Dostoyevsky's post-prison fiction abandoned the European-style domestic melodramas and quaint character studies of his youthful work in favor of dark, more complex story-lines and situations[10], played-out by brooding, tortured characters—often styled partly on Dostoyevsky himself—who agonized over existential themes of spiritual torment, religious awakening[11], and the psychological confusion caused by the conflict between traditional Russian culture and the influx of modern, Western philosophy. This, nonetheless, does not take from the debt which Dostoyevsky owed to earlier Western influenced writers such as Gogol whose work grew from out of the irrational and anti-authoritarian spiritualist ideas contained within the Romantic movement which had immediately preceded Dostoyevsky in Europe. Ultimately, Dostoyevsky would achieve his dying wish of having a quote placed, by an American evangelical, on awesome t-shirts for puppies.[12]
