Notes From a Dead House 

Записки из Мёртвого дома 0r Notes From a Dead House
Introduction & Background: The book "Notes from a Dead House" is a semiautobiographical book about Dostoevsky's life in Siberian exile. It was published between 1860 and 1862, with the first part published in 1860 and then the second part published two years later and then finally appearing in a full book form in the year of 1862 in the journal Vremya. Along the long course of English translations that have appeared over the time the book has been around, many different titles have been published for the Russian book, including: Notes from the house of the Dead, The house of the Dead, The Dead House, but the version that I have read has a better translation of the Russian title and is more Literal to the Russian meaning, Записки из Мёртвого дома,  Записки, (meaning notes),  из, (Meaning from), and Мёртвого дома, (Dead House). 

The novel portrays the life and experiences of Dostoevsky when he was in his Siberian exile. The book mainly focuses on character development, philosophical discussions, loose descriptions, and very particular experiences rather than a solid plot that is easy to follow. Although it does have a plot, and one is posited at the start, it really gets abandoned and is not relevant. The plot was only really there so Dostoevsky could escape the tyrannical oppression of the censorship from the government at the time. Dostoevsky spent four years in Siberian exile and this book accounts his experiences after being convicted of being in the Russian revolutionary group "The Petrashevsky circle". This experience in the camp completely changed him and it would of shaped his entire psyche, but he also knew how to describe the experience of a prisoner very well from the experience of being one for four years.

After his mock execution with all of his comrades, he was sent to Siberia in the Omsk region in a Katorga camp, (which was the penal system that was responsible for Siberian exile during the 19th century and in the soviet union. Although he was often not liked by some of the prisoners because of his higher Russian nobility status, he eventually was respected by others and his views on his life changed, namely he converted more to the side of conservatism and the Slavophile ways, (which I imagine many people would probably adapt after being sent to Siberia for four years because of "radical political crimes"). After all of his time in the camp and then another six years of terrible mandatory military service, he finally got down to writing the book. The book follows many of the most horrifying experiences he saw in the camp. He recalls the guards terrible action of violence to the prisoners, the prisoners crimes they committed, and how, at the end of the day, among the prisoners were very decent men, and even how these terrible criminals that he writes about in this book were just as humane as we all are and that there is no difference between us. But he was also shocked at how the prisoners could commit such murders without blinking an eye. He also experienced many epileptic seizures during his time in prison, and they mainly came on at this point of his life as well, which would haunt him dreadfully for years to come. (Refer to the section in the autobiography for more information about his exile.) 

The Loose Plot: The narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, has been sentenced to deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labour for murdering his wife. (In the book he replaces his own status of a political prisoner for that of a murderer to evade the censorship he would of got from the government, but everything you can really just imagine the murderer as being Dostoevsky himself because it is a semiautobigrapy in the first place.) The life in prison is hard for the man because of his status of a gentlemen and a nobleman, and he gets a hard time for that because many of the other prisoners belong to the peasant status. Throughout the book the man called "Goryanchikov" comes to accept his prison experience and comes to love his fellow prisoners and he slowly begins a spiritual metamorphosis which comes to its height as the man gets released from prison. Dostoevsky writes each prisoner with empathy with their unique situation and praises them all for their uniqueness and their individual talents they all posses, from drama skills, musicians, building skills and many more that he witnessed in the camp. Dostoevsky concludes that the sheer existence of prisons like this and the punishments, such as birching, are sheerly absurd and are completely terrible and have so many implications for the prisoners and Russia as a whole. 

But I will mention again that this book doesn't really have a normal plot that most books would normally have. It follows loose descriptions on very particular events and commentaries on them, and how the narrator metamorphoses into a better person over the time of the imprisonment. It is a autobiography novel as much as it could be because of the restrictions of the censorship at the time. The narration at the start of the novel is rather different. The book starts off with an introduction of the man who wrote the notes from the prison from another person who is unnamed and was an acquaintance of the murderer. The unnamed narrator recounts how he found the notes, which was after the death of the man. He recounts his disposition as a man coming back from prison and how he was affected from an outside perspective and how he ended up becoming more reclusive in his life. He recovered the notes from the landlady of his house and he describes his memoirs as being: "incoherent and fragmentary... interrupted, here and there, either by anecdotes, or by strange, terrible recollections thrown in convulsively as if torn from the writer."

