you doing! This is wrong, wrong…”

Aglaya toys with Myshkin in a way which appalls her family. She goes against all social etiquette, turning the question of any potential marriage into an absurd, theatrical display for her own amusement. Aglaya is mocking the society, mocking its manners, and—by mimicking his social misunderstanding—mocking Myshkin. Aglaya's behavior reveals that all the social expectations projected on to Myshkin are hollow and absurd. Everything is a joke to her, prompting her audience to question whether Myshkin or everyone else is truly foolish.

“The majority of the guests, despite their imposing appearance, were even rather empty people.”

At the end of the novel, Myshkin finds himself on the precipice of acceptance into the social elite of Saint Petersburg. He is so enthralled by the novelty of the situation that he fails to recognize the hollowness of the other guests. They are vapid, uninteresting people whose status is a mere coincidence, rather than the result of any great intelligence or achievement.

“It's so easy for a Russian man to become an atheist, easier than for anyone else in the whole world!”

In Myshkin's view, an inherent trait of the Russian identity is the passion and dedication that are directed toward any idea or pursuit. No Russian can half-commit to anything, and this is evidenced by the roles of the characters in the novel. Dostoevsky defines each character by one overarching trait, to the point that they become a parody of themselves. Rogozhin embodies boundless, violent passion; Ippolit is his sickly nihilism; Nastasya is her desperate self-loathing; and Myshkin is his pure sincerity. They are all examples of this Russian exuberance, so much so that they cannot recognize it within themselves.

“It's simply impossible to die without explanation."

Ippolit complains that a person cannot "die without explanation" (419) but the events of the novel prove him wrong. Every significant death happens external to the narrative. General Ivolgin dies of a stroke in an undescribed scene. Nastasya is killed by Rogozhin before Myshkin can arrive. Even Ippolit's death is described in a throwaway sentence in the final pages of the novel, with his philosophy and his desire for control over his death unmentioned. Every character dies without any explicit explanation; the real explanation is the exploration of the characters which has taken place throughout the novel.

“The point is whether there was truth here, whether your feeling was genuine, was it natural, or was it only a cerebral rapture?”

The desire to determine whether Myshkin's emotions were real or the result of some kind of "cerebral rapture" (433) diminishes the authenticity of Myshkin's emotions. He has spent the novel being nothing but sincere but every character refuses to accept this sincerity. Instead, they try to project other emotions on to his actions. Only Rogozhin, in the final pages, accepts that Myshkin is capable of real and sincere emotion, suggesting that Rogozhin is the only person who truly understands Myshkin.

“It seemed carved from marble and was terribly still.”

Nastasya's body laying on Rogozhin's bed is described in a similar manner to the painting of Christ being taken down from the cross. After being killed, she is laid out in an almost ceremonial manner, as though Rogozhin hopes that by recreating the aesthetics of the resurrection, he can bring Nastasya back to life. The irony of this action is that Rogozhin is an atheist. He does not believe in God, yet alone in the possibility that Nastasya might be revived. Earlier in the novel, Myshkin mentioned that the painting was enough to destroy a person's belief in God. Nastasya's body, laid out in the same way, destroys Myshkin's faith in the world and leaves him a quivering, catatonic wreck.