One of the major themes in world literature is the conflict between society and the individual, with society poised to enforce its requirements and its proscriptions on individuals to enforce conformity, while the individual feels constrained and would break out to a life of greater self-expression if he or she could. Different writers have portrayed this conflict in different ways, and those who have offered solutions to this conflict have also offered varying answers. This theme is depicted in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, and both writers create a clear-cut choice in the situation without "solving" the problem. Ibsen hints that the proper answer for society would be to encourage the individual and that to do otherwise will in the long run be a detriment to society itself, while Dostoyevsky leaves the choice to the reader as a moral dilemma, though in truth there is an answer implied by the author in the very fact that he asks the question.
The story of the Grand Inquisitor is a parable of the authoritarian nature of the Church and its centrality to the social order. It is the story of the return of Christ to earth during the Inquisition, and he is arrested and taken to the Grand Inquisitor. What emerges in the dialogue between the two is a distinction between the teachings of Christ and the reality of the Church. Christ had wanted freedom for mankind, but the Church does not. The Church, in the person of the Grand Inquisitor, claims to have corrected Christ's "errors" by seeing to it that mankind is spared the horrors of free choice. The Church says that humanity only yearns for someone to worship, and Christ had taken this from mankind by giving it free will. The Church says that mankind does not want freedom of choice in terms of good and evil but rather wants these choices made for it. The Church displays its compassion by directing the actions of men and by giving mankind a...