Discussion Questions

Rogozhin says he does not know why he has grown fond of the prince and, minutes later, calls him a holy fool. What is it, in the man in the Swiss cape, that disarms someone who speaks only of Nastasya Filippovna and money?

The prince tells the servant that killing by sentence is worse than killing like a bandit, because it takes away hope. Why does he tell this precisely to a servant, in the antechamber, before seeing the general?

The prince says that everything would be saved if Nastasya Filippovna were good, and minutes later he predicts that Rogozhin would kill her a week after the wedding. How do the two sentences, spoken before the same portrait, coexist in the same man?

Totsky offers seventy-five thousand rubles and says it is not compensation; Nastasya Filippovna accepts the money and says it is not payment. What name does each one want to give that money, and why?

Aglaya says that, with the prince's quietism, one draws the same lesson from an execution and from a little finger. Does the description of the condemned man that he gives next confirm or refute the accusation?

The prince kisses Marie out of pity and lets the children believe it is love, the one thing he says he deceived them about. Why does he not correct them?

Aglaya tells the prince, in front of Ganya, "I do not haggle," and then hands him the note to read. Why does she choose the prince in particular as witness and messenger of the refusal?

Ganya defends, before his mother, a marriage she says is without love, and the narrator observes that he already nearly enjoys his own irritation. What does that anger spare him from answering?

Nastasya Filippovna exposes the story of the little dog with a newspaper, before the whole family. What does she gain by humiliating Ganya's father, and what does that say about the reason for her visit?

After Ganya slaps the prince and the prince does not react, Nastasya Filippovna comes back to kiss the hand of Ganya's mother. Why does the gesture of the one who was struck change the attitude of those who watched?

The prince calls Ganya an ordinary man to ease him, and Ganya hears in it the worst insult of the day, worse than the slap he himself gave. Why does being called ordinary hurt Ganya more than being called a scoundrel?

The general lies before a door on which another name is written, and the prince accompanies him without contradicting him. What does the prince protect by not exposing the lie?

Ferdyshchenko says he has license for the truth because he has no wit. In a room where everyone waits for the announcement of an arranged marriage, who gains most from a game of sincere confessions?

Nastasya Filippovna leaves the decision about her marriage to a man she met that morning. What does she take from Totsky and the general by making the prince decide for her?

The prince says he accepts her as an honest woman, and Nastasya Filippovna answers that this is a matter for novels. Why is the offer of someone who asks for nothing harder for her to accept than Rogozhin's hundred thousand?

Nastasya Filippovna refuses the prince, saying she fears ruining him, and leaves with Rogozhin, saying that for the first time she has seen a human being. What does she fear, if she believes in him?

In a single day the prince is called an idiot by the general, by Ganya, by Nastasya and by Ferdyshchenko, and at the end of the night Nastasya says she has seen in him the first human being. What changes, over the course of the day, in the way others look at him?

Money passes from hand to hand through the whole part: Totsky's seventy-five thousand, the general's pearls, Rogozhin's eighteen, forty and hundred thousand, the prince's inheritance. Who refuses money in these sixteen chapters, and what does each refusal protect?

The prince writes to Aglaya that he needs her, asks only whether she is happy, and signs as a brother. What does that signature allow the note to say, and what does it prevent it from saying?

The prince sees from the door that Lebedev is deceiving him and stalling for time, and even so he rents the dacha from him. What does the prince look for in Lebedev that makes up for the deceit?

Rogozhin says that the prince's pity may be stronger than his love, and the prince answers that Rogozhin's love cannot be told apart from anger. What does each see in the other's feeling that he does not see in his own?

Rogozhin exchanges the gold cross for the tin one, takes the prince to his mother's blessing, and embraces him only after changing his face. What does the exchange of crosses change between the two of them, and what does it leave as it was?

During the day the prince accuses himself of baseness for suspecting Rogozhin, and on the stairs he cries out that he does not believe it at the moment he sees the knife. What does that cry say about what the prince already knew?

Aglaya says that the knight's merit lies in believing in the lady even if she is a thief, and she tells how she first laughed at him and now respects him. What in the prince makes Aglaya laugh, and what makes her respect him?

The prince cannot decide whether Aglaya's reading was feeling or mockery. What, in the scene, sustains each of the two?

The prince offers ten thousand rubles to someone who may not be Pavlishchev's son, and calls himself an idiot for making the offer in public. What changes in a gift when it is made before witnesses?

Burdovsky returns an envelope with a hundred rubles in place of two hundred and fifty, and Doktorenko swears to pay the difference with interest. Why does it matter to the group to return the money, even incomplete?

Hippolyte weeps in Yelizaveta Prokofyevna's lap and, minutes later, shouts that he hates the prince more than anyone. What happened between the weeping and the shout?

Keller and Lebedev each confess to the prince that the sincere confession came together with the calculation of profiting from it. Why do the two choose the prince in particular to say this?

Aglaya's note forbids the visit, and Yelizaveta Prokofyevna understands that he is the one asking for it. What, in the note and in what came before it, allows each of the two readings?

The prince tells Rogozhin that he loves Nastasya Filippovna out of pity, and in Petersburg, the same day, he concludes that compassion is the law of humanity. Where, in this part, does his compassion help the one who receives it, and where does it wound?

Rogozhin exchanges crosses with the prince, takes him to his mother's blessing and, the same night, waits for him on the stairs with a knife. What does the book show in putting the two things on the same day?

