Arian’s Reviews > The Idiot > Status Update

At the beginning of this extract, the narrator opens part three of the story with a monologue on the scarcity of ‘practical men; that there are, for example, many politicians; also many generals; various kinds of managers, as many as one might require, may presently be found wherever one looks - but practical men there are none. (..) Lack of originality has always, everywhere, in the world, from time immemorial, been considered the primary quality and finest recommendation of the efficient, businesslike and practical man, and at least ninety-nine per cent of men (at the very least) have always shared this view, while only one per cent has viewed, and continues to view, the matter differently. (…) In essence only the (Russian) man who is original, or in other words, the man who is restless, could fail to become a general.’

Further in the extract, the cast talk about the ‘distortion of concepts and convictions’ in relation to ‘that dreadful murder of six people by that… young man and about the strange speech of the defence counsel, in which it was said that because of the criminal’s impoverished state it must have been natural for him to kill those six people.’ The Prince believes that these ‘distortions of concepts and convictions’ are becoming more of a general instance and goes on to say, ‘there are criminals (in the past) even more terrible than this one, men who have murdered ten people without any remorse whatsoever. But what I’ve noticed is that the most hardened and unrepentant murderer knows he is a criminal, that is, believes in his conscience that he has acted wrongly, even though he has no remorse. And they are all of them like that; but you see, those people Yevgeny Pavlych started to talk about don’t even want to consider themselves criminals and privately consider that they had a right to do what they did, and… even did the right thing. It’s there, in my opinion, that the dreadful difference lies.’