At the end of the book, the dying Stepan Trofimovich explains to a devout peasant woman the meaning of Luke 8:32-36 from the Bible, which gives the book its title.

Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, aluminium columns – all this is fit perhaps for sparrows but not for human society. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed.and Karmazinov, after exchanging insults with the audience, finally closes with an ironic " Merci, merci, merci. In the following years he published his most enduring and successful books, including Crime and Punishment (1865). Rather Pyotr Stepanovich is trying to involve Stavrogin in some radical political plans of his own, and is avidly seeking to be of use to him.

The torture only comes to an end when an exhausted listener inadvertently cries out "Lord, what rubbish! Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is a refined and high-minded intellectual who unintentionally contributes to the development of nihilistic forces, centering on his son Pyotr Stepanovich and former pupil Nikolai Stavrogin, that ultimately bring local society to the brink of collapse. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is residing with the wealthy landowner Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina at her estate, Skvoreshniki, in a provincial Russian town. That night the emissary from the revolutionary group—Erkel—arrives to escort Shatov to the isolated part of Skvoreshniki where the printing press is buried. Stavrogin calmly replies that Marya (née Lebyadkina) is indeed his wife, and that he will make sure the Captain causes her no further trouble.After his release he adopted more conservative and traditional values and rejected his previous socialist position. He invites Kirillov, and subsequently Shatov, to a meeting of the local branch of the society to be held later that day.

At the fire he is knocked unconscious by a falling beam, and although he later recovers consciousness, he does not recover his sanity, and his career as governor comes to an end.Conversely, Kirillov was convinced by Stavrogin's exhortation of atheism—the supremacy of Man's will, not God's—and forges a plan to sacrifice himself to free humanity from its bondage to mystical fear. For Dostoevsky, 'ideas' are living cultural forces that have the capacity to seduce and subordinate the individual consciousness, and the individual who has become alienated from his own concrete national traditions is particularly susceptible. Likewise, if Tsarist Russia had not been such a backward, intellectually intolerant, priest-ridden, anti-Semitic hellhole, the likes of Lenin would not have a According to Praskovya, Varvara Petrovna's young protégée Darya Pavlovna (Dasha), has also somehow become involved with Nikolai Vsevolodovich, but the details are ambiguous.

When he perceives that he has been unjust or irresponsible in relation to her, he is overcome with shame to the point of physical illness. Pyotr Stepanovich is enamored of Stavrogin, and he tries desperately, through a combination of ensnarement and persuasion, to recruit him to the cause. He launches into an incoherent monologue, alternately passionately persuasive and grovelingly submissive, desperately pleading with Stavrogin to join his cause. Varvara Petrovna questions Dasha about a large sum of money that Nikolai Vsevolodovich supposedly sent through her to Marya's brother, but in spite of her straightforward answers matters don't become any clearer.But Stavrogin himself does not even believe in his own atheism, and as Shatov and Tikhon recognize, drives himself further into evil out of a desire to torture himself and avoid the truth. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia-a novel that is rivaled only by The Brothers Karamazov as Dostoevsky’s greatest. Dostoevsky wrote to Maykov that the chief theme of his novel was "the very one over which, consciously and unconsciously, I have been tormented all my life: it is the existence of God. But attention is immediately diverted to a new drama: Stavrogin has entered the room, and he is accosted by Liza.