How?

I can’t speak for the OP, nor can I express how D. changed my life.

Perhaps D. is the exact opposite of a self-help book at the airport. It’s hard to read and emotionally devastating. You go into the depths of human depravity. Sin is real. Modernity is fraught with contradictions, with danger. Modernity offers mechanical band aids for what are sicknesses of our souls. For Doestoyevsky the greatest man is Christ but he is what we would consider an Idiot.

In the end you are offered catharsis. accept it and you are changed.

I like they way he challenges himself and his beliefs. If he presents a character with a contrary position, he doesn’t cheat. He makes them powerful, compelling, articulate characters and presents their arguments in the best light. He’s incredibly tough on himself and his protagonists or sympathetic characters.

For me, his writing helped me understand human nature better such that I see people less as slowly clawing their way up a mountain towards being a better person and instead to view people more like a Jekyll and Hyde struggling between two extremes of good and evil.

I'm off to celebrate Christmas with family but I don't think you can be honest with yourself about who you are unless you appreciate the depths of human depravity, with that understanding you can build a truer foundation for your personal convictions about life.