Nekhludoff's spiritual awakening

Nekhludoff's spiritual awakening is the decisive inner revolution of the novel, a night-long crisis in a Siberian hotel room that transforms a tormented, guilt-ridden aristocrat into a man resolved to live by the practical commandments of the Gospel. Exhausted by the day's horrors—Kryltzoff's corpse in the prison mortuary, the stench of overcrowded cells, the defiant old man who called the officials servants of Antichrist—Nekhludoff paces his room, unable to sleep. The question that has haunted him for months returns with renewed force: is he mad, or are those who calmly inflict such suffering mad? He sits down by the lamp and mechanically opens the New Testament the English traveller had given him as a souvenir, which he had thrown on the table when emptying his pockets.

The Reading of the Gospel

He begins with Matthew 18, where the disciples ask who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ sets a little child before them and says, "Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Nekhludoff remembers that he had known peace and joy only when he had humbled himself. He reads on: the parable of the lost sheep, which declares that it is not the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish. "Yes, it is not the will of the Father that they should perish, and here they are perishing by hundreds and thousands," he thinks, and there seems no possibility of saving them. Then comes Peter's question: "How oft shall my brother offend me and I forgive him? Until seven times?" Jesus answers: "I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven." The parable of the unmerciful servant follows: a king forgives his servant a debt of ten thousand talents, but that servant immediately casts a fellow-servant into prison for a debt of a hundred pence. The king rebukes him: "Shouldst not thou also have mercy on thy fellow-servant, as I had mercy on thee?"

The Revelation of the Five Commandments

"And is this all?" Nekhludoff suddenly exclaims aloud, and the inner voice of his whole being answers, "Yes, it is all." The thought that had seemed strange, paradoxical, or even a joke now appears as the simplest, truest certainty. The only certain means of salvation from the terrible evil men suffer is that they should always acknowledge themselves to be sinning against God, and therefore unable to punish or correct others. All the dreadful evil he has witnessed—the prisons, the jails, the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators—flows from men trying to do what is impossible: correcting evil while being evil themselves. He now sees clearly that the answer Christ gave to Peter is the solution: forgive always, an infinite number of times, because no man has not sinned himself, and therefore none can punish or correct others. He turns to the Sermon on the Mount and for the first time reads it not as beautiful abstract thoughts but as simple, clear, practical laws. He finds five of them: the first, that man shall not only do no murder but not even be angry with his brother; the second, that man shall not only not commit adultery but not even seek enjoyment in a woman's beauty, and if he has once come together with a woman he shall never be faithless to her; the third, that man shall never bind himself by oath; the fourth, that man shall not only not demand an eye for an eye but shall turn the other cheek and never refuse service; the fifth, that man shall not only not hate his enemy but love him, help him, serve him.

The Parable of the Vineyard and the Meaning of Life

These laws, if carried out in practice, would establish perfectly new conditions of social life in which the violence that fills him with indignation would cease of itself. The greatest blessing obtainable to men—the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth—would be established. The parable of the vineyard confirms this: the husbandmen imagined the vineyard was their own and that their business was to enjoy it, forgetting the Master and killing those who reminded them of His existence. "Are we not doing the same?" Nekhludoff thinks. "We were sent here by some one's will and for some reason. And we have concluded that we live only for our own joy, and of course we feel unhappy." The Master's will is expressed in these commandments. "Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

The New Life Begins

He sits staring at the lamp, his heart still. Recalling the monstrous confusion of the life he has led, he distinctly sees what that life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules. Rapture such as he has long not felt fills his soul, as if after long days of weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom. He does not sleep all night, imbibing the words like a sponge. Everything he reads seems to confirm and form into a conception what he had known long ago but had never realized or quite believed. Now he realizes and believes it: the only duty of every man is to fulfil these laws; in this lies the only reasonable meaning of life; every stepping aside from these laws is a mistake that is immediately followed by retribution. "And so here it is, the business of my life. Scarcely have I finished one and another has commenced." A perfectly new life dawns that night for Nekhludoff—not because he enters new conditions of life, but because everything he does after that night has a new and quite different significance. How this new period will end, time alone will prove.