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Demons · Part Three

The last decision

The Meaning of LifeGuiltTruth and LiesGod and the DivineRevolution

Summary of the part

In two days and one night, the quintet that was rebelling becomes accomplice to a murder. Pyotr Stepanovich is in a hurry: Stavrogin has left, the town is upside down, and he must bind the five to something before he departs. He invents a denunciation that no one has seen and makes it stand by the force of certainty, and he chooses as his victim the man he detests. Meanwhile the same house receives Marie, who returns to Shatov sick and pregnant, and witnesses the birth of a son; and Kirillov, the neighbor, describes to Shatov the five seconds in which the whole world is present and life is worth giving. The two houses of Filippov's courtyard are the two pans of a scale on which one weighs how much a conviction is worth, for the one who holds it and for the one who uses it. When the body enters the scene, in the park and in Kirillov's room, the result is the same: the doctrine rested on talk alone, and those who defend it shout, bite and hide. The question left is the one Virginsky shouts without knowing what it means: whether that really was "this" that they had agreed upon.

Chapter IV: The Quintet at Erkel's House

Truth and LiesGod and the DivineRevolution

Chapter summary

On the day after the fire, many people see Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky in an unusual state of excitement. At two in the afternoon he passes by the Gaganov house, full of visitors, and speaks more than anyone: he presents himself as the intimate confidant of Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke, says she knew all of Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin's secret and conducted the intrigue, and that she deceived him too, he who was in love with poor Liza and even drove her in his carriage to Stavrogin. About the death of the Lebyadkins he says it was pure chance, the captain's fault for showing money. The general impression is favorable to him, for who would blame him for the follies of Yulia Mikhailovna? But, almost at two, news arrives that Stavrogin has suddenly left for Petersburg on the noon train, and Pyotr, they say, changes countenance and exclaims: "But who could let him go?" By evening he manages to force his way into Yulia Mikhailovna's house, which had refused to receive him, and the chronicler judges that he frightened her with the threat of complicity, should she "talk."

At eight in the evening, "our people" are gathered at the house of Ensign Erkel, on Fomin Lane: Liputin, Virginsky, Shigalyov, Lyamchin and Tolkachenko, the "expert on the people." Erkel does not belong to the quintet; the others supposed he had special missions, but the young man, silent and with childlike eyes, bows only before Pyotr and sends half his pay to his sick mother. The fire, the death of the Lebyadkins and the fury of the crowd against Lizaveta Nikolaevna are surprises that their program never foresaw, and during the wait they accuse the hand that moves them of despotism and lack of candor. They agree to demand a categorical explanation and, if Pyotr evades them once more, to break with the quintet and found on their own a society for the "propaganda of ideas," on equal and democratic foundations.

Analysis

Pyotr arrives at half past eight, haughty, and perceives from afar that they are rebelling. Liputin speaks for all: what do the petty intrigues of Mr. Stavrogin have to do with the group? Pyotr says the murder was the work of Fedka, who wanted to rob, and that the fault, if there is any, is Liputin's, who should have dispatched Lebyadkin. He shows Lebyadkin's anonymous letter to Lembke, which Liputin and Tolkachenko recognize as his handwriting, and concludes that some Fedka or other rid them, by chance, of a dangerous man. Then he turns the tables and asks by what right they set the town on fire without permission. He says three of them incited the Shpigulin workers and proves he knows everything: Tolkachenko whispered to Fomka in the Nezabudka tavern, and he was under the table; Liputin pinched his wife in the bedroom, as the maid Agafya told him, whom he pays to spy. When Virginsky protests against despotism and inequality, Pyotr answers that each of them is only a knot in an endless net and must obey the center blindly. Shigalyov asks leave to "state a fact":

систематическою обличительною пропагандой беспрерывно ронять значение местной власти, произвести в селениях недоумение, зародить цинизм и скандалы, полное безверие во что бы то ни было, жажду лучшего и, наконец, действуя пожарами, как средством народным по преимуществу, ввергнуть страну, в предписанный момент, если надо, даже в отчаяние, to undermine without cease, through systematic denunciatory propaganda, the prestige of local authority, to produce bewilderment in the villages, to breed cynicism and scandals, total unbelief in anything whatsoever, a thirst for something better, and finally, using fires as the people's most effective means, to plunge the country, at the prescribed moment, if need be even into despair.

