The Devils (The Possessed)

While the older generation in town is full of self-serving apathy and ignorance toward wider social tensions, the younger generation is fired up by violent revolutionary ideas. What are the flaws in the positions of each generation? What solution or reconciliation, if any, could be affected between these two extreme viewpoints?

Devils frequently raises the issue of moral culpability, suggesting that a failure to act—as Stavrogin does in not trying to prevent Marya’s murder—can be just as harmful as acting. To what degree and why are characters responsible for what they do or do not do? Does any character manage to behave in a morally responsible or redemptive way? Why or why not?

Consider the figure of Marya in the text. What role does she play in the novel? How does her characterization reflect some of the novel’s key thematic preoccupations and ideas?