Characters: Before I do a description of some of the events that happen in the book, I will firstly list all of the main characters. Many of the main characters that I am listing are based on loosely, or are entirely based on real people that Dostoevsky encountered in the Siberian prison 

• The Major: The Major is the tyrannical leader of the camp, who exudes authoritarian behavior with everybody. He is described by Alexander Petrovich as "a spiteful, ill-regulated man, terrible above all things, because he possessed almost absolute power over two hundred human beings." Referred to by the prisoners as "the man with the eight eyes", because of his apparent all seeing, omniscient disposition in the prison as a dictator. He is generally feared by all prisoners in the camp. 

• Akim Akimitch: One of the few noblemen in the prison and befriends the narrator and teaches him how to survive in the prison. Akim was a former officer who was sent to prison for unilaterally and singlehandly ordering a unofficial and illegal execution. He acts a moral guideline for the rest of the prisoners and a role model for morals, although the other prisoners generally laugh at him and call him mad. The narrator, (who is Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, but I will just refer to him as the narrator), describes his friend Akim as being unable to reason independently and that he is built for obedience and duty. Akim exudes a rather obedient relationship to the narrator, like a slave in many ways. 

•  The Parricide Prisoner: This prisoner is not named directly but is described by Dostoevsky as having killed his father to gain his inheritance. He is also described as being merry all the time and happy. The character is based on a real case that inspired Dostoevsky and one that eventually led towards Dostoevsky writing the plot of the Brothers Karamazov and the person is thought to have inspired the character of Dmitri Karamazov. (See the section on Brothers Karamazov). 

• Luka: This character has killed six people and has a desire to be feared for his crime, but not a single soul in the prison actually cares about him or is even afraid of him in the tiniest bit. The narrator describes him as being the type of person who: When once he has passed the fatal line, he is himself astonished to find that nothing sacred exists for him. He breaks through all laws, defies all powers, and gives himself boundless license... From time to time, the murderer will amuse himself by recalling his audacity, his lawlessness when he was in a state of despair. He likes at these moments to have some silly fellow before whom he can brag... 'That is the sort of man I am,' he says." 

• Isaiah Fomitch: This man is a Jewish Prison who becomes a great friend of the narrator in the prison. He is often described as feeble and cunning, and is both capable of being a coward and being a very brave man. The other prisoners laugh at him and make fun of him but he is also admired for his great humor. He has many scars on his face around his cheeks and forehead from burns while he was a victim of the pillory, (see panel pack/Terms).

• Aristov: Aristov is one of the rare noblemen in the camp and is very corrupt and perverted and also acts as an informer and spy for the Major. The narrator refuses to get into discussions or have any type of relationship with the man because he despises him. Alexander Petrovich says of him that "if he wanted a drink of brandy, and could only have got it by killing some one, he would not have hesitated one moment if it was pretty certain the crime would not come out." 

• Ali: The man Ali is described as having a beautiful soul and being very generous to everybody. He is a Tatar and is in prison with his other two brothers. He is described by the narrator that: "This young man preserved his tender heart, his native honesty, his frank cordiality without getting perverted and corrupted during his period of hard labour, is quite inexplicable." 

• Gazin: This man is an extremely strong and violent criminal, but not very smart and is in prison for many things included murdering and torturing small children. He made alot of the other criminals disgusted and repulsed by his actions.  According to Alexander Petrovich: "It was less by his great height and his herculean construction, than by his enormous and deformed head, that he inspired terror."  

• Petrov: Petrov is a extremally quiet and taciturn man who ends up becoming the narrators friend, although their friendship on the side of Petrov was only really for intellectual and knowledge benefits. The other prisoners, including the narrator, think that he is capable of great violence and thus the most dangerous prisoner because of his potential.

• Orloff: This man is a notorious prison escapee and is considered to be very dangerous. Whom Alexander Petrovich describes as "a brilliant example of the victory of spirit over matter", unlike some other prisoners whose fearfulness proceeded more from their complete submission to matter, i.e. the body and fleshy materialism. 

