The character of the novel “Idiot” (Prince Myshkin) is an eternal image of an “ideal” person. A man involved by some cruel mistake in a crazy social life, which made him look differently at the world around him.
Prince Myshkin is the main character of one of the best works of F.M. Dostoevsky - The Idiot. In this novel, the author summarizes his many thoughts related to Christianity in general, the personality of Jesus Christ himself and the influence of his teachings on the world around him. According to the writer, the purpose of this work was to present to readers a positively beautiful person from all sides. And such a person for Dostoevsky was Christ.
If you look at the meaning of the word "idiot" in Dahl's explanatory dictionary, you will find that he is "a stupid, holy fool, wretched, foolish person." In the novel, Prince Myshkin is endowed by the author with “meaninglessness from birth”. He comes to Russia penniless, without any knowledge of Russia, about his future, but he is full of enthusiasm and curiosity for his homeland. Prince Myshkin is an open book for everyone he meets, and as much he is ready to accept from this world, as well as share his inner world. He looks like a naive, gullible child, and at the same time, serious mental processes occur in the head of this hero. Prince Myshkin sees in every person he meets, that is, he does not focus on the position of a person in society, his material well-being or other prejudices. And in this he is smarter than everyone, he could treat everyone the same way, and that was what caused many people to be bewildered: some considered him crazy, some considered him extremely stupid, unsuitable for public life. The image of Myshkin is extremely distinguished from the background of the then self-serving society described. People do not believe his sincere compassion, because they themselves are not capable of this, and yet it is known that everything that is not subject to you seems impossible to others.
The truth that Prince Myshkin believed in was that compassion is the basis of being. We all suffer, but the rare of us are endowed with the art of compassion, which few of us believe in. In the novel “The Idiot”, Myshkin’s mission is to observe the life of Nastasia Filippovna, the Yepanchins, and Ippolit. All the characters in the novel are little children, and each of them needs care, and at the same time, they all feel like parents. The hero of the novel is endowed with insight, capable of revealing human souls.
When he first saw the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna, Myshkin was struck by her unearthly beauty, combined with proud suffering. The only person who worried about the fate of the girl was exactly Myshkin. The prince fell in love with this suffering image, the treatment of which he devoted his life to. Myshkin is innocent and knows no other love than the highest and immaculate. And this is exactly what becomes a difficult test for Nastasya Filippovna - a simple loving woman.
The whole novel is saturated with the depravity of secular society, where crimes and the receipt of one's own conscience for the sake of money are taken for granted. Prince Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna are the only ones who did not fit into all this. They are endowed with high spirituality and at the same time gnawing at suffering hearts with loneliness. In the end, the intricacies of public life and the difficulty in relations with women undermined Myshkin’s already poor health, so he again had to be treated in a Swiss hospital. The end of the work is saturated with the deepest tragedy. Involuntarily, Prince Myshkin contributed to this: trying to show people a new world, he only embittered them more and rebelled against himself.