Work record

The Devils

Name: The Devils
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Also known as: Demons · The Possessed · Besy

1871-72 · 19th Century · Novel · Russian

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Abstract

Written: Serialized 1871-72; book 1873
Setting: About 1869; A provincial Russian town
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky; trans. Constance Garnett (1916)
Country: Russian Empire (Russia)
Language: Russian
Genre: Political and philosophical novel
Form: Novel in three parts
Recommended: Grades 11–12 (Murder, suicide, political terror; very demanding.)

Premise. A gossipy town chronicler begins with the comic life of an old idealist living on a rich widow's patronage. The arrival of her son and the idealist's son brings disaster to the province.

Conspiracy. The idealist's son organizes a secret circle of five and dreams of chaos and power, hoping to use the widow's magnetic son as a figurehead.

Ideas. Around them gather a convert to Orthodox faith, an engineer who wishes to kill himself to become God, and a theorist whose freedom ends in tyranny.

Catastrophe. A fête collapses, fires break out, several people are murdered, and the circle binds itself by killing the convert. The engineer shoots himself and the aristocrat hangs himself.

Redemption. The old idealist, wandering, hears the Gospel of the swine read aloud and recognizes his country in it before he dies.

Translation. The library uses Garnett's 1916 version, published as The Possessed, which lacks the suppressed chapter of Stavrogin's confession. This difficult novel warns of ideas cut off from God and conscience. Read it with Luke 8 and Crime and Punishment. The plot drew on a real 1869 Moscow case in which a radical leader persuaded his followers to kill a student they suspected of disloyalty. Many later readers saw the novel as a prophecy of twentieth-century revolutionary tyranny.

Main characters

Stepan Trofimovitch: aging liberal
Nikolay Stavrogin: charismatic aristocrat
Pyotr Verhovensky: revolutionary plotter
Shatov: returning believer
Kirillov: engineer planning suicide
Varvara Petrovna: wealthy patron

Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Source · Public domain

Summary

The Devils, also translated as Demons and The Possessed, is Dostoevsky's great political novel, a satire and tragedy about revolutionary nihilism in a Russian provincial town. Its epigraphs include the Gospel story of the Gadarene swine (Luke 8:32-36), in which the demons enter the herd and it rushes into the lake: Dostoevsky saw Russia's radicals as possessed by foreign ideas that would drive them to destruction. The narrator, a local gossip named Anton Lavrentyevitch, begins with the comic history of Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky, a vain, sentimental liberal of the 1840s who lives as tutor and companion under the patronage of the wealthy, domineering Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin. The real disturbers arrive with the younger generation: Varvara's son Nikolay Stavrogin, a handsome, gifted aristocrat who is magnetic but morally empty, and Stepan Trofimovitch's son Pyotr Verhovensky, a manipulative revolutionary organizer who forms a secret cell of five and plans to spread disorder. Around them gather Shatov, a former radical who has come to believe in Christ and Russia; Kirillov, an engineer who plans suicide to prove that man can become God; Shigalyov, whose theory begins with unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism; and others. Stavrogin has secretly married the crippled, simple-minded Marya Lebyadkin and seduced several women, including Shatov's wife. Pyotr hopes to make Stavrogin the figurehead of revolution. At a disastrous fête given by the governor's wife, the town's order collapses; fires break out; Marya and her brother are murdered; the young heiress Liza is killed by a mob. Pyotr binds his cell together by making them murder Shatov, whom he accuses of betrayal, on the very night Shatov's estranged wife returns and gives birth. Kirillov signs a false confession and shoots himself. Pyotr escapes abroad. Stepan Trofimovitch, wandering, hears the Gospel story of the swine read to him and understands its meaning for Russia before he dies. Stavrogin hangs himself. Constance Garnett's 1916 translation, used here, omits the suppressed chapter 'At Tikhon's'. The novel is a profound warning about ideas cut off from God and conscience.

Virtues in this work

Faith: Shatov turns back toward God and Russia after his nihilism.
Humility: Stepan Trofimovitch repents at the end.

Plot or Argument

Part I: The fathers and the arrival
Stepan Trofimovitch's comic history; Stavrogin and Pyotr arrive in the town.
Part II: The conspiracy
Pyotr organizes his cell; Kirillov and Shatov wrestle with God; the governor's fête collapses.
Part III: Catastrophe
Murders, fire, Shatov's death, Kirillov's suicide, Stepan Trofimovitch's last wandering, and Stavrogin's end.

Characters

Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky, liberal of the 1840s
Vain, sentimental idealist.
Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, patron
Wealthy, proud mother of Stavrogin.
Nikolay Stavrogin, enigma
Gifted, empty aristocrat.
Pyotr Verhovensky, conspirator
Manipulative revolutionary.
Ivan Shatov, believer
Former radical who turns to faith.
Alexey Kirillov, engineer
Plans suicide to prove man's godhood.
Marya Lebyadkin, wife
Crippled, simple woman secretly married to Stavrogin.