Events in the book: 

The Bath House: 

Perhaps the most famous scene in the book is the bathroom scene with all of the prisoners washing themselves and is described with elegant prose by Dostoevsky, in which he experienced how everybody would wash themselves and how they would all have shifts. This scene is the most memorable for myself and I will just let Mr. D describe in his own words.  

Pg 121 Notes from a Dead House: 

"When we opened the door to the bathroom itself, I thought we were entering hell. Imagine a room some twelve paces long and the same in width, in which maybe up to a hundred men are packed at once, and certainly at least eighty, because the prisoners were divided into just two shifts, and in all about two hundred of us had come to the bath house. Steam clouding your eyes, soot, filth, such crowdedness that there was nowhere to set your foot down. I was frightened and wanted to turn back, but Petrov immediately reassured me. Somehow, with the greatest difficulty, we forced our way to the benches over the heads of people sitting on the floor, asking them to bend down so that we could pass. But all the benches were taken. Petrov announced to me that we had to buy our places and at once entered into negotiations with a prisoner who had place by the window. The man gave his place up to me for a Copeck." - "Petrov, who had the foresight to bring it with him to the bath house, clenched it in his fist, and darted at one under the bench right under my place, where it was dark, dirty, and there was a layer of sticky slime about almost half a finger thick. But the places under the benches were all taken, too."-"On the whole floor there was no space bigger than the palm of your hand, not occupied by prisoners sitting hunched up and splashing themselves with their basins."-" The dirty water poured straight onto the shaven heads of those sitting under them."- " More steam was added every moment. This was no longer heat, it was the fiery furnace. All a bawling and roaring to the noise of a hundred fetters dragging on the floor..." (Metal shackles that the prisoners still had on their feet, and which Dostoevsky had his entire time on both his feet and hands during the entire imprisonment.) "It occurred to me that if all of us are ever in hell together, it’ll bear a very close resemblance to this place". 

"The shaved heads of the convicts, and their red bodies, which the steam made the color of blood, seemed more monstrous than ever. On their backs, made scarlet by the steam, stood out in striking relief the scars left by the whips and the rods, made long before, but so thoroughly that the flesh seemed to have been quite recently torn. Strange scars. A shudder passed through me at the mere sight of them. Again the volume of steam increased, and the bath-room was now covered with a thick, burning cloud, covering agitation and cries. From this cloud stood out torn backs, shaved heads; and, to complete the picture, Isaiah Fomitch howling with joy on the highest of the benches. He was saturating himself with steam. Any other man would have fainted away, but no temperature is too high for him; he engages the services of a rubber for a kopeck, but after a few moments the latter is unable to continue, throws away his bunch of twigs, and runs to inundate himself with cold water. Isaiah Fomitch does not lose courage, he runs to hire a second rubber, then a third; on these occasions he thinks nothing of expense, and changes his rubber four or five times" 

The Hospitable:  

Dostoevsky in the novel describes how many prisoners would fake being sick so that they could go the hospitable and receive treatment and a small solace. Dostoevsky often went to the hospitable because of his seizures. He described that many of the nurses and doctors would have empathy on the prisoners even if they knew they were faking it and would usually let them stay without another word, but when stayed too long they would be gently escorted out to go back to their living hell. Fyodor himself spent much time in hospitable and read much fiction while he was sick, mainly Charles Dickens.
Pg 169:

"Shortly after the Christmas holidays I felt ill, and had to go to our military hospital, which stood apart at about half a verst from the fortress. It was a one-story building, very long, and painted yellow. Every summer a great quantity of ochre was expended in brightening it up. In the immense court-yard stood buildings, including those where the chief physicians lived, while the principal building contained only wards intended for the patients. There were a good many of them, but as only two were reserved for the convicts, these latter were nearly always full, above all in summer, so that it was often necessary to bring the beds closer together. These wards were occupied by “unfortunates” of all kinds: first by our own, then by military prisoners, previously incarcerated in the guard-houses. There were others, again, who had not yet been tried, or who were passing through. In this hospital, too, were invalids from the Disciplinary Company, a melancholy institution for bringing together soldiers of bad conduct, with a view to their correction."

Pg 175:

"The men condemned to the rods, having undergone their punishment, were brought straight to the hospital, their backs still bleeding. As compresses and as poultices were placed on their wounds, the dressing-gown they wore over their wet shirt received and retained the droppings." 

