**Hi Professor! I’m really hoping that I’m getting the names correct at this point, but, in case I’m not, the part of the book which I’m discussing is “A Toilsome Night” in the third part. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy what I have to say about this incredible chapter!
In their effort to retain complete control over the individual, totalitarian regimes rely on cognitive dissonance. This cognitive dissonance allows the individual to believe equally in two diametrically-opposed thoughts or concepts without realizing the internal discrepancy this new belief creates. In Orwell’s 1984, he constructs a series of phrases which, on face value, seem to be oxymoronic per se. For example, the phrase “war is peace,” to Orwell’s average reader, is almost laughable. However, when O’Brien gives Winston the pamphlet of “the Brotherhood,” it becomes clear that the logic and the argumentation behind this phrase is firmly rooted in human social behavior. Dostoevsky is able to write a similar experience in this third part of his novel Demons. “A Toilsome Night” is ripe with ethical imagery, commentary on human response to death and tense mystery. Before he kills Shatov, Pyotr Stepanovich chides Virginsky by saying, “‘to risk the common cause on a word of honor––is the height of stupidity” (Dostoevsky 601). This moment is singularly indicative of the same sort of backwards (or otherwise perverse) moral system wherein commonly-revered things like honor become an invalid or inadequate impetus for particular actions.
Pyotor then goes on to further denounce Shatov’s actions by saying to the group gathered before him, “you can go and kiss him if you like, but you have no right to betray the common cause on a word of honor! Only swine and people brought by the government act like that!” (Dostoevsky 601) In this moment, Pyotor is attempting to lure his fivesome away from a place of principle. What is more, Pyotor tries to coax his audience away from subjective humanity to a point of stoicism. When Lyamshin is having a fit after Shatov is killed, Pyotor regards his hysterics and says, “this is very strange” with “alarmed astonishment” (Dostoevsky 605). Although it is Lyamshin’s reaction to the flippant destruction of human life that is more natural or visceral, Pyotor is taken aback by such an extreme display of humanity. It is this feature of humanity which causes “a man [to] suddenly cry out in a voice not his own, but such as one could not even have supposed him to have before then” (Dostoevsky 605). It is also this particular feature which is antithetical to totalitarianism’s principal project––the consolidation of power.
Pyotor’s desire to consolidate power is quite clear when, just after he congratulates his comrades for “the fulfillment of a free duty,” he instructs that “in the meantime [their] whole step is towards getting everything destroyed: both the state and its morality. We alone will remain, having destined ourselves beforehand to assume power: we shall rally the smart ones to ourselves, and ride on the backs of the fools” (Dostoevsky 606, 607). For Pyotor, Shatov was a mere inconvenience along the ascension to ultimate power. After neutralizing this inconvenience, Shatovs’s existence ceased to interest Pyotor. It is also noteworthy to mention that Shigalyov’s departure from the group happens before Shatov’s murder. Before he leaves, Shigalyov makes a proclamation and a prediction. He cannot engage in Pyotor’s plan because the “entire affair, from beginning to end, literally contradicts [his] program” (Dostoevsky 602). He is not willing to compromise himself ethically because he knows that, in the end, his “program” is the ultimate destination. Shigalyov says to Pyotor, “you won’t gain anything for yourself by shooting me: you will kill me, but sooner or later you will still arrive at my system” (Dostoevsky 602). It is at this moment that Shigalyov places himself squarely outside of the bounds of the cognitive dissonance on which totalitarianism relies. His system of belief rejects the duplicity of cognitive dissonance with a striking degree of ethical clarity. In this sense, someone like Shigalyov cannot be “reeducated” or “retrained.” His mind belongs to him alone.