Lessons

Ideas have consequences
Dostoevsky shows how abstract theories lead to murder.
- How does Shigalyov's theory end?
- What ideas drive Pyotr?
Related across the library
- The Oresteia, Lesson: Institutions need emotional foundations
  Institutions need emotional foundations. Athena does not simply defeat the Furies; she gives them honor. The city survives by making room for fear, anger and reverence inside law.
- Second Treatise of Government, Lesson: Power is a trust that can be forfeited
  Power is a trust that can be forfeited. For Locke, rulers are trustees of power given for specific ends. When they act beyond those ends, invading property or ruling arbitrarily, they forfeit the trust, and the people may judge and resist. This fiduciary model of authority also underlies modern ideas of professional duty, including the doctor's.
- Prometheus Bound and Other Plays, Lesson: Choosing the seventh gate
  Choosing the seventh gate. Eteocles plans the defence of Thebes rationally until he hears his brother's name. The chorus begs him not to go; he goes. The play asks how far an inherited curse explains a choice that is still his own.
- Oliver Twist, Lesson: Crime and its consequences
  Crime and its consequences. Dickens shows crime without making it glamorous. Sikes is driven by guilt across the countryside, and Fagin spends his last night in terror. The ending gives each character a fate that matches the way they lived.
- West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Lesson: Rights withdrawn from the vote
  Rights withdrawn from the vote. Jackson writes that the very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to remove certain subjects from political controversy and place them under the protection of courts. This directly answers Frankfurter's view in Gobitis that remedies should be sought at the ballot box, and it remains one of the clearest statements of why written guarantees exist.
Faith and unbelief
Shatov and Kirillov embody the struggle with God.
- What does Kirillov believe?
- How does Shatov differ?
Related across the library
- Fear and Trembling, Lesson: Resignation and faith are two different movements
  Resignation and faith are two different movements. Infinite resignation renounces the finite for an eternal consolation; faith renounces and then receives the finite back with joy. The distinction separates detached spirituality from a faith that returns to ordinary life.
- The Oresteia, Lesson: Institutions need emotional foundations
  Institutions need emotional foundations. Athena does not simply defeat the Furies; she gives them honor. The city survives by making room for fear, anger and reverence inside law.
- The Oresteia, Lesson: Trauma is inherited as story
  Trauma is inherited as story. The family curse persists because each generation receives a narrative of injury that demands action. Aeschylus shows memory becoming command.
- The Trial of Joan of Arc, Medical lens
  Joan's voices are a classic case for the ethics of retrospective diagnosis. Epilepsy, migraine, schizophrenia, trauma, and dissociation have all been proposed in modern discussions, but the trial record is not a clinical interview and is shaped by coercion, translation, theology, and politics. Present diagnostic language as hypothesis about reception, not fact about Joan.
- The Bible, Lesson: Wisdom about limits
  Wisdom about limits. Ecclesiastes and the Psalms confront mortality and the fragility of human effort, offering not escape but a way to live within limits.
The fathers' responsibility
Stepan Trofimovitch's vague liberalism helped produce his son's nihilism.
- How are the fathers responsible?
- What does Stepan learn at the end?
Related across the library
- The Oresteia, Lesson: Institutions need emotional foundations
  Institutions need emotional foundations. Athena does not simply defeat the Furies; she gives them honor. The city survives by making room for fear, anger and reverence inside law.
- Resurrection, Lesson: Unjust institutions
  Unjust institutions. Tolstoy shows courts, prisons and officials crushing ordinary people.
- The Brothers Karamazov, Medical lens
  its medical material includes epilepsy, hysteria, alcoholism, trauma, patricidal obsession, suicidal despair, and the contagious psychology of families
- Olmstead v. L. C., Lesson: Caution about deinstitutionalization
  Caution about deinstitutionalization. Kennedy reminded readers that the movement of patients out of state hospitals after the 1950s, though often well meant, left many without care. His concurrence shows a justice agreeing with a result while warning about how it might be carried out.
- The Bible, Lesson: Wisdom about limits
  Wisdom about limits. Ecclesiastes and the Psalms confront mortality and the fragility of human effort, offering not escape but a way to live within limits.

Context

Dostoevsky was inspired by the 1869 Nechaev affair, in which a revolutionary cell murdered one of its own members in Moscow.

Composition

Serialized in The Russian Messenger in 1871-72; the chapter 'At Tikhon's' was suppressed by the editor. Garnett's translation, as The Possessed, appeared in 1916.

Reception

Long read as a prophecy of twentieth-century totalitarianism; admired by Camus, who adapted it for the stage.

