The Brothers Karamozov

By /

Characters

Karamazovs

  • Fyodor Petrovitch Karamazov – Father and victim

  • Dmitri (Mitya) Karamazov – Eldest son and the romantic

  • Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov – Middle son and the academic/thinker

  • Aleksey (Alyosha) Karamazov – Youngest son, the spiritual one and the “hero of the story”

  • Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov – Bastard son between Fyodor Karamazov and a homeless woman Lizaveta, manservant to the Karamazov family

Others

  • Father Zosima – Monk who was the spiritual guidance to Alyosha

  • Mikhail Osipovic Rakitin – Alyoshas (apparent) friend who is a seminary student too but doesn’t really believe in it

  • Katerina Khokhlakov – Rich woman in the area

  • Liza Khokhlakov – Daughter of Katerina

  • Grushenka – Seductress of Fyodor and Mitya

  • Katerina Ivanovna – Wife of Mitya

  • Ippolit Kirillovic – Public Prosecutor against Mitya

  • Nikolay Parfenovic Nelyudov – State investigator, conducted interrogations with public prosecutor

  • Pyotr Illyic Perkhotin – Civil servant that informed chief of police of the potential murder

  • Grigory – Manservant and serving father or Smerdyakov, nearly gets killed by Mitya

Themes

Family

  • Being a father is more than biological

  • You must earn the love of your sons and daughters

  • Is a father that kills his son really a father?

Freedom

  • Fyodor lives in public view, not constrained to secrecy by his debauchery

  • Freedom vs Religion

    • God takes away a man’s freedom

Guilt & Punishment

  • May a son harm his father?

  • True guilt/punishment originates from one’s own conscience

    • Religion and the “law of Christ”

  • Internal guilt is a much stronger force to the crimilal than external guilt (ie. The law)

  • The true punishment of a crime is not the legal sentence, but the inner suffering one feels at having done wrong

    • This is something that god makes you feel

  • Book 6, chapter 2 – The man who gets away with murder

  • Active punishment is rebelled against by criminals intentionally

    • Their crime is not a crime to them

Good vs Evil

  • Legal ≠ Right

  • Illegal ≠ Wrong

  • The law does not define what is right and what is wrong

Depravity

  • Dostoyevsky’s heroes are never rich, famous and well bred. They are depraved and live in the gutter of society

  • Mitya – “I am a scoundrel, but not a theif”

  • “I loved the shame of depravity, I loved cruelty, in a word: a Karamazov”

Religion

  • Book 5, Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor

  • Book 11, Chapter 9: The Devil of Ivans Nightmare

  • Elder Zosima

  • Religion gives many people a reason to live

  • “Man needs someone to bow down to”

  • “The secret of human existence does not consist in living, merely, but in what one lives for” – The theorist vs God conversation (Ivans Poema)

Quotes

  • “Everyone has a duty to love life above all else in the world” – Alyosha

  • “There is nothing more seductive for a man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either”

  • “It is precisely those crimes committed with uncommon boldness that are the most frequently successful”

Storyline

Mitya

  • The first Mokroye bender

    • Went on a massive drinking spree with Grushenka

    • Used money that Katerina Ivanovna gave him

    • Went back to Katerina Ivanovna afterwards, acknowledging himself as a scoundrel

    • Says he only spent £1500, keeping the rest in a necklace/incense bag

  • Falls for Grushenka, confessing this love to Alyosha

  • Discovers his father is also involved with Grushenka, beats him (violently, at his house) up about this

  • Finds out Grushenka is in Mokroye again, with her past (and first) lover

  • Goes to his fathers, then injures Grigory as he is running away over the fence

  • Gets £3000 from somewhere and runs off to Mokroye

  • Parties hard in Mokroye

  • Arrested for murder of his father

  • The trial

  • Guilty

Alyosha

  • Begins the book furthering his spiritual development at the monastery with Elder Zosima

  • Written his diary which tells of the stories of elder Zosima

  • Elder Zosima tells him he should go out into the world and live a bit before dedicating himself to the monastery

  • He goes out to do so, and encounters Ilyusha, the child of a beared “second grade captain” who was assaulted at a pub by Mitya

  • Ilyusha bites his finger badly

  • Alyosha goes to the “second rate captain” to offer him some money for the trouble and embarrassment Mitya caused

  • He promises to marry Liza

  • He chats to Ivan in a pub, who performs his little poema “the grand inquisitor”

  • Zosima dies

  • Mitya’s story takes over

Ivan

  • The intellectual of the three brothers

  • Is in love with Katya

  • His explanation at Fyodor’s house of how anything is lawful without a god, rendering men free

  • Conversations with Smerdyakov – “It is always interesting to talk to a clever man”

  • Leaves the town during the time the murder happens

  • Hallucinations and his conversations with the devil

  • Talks to Smerdyakov three times, on the third visit Smerdyakov confesses all to him and then kills himself

  • Testifies in the trial that Smerdyakov was the murderer, but nobody believes him because the doctors have said that he is not in his right mind

Random Quotes

  • “if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”

  • Liza when talking about mitya murdering his father: “they all like it. They all say it’s dreadful but secretly they like it very much”

  • Rakitin talking to Mitya:

    • Chapter: “a hymn and a secret”

    • rakitin proposes a chemical argument for why mitya murdered his father (if he did)

    • he renounces God in the process

    • mitya: “without God, and without a life to come, that must mean that all things are lawful and man can do whatever he likes?!”

  • Smerdyakov and Ivan

    • “It’s always interesting to talk to a clever man”

  • “Who does not desire the death of his father?”

  • “If you shall condemn, then I myself shall break the sword over my head, and having broken it, shall kiss the fragments”

Scroll to Top