SOURCE: Jackson, Robert L. “Dostoevsky and Freedom.” New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1995): 1-21.

In the following essay, Jackson examines Dostoevsky's Notes From a Dead House, his account of imprisonment in Siberia, suggesting that although the novel ostensibly addresses the inhumanity of a physical prison, it also imagines Russia itself as a prison.

There is a breathtaking moment in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol when the Spirit of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come points to Scrooge's own grave stone. Scrooge anxiously asks: “Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” The Ghost answers by pointing downward to the grave by which it stood.” Scrooge then exclaims, in what is one of the two philosophically most weighty lines of the story: “Men's courses...