The Idiot, My Third Dostoevsky Novel

The Ending, The Episodic Narrative Structure, And Some Thoughts

My copy of The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Hello, my lovely bookish friend!!!

Welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books. Have you been reading this week?

Last Sunday, I finished The Idiot. It felt good to finally be able to write it down in my book-log, because I felt like I was reading it forever.

As I’ve already mentioned before, I was finding The Idiot quite difficult to navigate. Part of that had to do with its structure. In general, I expect a story to start off, give some exposition, go for some build-up, then start picking up pace, then reach the climax and the ultimate resolution. But that wasn’t the case here. 

While the story was still in what I assumed was the exposition and build-up stage, a certain scene came, filled with high tension and drama, like I’d expect a climax scene to be. I was totally unprepared for that. I was expecting a slower and gradual build-up. 

But it didn’t stop there. After this scene, my expectation was that we’ve entered the high-action phase of the story and expected actions. But that never came. Instead, after that one high-tension scene, it got slow and laid-back, almost like how things were at the beginning of the story, probably even slower. And this pattern continued for the rest of the book, it’s kind of episodic.

Later on, I read something very interesting about how the ‘episodes’ of the book are like epileptic episodes. Dostoevsky himself suffered from epilepsy and so does Prince Myshkin, the main character of The Idiot. So that I thought was very insightful.

But I think for me, the actual answer came after I finished the book, because it’s one of those books where just by comparing the beginning and the ending, you pretty much get your answers. Like say Romeo and Juliet. The Idiot was also like that (spoiler alert).

The story starts with Prince Myshkin coming back to Russia after spending years in a sanatorium in Switzerland, getting treated for his epilepsy, because he’s doing better now. And it ends with him back at his sanatorium in Switzerland, having gone completely mad with little hope for recovery.

Just by taking a look at this outcome one can conclude that the goal of this book is to imply that everything that Myshkin experienced in between, might not have been ideal. Dostoevsky here, just like in his other two novels I’ve read, is criticising his contemporary Russian society. The topics that I personally tried to find in the book– guilt and innocence, conscience and societal hypocrisy, are all part of that criticism. This made it all a bit more coherent for me. And this probably is a lesson for me to be patient with a book and actually wait for it to end before I start pulling my hair out in frustration.

I do have a few other thoughts about this book, but it won’t be for a while that I’ll be talking about those thoughts. That being said, I do believe it’s so far my least favourite Dostoevsky novel, which by the way, does not mean I don’t like it. 

I’ll be looking forward to reading The Brothers Karamazov next year.

What about you? Have you read any Dostoevsky novels? Don’t forget to let me know.

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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.

Until then,

Joyie 🌻