Brothers Karamazov Reflection (December)

The Brothers Karamazov (which I will continue to refer to as BK for the sake of convenience) has been a great read so far. I’m only about halfway in, but I’ve enjoyed it so far. 

There is an element of this book that differentiates it from perhaps all other books I’ve read: it was serially published by Dostoyevsky, which I haven’t seen in any other media other than comics/manga. BK also is very context-laden: with small footnotes scattered all across the text referring to passages in the Bible, poems, plays, other works of literature, and translation notes. There is a staggering variety of characters from different backgrounds and different places where the story goes. In fact, while BK is really known as a novel about a murder and a trial, halfway through the book, I haven’t gotten to that part of the story at all. The story primarily follows the members of the Karamazov family, the loathsome father Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the passionate and hot-headed Dmitri Karamazov, the cold, intellectual Ivan Karamazov, and the kind, perceptive Alexei Karamazov, the protagonist of the story. 

So far, I have gotten the most out of Alexei’s internal struggles concerning religion and the elements of Russian history explored in BK. Alexei, a religious and perceptive individual, is challenged ideologically throughout the novel. He talks with Ivan, his learned and atheist brother, about the idea of an all-powerful and all-loving God. Ivan provides strong arguments against theodicy particularly in 2.54 and 2.55 of BK. He argues that paradise and belief are irreconcilable with the suffering that children face and is simply not satisfied by the fact that the actions of God are beyond human comprehension. Alexei, despite his religious faith, agrees with Ivan that he could not torture a small child for the sake of the salvation of all humanity, yet Jesus Christ, the one who would forgive humanity’s sins exists. Ivan then proceeds to tell a poem called “The Grand Inquisitor” that follows Jesus’ imprisonment in Spain during the inquisition. Ivan in this poem proceeds to address the aspects of human nature that make God’s granting humanity freedom immoral. Humans need clear goals and objectives to function, and depriving them of certainty hurts them in the end because they are imperfect, base creatures. Ivan tells of man shunning religion because of their adoption of science and logic, because man is given such a burden as freedom of choice, which ultimately confuses and torments those that bear it. I ultimately agree with the arguments Ivan makes not only from a scientific perspective, but also on the grounds of the justification of theodicy. I believe like Ivan, the price is too high for salvation, that is, the sacrifice of the innocent. Later on, Alexei also struggles with the putrefaction of the carcass of Zosima, an elder his church and his idol, and being brutally attacked by a child who has reason to hold a grudge against Dmitri, his brother. 

The idea of the “Karamazov nature” comes up repeatedly in BK, or what I take more generally to be human baseness. Dmitri, Ivan, and Fyodor suffer from this throughout the novel, yet Alexei exhibits the willpower and grandness of spirit to subvert reader expectations. 

There were also some elements of BK that reveal certain things about Dostoyevsky himself. Smerdyakov, one of the servants of Fyodor, is epileptic (or suffers from the “falling sickness,” as Dostoyevsky refers to it), which Dostoyevsky also suffered from, and Alexei was named after Dostoyevsky’s child who died early in infancy. 

I will continue reading this book and let you know my thoughts at a later date. Like a lot of Russian novels (Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky’s other books like Crime and Punishment,) BK is a hefty read.