Fed'ka the Convict is an escaped convict who is suspected of several thefts and murders in the town. He was originally a serf belonging to Stepan Trofimovich, but was sold into the army to help pay his master's gambling debts. It is Fed'ka who murders Stavrogin's wife and her brother, at the instigation of Pyotr Stepanovich. Stavrogin himself initially opposes the murder, but his later actions suggest a kind of passive consent. Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss Dostoevsky and his novel The Devils or Demons, is Tatyana Kovalevskaya, Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow and the author of the bilingual edition Fyodor Dostoevsky on the Dignity of the Human Person; Carol Apollonio, Professor of the Practice of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University in the United States and President of the International Dostoevsky Society; and Dr Sarah Hudspith, Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds, and author of Dostoevsky and the idea of Russianness. Many of the other characters are deeply affected by one or other of the two aspects of Stavrogin's psyche. The nihilist Pyotr Verkhovensky is in love with the cynical, amoral, power-seeking side, while Shatov is affected by the ardour of the feeling, spiritually-bereft side. Shatov "rose from the dead" after hearing Stavrogin's uncompromising exhortation of Christ as the supreme ideal (an assertion made in a futile effort to convince himself: he succeeds in convincing Shatov but not himself). [64] Conversely, Kirillov was convinced by Stavrogin's exhortation of atheism—the supremacy of Man's will, not God's—and forges a plan to sacrifice himself to free humanity from its bondage to mystical fear. But Stavrogin himself does not even believe in his own atheism, and as Shatov and Tikhon recognize, drives himself further into evil out of a desire to torture himself and avoid the truth. Kirillov sums up Stavrogin's dilemma thus: "If Stavrogin believes, then he doesn't believe that he believes. But if he doesn't believe, then he doesn't believe that he doesn't believe." [65] Suicide [ edit ] pofida faptelor relatate în Demonii, cititorii nu-l pot antipatiza întru totul pe Stavroghin, cum nimeni din orășelul Skvoreșniki nu e dispus s-o facă. In a letter to his friend Apollon Maykov, Dostoevsky alludes to the episode of the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Luke as the inspiration for the title: "Exactly the same thing happened in our country: the devils went out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine... These are drowned or will be drowned, and the healed man, from whom the devils have departed, sits at the feet of Jesus." [9] Part of the passage is used as an epigraph, and Dostoevsky's thoughts on its relevance to Russia are given voice by Stepan Verkhovensky on his deathbed near the end of the novel.

So, you want to read Dostoevsky’s darkest and most hilarious novel, a controversial political satire, the title of which has been variously rendered as The Possessed, The Devils, Devils, and Demons? By all accounts, it’s intense! Stepan Verkhovensky began as a caricature of Granovsky, and retained the latter's neurotic susceptibilities, academic interests, and penchant for writing long confessional letters, but the character was grounded in the idealistic tendencies of many others from the generation of the 1840s, including Herzen, Belinsky, Chaadaev, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky himself. [73] Liberal figures like Stepan Trofimovich, Varvara Petrovna, Liputin, Karmazinov, and the Von Lembkes, and minor authority figures like the old Governor Osip Osipovich and the over-zealous policeman Flibusterov, are parodies of a variety of establishment types that Dostoevsky held partially responsible for the excesses of the radical generation. Karmazinov was an openly hostile parody of Turgenev—his personality and mannerisms, his perceived complicity with nihilism, and, in the Gala reading scene, the style of some of his later literary works. [74] Though dismayed, Stepan Trofimovich accedes to her proposal, which happens to resolve a delicate financial issue for him.

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It takes eight days. Stavrogin accepts no one, and when his retreat ends to him immediately slips Peter Verkhovenskii. He expresses the willingness to do anything for Stavrogin and reports about a secret society, where they should appear together. Shortly after his visit Stavrogin goes to engineer Kirillov. He engineer, for whom Stavrogin means a lot, says that still professes his idea. Its essence - the need to get rid of God, which is none other than the "pain of the fear of death," and say willfulness, killing himself and thus becoming the man-god. A hint is given when Varvara Petrovna asks the mentally disturbed Marya, who has approached her outside church, if she is Lebyadkina and she replies that she is not. ... Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1994). A Writer's Diary: 1877-1881, Vol. 2. Edited and translated by Kenneth Lantz. Northwestern University Press. p.67. ISBN 9780810111011. French cleverness …” he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever …“that’s false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It’s point of it. There’s something about some sort of ‘sins in Switzerland.’‘I’m getting married,’ he says, ‘for my sins or on account of the ‘sins’

to develop the characters that are essential later in the novel. ( Refer to "Character Analysis" for more details). Humiliated and Insulted (aka The Insulted and Humiliated, The Insulted and the Injured, Injury and Insult)All participants of the crime, except Verkhovenskii soon are arrested. Daria Shatov received a letter of confession from Stavrogin. He calls Daria with him to Switzerland, where he bought a small house in the canton of Uri, to settle there permanently. Daria gives the letter to read to Varvara Petrovna, but then both learn that Stavrogin suddenly appeared in his estate. They are in a hurry to go and find a "citizen of the canton of Uri" hung up on the mezzanine level. Update this section! And you know it all comes from that same half-bakedness, that sentimentality. They are fascinated, not by realism, but by the emotional ideal side of socialism, by the religious note in it, so to say, by the poetry of it… second-hand, of course. Arrival of Nicholas Stavrogin - a very "mysterious and novelistic" personality is awaited. He served in the elite Guards regiment, shot in a duel, and was demoted and then plunged into the wildest licentiousness. Four years ago in his hometown he caused general indignation: had pulled by the nose a venerable man Gaganov, had bitten the ear of the governor, publicly kissed another man's wife. In the end, everything was explained as the delirium tremens. Having recovered, Stavrogin went abroad. Going into his last pilgrimage, Stepan Trofimovich dies in a peasant hut on the hands of a rushed to him Varvara Petrovna. Before his death, a random fellow traveler, whom he tells of his entire life, reads him the Gospel, and he compares the possessed, from whom Christ cast out demons entered into the pigs, with Russia. This passage from the Gospel is taken by he reporter as one of the epigraphs to the novel.