Discussion Questions

The chronicler only now discovers that Stepan Trofimovich was never exiled or kept under surveillance, and Stepan believed it for twenty years. What would he lose if the authorities proved that they have no interest in him?

Varvara Petrovna invented Stepan Trofimovich and was the first to believe in the invention, yet she demands servitude from him and keeps every letter in a little box. What does an invention that might one day stop obeying her mean to her?

Shatov says that whoever loses the people loses the faith, and Stepan answers that he believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him. Where does each one place the place of God, and why does the disagreement turn into a quarrel?

The chronicler describes the face of Nikolai Vsevolodovich as too beautiful and, at the same time, repulsive, like a mask. What does each person in the town want to see behind it?

The club, the governor and the mother prefer the explanation of fever to admitting that Nikolai acted lucidly, and Liputin says he pretended to believe it. Who gains, in each case, from the diagnosis?

Varvara Petrovna tells Stepan Trofimovich that only young women get married and that he marries on his own account, and tells Darya Pavlovna that everything depends on her will. What part of each one's act belongs to them when the price, the date and the partner have already been decided?

Stepan Trofimovich says that he cannot marry «other people's sins,» and the chronicler replies that the idea is base. What does the suspicion spare him, and what does it cost him?

Kirillov claims that whoever conquers pain and fear will be God, and that he seeks to know why no one kills himself «by reason.» What difference does he see between someone who kills himself out of sadness and someone who would kill himself by reason?

Marya Timofeyevna says that she weeps more for having given birth without knowing her husband than for the loss of her son, and that even so she does not stop weeping when she is asked whether there was a son. What does Shatov's question take from her, and what does it leave her?

Liza demands to see Marya Timofeyevna with her own eyes and threatens to go alone, and then demands to accompany Varvara Petrovna, threatening to run after the carriage. What does she want to see, and why can she not ask?

Varvara Petrovna asks Nikolai Vsevolodovich, in front of everyone, whether Marya Timofeyevna is his wife, and he kisses his mother's hand without answering and then tells Marya that she is a stranger, neither husband, nor father, nor fiancé. What does each of the two gestures confirm, and what does it leave open?

Pyotr Stepanovich tells the story from Petersburg before Nikolai Vsevolodovich returns, the captain confirms it point by point, and Varvara Petrovna adopts it. What does each of the three gain from this version, and what do they lose if it is refuted?

Shatov stands for five seconds before Nikolai Vsevolodovich and strikes with his fist; Nikolai Vsevolodovich seizes his shoulders, releases them and crosses his hands behind his back. What difference does the chronicler see between what Nikolai Vsevolodovich could have done and what he did, and what does he himself say he does not know?

Kirillov says he loves life and has decided to kill himself, and that one thing does not contradict the other. What, in his account, separates the life he loves from the death he chooses?

Pyotr tells Stavrogin, with calculated frankness, the role he has chosen for himself. Why reveal the disguise precisely to the one he wants to draw in, and what does Stavrogin gain by knowing it?

Shatov says he repeats Stavrogin's words, and Stavrogin replies that he reworked them without noticing. If the idea belongs to both of them, whose responsibility is it for what Shatov does with it?

Marya Timofeyevna accuses Stavrogin of being an impostor after saying that, since Sunday, she has seen him ashamed. Is she right about him, or only about the man she invented?

Fedka never utters the word kill in either of their two meetings. Why does the request work better unspoken, for the one who makes it and for the one who hears it?

Stavrogin fires into the air twice and still offends Gaganov more than if he had fired for real. What does that reveal about the difference between sparing someone and respecting them?

Kirillov says Stavrogin seeks burdens and that, without carrying them, there is no merit. What burden did Stavrogin seek on this day, and which one did he stop carrying?

Darya Pavlovna accepts in advance what Stavrogin may become, and he warns her that he will ruin her. What makes her choice different from Fedka's, who also waits for a signal from him?

The town that condemned Stavrogin now admires him after a single sentence from Yulia Mikhailovna about the servant. What does the speed of the change say about society, and about what it needs to believe of him?

Pyotr humiliates his father with letters that he says he read to Varvara Petrovna, and with doubt about his paternity. What does he gain by breaking the old man now, and why at this precise moment?

Lembke tells Pyotr that government and revolutionaries need each other, like English liberals and conservatives, and differ only in timing. At what point does this formula protect him, and at what point does Pyotr turn it against him?

