Who tells the story in “The Devils”?

Abstract

Against all numerous complexities and riddles that Dostoevsky’s “The Devils” contain, a great storm of searing passions, insane ideas and wild behavior its characters reprise, the figure of Storyteller often seems lost, pale, quite insignificant. He is merely a mask of the Author, a weaver of narration, a devoted chronicler of what happened. Or is he really? We somehow rarely realize that it’s his eyes we look through and see what is considered to be the “final truth” of the novel, the meaning and motivation behind its heroes’ actions, let alone the deepest secrets of their minds and souls. How come a character all like themselves has all the keys, where’s the source of his all-knowing, and is it only a matter of pure art, a writer’s convention that we must easily accept and pay so much attention? Maybe ignoring this strangeness means we really underestimate the troubling greatness of “The Devils”, its many layers and ruinous conflict that lies at the core of all its confusion.