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zachhois 's review for:
The Insulted and Humiliated
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
This was an interesting read for me! It is an early and lesser-known Dostoevsky work, which normally isn't my style, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
You can see some things begin to develop in these characters that would be further expounded upon in the future. I felt like Nelly and Vanya are the two parts of Prince Mushkin. And the Prince Volkhovsky was a classic Dostoevsky villain, further expanded on in [book:Notes from the Underground|436982]. He said that he had wished he had more time to develop these characters in his mind, because they were thrown together rather quickly while he was editing the journal he was publishing in. This was a transitional work, going from social (Poor Folk) to psychological. I liked how autobiographical it was even though it is fiction and also how he constantly referenced contemporary literature, like [book:Childhood, Boyhood, Youth|226377].
The characters were lovable or evil and their endings tragic. My favorite. There are two storylines at once: Natasha and Alyosha's love story, with Alyosha being pushed to Kotya, and Nelly, the orphan taken in by Vanya.
Quotes:
“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
“She enjoyed her own pain by this egoism of suffering, if I may so express it. This aggravation of suffering and this rebelling in it I could understand; it is the enjoyment of man, of the insulted and injured, oppressed by destiny, and smarting under the sense of its injustice.”
“Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn't during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn't yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone -- during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed -- and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.”
You can see some things begin to develop in these characters that would be further expounded upon in the future. I felt like Nelly and Vanya are the two parts of Prince Mushkin. And the Prince Volkhovsky was a classic Dostoevsky villain, further expanded on in [book:Notes from the Underground|436982]. He said that he had wished he had more time to develop these characters in his mind, because they were thrown together rather quickly while he was editing the journal he was publishing in. This was a transitional work, going from social (Poor Folk) to psychological. I liked how autobiographical it was even though it is fiction and also how he constantly referenced contemporary literature, like [book:Childhood, Boyhood, Youth|226377].
The characters were lovable or evil and their endings tragic. My favorite. There are two storylines at once: Natasha and Alyosha's love story, with Alyosha being pushed to Kotya, and Nelly, the orphan taken in by Vanya.
Quotes:
“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
“She enjoyed her own pain by this egoism of suffering, if I may so express it. This aggravation of suffering and this rebelling in it I could understand; it is the enjoyment of man, of the insulted and injured, oppressed by destiny, and smarting under the sense of its injustice.”
“Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn't during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn't yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone -- during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed -- and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.”