The Idiot: Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m scared to review a book of such brilliance. I read Crime and Punishment last year in Africa, and the characters came alive for me. I got so wrapped up in the story, it surrounded me and picked me up and carried me along with it. Now, almost a year later, I still find myself thinking about the characters as old friends whom I once shared something special with, but haven’t seen in a while.
The Idiot has affected me in the same way, and I know Myshkin and Nastasya and Aglaia and Kolya and the others are going to be with me for a long time.

Myshkin, who has returned to Russia after years of medical treatment in Switzerland, is ‘The Idiot.’ He’s earned this title through a combination of illness and innocent simplicity that his contemporaries in Russian society can’t understand.
His natural honesty, truth, courage and love are foreign to them, and despite their mostly warm feelings for this man, he is known behind his back, and sometimes to his face, as The Idiot.
Myshkin is a Christlike character. He always forgives the scoundrels around him who try to take advantage of him. They love him for it, but their nature still can’t allow them to truly follow his example.
He is mocked and revered equally, however. Kolya and Vera give him their unconditional dedication and love, while others respect him from a distance, and others disguise their affection with jealousy or mockery.
Upon his homecoming to Russia, Myshkin finds himself drawn irresistibly towards Nastasya Filipovna, a renowned beauty, but a fallen woman who was raised up as the mistress of a wealthy St. Petersburg man. As a result she is cruel and capricious and has trouble truly loving. She represents the prostitute Christ befriended at the well, as the prostitute represented fallen humanity not worthy to even stand before Christ, but somehow still loved by him.
Myshkin loves Nastasya for what she has suffered, and his love is based more on pity and sadness than passion. She loves him briefly then abandons him coldly.
Myshkin begins to fall in love with another woman. Aglaia is, in many ways, the opposite of Nastasya. Innocent and pure, young and beautiful, but at the same time she is also capable of great deception and cruelty.
Their love develops, and Aglaia becomes a passionate advocate of Myshkin, though she rarely speaks in his defence. But their love and pending marriage fall apart when Myshkin is forced to decide between Aglaia, and caring for someone who needs him desperately.
Though he knows the consequences will be harsh, Myshkin’s character only allows one choice, and Aglaia’s heart suffers the consequences. But even as Myshkin makes this choice, he knows what the consequences will be.
His Christlikeness is clear in this action, because he knows he is bringing ruin upon himself – the loss of love, of an adopted family that loves him as a son, of any public respect, even of his health. But as Christ sacrificed himself to fulfill his purpose, so does Myshkin.
At the climax of the story, Myshkin suffers his most public humiliation, and crowds gather around his home to enjoy the spectacle of a broken man.
Myshkin, always kind and generous and polite, opens his door even to them, offering them tea despite his grief.
Keller, a rough and tough character known for his prowess as a boxer and his willingness to fight, is astounded, and says this to a companion: “You and I would have made a row, had a fight, disgraced ourselves, have dragged in the police, but he’s made a lot of new friends – and what friends!”
The companion, Lebedyev, responds: “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, but revealed them to babes."
As the Russians around him did, I too find myself feeling great respect and compassion for Myshkin, along with a desire to follow the example he sets. But at the same time, there’s pity mixed in with my admiration for him – and the lurking knowledge that my pride would have to be crushed and broken too, before I could become like Myshkin.