History Creator / FyodorDostoevsky

->''"What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people."''

-->-- from ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov''

He's really remembered 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, as well as featuring some of the most original and archetypal characters in literary history, such as Raskolnikov, Sonya, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin and Dimitri and Ivan Karamazov.

* CreatorThumbprint: Idea-driven and/or unhinged characters with detailed psychological profiles, [[SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty gritty]] depictions of poverty and crime, frequent [[CharacterFilibuster character filibusters]], [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold "fallen" women with pure hearts]], [[CrisisOfFaith crises of faith]], murders, men who [[WouldHurtAChild abuse children]], [[TrueArtIsAngsty angst]] about love and money (and everything else), a manic writing style, and earnest discussions of Russian society and the "Russian spirit", among many others.

!!Other works by Fyodor Dostoevsky provide examples of:

* ''White Nights'' was adapted into ''La Notti bianche'' by Creator/LuchinoVisconti, ''Four nights of a dreamer'' by Creator/RobertBresson, and loosely adapted into ''Two Lovers'' by James Gray.

* SchoolgirlLesbians: Eponymous protagonist of ''Netochka Nezvanova''. Probably the UrExample.

The funny thing about Dostoevsky is that he's really two different authors separated by a four year stretch of imprisonment and exile to Siberia in 1849. Pre-1849, Dostoevsky wrote two novels (''Poor Folk'' and the incomplete ''Netochka Nezvanova'') and several short stories, including the much filmed ''White Nights'' and novellas. These early stories do anticipate some of his later work, but they are also more humorous, idealistic, and realistic compared to his later works. ''The Double'', his most controversial early story, is now seen as the work that really anticipates his later style. His involvement with a circle of armchair revolutionaries and pamphleteers led him to be rounded up and imprisoned by the state and he was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. At the last moment, right when Dostoevsky was lining up to be killed with his friends, a message of pardon arrived and everyone was sent to prison instead. Biographers consider this a "mock execution", that is none of them were ever going to be killed in the first place but were put through the ringer of being on "Death Row" as a form of psychological torture. One of Dostoevsky's friends went insane as a result of this ordeal. This incident had a phenomenal influence on his life and worldview and the Dostoevsky who returned from prison was a changed man in every sense of the term. Formerly, a kind of liberal interested in applying Western ideas to Russia, he became an anti-Radical Orthodox Christian conservative whose works explored characters who are contradictory, divided and full of neurosis and trauma, much like the author himself.

If Dostoevsky wasn't the [[TropeMaker clear "father"]] of the PsychologicalThriller, he certainly [[TropeCodifier set the standard for future practitioners of the genre.]] In addition, his thematic and philosophical emphases link him strongly to the roots of FilmNoir--particularly the appropriately-named ''Crime And Punishment''.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: For an artist with such a colorful life, Dostoevsky has been fictionalized in books like ''Sumer in Baden Baden'' by Leonid Tsypkin and ''The Master of Petersburg'' by J. M. Coetzee.
* JekyllAndHyde: The early novella "The Double", as you might have guessed from the title. It's actually a lot more funnier than Stevenson's surprisingly enough.

* NiceGuysFinishLast: The protagonist in the story "White Nights" though unlike other examples, the "nice guy" here is grateful and happy to have been friends with the girl and wishes her a happy life, and takes his rejection in a stride. This makes him the only Dostoevsky protagonist to have a happy ending.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский; 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''Literature/NotesFromUnderground'', ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', ''Literature/TheIdiot'', and ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov''. He was famous for his rather dark stories, filled with violent, self-destructive characters driven by ideas and strong passions, his intense psychologically driven character studies, as well as the rich philosophical and religious themes of his works, which is credited by many for anticipating modernist, existentialist and post-modernist ideas and narratives. Popular in Russia during his lifetime, his works found a global audience after his death, becoming one of the most widely-translated and widely-read great authors, and an influence and inspiration for an endless list of great writers from the late 19th to the early 21st Century.

->''"[Dostoevsky is] the only psychologist from whom I have something to learn."''
-->-- '''Creator/FriedrichNietzsche'''

* ''The Double'' was adapted by Creator/BernardoBertolucci as ''Partner'' and ''Film/TheDouble'' by Richard Ayoade, starring Creator/JesseEisenberg.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский; 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''Literature/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.

