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Part 3, Chapter 7, Section 2
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
A carriage pulls up outside of the hut where Stepan lies sick. Varvara and Darya get out and go into the hut. Anisim told Varvara’s servants that he saw Stepan, and the news eventually reached Varvara. Varvara initially sends Sofya away, but when she realizes how sick Stepan is and that Sofya has cared for him, Varvara tells her to return. Varvara sits by Stepan’s side and sarcastically asks if he had a nice walk. Stepan struggles to respond, and Varvara finds water for him. He then tells Varvara that he has loved her for 20 years. She says that didn’t stop him from wanting to marry Darya. Stepan repeats that he has loved Varvara for 20 years. Varvara says that 20 years have passed, and she’s a fool as well, just as he is.
Varvara shows how much she cares about Stepan, even if she often articulates her care for him with an air of annoyance. The conversation between Stepan and Varvara is the closest the two come to acknowledging that they have both been in love with each other for the past 20 years. Varvara’s comments that she has been a fool, too, suggest that she has forgiven Stepan for his missteps, is willing to embrace him again and, if he were well, would take him back to her estate.
Themes
Varvara sends for a doctor. When the doctor arrives, he says that there’s no hope for Stepan and sends for a priest. When the priest arrives, he administers Stepan’s last rites. After hearing those rites, Stepan declares that God is necessary because God is the only being capable of eternal love. He says that all of human existence rests on the fact that people can bow before something unfathomably great. Without that, people would die of despair. Stepan dies three days later. Varvara stays by his side the entire time. After Stepan dies, Varvara brings Sofya back to her estate. She tells Sofya to settle there and that she will pay for all of Sofya’s expenses.
Stepan has a conversion experience on his deathbed. That conversion experience provides the conclusion to the novel’s throughline from the liberalism of the 1840s to the nihilism of the 1870s. In Dostoevsky’s telling, the fitting conclusion of that line of thought would be for people to throw off their (in his view) destructive ideologies and find a way to return to Christianity and the eternal love that, in the novel’s view, is central to Christianity.
Themes
