The Brothers Karamazov (‹See Tfd›Russian: Бра́тья Карама́зовы, Brát’ya Karamázovy, pronounced [ˈbratʲjə kərɐˈmazəvɨ]), also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the last novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Dostoevsky died less than four months after its publication. It has been acclaimed as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.
Set in 19th-century Russia, The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that discusses questions of God, free will, and morality. It has also been described as a theological drama dealing with problems of faith, doubt, and reason in the context of a modernizing Russia, with a plot that revolves around the subject of patricide. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which inspired the main setting.
Background
Although Dostoevsky began his first notes for The Brothers Karamazov in April 1878, the novel incorporated elements and themes from an earlier unfinished project he had begun in 1869 entitled The Life of a Great Sinner. Another unfinished project, Drama in Tobolsk (Драма. В Тобольске), is considered to be the first draft of the first chapter of The Brothers Karamazov. Dated 13 September 1874, it tells of a fictional murder in Staraya Russa committed by a praporshchik named Dmitry Ilynskov (based on a real soldier from Omsk), who is thought to have murdered his father. It goes on to note that the father’s body was suddenly discovered in a pit under a house. The similarly unfinished Sorokoviny (Сороковины), dated 1 August 1875, is reflected in book IX, chapter 3–5 and book XI, chapter nine.
In the October 1877 Writer’s Diary article «To the Reader», Dostoevsky mentions a «literary work that has imperceptibly and involuntarily been taking shape within me over these two years of publishing the Diary.» The Diary covered a multitude of themes and issues, some of which would be explored in greater depth in The Brothers Karamazov. These include patricide, law and order, and a variety of social problems.
The writing of The Brothers Karamazov was altered by a personal tragedy: in May 1878, Dostoevsky’s 3-year-old son Alyosha died of epilepsy, a condition inherited from his father. The novelist’s grief is apparent throughout the book. Dostoevsky named the hero Alyosha, as well as imbuing him with qualities that he sought and most admired. His loss is also reflected in the story of Captain Snegiryov and his young son Ilyusha.
The death of his son brought Dostoevsky to the Optina Monastery later that year. There he found inspiration for several aspects of The Brothers Karamazov, though at the time he intended to write a novel about childhood instead. Parts of the biographical section of Zosima’s life are based on «The Life of the Elder Leonid», a text he found at Optina.
Major characters Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov
Fyodor Pavlovich, a 55-year-old sensualist and compulsive liar, is the father of three sons—Dmitri, Ivan and Alexei—from two marriages. He is rumored to have also fathered an illegitimate son, Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov, whom he employs as his servant. Fyodor Pavlovich takes no interest in any of his sons at their birth, who are, as a result, raised apart from each other and their father. The relationship between Fyodor and his adult sons drives much of the plot in the novel. Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov
Dmitri Fyodorovich (often referred to as Mitya) is Fyodor Karamazov’s eldest son and the only offspring of his first marriage, with Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov. Dmitri is considered to be a sensualist, like his father, and regularly indulges in alcoholism and carousing. Dmitri is brought into contact with his family when he finds himself in need of his inheritance, which he believes is being withheld by his father. He was engaged to be married to Katerina Ivanovna, but breaks that off after falling in love with Grushenka. Dmitri’s relationship with his father is the most volatile of the brothers, escalating to violence as he and his father begin fighting over his inheritance and Grushenka. While he maintains a relationship with Ivan, he is closest to his younger brother Alyosha, referring to him as his «cherub».
The character of Dmitri was initially inspired by a convict, D.I. Ilyinsky, whom Dostoevsky met while in prison in Siberia. Ilyinsky, who is described in Dostoevsky’s memoir-novel Notes from the House of the Dead as «always in the liveliest, merriest spirits», was in prison for murdering his father in order to obtain his inheritance, although he always steadfastly maintained his innocence. He was later freed after another man confessed to the crime.
Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov
Ivan Fyodorovich (sometimes also referred to as Vanya) is the 24-year-old middle son, and the first from Fyodor Pavlovich’s second marriage. Ivan is reserved and aloof, but also intellectually brilliant. His dictum «if there is no God, everything is lawful» is a recurring motif in the novel. At first, Ivan seems not to have much time for his brother Alyosha, but later their bond and mutual affection deepens. He finds his father repulsive, and also has a strong antipathy towards Dmitri. Fyodor Pavlovich tells Alyosha that he fears Ivan more than he fears Dmitri. Ivan falls in love with Katerina Ivanovna, but their intimacy develops in the shadow of her prior connection to Dmitri, and her ambivalence is a source of torment to him.
