The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Review by Noan Cheng '26

Dostoevsky's The Idiot is a fragmented, nigh-indecipherable, and ultimately harrowing read into the human condition as depicted in the context of 19th-century Russian aristocracy. Long-winded and often running into tangents, the text demonstrates the fatal, near-nihilistic clash between tradition and revelation in a joyful, profoundly pessimistic manner. With an unremarkable but detailed introduction, The Idiot lies amongst a class of narratives that plies the reader, forcibly, firmly–but ever so gently–into a world eerily similar to our own.

There is a strange irregularity with the overall structure, one that perhaps makes it all the more relatable to us. The anomaly lies in the sentiment that The Idiot seems less like a standalone plot with a theatrical set of characters, and more of a documentary of a few nuanced experiences for a select few people, whose lives have gone on for decades before and shall go on for decades after. The plot undulates and shifts, of course, with resounding climaxes and catharsis to be found for the narrative. And yet, there is no corresponding resolution for the story. No neat denouement, in any seemingly just sense of the concept, presents itself for our satisfaction. What can be noticed from the conclusion, is the leviathan gears of time which stand behind Dostoevsky's shoulder, grinding all sentiment into a futile resignation. As the lumbering treads of life trudge on forward, the nadirs and peaks experienced by the characters seem to flatten out into a rote, nonchalant “c’est la vie”, with as much enthusiasm as one takes out the trash or one day sits down and ponders about a friend who moved away.

Such a curious effect is possible in The Idiot by a punctual veneration of the characters that reaches a point of self-invention, where the plot is of secondary importance, and perhaps even irrelevance. It is clear that one of Dostoevsky's most quixotic strengths presents itself in The Idiot. It is beyond mere puppet mastery which animates his creations; it is not a matter of seeing his characters come to life. No, they are already alive, endowed with the universal vigor of passion that so ensconces itself within our souls. By a paradoxical brute-forced redundancy of description, anemic peculiarities tie the reader into a web that is so, so very weak, but all the more confining, forcing the completion of the book. As you stare at the last few words, only the illusion of choice and a disdainful, hopeful jolly for the human soul remains.