In this blog post, we’ll focus on “Analysis of Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’: Prince Myshkin and the Meaning of Purity,” naturally summarizing the background, main content, and the key meanings and impressions revealed throughout the narrative in a single sentence.
Introduction
No matter how long or tedious a work may seem, every work possesses a taut tension. The reason we cannot casually turn the pages of a classic is that it drives us to maintain that tension. If we let our guard down for even a moment, that thread snaps.
While reading Dostoevsky’s novel, I could not feel that thread of tension. No, it would be more accurate to say it was a distraction. It’s not just because the work itself is so vast. It’s probably because I couldn’t bear the weight of the work and frequently lost hold of the thread of its meaning.
In fact, writing a book report on ‘The Idiot’ is no easy task. For one thing, the structure of the work seems inconsistent and, in some ways, even awkward. Furthermore, not only the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, but nearly all the characters are far from the sensible, everyday people we commonly encounter in our surroundings. Moreover, the plot itself is quite unconventional. And that’s not all—the themes we can draw from the work are endless. To capture all of that in a review, one would practically have to write a massive dissertation.
In this novel, Dostoevsky tackles all manner of weighty themes—faith, ideology, sin, love, compassion, life, and death—while simultaneously portraying his homeland, Russia. Through this work, he explores the future of Russia in the form of a series of questions and seeks to define what true humanity should look like. In short, this novel presents all the inner tensions and conflicts we might experience in life as a single dramatic narrative.
However, as is true of all of Dostoevsky’s novels, this one—despite tackling such weighty themes—offers readers plenty of enjoyment. In my view, Dostoevsky stands among the greatest—alongside Cervantes of ‘Don Quixote’ and Victor Hugo of ‘Les Misérables’—in his ability to portray such weighty themes in such an entertaining way. In that sense, he is also a natural storyteller.
Let us content ourselves with experiencing that pleasure once again by following the figure of Prince Myshkin—the protagonist of this profound work, a work in which all manner of questions and stories are intertwined—who can be described as the most unconventional character in the novel.
The Character of Prince Myshkin
What did you feel when encountering the character of Myshkin? If, putting everything else aside, you thought, “Where on earth could such a person exist?”, then you are the most honest person of all. It’s true. He is a completely unrealistic character. He is the kind of person who has no place to belong anywhere in the world.
First of all, he is a man without a homeland. Of course, he is Russian. But he is a man who, suffering from epilepsy, left for Switzerland in a state of near-total mental incapacity as a child and has only recently returned to Russia. To him, Russia is a foreign land. Although he is a son of Russia, he views the country with completely fresh eyes, as if starting from a blank slate.
He holds no social status whatsoever. All he possesses is purity and innocence. He is so pure that he does not feel ashamed no matter what insults he faces. For example, even when Ganya slaps him across the face, he does not blush or get angry; he simply accepts the slap meekly. But look closely at the novel. The people who insulted and mocked him all change little by little as a result of his acceptance of such humiliation.
The most representative example is Ganya. Ganya, who was a careerist and a market-oriented man, abandons the hostility he felt toward the Duke and comes to care for him. His purity possesses the power to transform others in this way.
That is right. The Prince is not a passive character. In a sense, he is the most active character of all. He is almost recklessly proactive in the sense that he dreams of the impossible. So what is this impossible dream? It is his dream that the people he meets will return to their true selves through fundamental change—and he never loses that faith. He does not leave Nastasya’s side because he never loses faith that she will be reborn.
As human beings live in society and form relationships with others, we are bound to become corrupted to some extent. And we go through life believing that this is our true nature. Yet Prince Myshkin categorically rejects that notion.
However, the Prince’s rejection differs in meaning from the rejection we commonly imagine. He does not feel revulsion toward the corrupted human form; rather, he feels compassion and sympathy. This is because he harbors affection for the inevitably fallen nature of humanity. He does not force them to change. Instead, with faith in their potential for change, and with compassion and affection, he remains by their side. While rejecting Nastasya, Rogozhin, and Hippolyte as they are now, he projects onto them the image of who he truly wishes them to be.
How can he reject depravity while simultaneously accepting the fallen state? It’s simple. It is because he knows that human beings are inherently weak. It is because he knows that human beings are incapable of resisting temptation. To love human beings—who he rejects as fallen yet cannot help but be so—and thereby guide them onto the right path, not through religious sermons or logical admonitions, but through his own actions alone—it is precisely in this regard that Prince Myshkin becomes the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
And this religious essence is also expressed directly through Prince Myshkin’s own words. The prince sees a woman he meets on the road making the sign of the cross upon seeing her infant son—who is only about six weeks old—smile. When he asks why she is making the sign of the cross, she replies:
“A mother’s joy at seeing her newborn smile for the first time is just like God’s joy up there whenever He sees the sinners of this earth praying earnestly to Him.”
He then goes on to say:
“Such a profound, delicate, and genuine religious thought—one in which the very essence of Christianity is embodied—came from the lips of a simple woman. She conceived of God as the Heavenly Father who looks down upon humanity with joy, just as a father gazes upon his own child. (…) The essence of religious sentiment cannot be approached or explained by any logic. It cannot be explained by any sin, any crime, or any atheism… it lies beyond all of that.”
Mishkin’s Religious and Moral Stance and Literary Comparisons
Through ‘The Idiot’, Dostoevsky likely sought to portray a character filled with compassion and love for humanity. It is well known that the only character Dostoevsky viewed positively was Jesus Christ. Through the character of Prince Mishkin, he sought to portray the most beautiful of all characters. He cites Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’ as the most beautiful character in the history of Western fiction, followed by Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables’.