Faith / Religion Power / Politics Doubt Meaning Guilt Sin Madness / Mind Crime / Punishment

Comparisons

Crime and Punishment
Another Dostoevsky novel in which an idea leads to murder.
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's last novel, continuing the debate about God and freedom.
Fathers and Sons
Turgenev's portrait of a nihilist, which Dostoevsky answers.
Darkness at Noon
Koestler's novel of revolution devouring its own.

Quotes

“Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils, Part II, Ch. 7, trans. Constance Garnett (1916).Quote card

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Full Text
as possible I reserved my attentions for my old regiment known so well in my native island My poor th their loss was terrible I dressed the wound of one of its officers seriously hit in the mouth I attended to another wounded in the throat and bandaged the hand of a third terribly crushed by a rifle-bullet In the midst of this we were often interrupted by those unwelcome and impartial Russian visitors--the shells One fell so near that I thought my last hour was come and although I had sufficient firmness to thro...
Two Lives of Charlemagne, Lesson: Rulers are built from habits
Rulers are built from habits. Einhard treats diet, exercise, dress, study and worship as part of kingship. The biography teaches that political authority is represented through daily discipline as well as public acts.
Charmides, Lysis and Laches, Laches (Stephanus 194a)
We too must endure and persevere in the enquiry, and then courage will not laugh at our faint-heartedness in searching for courage With Laches' definition in trouble, Socrates turns it on the discussion itself: inquiry also needs endurance.
Common Sense, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, and The American Crisis, Introduction
him from living and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die Thus necessity like a gravitating power would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society the reciprocal blessings of which would supersede and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration which bound th...
Meno, Full Text
Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour and try to define them Meno confesses his inability and after a process of interrogation in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a simile in multis Socrates himself defines figure as the accompaniment of colour But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word colour and if he is a candid friend and not a mere disputant Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition into which no disputed word is allo...

“If there is no God, then I am God.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils, Part III, Ch. 6, trans. Constance Garnett (1916).Quote card

The Practice of the Presence of God, Eighth Letter
Hold yourself in prayer before GOD, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Counsel on wandering thoughts, advising few words and simple waiting in prayer.
Enneads, Porphyry's arrangement
Enneads gives this tag concrete force through its medical relevance is indirect but real: passions, embodiment, purification, attention, and the divided self make philosophy a therapy of perception
Enneads, Return and contemplation
Enneads gives this tag concrete force through its medical relevance is indirect but real: passions, embodiment, purification, attention, and the divided self make philosophy a therapy of perception
Enneads, Soul and embodiment
Enneads gives this tag concrete force through its medical relevance is indirect but real: passions, embodiment, purification, attention, and the divided self make philosophy a therapy of perception
The Practice of the Presence of God, Full Text
I be lost or saved I will always continue to act purely for the love of GOD I shall have this good at least that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him That this trouble of mind had lasted four years during which time he had suffered much But that at last he had seen that this trouble arose from want of faith and that since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy That he had placed his sins betwixt him and GOD as it were to tell Him that he did not deserve His favors...

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The Gospel epigraph.
Stepan Trofimovitch's character.
Pyotr's methods of control.
Kirillov's and Shatov's beliefs.

Key terms and names

Nihilism: Rejection of all moral and religious principles.
Nechaev affair: 1869 murder by a revolutionary cell.
Gadarene swine: Gospel story of demons cast into pigs.
Cell of five: Pyotr's secret revolutionary group.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension Who is Pyotr Verhovensky?
Comprehension Why is Shatov murdered?
Interpretation What is the meaning of the title?
Interpretation What does Stavrogin represent?
Interpretation How does Stepan Trofimovitch change?
Big Question What happens to a society that abandons God?

Faith Connections

Luke 8:32-36 (Scripture)
The swine possessed by demons, epigraph of the novel.
Psalm 14:1 (Scripture)
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God; the novel traces the fruit of that belief.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Ideas severed from God and conscience lead to tyranny, murder and self-destruction; only repentance and faith can heal.

Rhetorical device: chronicle narration. A gossiping townsman narrates events he often could not have witnessed, creating irony.

Debate: Resolved: that Stepan Trofimovitch is responsible for his son's crimes.

Memory Work

Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.
Part II, Ch. 7, trans. Constance Garnett (1916). Shigalyov's famous paradox of freedom and despotism.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how The Devils shows ideas leading to violence.

Comparison with Crime and Punishment: Compare Raskolnikov's theory and Pyotr's.

Medical Lens

Kirillov's philosophical suicide and Stavrogin's final despair; Marya Lebyadkin's mental disability; Marie Shatov's childbirth.

Suicide Madness Psychosis Childbirth Maternal

Part III, Ch. 5
Marie Shatov gives birth with Shatov's care.
Childbirth Maternal
Part III, Ch. 6
Kirillov's suicide and its philosophy.
Suicide

Creative Prompts

Essay
Explain the meaning of the Gadarene swine epigraph.
Dialogue
Write a dialogue between Shatov and Kirillov about God.
Classroom
Research the Nechaev affair and compare it with the novel.