Would Reading Dostoevsky Change Someone’s Mind?

I have a WhatsApp group of literary friends where conversations often travel through novels, poetry, philosophy, writers and the strange complexities of human nature. Interestingly, whenever our discussions become deeper—when we speak about suffering, morality, guilt, freedom, faith or the contradictions within human beings—one name appears again and again: Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

Some admire him passionately, some question his darkness, and others compare his ideas with modern psychology and philosophy. This article, therefore, is partly a reflection of those conversations and debates. They have repeatedly made me wonder: Would reading Dostoevsky actually change someone’s mind?

My curiosity grew further after watching several discussions on YouTube in which Dr. Jordan Peterson speaks about Dostoevsky and his extraordinary understanding of suffering, responsibility, morality and human psychology. What fascinates me is how Dostoevsky transforms suffering into something more than sadness. 

For him, suffering becomes a window through which we observe pride, conscience, faith, resentment, love and the desperate human search for meaning.

Reading Dostoevsky, therefore, is not simply reading literature. It sometimes feels like entering a courtroom where the accused, prosecutor, witness and judge are all voices inside the same human mind.

His major works constitute an extraordinary journey through that mind: Poor Folk, The Double, The Village of Stepanchikovo, Humiliated and Insulted, The House of the Dead, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, The Eternal Husband, Demons—also translated as The Devils or The Possessed—The Adolescent and The Brothers Karamazov. 

His shorter works include such memorable titles as White Nights, A Gentle Creature, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and The Crocodile. Different stories, different characters, yet behind them stands almost the same enormous question: What does it really mean to be human?

Crime and Punishment examines crime, conscience and whether an intellectual theory can place someone above ordinary morality. 

The Brothers Karamazov takes us through faith, doubt, family, responsibility and the existence of evil. 

The Idiot places goodness and innocence inside an imperfect society. Demons explores ideology and what can happen when ideas begin possessing people rather than people possessing ideas. The Gambler exposes obsession and weakness, while White Nights captures loneliness, imagination and unfulfilled affection with remarkable tenderness.

But Notes from Underground, which is my favorite, occupies a special place in my understanding of Dostoevsky. I watched a dramatic stage interpretation on YouTube starring Larry Cendar as the Underground Man. The simplicity of the performance fascinated me: a man onstage speaking, remembering, questioning, contradicting and almost arguing with himself. It made me realise that Dostoevsky did not need a battlefield to create conflict. The battlefield was already inside the human mind.

The Underground Man is uncomfortable because we may occasionally recognise fragments of ourselves in him: pride mixed with insecurity, intelligence mixed with self-destruction, the desire to be understood combined with the impulse to reject those who might understand us. 

His underground, therefore, is not merely a location. It is a metaphor for those hidden rooms of consciousness where resentment, loneliness, humiliation and wounded pride survive.

This may explain why people’s opinions about Dostoevsky remain so strong. Some regard him as one of history’s greatest psychological novelists. Others find him dark, exhausting or excessively concerned with suffering. Both reactions are understandable. Dostoevsky rarely allows us to remain comfortable observers. He pulls the reader into the argument.

Raskolnikov makes us question crime and justification. Prince Myshkin makes us reconsider innocence. Ivan Karamazov challenges comfortable answers about faith and suffering. The Underground Man attacks our confidence in rational behaviour. Dostoevsky’s characters do not merely ask, “What do you believe?” They seem to ask something more dangerous: “Would you still believe it if you had to live through its consequences?”

Perhaps this is why Dostoevsky continues appearing in literary WhatsApp conversations, university discussions, philosophical debates and modern YouTube lectures. He died in 1881, yet the psychological problems he examined have not disappeared. Human beings still struggle with jealousy, humiliation, inequality, faith, loneliness, ambition, guilt and the desire for recognition.

So, would reading Dostoevsky change someone’s mind? Perhaps not by converting one opinion into another. Dostoevsky does something more profound: he makes certainty uncomfortable. After reading him, it becomes harder to divide humanity neatly into good and bad, strong and weak, rational and irrational.

Perhaps great literature does not change our minds by providing new answers. It changes us by making our old answers inadequate.

We close Dostoevsky’s book, but somehow Dostoevsky does not close the conversation with us.