The Death In Dostoevsky's Demons

Suicide is one of the most puzzling factors in Dostoevsky's Demons.The atheist Kirillov believes that in order to prove that human can survive without the existence of God,he must commit suicide.Nevertheless,his close friend and spiritual mentor Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin,a nihilist who seems to be bored with both survival and death so that he declared he would never commit suicide,finally killed himself as well.Both Krillov and Stavrogin's death prove that suicide can be completely irrelevant to mental illness,but a logical choice.On the other hand,their suicide also reflects the loneliness and despair of modern life.Secondly,from the perspective of sociology and history,suicide is a typical cultural mechanism which mirrors of the situation of the late imperial Russia.The mental conditions of Dostoevsky's characters are influenced by the political and ideological environment of their time.Before 1861 reform,suicide,especially young people's suicide,has become an eye-catching phenomenon.When Russia,a country who has profound religious traditions,encounters Western enlightenment rationality,it will inevitably be faced with numerous chases.Those young nihilists are kids of the older atheist liberals.Nihilists believe that since there is no God and no eternal soul,everything is allowable.Therefore,those poor fellows and nihilists are most likely to commit suicide.For Dostoevsky,suicide contradicts the lifestyle advocated by Christianity,but it worth to be sympathized.As a devout Christian,Dostoevsky shows an obvious conservatism tendency in his A Writer's Diary and other literary works.Apparently,he does not regard suicide as something worth of praising.However,in terms of the results,he depicts how profound and charming the thoughts of those nihilists can be,which is opposite to his original intention.According to Durkheim,in order to minimize the suicide rate,there must be a highly cohesive community which helps the individuals to recognize their values.If this methodology is transplanted to Russia,then Dostoevsky's opinion that the only way for Russia to avoid chaos is to return to its religious root is convincing.