Evgeny Pavlovich says he invented the question about the particular or general case only for the prince. What does he expect to see in the answer, and why does its seriousness unsettle him?

Aglaya defends the prince in front of everyone and, in the same scene, swears she will never marry him; at the Vauxhall, she calls him an idiot. What does each of these gestures protect in her?

Rogozhin says he believes every word of the prince and, even so, does not like him. What, in the conversation on the bench, explains both things at once?

Evgeny Pavlovich speaks of the law of self-destruction to provoke the debate; Lebedev tells the story of a cannibal who gives himself up. What do these two speeches, said amid laughter, prepare for what Hippolyte is about to read?

Hippolyte hands the coin the decision to read what he had already written and sealed in order to be read. What does this staging reveal about his relationship with his own decision?

Hippolyte says the decision to kill himself came from disgust, not from logic, after seeing the painting and Rogozhin's nighttime visit. Why is it the image of the dead Christ, and not the illness itself, that brings on this disgust?

Hippolyte says he prefers to be devoured rather than have to praise whoever devours him, and the prince recalls feeling in Switzerland the same exclusion as the fly in the ray of sunlight. Why does the book give the prince the same experience that drives Hippolyte to despair?

The prince tells Aglaya that he only pities Nastasya Filippovna and no longer loves her, and that she would perish if he went back. What can his compassion do for Nastasya Filippovna, and what can it not do?

Lebedev says he does not suspect the general and, laughing, makes the prince repeat the warning the general gave about Ferdyshchenko. What does Lebedev want to get from the prince with this game?

Nastasya Filippovna writes that she wants to unite the prince and Aglaya for herself, and sets her own marriage to Rogozhin for the same day. What does she expect to gain from the prince's happiness?

In Part Three, the dead Christ of Rogozhin's painting and the Christ with the child in Nastasya Filippovna's letters appear only a few hours apart. What does each image say about the person who describes it?

Hippolyte asks whether beauty will save the world and, hours later, says that the beauty of Pavlovsk only shows him the feast from which he is excluded. Does the part offer any answer to this objection?

Varya says the prince won Aglaya by not trying to win her. What does this explanation say about Ganya, who did try?

The general can bear grave accusations, but he cannot bear hearing that Captain Yeropegov never existed. What does that invented memory hold for him?

Lebedev says the general became more costly to him after the theft. What did the theft give Lebedev that friendship did not?

The advice the general says he received from Napoleon is to never lie. Why is this phrase at the center of the greatest lie he tells?

Aglaya asks publicly whether the prince is proposing marriage to her and, hours later, says it was all an absurdity with no consequence. Which of the two statements does the family take seriously, and why?

Aglaya forbids the prince precisely the topics he loves most. How does she know them so well?

The prince spends the night afraid of breaking the vase, and he breaks it at the height of his speech. What does he feel when the vase falls, and why does that hit him harder than the scandal?

Nastasya Filippovna offers the prince to Aglaya and, minutes later, demands that he choose. What does she expect from his answer?

The prince says he is marrying because, without him, Nastasya Filippovna would die, and that he is afraid of her face. What is he choosing in this marriage?

On the eve of the wedding, Nastasya Filippovna falls on her knees and asks what she is doing to the prince; the next day she runs off with Rogozhin. What is she running away from?

Rogozhin wants to spend the night beside the body with the prince, and the prince accepts without hesitation. What do the two of them keep together that night?

The prince arrives in Russia from Switzerland and goes back there at the end, without recognizing anyone. What changed, during his stay, in the people he met?

The prince wanted to save Nastasya Filippovna through compassion, and Rogozhin wanted her through passion. What does the book show, in the end, about what each of these loves was able to do for her?

Aglaya and Nastasya Filippovna confront each other over the prince, and he chooses neither. Why does his hesitation weigh so heavily on both of them?

Myshkin says he used to be an idiot but is no longer, and also that he knows people take him for an idiot while considering themselves clever. Is his goodness the choice of a man who sees clearly, or a symptom of the same constitution that brings on his fits?

The line that beauty will save the world is never spoken by the prince before the reader: it reaches us through Hippolyte's mouth, who heard it from Kolya, and then through Aglaya's, who forbids it. Why does Dostoevsky always keep it filtered through another voice?

Nastasya accepts Totsky's money as compensation and throws Rogozhin's hundred thousand into the fire, but she flees from the only man who tells her she is not to blame. What can she not receive from Myshkin: compassion or absolution?

Radomsky tells the prince that he never loved either of the two women, and the prince does not dispute it. Does the text support this conclusion, or is love here of another kind, out of pity for Nastasya and something nameless for Aglaya?

Before the copy of Holbein's Dead Christ, the prince tells Rogozhin that the painting can make someone lose their faith, and answers his question with the scene of a mother who crosses herself because her son smiled. Hippolyte reads in the same painting a nature that grinds down the best it has created. Does the prince's answer respond to Hippolyte, or does it pass him by?

Myshkin and Rogozhin exchange crosses and, on the last night, keep vigil together over Nastasya's body. Are they rivals, brothers in the cross, or two halves of the same soul?

General Ivolgin, Lebedev, Keller and Ferdyshchenko lie and confess all the time, and the prince forgives them knowing he is being deceived. Is his trust naivety, or another form of lucidity?

The title is the word the prince uses for his own past, which many use against him and which the narrator imagines Schneider saying again before the prince beside the body. Who, in the end, is the idiot of the book: the prince, those who judge him so, or both of them?