However, while ‘Don Quixote’ is a comical figure and Jean Valjean is a character who moves people through his good deeds and sacrifices, Myshkin is a character who is seriously innocent and pure. Isn’t Christ himself the very embodiment of such a character—seriously naive and innocent? A figure who bears the suffering and illness of others, yet whose heart and soul are always turned toward God—isn’t that precisely who Christ is? Is this not why, paradoxically, Prince Myshkin strikes us as such an unrealistic character?
In the novel, the Prince is a failed figure. When he returned to Switzerland, having reverted to his state of mental simplicity, the world had not changed in the slightest. Perhaps it had even gotten worse. Even if he were to appear in the world and then leave again, the same kinds of people would continue to be born. The world seems to turn regardless of him.
Hippolyte, an atheist, has become more petty than ever and resents the world, while Ganya still dreams of becoming a Rothschild. Aglaia, her pride wounded, is swindled into marriage by a Polish Catholic, and Nastasya is murdered by Rogozhin. And the Duke reverts to his original state as a simpleton. There seems to be no place for him in this world. The Duke’s innocence and purity appear to serve no purpose whatsoever in this world.
So let us ask: Are purity and innocence truly necessary in this world? What value and role do they serve? The Duke repeatedly says that Nastasya has gone mad. Aglaya, seeing that the Duke resolutely refuses to choose her, is consumed by jealousy and abandons him. Could it be that the mad Nastasya and the jealous Aglaya are, in fact, the more natural states of being?
Aren’t Logozhin’s passion, Hippolyte’s hatred, and Ganya’s ambition for social advancement more natural human emotions? Isn’t the childlike innocence possessed by the Duke, on the contrary, what is unnatural? Is it truly natural not only to forgive Logozhin, who tried to kill him, but to embrace him as a brother? Above all, don’t we get angry when we’re called a “fool”?
That’s right. The Duke is not a natural character. His decision to choose both Nastasya and Aglaya—rather than just one—in their love triangle is also unnatural. His utter selflessness is unnatural. His tendency to cultivate compassion toward evil rather than hatred is unnatural as well.
The Duke is a thoroughly unrealistic character. Such a being cannot exist in the real world. This is because he is a character who is innately inexperienced. Everyone gains experience and becomes tainted as they live in the world. Yet he is innately inexperienced. He is flawless, like a seamless celestial robe. No matter how much worldly experience he gains, he learns nothing. He is a mass of flawless innocence. He is a fool.
Paradoxically, however, he is wise. He sees what those who are tainted and wear colored glasses cannot see. This is because he is free of prejudice, and his eyes are clear. He can see what blurred eyes cannot. That is why he is both innocent and insightful. That is why, even as we click our tongues at someone and say, “Oh, how naive…,” we simultaneously feel a subtle fear toward that person.
Prince Myshkin was a fool, and he returned to being a fool, but when he first came into this world, he was not a fool. It was merely that people treated him as an idiot. He knows he is being treated as an idiot. And as long as he knows that, he insists he is not an idiot.
Could it be that we are living our lives mocking as fools those who possess the insight, purity, and innocence that we lack? Or could it be that we are living while suppressing the possibility of purity that still breathes preciously within us?
If we ask ourselves such questions while reading ‘The Idiot’, Prince Myshkin will always live on within us. He is a character who could never exist in reality, but he can always live on within those questions and their meaning. After all, is Jesus Christ meaningful simply because he constantly appears before us and exists in reality? Isn’t he all the more meaningful precisely because he is an unreal being?
Dostoevsky’s Life and Literary Career
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821 as the second son of Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky, a doctor at a charity hospital, and his deeply devout mother, Maria Fyodorovna Nechayeva. In 1838, at the age of 17, he enrolled in the Military Engineering School; he was appointed a non-commissioned officer in 1840, commissioned as a second lieutenant two years later, and discharged from the army in 1844 at the age of 23.
Thereafter, he devoted himself exclusively to writing, publishing “Poor Folk” in 1846 and continuing to release over ten novels and short stories. Then, a life-changing event occurred.
Dostoevsky was not a revolutionary, either by temperament or personal conviction. However, he regularly attended gatherings of young writers who read the works of socialists such as Fourier and Proudhon. In 1849, he was arrested along with other writers on charges of being subversive and sentenced to death.
In December of that year, he was dragged out to Semyonovsky Square and found himself on the brink of being executed by firing squad. However, at the very last moment, the execution was halted by a special decree from the emperor, and his sentence was commuted to hard labor. The anecdote recounted by Prince Myshkin at the beginning of ‘The Idiot’ is based directly on the author’s own experience.
After serving the remaining four years of his sentence, he was released from prison in 1854. He then re-enlisted in the army and served until 1859, when he turned 38.
In 1861, when he turned 40, the Emancipation Edict was enacted, and he published ‘The Insulted and Injured’ that same year. Despite being plagued by poverty and debt due to his gambling addiction and epilepsy, his prolific writing never ceased. He serialized ‘Crime and Punishment’ in 1866, ‘The Idiot’ in 1868, and ‘Demons’ in 1871; he began serializing ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ in 1879 and published it as a book the following year.
In 1881, at the age of 60, he suffered a ruptured artery and died on January 28; he was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.
No one disputes that he is considered one of Russia’s two greatest writers alongside Tolstoy, nor does anyone hesitate to call him a master whose name ranks among the greatest in the history of world literature.
