“Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow – they don’t hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.”
Expectations always lead to disappointment
I feel the book is mostly about expectations (and this is the part I would like to analyze here) which can lead to disappointment most of the time if not always.
The character as the book progresses falls in love with a young woman named Nastenka “hoping” that she would reciprocate the same in the end, but that does not happen.
Our hero is alone most of the time and maybe that could be the reason he always dreams and have a far more stretched and imaginative inner monologues very often like
“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy.
Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
While reading the above I was sure the ending would make him more miserable because he expects a lot and great expectations lead to greater disappointments
“Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!”
He was maybe really unbearable to Nastenka maybe?
That is why she chose a guy who was quieter over him? (She waited for the other guy for well over a year, but even if it was not the case I don’t really think Nastenka would consider our hero as her boyfriend ever let alone marry him and the reason I think Nastenka chose him for a while was because she was sad and really needed a coping mechanism)
“Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!”
our hero was putting her in the pedestal most of the time which is bound to make her run away from irritation
“I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering!…”
Even our dear hero knows overtly dreaming causes despair and disappointments
The book was so wonderfully written by Fyodor Dostoevesky but I could not relate to the hero in the book, although I can empathize with him , and I feel the book is mostly about having less expectations and desires and that is not a topic mostly discussed while reviewing this book in the subreddit so I felt this has to be here – “Expect less, Be happy”