The funny thing about Dostoevsky is that he's really two different authors separated by a four year stretch of imprisonment and exile to Siberia in 1849. Pre-1849, Dostoevsky wrote two novels (''Poor Folk'' and the incomplete ''Netochka Nezvanova'') and several short stories, including the much filmed ''White Nights'' and novellas. His involvement with a circle of armchair revolutionaries and pamphleteers led him to be rounded up and imprisoned by the state and he was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. At the last moment, right when Dostoevsky was lining up to be killed with his friends, a message of pardon arrived and everyone was sent to prison instead. Biographers consider this a "mock execution", that is none of them were ever going to be killed in the first place but were put through the ringer of being on "Death Row" as a form of psychological torture. One of Dostoevsky's friends went insane as a result of this ordeal. This incident had a phenomenal influence on his life and worldview and the Dostoevsky who returned from prison was a changed man in every sense of the term. Formerly, a kind of liberal interested in applying Western ideas to Russia, he became an anti-Radical Orthodox Christian conservative whose works explored characters who are contradictory, divided and full of neurosis and trauma, much like the author himself.

He's really remembered 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.

* TheGulag: ''Notes from the Dead House'', which describe Dostoyevsky's imprisonment in Siberia. Also a rare non-Soviet example of this trope.

* JekyllAndHyde: The early novella "The Double", as you might have guessed from the title.

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

Dostoevsky is featured as a character in the novels ''Summer in Baden-Baden'' and ''The Master of Petersburg''.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: [[invoked]] He never finished ''Netochka Nezvanova'', one of his first works. He started it before his imprisonment and by the time he was released his pre-occupations had drifted far from the pre-Prison writer.

Fyodor [[{{Patronymic}} Mikhailovich]] Dostoevsky was a 19th century Russian author, famous for writing ''Literature/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.

* EsotericHappyEnding: ''The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree'', where titular beggar boy, who is abused by his alcoholic parents, freezes to death during during Christmas, but he dies happily, because he saw Christ in his DyingDream and felt that he is beloved by God.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: He never finished ''Netochka Nezvanova'', one of his first works. He started it before his imprisonment and by the time he was released his pre-occupations had drifted far from the pre-Prison writer.

* NietzscheWannabe: Arkady in ''The Adolescent''.

* 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).
* AuthorTract: Liable to appear at any given time in his books. However several critics note that what appears to be AuthorTract turns out to be different from Dostoevsky's own ideas.
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Averted. Although he was a devout Christian, Dostoevsky ''loathed'' Catholicism (especially the Jesuits), and he saw the raw, innocent spirituality of Russian Orthodoxy as an antidote to it. An AuthorFilibuster in ''The Idiot'' is devoted to this.
* {{Doorstopper}}: He wrote very thick novels.
** There is actually a very good reason for this: Dostoevsky, like most Russian (and European in general) 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.
** Also for most of Dostoevsky's career he wrote short stories and novellas -- ''Poor Folk, The Gambler, The Double, White Nights, The Eternal Husband, Notes From Underground'' -- he only wrote ''four'' major novel-length narratives, but [[TropesAreNotBad those are among the best ever written]].
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:''The Idiot''.]]
* 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.

* LonersAreFreaks: Dostoevsky's books feature characters who are loners, social rejects, the mentally ill and other freaks. His sympathetic portrayal of their alienation from society struck a chord with several modernist writers and made him highly popular among existential philosophers. What people often miss is that Dostoevsky doesn't romanticize this status at all, as seen in ''Notes from Underground''. His works show how poverty, breakdown of family relations, genuine social dissatisfaction and callous cruelty makes such figures easy to indoctrinate into radical politics or other kinds of dangerous abstract ideas. About the only response to such alienation Dostoevsky can find is either authentic religious belief, ThePowerOfLove, forgiveness and compassion.
* TheMasochismTango: The marriage in the short story "A Gentle Creature". (Alternately, the relationship between any given Dostoevsky character and any other given Dostoevsky character.)
* 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.
** One delicious irony for the Great Russian is the fact that his books influenced Creator/FranzKafka and UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud and several other Jewish writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer despite being, unfortunately, an anti-Semite like many Russians of his time.

