The Idiot

"Was it you?" he muttered, at last, motioning with his head towards the curtain. "Yes, it was I," whispered Rogojin, looking down. Neither spoke for five minutes. "Because, you know," Rogojin recommenced, as though continuing a former sentence, "if you were ill now, or had a fit, or screamed, or anything, they might hear it in the yard."

Return-of-the-prince arc collides Christ-like innocence with corrupt society until murder and breakdown; Rogojin confessing beside the curtain is the plot's terminal catastrophe, so plot scores 89.

The wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, slightly above the middle height, very fair, with a thin, pointed and very light coloured beard; his eyes were large and blue, and had an intent look about them, yet that heavy expression which some people affirm to be a peculiarity as well as evidence, of an epileptic subject.

Myshkin the epileptic Christ-figure, Nastasya, Rogozhin, Aglaya, and Ganya are variants on love, pride, and destruction; the prince's first appearance on the train defines the cast as innocence entering a predatory world, so cast scores 92.

"There's nothing better than the 'poor knight'!" said Colia, who was standing beside the prince's chair. "What poor knight?" asked Mrs. Epanchin, looking round at the face of each of her daughters, in turn. "Beauty is a riddle," said the prince, warmly, gazing at Aglaya with admiration.

Four-part society novel with episodic set pieces — train, salon, birthday party, murder — tempo follows social gathering and dialogue rather than thriller acceleration, so pace scores 84.

"Yes—that's a copy of a Holbein," said the prince, looking at it again, "and not a copy. I saw it at Lyons. Schneider took us there, and as soon as we arrived I went into a sort of gallery and saw this picture. It impressed me so deeply that I stood before it for a long time."

Dostoevsky's prophetic dialogue — 'Beauty is a riddle,' the Holbein Christ, the epileptic aura — philosophical intensity in conversational form; among the most audacious prose experiments in the novel, so prose scores 90.

Nastasia Philipovna's family name is Barashkoff—I know, you see—and she is a very well known lady, indeed, and comes of a good family, too. She is connected with one Totski, Afanasy Ivanovitch, a man of considerable property, a director of companies, and so on, and a great friend of General Epanchin.

St Petersburg society, the Epanchins' dacha, Rogozhin's house, and the Swiss sanatorium form Imperial Russia as theater of spiritual and social corruption; the train gossip maps the money-marriage triangle, so world scores 88.

"Do you know the Rogojins?" asked his questioner, abruptly. "Yes, I am Rogojin, Parfen Rogojin." "Parfen Rogojin? dear me—then don't you belong to those very Rogojins, perhaps—" began the clerk, with a very perceptible increase of civility in his tone.

Part I — Myshkin on the train meeting Rogojin and hearing of Nastasya — establishes the prince's innocence and the triangle before Petersburg society tests him; ignition is conversational and prophetic, so hook scores 87.

"It is difficult to judge when such beauty is concerned. I have not prepared my judgment. Beauty is a riddle." "That means that you have set Aglaya a riddle!" said Adelaida. "Most wonderfully so," said the latter, warmly, gazing at Aglaya with admiration. "Almost as lovely as Nastasia Philipovna, but quite a different type."

The Christ-figure in modern fiction — Myshkin as 'idiot' whose goodness destroys rather than saves — and the epileptic vision as narrative method anticipate modernist alienation, so innov scores 93.

Lizabetha Prokofievna, when she saw poor Muishkin, in his enfeebled and humiliated condition, had wept bitterly. Apparently all was forgiven him. Prince S. had made a few just and sensible remarks. It seemed to Evgenie Pavlovitch that there was not yet perfect harmony between Adelaida and her fiance.

Nastasya's murder and Myshkin's complete breakdown — the Christ-figure unhinged by the world; no redemption, only pathos of innocence destroyed; formally complete, emotionally devastating, so ending scores 88.