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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Part 1: Book 1, Chapter 2: The First Son Sent Packing
Explanation and Analysis—Russian Reformers:
Dostoevsky satirizes the Russian “liberals” who promoted European-style social reform in his depiction of Adelaida Ivanovna’s cousin, Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov:
He lived abroad for many years, but at the time he was still a very young man, and, among the Miusovs, an unusual sort of man—enlightened, metropolitan, cosmopolitan, a lifelong European, and at the end of his life a liberal of the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had relations with many of the most liberal people of his epoch [...] and he particularly liked to recall and describe [...] the three days of the February revolution in Paris in forty-eight, letting on that he himself had almost taken part in it on the barricades.
In many of his novels, Dostoevsky criticizes those members of the Russian intelligentsia whom he regarded as being too enamored with ideas from Western Europe, particularly concerning “liberal” social reform. Through Miusov, he satirizes those “enlightened, metropolitan, cosmopolitan” intellectuals who often spent time living in “modern” cities such as Paris. Miusov is a “lifelong European” rather than a patriotic Russian, and he enjoys bragging about the leading intellectuals whom he met while living abroad. Comically, he cherishes his memories of the February Revolution (or the French Revolution of 1848) despite not having been an active participant. The pretentious Miusov, then, is a satirical portrait reflecting Dostoevsky’s distaste for liberal reformers.
Related Themes:
Part 1: Book 1, Chapter 3: Second Marriage, Second Children
Explanation and Analysis—Russian Students:
While describing the eloquent articles written by Ivan in order to support himself financially while in college, the narrator satirizes the student population of Russia, whom he considers to be unoriginal and overly reliant upon French ideas and culture:
These little articles, they say, were always so curiously and quaintly written that they were soon in great demand; and even in this alone the young man demonstrated his practical and intellectual superiority over that eternally needy and miserable mass of our students of both sexes who, in our capitals, from morning till night, habitually haunt the doorways of various newspapers and magazines, unable to invent anything better than the eternal repetition of one and the same plea for copying work or translations from the French.
The narrator emphasizes that Ivan is far more intelligent and hard-working than the other college students, as he provides for himself by giving lessons and writing articles that “were in great demand” due to his skills as a writer. In comparison, the narrator satirically suggests that the other young people who constitute “that eternally needy and miserable mass” of students lack originality and rigorous thinking. Unlike Ivan, they are “unable to invent anything” and rely on “copying work” and translating French writing. In his novels, Dostoevsky often satirizes the Russian intelligentsia for what he perceived to be its fawning submission to “modern” ideas from Western Europe, especially France.
