I’m back to reading Dostoyevsky. After piss farting around with other novels, I felt compelled to go back to the big ones. I needed another “War and Peace” experience where I had to have a book that I scribbled in, took notes, lived in.

I checked my shelves. Brothers Karamazov? Crime and Punishment? I didn’t know except that it had to be by a Russian author.

I decided on The House of the Dead, a semi autobiographical account of the years Dostoyevsky spent in a Siberian prison. I figured by his writing of the rabble of murderers, vagabonds, thieves and smugglers would set me up to understand more about how humans are treated when denied their freedom.

While reading about the different characters, I have to stop myself from having an idealistic view of them. Or some kind of comical, humour emotion. Of course some of the characters seem that way as he writes them but at the same time, the environment and the conditions are hard – and not forgetting that these men have all committed crimes. It’s no laughing matter.

Reading the book reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Both situations, one a prison and the other a group of men on an island doing meaningless and pointless tasks made me think of the similarities between prison and the military.

Dostoyevsky talks about forced labour and then forced co-existence in the early chapters of the book which is what made me think about Catch-22. The fact that people from all walks of life come together and forced ro live together stripped of freedoms – and then how they behave with each other and the pecking order that prevails.

However a quick look on Google reveals that there’s no one who has made this connection out there. I thought there’d be at least some English Literature PhD student – or even a Psychology student – who has written some paper but no.

Personally, I think Dostoyevsky should be mandatory reading for anyone who has an interest in human psychology. The irony is not lost on me that he had this massive personal transformation in prison where he saw all humanity – the good and kind, the debauched and the evil – in front of his eyes and he changed his mind about people. The same could be said for George Orwell who lived among the down and out in London and Paris and then experienced a more human, empathetic approach to others.

Maybe that’s why I like them both as authors. They’ve accepted that there are all kinds of people who have their own reasons for their life situation and it’s not up to them to judge. Instead, they do what they can to bring these stories to light so that we can at least hold a mirror up to our selves and reflect on our own judgements and assumptions of people who are different from us in the hope that we can at least empathise.

Also out of situations that are deemed brutal and hellish, acts of kindness and love can be found such as how they share their bread equally, the unconditional love of their dogs and the kind hearted outsiders – peasants themselves – who give what they can to make the convicts life a little more bearable.

I’m only half way through The House of the Dead and I’m loving it. It’s making me think long and hard.

A convict knows he’s a convict, an outcast… but no branding and no shackles can make him forget that he’s a human being. And since he really is a human being, it follows that he has to be treated humanely. God knows, humane treatment can humanize even one in whom the image of God has long been obscured… This is their salvation and their joy (116).

Although I must admit that at times I struggle with this quote, especially this week when we heard about the most heinous pedophile caught after 15 years of molesting 91 victims with 1623 offences – in childcare centres in Australia. If Australia had the death penalty, he would have been first in line for it. And I would have been ok with that.