Résumé
Résumé de The Possessed: Or, The Devils
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love Russian novels, arguments about God and politics, and dark comedy mixed with suspense. It also rewards anyone curious about how extremist movements form.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Possessed, also called Demons or The Devils, is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He wrote it mostly abroad and it appeared in a Russian magazine in 1871 and 1872. It was inspired by a real case from 1869, in which a small revolutionary group in Moscow turned on one of its own members. Dostoyevsky took that crime and set it in a quiet provincial town, where it grows into a story about a whole society losing its footing.
The book gives you a crowded, funny and frightening picture of Russia in the 1860s. You meet an aging liberal professor, a proud landowner, a magnetic and troubled aristocrat, and a young schemer who wants to burn the old order down. Each of them carries an idea, and the novel asks what happens when ideas take hold of people the way a sickness does. It is a political book, but it is also a book about the inner life, about pride, shame, faith and boredom.
The title comes from a passage in the Gospel of Luke, where devils leave a sick man and enter a herd of pigs. Dostoyevsky places that scene at the start, and it frames everything. Let us begin where the story begins, in a provincial town, with a gentle old teacher and the woman who has supported him for twenty years.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A gentle old liberal and his patronessFree
- 2The son returns with a dark reputation
- 3Pyotr Verkhovensky arrives with a scheme
- 4Shatov and the faith in the Russian people
- 5Kirillov and the logic of freedom
- 6A town in fever: scandal, fêtes and fires
- 7Ideas become method: the quintet and Shigalyov
- 8What the novel is really about: possession
- 9How it is told, and how it has lasted
Point clé 1 sur 9
A gentle old liberal and his patroness
The story is told by a local man, Anton Lavrentyevich G-v, who writes as a chronicler of events in his own town. He begins with Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, a scholar who likes to think of himself as a persecuted liberal from the 1840s. Ever since, he has lived as a kind of ornament in the house of Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, a rich and commanding widow. She manages his money, his moods and his friendships.
Stepan is vain, tearful and charming. He speaks of beauty and humanity, and he loves to be seen as a martyr, though he has done little to earn the title. He plays cards, drinks champagne and quarrels with Varvara in a long friendship that is half marriage and half comedy. The narrator treats him with a mix of affection and mockery.
Stepan was also the tutor of Varvara's son, Nikolai Stavrogin, and he likes to think he shaped the boy's mind. Dostoyevsky uses this link on purpose. The older generation of gentle, talkative idealists has raised the younger generation of hard, practical radicals. Stepan has no idea what he has helped to make.
The opening chapters set the tone of the whole book. They are full of gossip, small humiliations and social jokes, and they seem lighter than the title promises. Yet the laughter has an edge, because Stepan's empty words will soon meet people who mean theirs. A reader who enjoys the comedy now will feel its cost later.
There is also a plan in the air. Varvara wants to arrange a marriage for Stepan with a young woman in her household, Darya Pavlovna, who is known as Dasha. Stepan is frightened and flattered at once. This small domestic scheme draws in the whole circle of characters, and it prepares the arrival that changes everything.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Questions about The Possessed: Or, The Devils
What is The Possessed about?
It follows a provincial Russian town in the 1860s where a young schemer, a troubled aristocrat and several believers and doubters collide. The novel shows how radical ideas about God, freedom and power can take over people and a community.
Why is it also called Demons or The Devils?
The Russian title means devils or demons. Dostoyevsky took it from a Gospel scene in Luke where devils leave a sick man and enter pigs. He uses it to picture ideas that possess a person or a country.
Is The Possessed based on a true story?
Partly. Dostoyevsky drew on the 1869 case of Sergei Nechaev, a Russian revolutionary whose group turned on one of its own members. He set a fictional version in a provincial town. The book was published in 1871 and 1872.
Is The Possessed hard to read?
The comedy of manners eases the start, and the plot gains speed.
What is the main message of The Possessed?
Dostoyevsky warns that ideas cut loose from moral limits and faith can possess people and justify violence. He also shows how pride, shame and loneliness draw people into extreme movements and into the hands of manipulators.