The Neighbor A Weak Heart

Description

In his novella “The Neighbor,” written by the young Dostoevsky, the protagonist Catherine says, “Give freedom to a weak person, and they will reject it and return it to you.” In doing so, he raises the issue of freedom and will, a theme he would revisit in several of his novels. Catherine desires to give her true love to someone worthy of it, but she cannot free herself from the constraints of her past mistakes. This is a characteristic shared by Nastasya, the protagonist of “The Idiot,” and also by Grushenka, the protagonist of “The Brothers Karamazov.”