History Creator / FyodorDostoevsky

* MisaimedFandom: [[invoked]] A posthumous example. Dostoevsky wrote about revolutionaries or aspiring radicals, social rejects, outsiders and featured characters who tend to scorn family values and religion. This made him influential on leftists, philosophers, freethinkers and young adolescents despite himself being a conservative Orthodox Christian Russian writer.

* NietzscheWannabe: Many, including pretty much ''all'' the young radicals in ''Demons'' (although Stavrogin and Verkhovensky stand out), and Arkady in ''The Adolescent''.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: "The Double", though it's narrated through third-person.

* WesternTerrorists: ''Demons' '' plot revolves around such group.

** Also, he never finished ''Netochka Nezvanova'', one of his first works.

* AllWomenAreDomsAllMenAreSubs: Though without sexual meaning, many, if not the most relationships in his books are female-led and man is submissive. Dmitri Karamazov even says "I believe that every good man must be kept under the heel of some woman!", which may be the view of Dostoyevsky himself(or not).

* BombThrowingAnarchists: The gang of terrorists in ''Demons'' starts as one, but throughout the novel they change their goal form destroying the authorities and liberating everyone to installing crueller regime and enslaving 90% of population.

** Depending on your point of view, that is either HilariousInHindsight or HarsherInHindsight, as Russian Orthodox Church is ''now'' mostly known for being [[CorruptChurch anything but innocent]].

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: ''The Idiot'', to a certain degree ''Demons'' as well.]]

* UsefulNotes/{{Epilepsy}}: Dostoevsky was a famous real-life epileptic who often suffered periodic fits. His family and friends noted that his fits came suddenly without warning and that he would describe his trance like state and visions in considerable detail. This eventually made its way into his books where many characters, notably Prince Myshkin and Smerdyakov are epileptics and a lot of MindScrew comes from their descriptions of their fits.
* FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Stavrogin is described as absolutely charming and beautiful, like a prince from fairy tale, while in fact, he is a depraved murderer, pedophile and rapist.

* HenpeckedHusband: Anton von Lembke from ''Demons'' is a spineless doormat for his wife and is generally a weak-willed person. The narrator says with total contempt, that he was a virgin, she he married his wife, while she wasn't.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: For an artist with such a colourful life, Dostoevsky has been fictionalized in books like ''Sumer in Baden Baden'' by Leonid Tsypkin and ''The Master of Petersburg'' by J. M. Coetzee.

* {{Doorstopper}}: Wrote very thick novels.

* AuthorTract: Liable to appear at any given time in his books.

* TheGamblingAddict: Most of the characters in "The Gambler", as well as Dostoevsky himself.

* MisaimedFandom: [invoked]A posthumous example. Dostoevsky wrote about revolutionaries or aspiring radicals, social rejects, outsiders and featured characters who tend to scorn family values and religion. This made him influential on leftists, philosophers, freethinkers and young adolescents despite himself being a conservative Orthodox Christian Russian writer.

* MisaimedFandom: A posthumous example. Dostoevsky wrote about revolutionaries or aspiring radicals, social rejects, outsiders and featured characters who tend to scorn family values and religion. This made him influential on leftists, philosophers, freethinkers and young adolescents despite himself being a conservative Orthodox Christian Russian writer.
** One thing that might perplex the Great Russian is the fact that Dostoevsky influenced Creator/FranzKafka and UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud despite being, unfortunately, an anti-Semite like many Russians of his time.

** There is actually a very good reason for this: Dostoevsky, like most Russian novelists of the time, had his work published in installments by literary magazines which paid by the page or word; the longer the work, the more money you made.

** One thing that might perplex the Great Russian is the fact that Dostoevsky influenced Creator/FranzKafka and SigmundFreud despite being, unfortunately, an anti-Semite like many Russians of his time.

