Clavis Libri
Plans Sign in

Demons · Part Three

The last wandering

The Meaning of LifeGuiltFamilyTruth and LiesGod and the Divine

Summary of the part

Of those whom Part Three set in motion, the ends remain. Stepan Trofimovich, father of both lineages in the novel, sets out on foot along the road, not knowing where to, and dies in a village bed with the woman he loved for twenty years at his side, after reading aloud the passage that gives the book its title and epigraph and applying it to Russia, to himself and to his son. Marie and the boy die of cold and panic on a morning when she enters Kirillov's annex. The group falls apart because of the first to yield, Lyamchin, and each of the others ends up arrested in his own way, except Pyotr Stepanovich. And Stavrogin, who had written to Darya Pavlovna that he could never shoot himself, is found hanged, with a soaped cord and a spare nail. Four endings answer the same impasse: what to do when the idea that sustained life proves false or fulfills itself to the end.

Chapter VII: The Last Wandering of Stepan Trofimovich

The Meaning of LifeGuiltFamilyTruth and LiesGod and the Divine

Chapter summary

Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky sets out on foot the morning after the ball, with his bag on his shoulder, his umbrella and his cane, and the chronicler, who judges him terrified and incapable of turning back, explains why on foot and not by coach. Ordering horses would have got him discovered and stopped by Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, whom he would have obeyed, and goodbye to the great idea; and to obtain a travel passport he would have had to say where he was going, but any town would make the enterprise ridiculous in his own eyes, because none is the one of "ce marchand," the merchant he is going to look for and fears most of all to find. The road, on the contrary, "is something long, without end, like human life; on the road is the idea, and in the passport is the end of the idea." Hence the motto, "Vive la grande route." On the road Stepan meets peasants, hires a cart and makes the acquaintance of Sofya Matveyevna, a widow who sells Gospels along the roads and who from then on accompanies him. She is thirty-four, the widow of a sub-lieutenant killed at Sevastopol, and had lost the ride of a landowner woman to Spasov; he takes her in the cart he has hired. At the inn, after pouring out the story of his life to her, he is seized by an attack of cholerine that keeps him from catching the two o'clock steamer. In bed he confesses that he has lied all his life, out of glory and idleness, and asks her to read the Gospel; he hears the passage about the swine and applies it to Russia, to himself and to his son. Varvara Petrovna arrives, expels Sofya and then calls her back, and the two of them, who in twenty years had never said a word to each other, finally say what they feel. He confesses, takes communion, declares that love demands immortality, and dies three days later, with her beside him.

Analysis

Stepan Trofimovich plays the pilgrim so as not to have to say where he is going, and the road serves him as a destination because it asks for no answer. The chronicler notes that fear assails him little by little (of Fedka, of the thieves), but he goes on, because returning would mean accepting the place of hanger-on at Varvara Petrovna's. For him the flight costs less than staying, and that is what makes it look like an act.

After a verst or a verst and a half along the high road, seated by a willow with his umbrella open, he gathers the images of the day before (Liza, the fire, the dead, the card game in which he lost people, Fedka) and thinks that if he meets Fedka he will tell him the whole truth and give him the purse, with forty rubles, "and he will kill me just the same." A cart passes with a peasant, a woman and a cow tied behind; relieved by the cow, he follows it. The two question him with curiosity, and he answers in French that he is not a merchant, that he is "something else." They offer him a ride for fifty kopecks, and he, in a flash, declares himself "the chief professor." They arrive at Khatovo, at a house with three windows, where he warms himself, eats pancakes, asks for "un tout petit rien" of brandy, and takes a glass to the peasant woman, seized by an inspiration: "I know how to deal perfectly with the people."

Unlock with a subscription

Subscription

The complete analysis of every part of Demons comes with a subscription, along with the explanation of each quote, the quiz, the PDF guide, and the study workbook.

See the plansAlready subscribed? Sign in

Chapter VIII: The Denouements

The Meaning of LifeGuiltFamilyRevolution

Chapter summary

Crimes come to light faster than Pyotr Stepanovich supposed, and the first thread is Shatov's wife. Marie wakes before dawn on the night he was killed and does not find him; the maid hired by Arina Prokhorovna cannot calm her and runs to fetch the midwife, swearing that she knows where he is. Arina Prokhorovna already knew what had happened at Skvoreshniki: Virginsky arrived at eleven at night in a terrible state, repeating through sobs "it's not that, it's not that, it's nothing of the kind," and confessed everything to her, to her alone in the house. She told him to cry into his pillow and show nothing the next day, and set about hiding or burning papers, books, perhaps proclamations. When the maid arrives, she wants above all to know whether it is true what her husband said to her, in delirious whispers, about Pyotr's plan for Kirillov. But she comes too late: Marie, alone, could not bear it, got up, dressed in whatever she found, something light and out of season, and went to Kirillov's annex, thinking he would tell her where her husband was. What she saw there the chronicler can only imagine. What is certain is that she did not read the note lying on the table in plain view, and that she ran to her room, took the boy, and went out with him into the street, into the damp, misty morning.

She runs out of breath through the cold mud and knocks on doors: one does not open, another takes its time, and at the third, the merchant Titov's, she screams incoherently that "they have killed your husband." They know Shatov and are frightened to see her, a day after giving birth, in light clothing, with the baby nearly uncovered; they take her for delirious, because she cannot say who has been killed, Kirillov or her husband. When she realizes they do not believe her, she tries to flee, and they hold her by force. They go to Filippov's house, and within two hours Kirillov's suicide and the note are known to the whole town. The police question her while she is still lucid, and she only cries: "if that one was killed, my husband was too: they were together!" At noon she loses consciousness, and she dies about three days later; the boy, chilled, had died before her.

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription

Reading of the part

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription