Book Group: Demons Part One

I would like to apologize for missing my first deadline of April 20. I will try to be better in the future. Without further ado, here is the first of what I hope will be many great discussions about books.

We are reading Demons in three parts according to the following schedule:

Part I - April 20
Part II - May 11
Part III - June 1

In this post I will discuss Part I, pages 1-206 in the Vintage Classics paperback edition, through a series of passages and questions.

Similar to Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky starts this novel with a verse from the Bible. In Demons it is Luke 8:32-36, which reads as follows:

Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they
begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then
the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down
the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

When the herdsman saw what had happened, they fled, and told it in the city
and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they
came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at
the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And
those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was
healed.

Why do you think Dostoevsky chose this verse? Did you notice anything in Part I that added meaning to the verse?

I found some clues in this passage on pages 25-26:

you cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a
great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some
bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one
suddenly meets it in the flea market unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly
presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid
children!

I believe the above passage describes the course this novel will take--certain great ideas, "long and piously revered" will be "picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street," only to be disclosed as "unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children."

As I mentioned in my original post, Demons is about ideas run amok. Part I is essentially an extended introduction to the main characters and their Demons. As I read Part I, I had a hard time "rooting" for one character as a protagonist. They all appear quite devious.

Did you identify with any one character? If so, why?

On a "day of surprisingly converging accidents," Part I culminates on page 203 with Shatov striking Nikolai Vsevolodovich:

Shatov, who had been completely forgotten by all in his corner(not far from
Lizaveta Nikolaevna), and who apparently did not know himself why he was sitting
there and would not go away, suddenly rose from his chair and walked across the
entire room, with unhurried but firm steps, towards Nikolai Vsevolodovich,
looking him straight in the face. The latter noticed him approaching from
afar and grinned slightly: but when Shatov came up close to him, he ceased
grinning.

When Shatov stopped silently in front of him, without taking his eyes off
him, everyone suddenly noticed it and became hushed, Pyotr Stepanovich last of
all; Liza and her maman stopped in the middle of the room. Thus about five
seconds went by; the expression of bold perplexity on Nikolai Vsevolodovich's
face turned to wrath, he frowned, and suddenly . . .

And suddenly Shatov swung his long, heavy arm and hit him in the face with
all his might. Nikolai Vsevolodovich swayed badly on his feet.

Shatov hit him even somehow peculiarly, not at all as people ordinarily slap
someone in the face (if it is possible to put it so), not with his palm, but
with his whole fist, and his was a big, heavy, bony fist, covered with red hair
and freckles. if he had hit the nose, he would have broken it. But the blow
landed on the cheek, touching the left corner of the lip and the upper teeth,
which immediately started to bleed.

Then the narrator proceeds to describe Nicolai Vsevolodovich's character and his response as follows:

Nicolai Vsevolodovich was one of those natures that knows no fear. In a duel
he would stand cold-bloodedly before his adversary's fir, take aim himself, and
kill with brutal calm. If anyone had slapped him in the face then, I think he
would not even have challenged the offender to a duel, but would have killed him
at once, on the spot; he was precisely that sort, and would kill with full
awareness and not at all in rage. I even think that he never knew those blinding
fits of wrath that make one unable to reason. For all the boundless anger that
would occasionally take possession of him, he was always able to preserve
complete self-control, and therefore to realize that for killing someone
otherwise than in a duel he would certainly be sent to hard labor; nevertheless,
he would still have killed the offender, and that without the slightest
hesitation.

. . .

And yet, in the present case, something different and wondrous occurred.

As soon as he straightened up, after having swayed so disgracefully to one
side, almost as much as half his height, from the slap he had received, and
before the mean, somehow as if wet, sound of a fist hitting a face seemed to
have faded away in the room, he immediately seized Shatov by the shoulders with
both hands; but immediately, at almost the same moment, he jerked both hands
back and clasped them behind him. He said nothing, looked at Shatov, and turned
pale as a shirt. But strangely, his eyes seemed to be dying out. Ten seconds
later his look was cold and--I'm convinced I'm not lying--calm. Only he
was terribly pale. Of course, I do not know what was inside the man, I
only saw the outside. It seems to me that if there were such a man, for
example, as would seize a red-hot bar of iron and clutch it in his hand, with
the purpose of measuring his strength of mind, and in the course of ten seconds
would be overcoming the intolerable pain and would finally overcome it, this
man, it seems to me, would endure something like what was experienced now, in
these ten seconds, by Nikolai Vsevolodovich.

Shatov leaves the room "softly, his shoulders hunched up somehow especially awkwardly, his head bowed, and as if he were reasoning something out with himself."

Why do you think Shatov challenged Nikolai Vsevolodovich? Why do you think Nikolai Vsevolodovich resisted his natural response to kill Shatov "at once, on the spot"? What do you think Shatov was thinking as he exited the room?

I'm anxious to hear your thoughts generally and your response to the above questions. I will initiate another post on May 11, when we will discuss Part II.