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Chapter V: The Traveler

The Meaning of LifeFamilyGod and the Divine

Chapter summary

The catastrophe of Liza and the death of Marya Timofeyevna crush Ivan Shatov. By evening he even wants to go and declare everything, but he has no proof at all, only a conviction that holds for him alone, and he would denounce only himself; Pyotr Stepanovich guessed the impulse and knows he runs a risk by postponing the plan until tomorrow. What saves the "scoundrels" for a little longer is a circumstance they did not foresee. Around eight, at the hour when the five await Pyotr at Erkel's house, Shatov is lying in the dark, with a headache and chills, and dreams that he has been tied to the bed while they beat the whole house; he wakes, and the blows at the gate continue, with an impatient voice that he recognizes. It is his wife, Marie.

She comes in harsh, quarreling with the coachman over thirty kopecks, and examines the room with disgust: she has come for a short time, while she finds work, because she has no money (eight grivnas in her purse) and knows no one. She warns that she did not come to repent of anything and that he should not think such nonsense; she says she sought him out because she always took him for "not a scoundrel at all, perhaps much better than the others... scoundrels," and she must have been through worse with some of them. Shatov listens to her seized with a joy he cannot contain, because the three years of separation have taken nothing from his heart, and because he never imagined a woman would say "I love you" to him. He sees that she is ill. He runs to his neighbor Alexei Kirillov for tea and even takes up the revolver to pawn it. Kirillov gives him tea, sugar, bread, veal and a ruble ("if it's a wife, there must be a samovar"), and says it is good that he loves his wife "after Switzerland." As he gathers the things, Shatov asks Kirillov to drop his atheist delirium. Marie drinks half a cup and refuses the veal; she asks whether he is a Slavophile, and he answers, with a crooked smile, that he became a Slavophile because he could not be Russian; from the floor below she already knows: "Is this the one they killed last night? I have only just arrived and already I have heard!" She suddenly falls asleep.

Analysis

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Chapter VI: A Dreadful Night

The Meaning of LifeGuiltGod and the DivineRevolution

Chapter summary

Virginsky spends two hours of the day running after "our people" to announce that Shatov will not denounce them, because his wife came back and had a son, and, "knowing the human heart," it is not to be supposed that he is dangerous. He only finds Erkel, who listens to him looking him in the eye and answers with a clear smile that he will go, "of course," at six; and Lyamchin, lying under a blanket, sick with fear, who already knows of Fedka's death (from Liputin) and waves his hands, asking to be left in peace. Virginsky returns home distressed; what sustains him is a new idea, a conciliatory plan, and for that reason he reaches the meeting place before the hour. The meeting ends with the murder of Shatov: Pyotr overcomes Virginsky's objection with his own answer, Shigalyov withdraws out of consistency with the program, and Shatov, brought to the park by Erkel, is knocked down, shot dead by Pyotr and thrown into the lake with stones tied to his body. Lyamchin screams like an animal, Virginsky scratches whoever embraces him, and Pyotr, who had foreseen everything except this, urges the five to feel the pride of a duty fulfilled. On the way back, Liputin catches up with him, afraid that Lyamchin will denounce them, and Pyotr answers that Lyamchin would be the first to go to Siberia; Liputin then asks whether there is one quintet in the world or hundreds, and the irritated answer that at this point it makes no difference is enough for him to conclude that there is only one. At dawn he goes to Kirillov, so that he may sign the paper that takes the crime upon himself; Kirillov once more expounds the doctrine of suicide, signs, has a fit of panic and shoots himself, and Pyotr leaves the town on the six o'clock express, which runs only once a week. Erkel, who accompanies him to the station and tells him the others are not reliable, never sees him again.

Analysis

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Analysis

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