The Idiot - Moral Goodness
The Idiot is Dostoevsky's second novel. The book is a hybrid of biographical sketches and anecdotes of the writer. The protagonist, Prince Myshkin, bears traces of his creator in his suffering of epilepsy. Dostoevsky often deviates from the main plot and voices his perspectives on pain, suffering, capital punishment, and moral goodness.
The notion of suffering incessantly sifts through the novel as if true suffering plays a key role in purifying the protagonist and granting him the overriding power to the [evil] society in which he seeks to gain acceptance. However excruciating and painful it might be, physical suffering and bodily agony would distract the mind from spiritual suffering. That is, the physical aching deprives functioning of mental thinking. The worst suffering, as Prince Myshkin contemplates, are the knowledge and the inevitable truth of one's imminent death, the invincible parting of soul with the body. Being mindful of one's death would only perpetuate suffering. Readers should grip this idea and bear in mind.
Morally upright, magnanimous, forgiving, humble, loving, honest, virtuous and mindful of others needs, Prince Myshkin embodies all human virtue and goodness. He is almost like God, or perfecting to be like God. He is a man capable of an ideal. He is stuck and torn between the love of Aglaia and Natasya upon his return to Russia from medical treatment in Switzerland. Myshkin's self-stigmatizing, humble, and diffident element often agitated Aglaia whose love for him manifests to the full in her passionate recital of a poor knight poem. She shows desire to marry him despite the wonted taunting. She assures that Myshkin is more honorable than anybody is and nobody is worth his little finger let alone his heart and soul.
Out of volition and obligation, Myshkin believes he is responsible to rescue the vile, [evil] Natasya from her deranged mental state. The cause of his love for her was more than just the bewitching, demonical beauty: it is rather eagerness on Myshkin's part to be of service to his country after being abroad. He has long set an ideal and having faith in such ideal empowers him to give up his life blindly to it. Though Natasya is surprised at Myshkin's discerning words that she ought to be ashamed and that she is not what she pretends to be, she tortures herself by not falling in love with him lest to disgrace and ruin his life.
In her importunate...