inevitable fate

I've read Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. It came across to me that in both novels, the characters (Rodion, Myshkin, Nastasya, etc) are doomed from the very beginning to an inevitable fate, and you know it all along. You know, aided by foreshadows, what their actions, natural inclinations, circumstances and environment, will lead up to: the end is inescapable. And when I got to the end, I found myself saying, "It had to be so. It was the only way." But nevertheless, before I actually reach the end, I still hoped that it wouldn't be so, not unlike how they characters themselves would have hoped. I think this one reason why Dostoevsky's work are so powerful: it really draws you in to the characters' psyche, and makes you hope their hopeless hopes.

Some people call that a weakness. I know at least one critic said he disliked Crime and Punishment because he said the outcome was too predictable.

Regardless, I think that's a minor point against Dostoevsky. He has a way of getting you to the end of the book and caring about the characters the whole way through, and that's something special.