Shannon McDermott’s Reviews > Devils > Status Update

Everyone is being murdered and it makes me sad.

"Who can understand everything in all its infinity?"

This captures, eloquently, something I feel more as I grow older: There is, at the heart of the universe, a final mystery that will never be solved. Many things we will understand. Everything? Never.

This chapter was, I have heard, once suppressed by censors. It's not graphic, but it is harrowing.

"But is it possible to believe in the devil, if one hasn't the slightest belief in God?"

"Oh yes, entirely possible, that's as common as can be."

True, I think, but grim.

"Can you move a mountain or not?"

"If God bids me move it, I can."

"Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or equality without despotism ... Absolute submission, absolute loss of individuality, but once in thirty years Shigalov would let them have a shock and they would suddenly all begin eating one another."

All of Pyotr's political ideas sound like a sci-fi dystopia. But maybe dystopian novels are always political ideas.

"Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism."

It is an easier and more common journey than one would think.

"I used to jump out of bed at night and stood crossing myself before the images with nothing but my socks on, praying to God to give me faith; for even then I couldn't be at peace as to whether there was a God or not. It used to fret me so. In the morning, of course, one would amuse oneself and one's faith would seem to be lost again; and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime."

Kirillov: "I didn't confess it, I simply said so."

Pyotr Stepanovitch: "Quite so. And it would be absurd to confess such a thing. What a confession! You simply said so. Excellent."

Kirillov: "No, it's not excellent, for you are being tedious."

I have a feeling I'm going to find out horrible things about Kirillov, but I admire him in this exchange.