/lit/ - Literature

>>17603999
6/8)
The Devils. Dostoevsky’s strongest rebuttal to the increasing violent and radical socialist movements in his nation. Based on terrorist Sergie Nechaev, it follows a radical socialist group as they plan to commit the perfect murder against a member that they wrongly believe will betray them. It is a story full of despair. Stravogin, one of the revolutionaries, is a man who no longer “believed in good or evil, just prejudice” and commited vile acts throughout his life. He hangs himself, racked with guilt. Krillov who is used as the fall man for the murder in an engineer obsessed with suicide, that to claim control over one’s mortality, is to gain the power of God himself. And poor Shatov is able to reconcile himself with life after his son’s birth, finding God in the “irrational” and beautiful love for his son (its probably Stravogin’s but oh well) is soon after killed by his fellow socialists. The most haunting part of the book is the meeting of the group, with the intellectual Shigalev propose to enslave 9/10ths of man to free the few deserving. It would seem overreaching and reactionary if not for the events that would occur. About a decade later Tsar Alexander II would be murdered, and half a century later, Stalin’s reign of terror would fall upon Russia.