Some of the most acclaimed passages of the novel involve Ivan, including the chapters «Rebellion» and «The Grand Inquisitor» from Book V, and the three conversations with Smerdyakov and the subsequent chapter «Ivan’s nightmare of the devil» in Book XI. Book V, entitled «Pro and Contra», is primarily about «the inner debate taking place in Ivan between his recognition of the moral sublimity of the Christian ideal and his outrage against a universe of pain and suffering.» Ivan’s rejection of God is posited in terms of the Christian value of compassion—the value that Dostoevsky himself (through the character of Prince Myshkin in The Idiot) called «the chief and perhaps the only law of all human existence.» Thus Ivan’s rejection of God is justified by the very principle at the heart of Christianity. For Ivan the absurdity of all human history is proven by the senselessness of the suffering of children: if reason or rationality is the measure, God’s world cannot be accepted. All the examples Ivan gives of horrors perpetrated against children were taken by Dostoevsky from actual newspaper accounts and historical sources.
Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov
Alexei Fyodorovich (often referred to as Alyosha) is, at age 20, the youngest of the brothers. He is the second child of Fyodor Pavlovich’s second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, and is thus Ivan’s full brother. The narrator identifies him as the hero of the novel in the opening chapter, as does the author in the preface. At the outset of the events, Alyosha is a novice in the local Russian Orthodox monastery. His faith is in contrast to his brother Ivan’s atheism. The Elder, Father Zosima, who is a father figure and spiritual guide to Alyosha throughout the book, sends him into the world, where he becomes involved with the extreme personalities and fraught relationships in his family and elsewhere. At all times he acts as a compassionate and insightful peace maker, and is loved by virtually everyone.
In creating the character of Alyosha, Dostoevsky was in large part addressing himself to the contemporary Russian radical youth, as a positive alternative to the atheistic approach to justice and attainment of the good. Alyosha embodies the same aspiration to a society governed by goodness and compassion that is contained in the Socialist ideal, but not divorced from faith in God, from faith in the immortality of the soul in God, or from the Orthodox Christian tradition in Russia.
Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov
Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov is the son of «Reeking Lizaveta», a mute woman of the street who died alone giving birth to the child in Fyodor Pavlovich’s bathhouse: the name «Smerdyakov» means «son of the reeking one». He is rumored to be the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich. He was brought up by Fyodor Pavlovich’s trusted servant Grigory Vasilievich and his wife Marfa. Grigory tutored him and attempted to give him religious instruction, but Smerdyakov responded with ingratitude and derision. On one occasion Grigory had struck him violently across the face: a week later Smerdyakov had his first epileptic seizure. The narrator notes that as a child, Smerdyakov was fond of hanging cats and giving them ritualistic burials. Grigory told him: «You’re not human. You’re the spawn of the mildew on the bathhouse wall, that’s who you are»—a remark for which Smerdyakov never forgave him. Smerdyakov becomes part of the Karamazov household as a servant, working as Fyodor Pavlovich’s lackey and cook. Generally contemptuous of others, Smerdyakov greatly admires Ivan and shares his atheism and is largely influenced by Ivan’s philosophy that «everything is lawful». Despite his evident shrewdness, other characters—particularly Ivan, Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich—underestimate and criticize his intelligence likening him to a pseudo-intellectual.
Agrafena Alexandrovna Svetlova
Agrafena Alexandrovna Svetlova, usually referred to as ‘Grushenka’, is a beautiful and fiery 22-year-old woman with an uncanny charm for men. In her youth she was jilted by a Polish officer and subsequently came under the protection of a tyrannical miser. The episode leaves Grushenka with an urge for independence and control of her life. Grushenka inspires complete admiration and lust in both Fyodor and Dmitri Karamazov. Their rivalry for her affection becomes the main focus of their conflict, a state of affairs that Grushenka is happy to take advantage of for her own satisfaction and amusement. Belatedly, she realizes that she truly loves Dmitri, and becomes ashamed of her cruelty. Her growing
