Themes

Revolution the superior liberalism of Stepan Trofimovich and his circle, which awaits emancipation the way one awaits a party (Part One, Chapter I), the governor surrounded with the logic of his own liberalism (Part Two, Chapter IV), shame at having one's own opinion as... God and the Divine Stepan, who believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him, and Shatov, who answers that whoever loses the people also loses God (Part One, Chapter I), Kirillov and the pain of fear (Part One, Chapter III), the penitent woman who teaches... Family Varvara Petrovna, who invented Stepan and was the first to believe in the invention (Part One, Chapter I), the marriage of the ward, with dowry, allowance, and day already fixed (Part One, Chapter II), Marya Timofeyevna, who weeps more for having given birth... The Meaning of Life Kirillov, who wants to know why no one kills himself (Part One, Chapter III), the man who is unhappy only because he does not know he is happy (Part Two, Chapter I), the nineteen-year-old boy who kills himself in the hotel and the ladies who go to look (Part... Guilt the "sins of others" with which Stepan refuses the marriage (Part One, Chapter III), the letter that Pyotr reads aloud and that makes Varvara expel the professor (Part One, Chapter V), Marya Timofeyevna, who for five years has feared she bears a great guilt... Truth and Lies the professor who believed for twenty years in a persecution that did not exist (chapter I of Part One), the illness the town invents so as not to admit the affront (chapter II of Part One), the anecdote Pyotr tells Varvara and the captain confirms point by... The Individual and Society the town that calls the bite on the governor an illness (Part One, Chapter II), the town that begins to admire Stavrogin over a single sentence (Part Two, Chapter IV), the town that laughs at the desecrated icon and at the young man in the hotel while only...