The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

Rating:
Summary: in the shadow of innocence
Review: Although the book feels rushed in places--as indeed it was, what with Dostoevsky working under a tight deadline he barely made--it is a powerful examination of what can happen when innocence goes too far. Dostoevsky's question: what would be the impact of a man without guile, the ostensible Christian ideal?

As I read I couldn't help thinking about the innocence and denial so rampant in American culture nowadays. "Teddybearism," James Hillman calls it, referring to the mountain of stuffed animals sent to the remains of the World Trade Center. Not even the boldest and most Machiavellian maneuvers of the inadequately opposed theocracy now gathering power to itself in Washington can convince nearly 50% of Americans that relentless warfare, poverty, invasion of privacy, and environmental destruction have nothing to do with freedom, security, or patriotism. It's so bad now that Americans are posing abroad as Canadians to avoid the most embarrassing questions about all the reckless, ignorant, bow-legged posturing to make the world safer for Freedom Fries.

Prince Myshkin is not an American, but he is a card-carrying teddybearist. Lie to him and he'll probably believe it. Tell him an unpleasant truth about someone and he'll see only the good in them. He exemplifes the feel-good philosophy of "always look on the bright side." And the result? He surrounds himself with losers, liars, cheaters, drunks, and at least one killer, even passing up the chance to marry the woman he loves to wed a raving lunatic.

Those interested in the negative impact of too much pure-heartedness will find this book an interesting study--and a validation of psychologist Rollo May's dictum that an innocence which blinds itself to the power of the daimonic in man becomes demonic in its effects.

Rating:
Summary: "The Positively innocent man"
Review: Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic novel "The Idiot" centers around the main character, Prince Lev Nikolaievich Myshkin. Spending 3 years in a Swiss sanitorium for "idiocy," Prince Myshkin comes back to Russia because of a "longing in his heart for his fatherland". It doesn't take long for Myshkin to meet the dark and obsessive Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin and Lebedev, two main characters in the story.

The book is mostly centered around various planned marriages and relationships. As such, it is not a "gripping" read in the sense of suspense and thrill. It is a novel at the top of Russian style, that is a novel of ideas.

It is a moving story about the inability of society to accept someone purely based upon who they are. Prince Myshkin is a simpleton; he is honest and kind-hearted who gives his heart to anyone who would take it. He is purity embodied. However, the society with which Myshkin finds himself in contact with are vain, shallow, and greedy people who exploit others for personal profit.

All in all, this book is worth 5 stars based on the philosophical implications alone. Definitely worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: The Idiot surpasses all the great dramas of literature
Review: Some of the most memorable and most rewarding characters in all of literature were penned in The Idiot; and the emotions the reader feels while reading this epic are so wide in scope and so piercing that one is left to wonder how such a book is able to be written.
Other masterpieces that one should read if they like The Idiot, and Dostoyevsky:

Hunger, by Knut Hamsen *****; Crepuscule, by Roman Payne *****