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Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Demons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Politics and Self-Interest
Ideology and Extremism
Morality and Nihilism
Herd Mentality
Atheism vs. Belief in God
Summary
Analysis
The real reason Stepan stopped his career as a lecturer was due to a job offer from his friend, Varvara. The two first met in Berlin, where Varvara proposed that Stepan become the exclusive tutor of her only child, Nikolay. Stepan initially declined. He was married at the time and had a son of his own. His wife died after five years of marriage, and the son was raised in Russia by his wife’s relatives. Stepan remarried a German woman, but she died within a year. After that, Stepan went to live at a property his first wife had owned. By coincidence, that property was right next to Varvara’s estate, named Skvoreshniki. Stepan struggled as a lecturer and believed he was being persecuted. As a result, he eventually accepted Varvara’s offer to become her son’s tutor.
This prosaic explanation of Stepan’s career path differs from the dramatic version of persecution from an authoritative government that Stepan chooses to believe. This passage also introduces Varvara, one of Stepan’s closest friends and confidants. Notably, Varvara is wealthy enough that she has an estate and can privately employ people like Stepan. That puts Stepan’s view of himself further in question. While Stepan likes to think of himself as sympathetic to revolutionary ideas, he is also happy to cozy up to people like Varvara who have benefited from the established order. By extension, Stepan then clearly also benefits from that status quo (which revolutionaries aim to overthrow) when he accepts Varvara’s job offer.
Themes