* NietzscheWannabe: Dostoevsky codified these characters in many of his books. Raskolnikov is perhaps the archetypal example. Other examples include The Underground Man and Arkady in ''The Adolescent''. Bear in mind that this is a case of UnbuiltTrope since Dostoevsky was a rough contemporary of Nietzsche but did not read his books, while the latter read his books after formulating some of his beliefs and noted how Dostoevsky anticipated his ideas.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: If there is a ManipulativeBastard in his book, he ''will'' use this trick.

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

* {{Tsundere}}/SourOutsideSadInside: 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]].

* FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Stavrogin is described as absolutely charming and beautiful, like a prince from a fairy tale, while in fact, he is a depraved murderer, pedophile and rapist.

* AwesomeMcCoolName: Pyotr Verkhovensky, whose family name is formed from "verkhovenstvo", which means "supremacy" in Russian.
* 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 a crueler regime and enslaving 90% of the population.
* ByronicHero: Stavrogin from ''Demons'' 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 ''Demons''.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: ''The Idiot''. To a certain degree ''Demons'' as well.]]
* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: "Shigalyovism", the philosophy of the terrorist group from ''Demons''.

* FallenCreator: InUniverse, Karamzinov from ''Demons'', who had been one of the greatest Russian writers in the past, but then he JumpedTheShark.

* 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 when he married his wife, while she wasn't.

* MindScrew: Not so much his plots but the motivations and psychologies of the characters, the general ambiguity across his books about what is "good" and "right". One famous example of the schismatic nature of his characters comes in ''Demons'' where Arkady Kirillov, a rather verbose nihilist rhapsodizes about the VillainProtagonist Stavrogin:
--> '''Kirillov''': When Stavrogin believes, he does not believe that he believes. And when he does not believe, he still does not believe that he does not believe.

* NietzscheWannabe:
** Dostoevsky codified these characters in many of his books. Raskolnikov is perhaps the archetypal example. Other examples include The Underground Man and pretty much ''all'' the young radicals in ''Demons'' (although Stavrogin and Verkhovensky stand out), and Arkady in ''The Adolescent''.
** Bear in mind that this is a case of UnbuiltTrope since Dostoevsky was a rough contemporary of Nietzsche but did not read his books, while the latter read his books after formulating some of his beliefs and noted how Dostoevsky anticipated his ideas.

* PsychoForHire: Fedka The Convict, psychotic murderer and robber, who acts as paid muscle for Verkhovensky's gang in ''Demons''.
* ReignOfTerror: Dostoevsky saw this as the inevitable outcome of radical movements, as he illustrates in ''Demons''.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: ''Demons'' is a blatant fictionalization of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Nechayev Sergey Nechayev's case]].

* TakeThat / NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Karamzinov from ''Demons'' is widely seen as a caricature on fellow writer, Turgenev.

* WesternTerrorists: ''Demons' '' plot revolves around such a group. Though it must be noted that the Nihilists of 19th Century Russia ''were'' the [[TropeMaker original]] terrorists.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: ''The Brothers Karamazov'' 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.]]
** Also, he never finished ''Netochka Nezvanova'', one of his first works. He started it before his imprisonment and by the time he was released his pre-occupations had drifted far from the pre-Prison writer.

* MindScrew: Of course!

** Bear in mind that this is a case of UnbuiltTrope since Dostoevsky was a rough contemporary of Nietzche but did not read his books, while the latter read his books after formulating some of his beliefs and noted how Dostoevsky anticipated his ideas.

* ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov'' was loosely adapted as ''Die Morder Dimitri Karamasoff'' a Soviet-German co-production by Feodor Osep, starring Fritz Rasp (of ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' fame) and Anna Sten (who appeared in some MGM films). It's more well known for the 1950s Hollywood adaptation by Richard Brooks starring Creator/YulBrynner.

* CharacterFilibuster: See AuthorTract above.

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

* ''White Nights'' was adapted into ''La Notti bianche'' by Creator/LuchinoVisconti, ''Four nights of a dreamer'' by Creator/RobertBresson, and loosely adapted into ''Film/TwoLovers'' by Creator/JamesGray

He's really remembered 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. If Dostoevsky wasn't the [[TropeMaker clear "father"]] of the PsychologicalThriller, he certainly [[TropeCodifier set the standard for future practitioners of the genre.]]

He's really remembered 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.