a prisoner passionately loves money and values it above everything, almost on a par with freedom, and that it is enough to have it jingling in his pocket for him to be comforted.
This does sound frighfully like life. Let me have an analysis here. I said earlier that Dostoyevsky believed prison to be a sort of anti-life, but this perfectly desccribes many of us in freedom. That is the significance of this alive dead house; each man builds himself an anti-life within his life.
A battle in many Dostoyevsky works is a search for the living life.