The town laughs at the sacrilege against the icon and no one is truly offended; only one woman kneels in the filthy street. What does the scene say about the distance between laughing at a belief and no longer having any?

Liza makes Mavriky Nikolaevich kneel and, as soon as he obeys, yanks him up off the ground. What, in what she asked for, could she not bear to see?

Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich trade accusations of twenty years and both use words that came from others. Which words belong to each of them, and what is left once the borrowed ones are taken away?

Pyotr tells Lembke that the movement fits into three and a half men, seven at most, and at the same time asks him for six days of silence. What does each version of the size of the conspiracy serve Pyotr, and to whom does he tell it?

Kirillov says there is no agreement and that the will is his alone, and Pyotr counts on his death. What prevents the promise from being an agreement, and what makes it work as if it were one?

Stavrogin suggests to Pyotr, laughing, that the way to hold a group together is to make four kill the fifth, and Pyotr thinks he will have to pay for saying it. Why is a joke taken as a debt?

Shigalyov says the system starts from unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism, and that no other solution is possible. At what step of the reasoning, as the lame professor sums it up, does the equality of all come to require that one-tenth rule over the other nine?

Everyone answers that they would not denounce, except Shatov, who leaves without answering, and the professor recalls that Pyotr, who asked the question, did not answer it either. What does each answer cost the one who gives it, and the one who refuses it?

Pyotr says the chief never needs to appear, that it is enough to hide and let others say they saw him. Why does a chief who does not show himself serve Pyotr better than one who gives orders?

In a few minutes Pyotr exalts Shigalyov's system as the work of genius and dismisses it as goldsmith's work. What does he keep from it, and what does he discard?

Tikhon says there is no greater crime than Stavrogin's act with the adolescent girl, and also says that many people commit the same and live at peace with their conscience. What, for him, makes Stavrogin's case different from the others'?

Stavrogin says he prefers the hatred of everyone to general pity, and Tikhon asks him whether he would bear the punishment with the same humility. Why does hatred seem easier for him to bear than compassion?

Tikhon proposes, in place of publication, years of secret obedience to an old hermit, and Stavrogin refuses. What does each of the two see in this penance: release from pride, or another way of being seen without appearing?

Stepan says he fears the humiliation more than Siberia, and that even if he were released he would be lost, because Varvara Petrovna would suspect him for the rest of his life. What does he fear she will think, and why does acquittal seem worse to him than punishment?

Lembke shouts "On your knees!" and "Rods!" without knowing, according to the chronicler, that he is going to shout. What, the night before and that morning, leads him to this point?

Liza asks Stavrogin aloud about Captain Lebyadkin, and he answers before everyone that he is the husband of his sister. What does she expect from the question, and what does she achieve?

The audience boos Karmazinov, laughs at Lebyadkin's verses and applauds the professor who dishonors Russia. What does each reaction show of what it expected from the matinée?

The chronicler warns Stepan Trofimovich that everything is lost, and he takes the platform anyway. What does he hope to obtain from a hall that has just driven out Karmazinov?

Yulia Mikhailovna rejects the committee's middle course and chooses the extreme, and the town begins to expect a banquet that no one promised. What part of what happens at the matinée was already decided by the program?

Yulia Mikhailovna calls conspiracy what Pyotr Stepanovich dissolves by pointing only at Liputin. Which of the two explanations does the text make harder to maintain after the fire?

Pyotr Stepanovich recounts Lizaveta Nikolaevna's flight as if everyone already knew it. What does the chronicler note in this way of telling, and whom does the news serve?

Lembke shouts that the fire is in minds, and minutes later he risks himself for an old woman and a quilt. What does each of the two gestures show of what he understood of the night?

Stavrogin says he did not kill, that he was against it, that he knew and did not stop the murderers; the chronicler writes that the hand that knocked down Lizaveta Nikolaevna was "someone's," in the midst of people who did not know what they were doing. What difference does the text draw between knowing and failing to prevent, and between acting without having decided?

Pyotr Stepanovich says the quintets are a poor prop and that an idol-like will is needed, resting on something outside, and he looks for it in Stavrogin. What does he expect from Stavrogin that the quintets cannot give themselves?

To Lizaveta Nikolaevna, Pyotr Stepanovich told the story of the ladya; to Stavrogin, the story of Lebyadkin's money. How does each of the two stories fit the person who hears it?

