The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

she was crying out, shuddering, shouting that Rogozhin was hiding in the garden of their house, that she had just now seen him, and that he was going to kill her in the night … cut her throat!

She fucking knew, since her birthday, that getting married to Rogozhin meant dying.

‘What am I doing! What am I doing! What am I doing to you!’ she cried out, embracing his legs convulsively.

She definitely still knows she's ruining him and hates herself for it.

we don’t know what they talked about.

Who the fuck is the narrator

‘Save me! Take me away! Wherever you like—now!’ Rogozhin took her in his arms and almost lifted her into the carriage.

…bitch, again? we can't keep defending u when u're like this On a serious note though, this is actually her throwing away any kind of chance of being ‘redeemed,’ when she decided to go away with Rogozhin — the man she knows will murder her. I think she just can’t stand knowing that she’ll ruin Myshkin, but honestly, she does anyway.

he was setting off for town.

Fuck I'm scared to end the book.

The windows of Rogozhin’s rooms were all shut; the windows of his mother’s flat were all open; it was a hot and sunny day; the prince crossed the street on to the opposite pavement and stopped to look again at the windows; not only were they closed, but white curtains were drawn almost everywhere.

the one where he had had his seizure some five weeks previously.

I feel so terrible for Myshkin when i remember that this whole novel took place in a YEAR.

He came to the definite conclusion that he had been imagining things earlier; it was obvious that the windows were so grimy and long unwashed that it would have been hard to make out even if someone actually did peer through the panes.

Fuck, on the contrary, this convinced me hat Rogozhin reallly was there. If he wanted to have a clear view of Myshkin then that was the perfect place.

Nastasya Filippovna used to play cards with Rogozhin every evening—‘fools,

…he learned how to play 'fools' from nastasya The reference to Myshkin being good at ‘fools’ is in 4.5

There were many things he dreaded, and he sensed painfully and poignantly that he was horribly afraid.

‘I was there’, Rogozhin replied unexpectedly.

Oh fcuck oh fck oh fuk

Just watch that we keep together

The symbolism is realy symbolising rn. I mean that these two being parallels has been brought up since the beginning, sitting side-by-side in the train; now these two are, ahem, walking to Nastasya's corpse on opposite sides of the pavement.

‘Nastasya Filippovna isn’t at your house is she?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And was it you I saw earlier on, looking at me from behind the curtain?’ ‘Yes …’

…that was when he killed her. And he peeked out to look at Myshkin.

… it’ll be better for us … on opposite sides … you’ll see.’

The windows on the old woman’s side stood open as they had earlier in the day, those on Rogozhin’s were closed,

So that was the purpose of alotting the time and word to describe the curtains: it's an allusion to their parallelism again.

‘She’s … here’, said Rogozhin slowly, seeming to hesitate for the faintest instant.

I got goosebumps. it's all so vivid and suspenseful im just all like D:

Even when he was talking about the curtains, it was as if he had wanted to say something else, for all the seeming spontaneity of the story.

Well, he left out the fact that he killed her

taking the prince by the hand, pressed him into a chair; he seated himself opposite, shifting his own chair forward, so that the two sat almost knee to knee.

Very reminiscent of the train scene at the very beginning

They went out and sat down in the same chairs, again facing one another.

So this is settling all their symbolism then. Myshkin’s ‘shadow,’ the constant omnipresence of torment, the constant fear of murder; in every way his opposite. They sit face to face, knees touching, as they were in the beginning of the novel; but now beside the corpse of the woman they both loved and caused all these passions to arise in both of them.

it was all because she was afraid of you.

‘afraid of ruining* you’

So let her lie there near us, near you and me …’

The woman’s corpse, her murderer, and the poor knight all arranged in one bed in the darkness. Now that’s a fucking crazy ass scene what the fuck Dostoyevsky I feel like I’m going insane with the fucking characters

A knife? That knife?’ ‘That knife.’

It was a knife he directly associated with Myshkin, because they had a scene over it and he tried to kill Myshkin with it. Well, he indirectly caused Myshkin to lose his mind using that knife, so it’s as good at killing him.

… Sometimes there isn’t a drop. That’s if the blow goes straight to the heart …’

Holy shit. It pierced her straight through the heart; just like how she ‘pierced [Myshkin] straight through the heart.’ It’s why he loved her, but this is her cause of death.

A new feeling, melancholy and desolate, oppressed his heart; all at once he had become aware that at that moment, and for some time past, he had not been saying what he ought to have been saying, not doing what he should have been doing, and that these cards he held in his hands and had been so pleased about, could avail nothing, nothing at all now.

Fuck it's this quote. THIS. THIS IS THE LAST SANE FUCKING THOUGHTS MYSHKIN HAD. HIS LAST THOUGHTS. HIS LAST THOUGHTS WERE AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF HIS FAILURE.

the prince reached out his trembling hand and gently touched his head, his hair, stroking them and his cheeks … there was nothing more he could do!

‘There was nothing more he can do!’ It FUCKING hurts, FMD! it's such a hopeless sitation that it makes for a hard read. or maybe because the characters have become so real for me.

And if Schneider himself had arrived from Switzerland at this moment to see his former pupil and patient, remembering the state in which the prince had sometimes been during his first year of treatment, he would have washed his hands of him and said, as he had then: ‘An idiot!’

NOOOOOOOOOO I FELT GENUINE DISTRESS READING THIS ENDING. I. I. I. I AM NOT ALRIGHT. Bro i had my head in my hands and crying out bc of this ending I CANNOT ENDURE THIS?!?! We really just read a whole novel about the failure and ruin of a positively good man.

the prince once more found himself abroad, in Schneider’s Swiss clinic.

he hints at complete destruction of the reasoning faculties; he does not definitely speak of incurability, but he allows himself the gloomiest insinuations.

…we end with him in an altogether worse state than how he was in the very beginning. We watched him break.

He had captivated Aglaya by the extraordinary nobility of his soul, tortured by anguish for his native land

Aglaya literally went and looked for another Myshkin but found a fraud instead and broke off ties with her family… my goodness

all of us abroad are nothing but an illusion … mark my words, you’ll see!’

Why the fuck are THESE the last words of the novel