Stepan Character Analysis

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen. I know for a fact that on several occasions, Stepan Trofimovich, sometimes even after the most intimate effusions to Varvara Petrovna in private, would suddenly jump up from the sofa as soon as she left and begin beating his fists against the wall.

When the baron gave positive confirmation of the reliability of the first rumours about the great reform that were just then beginning to spread, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and even made a gesture with his hand that signified his delight. His exclamation was not loud, and was even genteel; his delight was perhaps even premeditated, and his gesture purposely practised in front of the mirror half an hour before tea. But something must not have quite come off, since the baron permitted himself a faint smile, although he promptly put in an extraordinarily polite phrase about the appropriate swell of emotion in all Russian hearts in view of the great event.

While abroad Shatov radically revised certain of his former socialist convictions and jumped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those idealistic Russian beings who are suddenly struck by some powerful idea and immediately, then and there, seem to be crushed by it, even sometimes permanently. They are never equipped to deal with it, and instead come to believe in it passionately, and so their entire life from then on passes in its final throes, as it were, under the stone that has fallen upon them and already crushed them half to death.

‘A great many ideas are coming to me now: you see, it’s just like our Russia. These demons who come out of the sick man and enter the swine — these are all the sores, all the contagions, all the uncleanness, all the demons, large and small, who have accumulated in our great and beloved sick man, our Russia, over the course of centuries, centuries! […] and I perhaps am the first, standing at the very head; and we shall throw ourselves, the madmen and the possessed, from a rock into the sea and we shall all drown, and that’s no more than we deserve, because that’s precisely what we’re fit for. But the sick man will be healed and “will sit at the feet of Jesus.”’

To the question of why so many murders, scandals and vile acts had been committed, [Lyamshin] answered with feverish haste that it was for the purpose of ‘systematically shaking the foundations, systematically undermining society and all principles; for the purpose of demoralizing everyone and throwing everything into chaos, and then, once society had begun to totter as a result — and was sick and weakened, cynical and devoid of beliefs, yet still yearning for some guiding idea and self-preservation — they would suddenly take it into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a complete network of groups of five, which would all be active at the same time, recruiting and making practical efforts to search out all the means and all the weak spots that could be exploited’.

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen. I know for a fact that on several occasions, Stepan Trofimovich, sometimes even after the most intimate effusions to Varvara Petrovna in private, would suddenly jump up from the sofa as soon as she left and begin beating his fists against the wall.

When the baron gave positive confirmation of the reliability of the first rumours about the great reform that were just then beginning to spread, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and even made a gesture with his hand that signified his delight. His exclamation was not loud, and was even genteel; his delight was perhaps even premeditated, and his gesture purposely practised in front of the mirror half an hour before tea. But something must not have quite come off, since the baron permitted himself a faint smile, although he promptly put in an extraordinarily polite phrase about the appropriate swell of emotion in all Russian hearts in view of the great event.

While abroad Shatov radically revised certain of his former socialist convictions and jumped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those idealistic Russian beings who are suddenly struck by some powerful idea and immediately, then and there, seem to be crushed by it, even sometimes permanently. They are never equipped to deal with it, and instead come to believe in it passionately, and so their entire life from then on passes in its final throes, as it were, under the stone that has fallen upon them and already crushed them half to death.

‘A great many ideas are coming to me now: you see, it’s just like our Russia. These demons who come out of the sick man and enter the swine — these are all the sores, all the contagions, all the uncleanness, all the demons, large and small, who have accumulated in our great and beloved sick man, our Russia, over the course of centuries, centuries! […] and I perhaps am the first, standing at the very head; and we shall throw ourselves, the madmen and the possessed, from a rock into the sea and we shall all drown, and that’s no more than we deserve, because that’s precisely what we’re fit for. But the sick man will be healed and “will sit at the feet of Jesus.”’

To the question of why so many murders, scandals and vile acts had been committed, [Lyamshin] answered with feverish haste that it was for the purpose of ‘systematically shaking the foundations, systematically undermining society and all principles; for the purpose of demoralizing everyone and throwing everything into chaos, and then, once society had begun to totter as a result — and was sick and weakened, cynical and devoid of beliefs, yet still yearning for some guiding idea and self-preservation — they would suddenly take it into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a complete network of groups of five, which would all be active at the same time, recruiting and making practical efforts to search out all the means and all the weak spots that could be exploited’.