"Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces...his reason was clouded..."
The point where everything begins to fade, everything begins to be vague- that is when one should despair. If even that. How relative it all is really, perhaps there were many perhaps there were a lot of stains- it really did not matter, the deed was done.
"(...)ghosts are as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer one becomes one's contact with the other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world."
Such a fine line between our health and sickness...what it turns us into! How our priorities change...they are turned upside down. We no longer are concerned with this world- as it haunted our every thought- but are concerned of another "world" another realm that is so "close" to us...as if we "are the beginning" of other worlds, as if we transition our being into something else. Into "shreds and fragments"...
"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort," he said suddenly.
...
We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bathouse in the country black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that."
I think the human mind needs to exaggerate what it does not understand, in order to heighten the contrast between it and the unknown. So that we could have an excuse, our excuse being that we are just human, inferior to the "impossible"... Could you imagine if it really was "a little room" and not vast? Why, it would crush humanity in one blow! It would kill all our hope of this eternity, and then we would really have nothing to live for! The unknown only occupying a little room! We NEED it to be vast!
"Let us go together...I've come to you, we are both accursed, led us go our way together!"
Oh to unite because of condemnation, extremely original. It usually follows that the noble unite- such a lesson.
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"The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room. The murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book."
My favorite quote of the book. This is the most extreme contrast in humanity- the lowest point each gender could achieve and the holiest thing given to humanity. The contrast is so majestic! A sentence summing up the human nature...It gives one a sense of hope, that it is "strange" for them to be reading the eternal book, and yet they are the ones whom it is for essentially. It is not for the good people, for He came to the "outcasts" and not the righteous. It sums up the Bible too- there is such salvation in the sentence.
"Look at them running to and fro about the streets, everyone of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart, and worse still, an idiot."
"Well, where are the crosses?"
"It was wounded pride that made him ill."
"But he did not repent of his crime."
That is what struck me the most! Why did Dostoevsky make it end like that? Why did he not repent?? My goodness this changed the whole POINT of the story! He would have been such a hero, such a noble man, and yet! Yet he did not repent of his crime...this made him not change, made his reason win against his true will. It shows us that it would be nice if we could listen to our conscious, but in the end, we do not- no matter how much it makes us suffer. Why do we need to live in hell? There was a passage but one of these authors- why we need to go out of our way to avoid heaven, while it is the most obvious passage- why we always pick hell. I guess humanity loves to suffer- enjoys the self loathing. My, that is a morbid thought.
"It was only in that he recognised his criminality, only in the food that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it."
"They were renewed by love; thw heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other."
"Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind."
His mind! That was the whole problem all along! Our minds, our reason can be the real prison-where our true selves are trapped.
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Marvelous story of the unconscious. A lesson on what extreme power our minds have over ourselves. He did not repent of his crime, even after all that he had suffered. This self-imposed suffering is the clearest hell. Our minds are the real tyrants-and they have mercy on us when they give us the illusion that we are actually in control. This theory of his took control of his reason, and made him suffer. His unconscious though- that is why this book is a masterpiece- was completely in control all along. He knew deep down from the start that it was morally wrong- not because it was what he had been taught- but that it was morally wrong against his being, humanity in general. It was a crime against human nature! That is why he suffered so! His existence could not stomach it! My, what a lesson to mind our unconscious and not ignore it! Reminds me of the exact things Freud warned us about... In the end, his true self did repent, while his mind was still the ruler. Such a contrast, such duality.
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