F. M. Dostoyevsky

In «The Idiot» by F. M. Dostoevsky we encounter a special genre of an ordeal novel: the hero enters the portrayed world with the mission of salvation. In this article the theme of fate appears of interest for the interpretation, which, being an intermediate concept, has connotations associated with death, chance, freedom, with the theme of the road.

‘Insulted and humiliated’ is one of F. M. Dostoyevsky’s recurrent themes. It remains up-to-date in the last period of his creative work related to Staraya Russa. This town became the prototype of Skotoprigonievsk from The Brothers Karamazov and the small town Afimievsk from the novel The Adolescent. In Dostoyevsky’s letters, in his wife’s memoires, in the reports of the writer’s friends from Staraya Russa there crop up the recollections of the citizens, who can be considered the prototypes of the ‘insulted and humiliated’ in these novels.

The article studies the images of the leading characters in the novels A Raw Youth by Dostoyevsky and Virgin Soil by Turgenev. The main idea of the article is to highlight the image of an illegitimate character as a separate archetype in literature.