The Insulted and the Damaged is not a long book and can be read in two hours. But in these two hours, your heart will continue to fluctuate with the storyline, sometimes feeling sad, sometimes seeing a glimmer of hope; but after reading it, it feels more like a sense of powerlessness.
When we read a novel like The Count of Monte Cristo, we have a sense of pleasure, a feeling of well-being. We will marvel at Dontese's ingenuity and his indomitable will. The protagonists of such novels are often several main characters, and other sentient beings appear only to set off the image of the protagonist.
But Dostoevsky is not a writer of cool writing, the protagonist of this master of psychological portrayal is those sentient beings, those who are as insignificant as ants, those who are hurt and insulted, those who are oppressed but believe that the sun will rise as usual.
At the beginning of the story, the description of the old man with a dog shows Dostoevsky's skill, and what surprises the author is that someone describes loneliness so naturally and so harshly. From the beginning of the story, the style of the whole book has been completed. Most Russian writers have similar styles, but I have to admire the author's character description and psychological portrayal.
If you're interested in psychology, then Dostoevsky is definitely a character you can't get around. If we compare Tolstoy to a sociologist, then Dostoevsky is dealing with the most fundamental, deep-hearted things that an ordinary man possesses.
In terms of writing technique and structure, Dostoevsky uses a first-person narrative in this novel, and the narrator (and protagonist) Ivan Petrovich is a poor writer in Petersburg who is new to writing, a common intellectual; and this image has the nature of a partial autobiography, describing the author's own situation in the literary world. Critic B" (i.e. Belinsky) enthusiastically commented on his first novel. The relationship between the young writer and his "boss" (i.e. the publisher). These episodes are based on the personal experiences of the young Dostoevsky. The young author's constant setbacks and failures after his initial successes are also a true portrayal of Dostoevsky's personal experience.
The chronological order of the novel is incoherent, and the historical context in which the events take place is assumed. Disrupting the sequence of events allowed the work to reflect more broadly than originally planned the personal and social life of Russia at that time, as well as the idea of the relationship between the inheritance of Russian thought and cultural life in the 1840s and 1850s.
The frequent mention of The Poor, Belinsky, and the 1840s is no accident. The humanistic tendencies of Russian literature in the 1840s were based on the conviction that "the most despicable man who has been tortured to the end is also a man, and he is my brother." ”
The unique echoes of the titles of the novels, The Poor man and The Insulted and the Damaged, attest to their intrinsic connection. In the title of Dostoevsky's first novel, the word "poor" has multiple meanings. What is poverty? The term "poor" does not refer only to those who lack material means of subsistence, the deepest meaning of "poor" is "those who are not needed". In the novel, the old man is framed for no reason and is involved in a lawsuit that is impossible to win. Here, the "poor" are not only those who have lost their rich income or the necessary means of subsistence, but also those who are unfortunate, oppressed and humiliated, and thus win people's sympathy and pity. Thus, "poor" and "insulted" and "damaged" are almost synonymous.
Dostoevsky's anti-capitalist themes from a humanitarian standpoint run through the novel. The so-called "top level" always has the right to speak and make decisions, and the people at the bottom can only go along with the flow. They don't even have the option. They can only consume their lives in a limited living space.
The plot of the novel can be divided into the main line and the dark line, the main line is Natasha's run away from home, and the dark line is Nellie's encounter. Later in the story, the main and dark lines gradually become clear and intertwined, and it is at this moment that we discover that Duke Valkovsky is the bane of all the misfortunes and sufferings of the "insulted and damaged" people. The duke represented absolute evil, and he was not like the interweaving of good and evil that the author later portrayed in Crime and Punishment.
In terms of content, Nellie's story allows the author to portray the slums of Petersburg and their inhabitants, to depict the life of the "bottom" of urban society, which is full of poverty, disease, vices and crimes. The "little people" who have been forgotten in this terrible world are destined to live a life of poverty and humiliation, physically and mentally destroyed.
"It's a tragic story," Ivan Petrovich wrote of what happened to Nellie:
Nellie was undoubtedly an angel who would willingly define herself in the position of "servant" because of her mother's influence; her character was snarky and mean, she would suddenly go mad with epilepsy on the ground; her body was very weak and prone to fever. But even so, no one among those who were "insulted and harmed" blamed her, and no one had the right to blame her. A person who is too bitter inside will be filled with a little sweetness, and she is such a child.
For Alyosha, Natasha was someone he could rely on spiritually but not materially. So although he "loves Natasha infinitely", the result is predestined from the beginning, and Katya is the one who can be relied on both spiritually and materially. So he will definitely choose Katya in the end. This is something that is clear to everyone in the story, except himself. Alyosha is a person with a good heart, but a weak personality and no opinion. Innocence, simplicity and "childishness" give him a certain unique charm. He did not deliberately do evil, as did Katya, and they acted with the symbol of naïve, outspoken egoism.
All the characters in the story are egoists. For Natasha, her morbid, self-sacrificing love for Alyosha, this peculiar egoism, made her indifferent to the suffering of her loved ones. Neilly is the same, who is characterized by arrogance and ruthless indulgence in suffering egoism. So did Natasha's parents. Ivan Petrovich also embodies this characteristic to some extent.
The author does not idealize their hearts when depicting people who are "insulted and damaged." These are not just noble, unfortunate and suffering people who deserve love and sympathy; they are also morally pathological and flawed. This is because human dignity is often compromised, and this damage poisons their minds and makes them inevitably vicious.
The experience of the "insulted and damaged" people in the novel is very tragic. Neilly's mother and maternal grandfather, who were plundered and deceived by Warkovsky, both died; Disaster suddenly struck the Ikhmenev family, who were also damaged and insulted by him; Ivan Petrovich's plans for his private life and literary creation were also undermined. All the threads of suffering point to the same class, the same person— the Duke of Valkovsky.
Duke Valkovsky embodied a kind of evil of unlimited power and invincibility, and he was an egoistic and individualist theoretician and practitioner of shamelessness and greed. Warkovsky's immorality had very important roots in the Russian reality of the time, in the standards of bourgeois individualism of Dostoevsky's contemporaries. For Warkovsky, money is the main driving force and master of people's destiny. Besides, he is also a hedonist who craves pleasure in time. He also believes that "life is a transaction" and that money is paramount. He even said: "I don't have ideals and don't want to..... In this world, there is no ideal to live freely. ”
When we see Alyosha suddenly say a whole bunch of idealistic things to Natasha, we think the story will evolve like Tolstoy's Resurrection. But unexpectedly, Alyosha's back gives the author the feeling of being like The New in Barkin's "Home". But he is fundamentally different from Kyaw Sin, who is a victim of class, and Alyosha is one of the egoists who disregard morality. But their choices and endings are equally predestined.
After returning from exile in Siberia, Tovon had realized that something could not be broken, and the novel reflected the view that the so-called progressive Russian intellectuals he had brought from Siberia were sadly detached from their "roots", and he no longer believed that revolutionary means could change the reality in Russia. Therefore, at the end of the novel, the fate of the protagonists is sadly buried one by one. The ending is not as just as we think, and the wicked are punished. The ending is still a triumphant victory, and the stone is returned to the stone; and this cannot be resolved, and as a humanitarian writer, he rightly shows the conflicts that could not be resolved in his time.
The only thing that comforts the insulted and the damaged is that the sun rises as usual.
And what makes people feel painful and helpless is that the sun rises as usual.
People still believe that "the future will be more exciting".