Ben C Davis

An arduous read. Long passages of winding inner monologues. Every emotion Rodya goes through is so viscerally and laboriously detailed that you can't help but feel his mind and yours are one. So when the end finally arrives, the wisdom he seems to find is reward enough for the frustration in getting there.

Although manifested in its extremes, his story reflects a journey I imagine most go through, especially those of us that consider ourselves extraordinary, or at least out of the ordinary. His belief in is own greatness leads to sociopathy, a result he initially finds perfectly justifiable, but for me, my over-inflated sense of self-importance led to a lifetime of self-inflicted isolation. Where Rodya murdered and stole, I belittled others and isolated myself. He pushed away his friends and family, and for a time, so did I. Much less extreme, but uncomfortably similar. (I should note I'm mostly talking about a teenage me.)

Rodya eventually succumbs to the weight of his own mental self-torture. Serving his sentence in Siberia, he becomes a changed man. Although conveniently done so through the impossibly subservient Sonia (male-gaze doesn't quite capture the degree to which she is invented purely for his own cleansing of sin), he ends the book in a state of spiritual awakening. This too feels familiar to me. Again, it's far less extreme, but I've spent the past few years in a perpetual mental health crisis. Those who've experienced similar problems will know it can feel like you're living in a prison (the lack of hard labor in 19th century Siberia makes it not quite the perfect comparison). But in that prison, the arrogance of youth gives way and a wisdom is born from suffering: a life lived inward is not a life at all. Be the sun and all will see you. As the lawyer who convicted Rodya says:

Who am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that's all. A man perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you. Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another class of men? It's not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It's not time, but yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun...