Dostoevsky relies on a fairly traditional device for the telling of his story: an unnamed and unidentified narrator (a townsman who relates what he sees and hears, much of which is what "everyone is saying," but who also knows and speaks with several characters) who tells of "the recent and strange incidents in our town" in a retrospective manner. The strategy works well, especially in its way of summarizing events and the behavior of characters at the opening of the plot.

The tone of the novel is imposed slowly and deliberately, as the narrator speaks calmly of the background of the Stavrogins, Stepan, and their strange relationships (the narrator is not averse to making convenient, for the author, judgments of characters; he speaks of the "friendship" of Varvara and Stepan in terms of peculiarity: "There are strange friendships. The two friends are always ready to fly at one...