Recounts of the birching:

"I have seen many convicts who had been whipped, and cruelly, I can tell you. Well, I do not remember one of them uttering a groan. Only after such an experience, the countenance becomes pale, decomposed, the eyes glitter, the look wanders, and the lips tremble so that the patient sometimes bites them till they bleed."

The Fact that they still had to wear their Shackles when in they were in convalescence disturbed Dostoevsky and he remarks in the book that it didn't even have to be so that they were fettered up. He remarks that they had no chance of escaping anyway because they were sick and that even if they did it was so cold that they would die within two minutes anyway. The reasons that the guards made people do this even when they were on their last breath was just pure torment and completely even. 

"For many years an inexplicable fact troubled me like an insoluble problem. I must speak of it before going on with my description. I am thinking of the chains which every convict is obliged to wear, however ill he may be; even consumptives have died beneath my eyes with their legs loaded with irons." 

The most disturbing part of the whole book for myself is contained in the story of the young man Mikhail who dies of consumption, and who was not allowed to take off his fetters even when on his last breath of life. 

"He died at three o’clock in the afternoon on a clear, dry day. The sun was darting its brilliant rays obliquely through the greenish, frozen panes of our room. A torrent of light inundated the unhappy patient, who had lost all consciousness, and was several hours dying. From the early morning his sight became confused; he was unable to recognize those who approached him. The convicts would gladly have done anything to relieve him, for they saw he was in great suffering. His respiration was painful, deep, and irregular; his breast rose and fell violently, as though he were in want of air; he cast his blanket and his clothes far from him. Then he began to tear up his shirt, which seemed to him a terrible burden. It was taken off. Then it was frightful to see this immensely long body, with fleshless arms and legs, with beating breast, and ribs which were as clearly marked as those of a skeleton. There was nothing now on this skeleton but a cross and the irons, from which his dried-up legs might easily have freed themselves. A quarter of an hour before his death everything was silent in our ward, and the inmates spoke only in whispers. The convicts walked on the tips of their toes. From time to time they exchanged remarks on other subjects, and cast a furtive glance at the dying man. The rattling in his throat grew more and more painful. At last, with a trembling hand, he felt the cross on his breast and endeavored to tear it off; it was also weighing upon him, suffocating him. It was taken off. Ten minutes afterwards, he died. Some one then knocked at the door in order to give notice to the sentinel; the warder entered, looked at the dead man with a vacant air, and went away to get the assistant-surgeon. The assistant-surgeon was a good fellow enough, but a little too much occupied with his personal appearance, otherwise very agreeable; he soon arrived, went up to the corpse with long strides which made a noise in the silent ward, and felt the dead man’s pulse with an unconcerned air which seemed to have been put on for the occasion. He then made a vague gesture with his hand and went out."

"He bit and closed his teeth, and said to the noncommissioned officer, as if involuntarily, at the same time nodding his head in the direction of the dead man, 'He had a mother, too!'" 

This part stuck with me the most in the book. 

Conclusion: 

In summary, this book has one of the deepest insights into Dostoevsky himself and humanity as a whole and how depraved it can be at its worst level, but also, juxtaposing that is the experiences that showed him how normal and human all the prisoners were and that they all had talents each and were unique in their own ways. The book mentions many more instances, but there are too many to do a full review of the whole thing because abelite the book is rather small relatively speaking, it is very dense and compacted. Other things that happened were that at Christmas they didn't have to go and work in the fields for one day and he describes how people would get drunk and celebrate it, he also describes one instance of prisoners escaping and then getting caught again, smuggling in vodka, also, the pets and animals that were in the camp, such as dogs and a hawk bird. The most interesting one was when he did an in depth description of a play that the prisoners got to run and that they got the day off work and that their was some very talented actors in the camp.

I will say however, that my reviews for my project are in no way a substitute for reading his books yourself, which are, ultimately, the best way and only way to consume them properly and to make your own opinions of them. This book is also the only one out of all of the books that Leo Tolstoy actually revered, because he didn't like Dostoevsky that much. And Dostoevsky's rival, Ivan Turgenev, described the bathroom scene as being "simply Dantesque", (talking about, of course, the writer Dante and his works on Christian literature such as, Dante's inferno in Divine Comedy. Many people repeated the Dante mantra about this book and it was very well received.

Thank you...