Dostoevsky

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoevsky was a well accomplished Russian author with a style unique to himself. He lived a very hard life starting from the time he was a young boy in St. Petersburg. He lived his teen years in a boarding school until he was sent off to an Army Engineering Academy with his older brothers. His young adult years were spent in a prison cell and serving in his country’s army. His real art began when he was discharged from the army for the second time in March 18, 1859. While much of his life was spent many of his younger years in the military and jail, his true passion was writing. Dostoevsky was on of the great authors of his time, with a style unique to himself and most off the wall characters in modern literature.

It was not long after he was born on October 30, 1821 that he was sent away from home. From the time he was shipped off to a boarding school as a young boy, through the time his mother died Fyodor lived a challenging and complicated life. His mother died on February 27, 1827, and several years later his father sent both him and his older brothers to an Army Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg, his birth city. “My brothers and I were taken to Petersburg to the Engineering Academy and our futures were ruined.”(Dostoevsky, his life and work 28) On June 8, 1839 his father was murdered while during a drunken rampage by his peasant workers. (Dostoevsky, his life and work 38) This marked the end of his stay at the Army Engineering Academy.

During his childhood years through to his teen years both Fyodor and his older brother Mikhail wanted to become great Russian authors. They were inspired by Pushkin, a man who they never got to mourn the death of due to the fact that he died around the same time as their mother. Fyodor joined the Russian army and graduated as an Army Engineer and moved quickly up the ranks, then later resigned in as a lieutenant October 1844, to pursue a writing career. (http://www.online-literature.com)

He joined a group of Utopian Sociologists in 1846 and was jailed for his beliefs in 1849. Soon after he was sentenced to death, but several years later the sentence was reduced to four years of jail time and four years of military service. While serving his military service he married his first wife, Maria Isaev. Both she and Fyodor’s brother Mikhail died soon after the marriage burdening him with debts. His situation was made worse by gambling. (http://www.online-literature.com) This experience later came back to inspire him to write the book The Gambler. It took him several years to get back on his feet and pay back his debts.

He met his second wife dictating one of his first major books The Gambler to a woman named Anna Snitkin, some say that she understood his manias and rages and this is why they fell so deeply in love. They were married in 1867. After their marriage they travelled abroad for several years, to escape creditors. (Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopaedia). By the time of their return and the release of The Brothers Karamazov in 1880 Dostoevsky was a recognised as a well known Russian author.

Dostoevsky’s list of great works doesn’t stretch as far as some of the other authors of his time, but he makes up for it with his amazing character development and astonishing plot twists. His first published work was his translation of Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet, published in the sixth and seventh issues of the magazine Repertoire and Pantheon (Dostoevsky, His Life and Works viii). His first major book, in 1846 was The Double, followed by a long break until his second release of The Insulted and Humiliated in 1861, closely followed by The House of the Dead in 1862 and Notes from Underground in 1864. He began to gain fame as an author and quickly released the books Crime and Punishment and The Gambler in 1866, soon after came, The Idiot in 1868, and just a year before the end of his life, in 1880 The Brothers Karamazov, one of his most well known works.

There has been several vital works in the life of Dostoevsky, including, Crime and Punishment. This was a book where the main character, Raskolnikov, decides to commit a serious crime. After he commits a double murder he becomes paranoid and delirious. He finally realises