The Idiot

The Idiot

by

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Themes and Colors
Innocence v. Foolishness Theme Icon
Money, Greed, and Corruption Theme Icon
Social Hierarchy, Authority, and Rebellion Theme Icon
Absurdity and Nihilism Theme Icon
Passion, Violence, and Christianity Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Idiot, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Absurdity and Nihilism Theme Icon

The Idiot contains an extensive depiction of nihilism, a philosophical movement that became popular in Russia in the 1860s. Nihilists were heavily critical of the existing structures, laws, and norms, which they held were arbitrary and wrong. They asserted that existence was fundamentally meaningless. The novel shows how the difficulty and absurdity of life might indeed compel someone to embrace a nihilistic worldview. However, through the character of Prince Myshkin, it ultimately takes a stand against nihilism, which it suggests is a misguided reaction to pain and absurdity.

In the novel, nihilism is mainly explored through the small group of young people who explicitly align themselves with the movement, including Ippolit, Doktorenko, and Burdovsky. Each character has different reasons for embracing nihilism, and perhaps the most sympathetic of these is Ippolit’s story. At only 17, Ippolit is very ill from consumption (tuberculosis) and has been told that he will die very soon. In despair at the injustice and absurdity of having his life cut so short, Ippolit adopts a nihilist worldview. He decides to commit suicide, explaining, “Nature has so greatly limited my activity by her three-week sentence that suicide may be the only thing I still have time to begin and end of my own will.” It is easy to feel sympathy for Ippolit and to understand why the dire circumstances of his life might lead him to conclude that existence itself is illogical and meaningless. However, the way he enacts his beliefs ends up painting nihilism as a somewhat foolish and childish reaction to the horrors of the world. This is conveyed most emphatically by Ippolit’s philosophical treatise, “A Necessary Explanation,” which he reads before a large audience of party guests. While the essay is meant to be dramatic (as immediately indicated by the epigraph, “Après moi le deluge…” / “After me the flood”), it actually just leaves everyone feeling bored. Most of the audience is not convinced that Ippolit actually intends to commit suicide. General Ivolgin, for example, comments, “He won’t shoot himself; it’s a boyish prank.” When Ippolit’s attempt fails, he is left deeply embarrassed, trying to assure everyone that he really did mean to kill himself. Ippolit’s boring essay and failed suicide attempt are metaphors for the general failures of nihilism. Although not entirely misguided, nihilism reacts to insightful observations about the world in an unhelpful and childish manner (as conveyed by Ivolgin’s phrase “boyish prank”). Perhaps the most important criticism the book makes of Ippolit’s form of nihilism is the fact that it is fundamentally selfish. Ippolit’s worldview and actions remain focused on himself—even if that means killing himself.

Although they are not necessarily recognized as nihilists, some of the female characters in the novel also react to the absurdity of life by embracing the philosophy. Mrs. Epanchin expresses concern about the prospect of her daughters “growing up into nihilists,” and wonders if Alexandra Ivanovna is a nihilist or “simply a fool.” Mrs. Epanchin’s words highlight the contradictory way in which nihilism is constructed in the minds of the characters—particularly older adults. On one hand, Mrs. Epanchin implies that nihilism is basically a form of foolishness, and thus assumedly shouldn’t be taken too seriously. On the other hand, she is very worried about the prospect of her daughters embracing nihilism, showing that the movement may be more powerful than many characters want to admit. Similarly, although she does not explicitly identify with it, Nastasya arguably behaves in the most stridently nihilistic way in the book. Reacting to the bleak absurdity of being orphaned as a child, sexually abused by her guardian, and put at the mercy of suitors who do not care about her, Nastasya loses all respect for social convention. Her rebellious behavior could certainly be read as an example of nihilism in action. However, because she is a woman, she is not viewed as a nihilist in the traditional sense. Moreover, her actions have only a very limited impact on the world around her, beyond causing scandal.