Pyotr Stepanovich is certain of a denunciation he has never seen. What kind of certainty is this, and what does he gain by treating it as fact?

Shigalyov repeats Pyotr's program and asks what they accuse him of, and Pyotr answers "on your own." What exactly does Pyotr censure, and what does that say about who may light the fire?

Fedka demands from Pyotr Stepanovich the money and the faith, and Liputin demands explanations and then follows him. What distinguishes one demand from the other?

Marie arrives saying she does not come to repent and that she does not want pity. Which of her gestures show that she needs Shatov, and which show that she will not accept his noticing it?

Erkel comes with the message that Shatov is dismissed from the society forever. What does Shatov understand from that phrase, and what keeps him from reading anything else in it?

Kirillov gives Shatov tea, bread, veal and rubles while speaking of a humanity that should stop begetting. What do the gesture and the thesis have in common, and where do they diverge?

Virginsky says that Shatov, happy, will not denounce them, and Pyotr Stepanovich answers him with what Virginsky would say of himself. In that exchange, who decided that Shatov had to die?

Kirillov formulates the doctrine of suicide with the coldness of a system, and the death scene shows laughter, hiding and a bite. If the novel wanted to validate the doctrine, why show the body contradicting the idea at the very moment of proving it?

Shigalyov refuses the murder and leaves; Liputin asks whether the network exists and stays. What does each exit show of what held each one to the group?

Stepan Trofimovich says he has lied his whole life and, in the same breath, celebrates the Great Thought. In the confession, what changed in him, and what stayed the same?

Stepan Trofimovich deciphers the epigraph and includes himself among the pigs, alongside his son. What leads him to put "Petrusha" on the list, and what keeps him from setting himself apart?

Varvara Petrovna calls her friend "empty" and then throws Sofya Matveyevna out of the room and cares for him alone to the end. What changes between the interrogation and the care?

Pyotr Stepanovich leaves by train for Petersburg, and the chronicler records that, three months later, there are those who call him a genius. What does the novel do with the only one of the principal characters who leaves the stage without paying for what he did?

Stavrogin writes that he could never shoot himself and that he fears suicide as the last deception, and he is found hanged, with everything prepared in advance. What do the letter and the act say about each other?

Marie sees Kirillov dead and concludes that her husband was too; Liputin flees and loses himself in drink; Liamshin confesses everything. What, in the breakup of the group, comes from within, and what comes from outside?

Pyotr Stepanovich does not believe in any of the doctrines he uses: he admits to Stavrogin that he invented them abroad, and he calibrates how large a conspiracy each listener needs to believe in. Is the book a critique of nihilism, or of the opportunism that dresses itself in it?

The first chapter places the idealistic liberal of the 1840s as the father of the conspirator, and Stepan Trofimovich, near death, includes "Petrusha" among the pigs. Is the filiation demonstrated by the novel, or only asserted at the beginning and illustrated afterward?

The chronicler is a resident of the town, writes after the disaster, gives two versions of a sentence of Varvara's that he will never forget, and narrates scenes he did not see. Why does Dostoevsky need a narrator who reconstructs events from other people's memories, rather than an omniscient one?

Shatov says he repeats Stavrogin's words, and Stavrogin replies that he reworked them without noticing. If the idea belongs to both of them, whose is the responsibility for what Shatov, and Kirillov, do with it?

Kirillov formulates suicide as a rational act and dies laughing, hidden in a corner and biting, while Stavrogin dies without any doctrine and with everything prepared in advance. What does the novel do by placing frenzy in the death of one who proclaims reason, and premeditation in the death of one who proclaims nothing?

Stavrogin, who tells Tikhon and Darya Pavlovna that he is in full possession of his reason, is found hanged, and the doctors reject madness. The Gospel gives "sound mind" to the man who has been cured: is Stavrogin the possessed man who is not healed, or the carrier who never fell ill?

Pyotr Stepanovich leaves by train, and three months later there are those who call him a genius, while Shatov, Kirillov, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, Stepan, and Stavrogin die. What does the novel do with the only one of the principal characters who leaves the stage without paying?

Tikhon proposes a long, secret obedience in place of publication, and Stavrogin refuses; the same day, before his mother and the town, he declares the marriage. Read in the place where the author wanted the chapter, what changes in the refusal of the role of Ivan Tsarevich, and in the gesture in the salon?