Honestly Good Luck if You Want To Read This

Yes, I am back from the dead, just like it was the third day.  My online presence didn't catch up to me until I received a kind little reminder from Mrs. LaClair in my mailbox saying "Blog!"

And yes, after years of slow and dry text I managed to finish my book.  It was not easy, it was not fun, but it made me feel a lot smarter than I actually am to be reading a book like that.  I also would like to go on record and say that I did not understand it all, but that's what life is all about, right?

(Spoiler, I'm talking about the ending of the book if anyone on this God forsaken planet would choose to read it)

Obviously I'm not going to summarize every event that took place in the book, which was actually just a lot of talking, but I will say the book was consistently paced throughout.  Each scene seemed to be variation of what that happened in the past.  Stylistically it was repetitive and very literal in description.  It seemed that every social event followed the same outline: a large gathering, a subtle fight breaks out across the table/room, more character arrive unannounced (what are the maids doing???), someone storms off or is dragged away, an anecdotal story is recited by a wise man about what just unfolded.  Boom, Dostoyevsky.

In another sense, the impression of characters has almost entirely flipped.  The Epanchin family were the first ones to accept him, especially the mother.  Once she finds about Myshkin and her daughter's rumored engagement, she refers back to him as an idiot, obviously a term he is very sensitive about.  Also after an epileptic seizure Myshkin experiences at a dinner party, the mother is disgusted and says she won't allow her daughter to marry the prince anyways.  Other characters like Ganya and Varya also think of him as stupid and unintelligent; a victim to his epilepsy.  Myshkin looses all of his money and respect from people, but in no fault of his own.  Throughout the many mini stories, rumors, and dinner conversations of the Idiot the only really similarity and concessions I can draw is that Myshkin has never done anything wrong.  He really acts in an ideal form and people think of him as stupid.

One of the (only) literary devices Dostoyevsky uses in this novel is the foiling of two characters.  Characters like Ganya and Rogodzhin are foiled in comparison to their love of Nastassya.  Nastassya and Aglaya and foiled in their treatment towards and from Myshkin.  One of the most obvious foils is between Myshkin and Kolga's friend Hippolite.  Hippolite suffers from a terminal illness and seems upset when his only friend Kolga is more interested in the prince than him.  Foiled together, the prince and Hippolite are both very ill.  Hippolite stays indoors and hates nature.  He doesn't want to socialize or see people; instead of trying to fight his illness he waits to die, saying his time is near anyways.  Myshkin obviously is not like that.  He traveled to Russia to meet his lost family, knowing full well he suffered from epilepsy.  He does not talk about his illness until later in the story when they start happening more often, indicating that it probably wasn't information he wanted to share.  Myshkin wants to embrace the world instead of just sitting and waiting for his illness to take over his life like Hippolite.  I think Dostoyevsky is depicting Hippolite as someone who has given up; developed to show the negative outcome for stopping to figure an illness or conflict.  When Hippolite tries to kill himself, Myshkin sees this as what could happen if he succumbed to his weakness.

Basically the book ends with Myshkin going back to the assylum.  He finally was going to marry a woman he thought loved and respected him, Nastasya, but she left him at the altar for her extremely violent and abusive ex-BF Rogodzhin.  Suprise, Surprise, he stabs her to death, covers her with a blanket, and invited Myshkin to sit on her body.  Nothing good happens.  Nobody really benefits.  God Bless America.

Love Owen