The obvious contrast here is the behavior of Myshkin. Like Ippolit, Myshkin is sensitive to the absurdity and injustice of the world and deeply affected by it. However, rather than turning to nihilism, Myshkin’s reaction is to be as kind, merciful, and generous as possible to his fellow human beings. In this sense, it is less important whether Myshkin’s Christian worldview or a nihilist worldview is actually correct. What matters is that the prince has a positively transformative impact on the world, whereas the nihilists in the novel do not manage to change the absurd nature of life that they are rebelling against, and are instead dismissed as ridiculous.

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Absurdity and Nihilism Quotes in The Idiot

Below you will find the important quotes in The Idiot related to the theme of Absurdity and Nihilism.
Part One, Chapter Four Quotes

But another rumor he involuntarily believed and feared to the point of nightmare: he had heard for certain that Nastasya Filippovna was supposedly aware in the highest degree that Ganya was marrying only for money, that Ganya’s soul was dark, greedy, impatient, envious, and boundlessly vain, out of all proportion to anything; that, although Ganya had indeed tried passionately to win Nastasya Filippovna over before, now that the two friends had decided to exploit that passion, which had begun to be mutual, for their own advantage, and to buy Ganya by selling him Nastasya Filippovna as a lawful wife, he had begun to hate her like his own nightmare. It was as if passion and hatred strangely came together in his soul, and though, after painful hesitations, he finally consented to marry “the nasty woman,” in his soul he swore to take bitter revenge on her for it and to “give it to her” later, as he supposedly put it.

Related Characters: Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov, Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin (Ganya), Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, General Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Part One, Chapter Six Quotes

“Maybe I’ll be considered a child here, too—so be it! Everybody also considers me an idiot for some reason, and in fact I was once so ill that I was like an idiot; but what sort of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that I’m considered an idiot? I come in and think: ‘They consider me an idiot, but I’m intelligent all the same, and they don’t even suspect it . . .’ I often have that thought.”

Related Characters: Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin (speaker)
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two, Chapter Seven Quotes

“Nihilists are still sometimes knowledgeable people, even learned ones, but these have gone further, ma’am, because first of all they’re practical. This is essentially a sort of consequence of nihilism, though not in a direct way, but by hearsay and indirectly, and they don’t announce themselves in some sort of little newspaper article, but directly in practice, ma’am; it’s no longer a matter, for instance, of the meaninglessness of some Pushkin or other, or, for instance, the necessity of dividing Russia up into parts; no, ma’am, it’s now considered a man’s right, if he wants something very much, not to stop at any obstacle, even if he has to do in eight persons to that end.”

Related Characters: Lukyan Timofeevich Lebedev (speaker)
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two, Chapter Nine Quotes

“Yes, Prince, you must be given credit, you’re so good at exploiting your . . . hm, sickness (to put it decently); you managed to offer your friendship and money in such a clever form that it is now quite impossible for a noble man to accept them. It’s either all too innocent, or all too clever . . . you, however, know which.”

Related Characters: Vladimir Doktorenko (speaker), Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three, Chapter Five Quotes

He is either a doctor or indeed of an extraordinary intelligence and able to guess a great many things. (But that he is ultimately an “idiot” there can be no doubt at all.)

Related Characters: Ippolit Terentyev (speaker), Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin
Page Number: 389
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three, Chapter Six Quotes

Nature appears to the viewer of this painting in the shape of some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, strange though it is—in the shape of some huge machine of the most modern construction, which has senselessly seized, crushed, and swallowed up, blankly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being—such a being as by himself was worth the whole of nature and all its laws, the whole earth, which was perhaps created solely for the appearance of this being alone! The painting seems precisely to express this notion of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subjected, and it is conveyed to you involuntarily.

Related Characters: Ippolit Terentyev (speaker)
Related Symbols: Holbein’s “The Dead Christ”
Page Number: 408
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Four, Chapter One Quotes

As soon as some of our young ladies cut their hair, put on blue spectacles, and called themselves nihilists, they became convinced at once that, having put on the spectacles, they immediately began to have their own “convictions.”

Page Number: 463
Explanation and Analysis: