Lessons from Pushkin by Jemima

Lessons from Pushkin by Jemima - June 2022 Scholarship Essay

While reading “The Idiot,” a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the character Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin struck me the most. Myshkin was the protagonist who descended from an ancient noble line. He spent four years in a Switz sanitarium to cure his “idiocracy” and epilepsy before his return to Russia. Mushkin was compassionate, and while his compassion seemed socially commendable, it led to the ruin of himself and the people he showed compassion. The important lesson I learnt from Myshkin’s character is being rational in my decision making process, regardless of my emotional investment.

Myshkin was undoubtedly a good man surrounded by selfish people. He was sensible and wished to do good for all the people he met. In today’s emotional literacy terms, one would say he always made deposits in the emotional bank accounts of the people he interacted with. While this is commendable, there were times when it was necessary for Myshkin to assess situations and make decisions without an emotional bias. His failure to do so contributed to death and misfortune befalling the people he loved. It also caused him despair and he ended up back in a sanitarium. This is when I learnt that when depositing into the emotional bank account is good, the value is lost when the account is under attack by hackers.

This lesson was important to me because when I grew up, I was shielded from the evils of the world like most children are. When I entered the real world, Myshkin’s story reminded me to be rational in my decisions.