Let’s be honest, I just don’t play well with fiction. I try to pick up on symbolism and allegory and metaphors, but it all seems so convoluted and unnecessary. Seriously, if you’re unhappy with socialism or capitalism then just say so. Why do you feel compelled to express your displeasure through talking crickets giving sage counsel to marionettes, or through retired civil servants bitterly contemplating the duality of wet snow? Take Chomsky for example, if he was disenchanted with the system at hand he wrote, “I am disenchanted with the system at hand” and then he proceeded to give you ten or twenty or a hundred reasons why. But not Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky gave us wet snow.

Moving on…

My first impression is that Dostoyevsky’s protagonist is tilting at the windmill of determinism. He repeatedly asserts that he is not a spiteful person yet his defining characteristic seems to be his ability to hurt, annoy and offend those around him. He’s not really a dick at heart, but being a dick gives him so much pleasure that he can’t really help himself.

My second impression is that Dostoyevsky’s protagonist is chafing under the constraints of Russian nihilism. His love interest, a prostitute, is convinced that she can better her situation and rise in the hierarchy of the brothel by aligning with and embracing the political establishment. Our anti-hero, predictably, thinks otherwise.

Am I off base? I don’t know enough about Russian history to know what, if anything, Dostoyevsky is railing against. I hate that I agonize and overthink and second guess myself to the point of insomnia. Why do you always do this to me Fyodor? Why????