The funny thing about Dostoevsky is that he's really two different authors separated by a four year stretch of exile to Siberia in 1849. Pre-1849, Dostoevsky wrote two novels (''Poor Folk'' and the incomplete ''Netochka Nezvanova'') and several short stories and novellas. He's really remembered, however, for the work he turned out after he came back from exile. Having had a religious experience while in prison, he spent the rest of his life exploring themes such as free will, guilt, religious awakening, and the effects of nihilism. His most famous novels are all critically-acclaimed for being thought-provoking explorations of the human condition in the face of suffering and despair.

* TheGamblingAddict: Most of the characters in "The Gambler", as well as Dostoevsky himself.

* JekyllAndHyde: The early novella ''The Double'', as you might have guessed from the title.
* TheMasochismTango: The marriage in the short story 'A Gentle Creature'. (Alternately, the relationship between any given Dostoevsky character and any other given Dostoevsky character.)

* NiceGuysFinishLast: The protagonist in the story 'White Nights'.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: ''The Double'', though it's narrated through third-person.

* TheGamblingAddict: Most of the characters in ''Gambler'', as well as Dostoevsky himself.

* ByronicHero: Stavrogin from ''The Possessed'' is a particularly nasty deconstruction; it's lampshaded early in the book that this character type was common in Russian literature (and society) at the time.

* DeceasedFallGuyGambit: A important plot point in ''The Possessed''.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: ''The Idiot'', to a certain degree ''The Possessed'' as well.]]

* NietzscheWannabe: Many, including pretty much ''all'' the young radicals in ''The Possessed'' (although Stavrogin and Verkhovensky stand out), and Arkady in ''The Adolescent''.
* ReignOfTerror: Dostoevsky saw this as the inevitable outcome of radical movements, as he illustrates in ''The Possessed''.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Dostoevsky's books tend to break the scale, as they have the entire range of behavior -- from the most idealistic to the most cynicial, with everything in between -- existing ''at the same time'', while being inconclusive as to what wins out.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov'' was intended to be the first part of a much longer series of books. [[AuthorExistenceFailure Dostoevsky died before he could write any of the others.]]

* WifeHusbandry: Taken to a nasty extreme in the short story 'A Christmas Tree and a Wedding'.

Fyodor [[{{Patronymic}} Mikhailovich]] Dostoevsky was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''NotesFromUnderground'', ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', ''Literature/TheIdiot'', and ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov''. A deeply philosophical writer with a nuanced understanding of human psychology, Dostoevsky is credited with being, depending on your view, either a forerunner or a founder of modern existentialism.

* ''NotesFromUnderground''

'''Fyodor [[{{Patronymic}} Mikhailovich]] Dostoevsky''' was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''NotesFromUnderground'', ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', ''Literature/TheIdiot'', and ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov''. A deeply philosophical writer with a nuanced understanding of human psychology, Dostoevsky is credited with being, depending on your view, either a forerunner or a founder of modern existentialism.

-->-- from ''TheBrothersKaramazov''

'''Fyodor [[{{Patronymic}} Mikhailovich]] Dostoevsky''' was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''NotesFromUnderground'', ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', ''Literature/TheIdiot'', and ''TheBrothersKaramazov''. A deeply philosophical writer with a nuanced understanding of human psychology, Dostoevsky is credited with being, depending on your view, either a forerunner or a founder of modern existentialism.

* Something that tends to throw some readers off is that Dostoevsky's characters are all mad. Not literally mad, but they are all motivated by ideas instead of normal human drives. Because of this, several of the characters across his oeuvre tend to fall into molds or archetypes based on the ideas they represent (Sonya from ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'' and Alyosha from ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' fall into a distinct category, as do Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov from the same books respectively), and his characters and their actions are symbolic of these ideas.

* ''TheBrothersKaramazov''

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' was intended to be the first part of a much longer series of books. [[AuthorExistenceFailure Dostoevsky died before he could write any of the others.]]

* ByronicHero: Stavrogin from ''The Possessed''.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' was intended to be the first part of a much longer series of books. Dostoevsky died before he could write any of the others.

* {{Tsundere}}/{{Tsunshun}}: Many of Dostoevsky's female characters fit into one of these types (see the pages for more details). As did Dostoevsky's RealLife mistress Apollinaria Suslova, [[AuthorAppeal which may explain some things]].