Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov can certainly be read as a novel in the detective, ideological, or psychological genres, but it is as a spiritual novel that it can most comprehensively be understood. The book has its detective elements, to be sure, but the reader can be told that it is Smerdyakov who murdered old Karamazov, and that reader's enjoyment of the novel will not be much diminished, if at all. The book certainly qualifies as an ideological work as well, with such prominent battles over ideas as the Inquisitor's scene in which the cynic Ivan is pitted against the idealist Alyosha. And the novel is full of psychological conflict as the brothers, their father, and most other characters exhibit layers and layers of psychological conflict and detail. But it is finally as a spiritual novel that the secondary elements of these other genres are brought together and make sense. Dostoyevsky and the reader are off on a spiritual journey, a journey of rebirth, beginning with mention of the death of the father, and ending with the celebration of the resurrection and the joyous affirmation of life and Life Eternal by Alyosha.Dostoyevsky in the first paragraph of the book writes that Fyodor Karamazov was "a landowner well known in our district . . . and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death" (3). And on the last page of the book, after an incredible and arduous journey through the interwoven and often tragic lives of the members of this famil
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ery wrong in his conclusions about the human race and its capacity for freedom and love.
Dmitri takes after his father more than the other sons, leading a similarly impulsive and dissolute life, although there may be a bit more philosophical rationalization behind his pursuits than we find in the case of Fyodor the father.
The fourth and final son, Alyosha, is obsessed with God and with leading as pure and saintly a life as he can.
Again, Dostoyevsky is not concerned with creating a psychological study of various obsessions for the purposes of understanding obsessiveness, or even madness, and/or finding some beginning of a cure. Instead, he wants to show that any obsession which separates one from one's fellow human beings and from God will inevitably bring misery. The only "cure" for the various obsessions experienced by this family and others in the novel is an awakening to the "obsession" of the love for God and other human beings which dwells within.
This is not to say that Dostoyevsky believes everything will turn out well in a happy ending on the earthly plane. To the contrary, there clearly appears to be much more suffering in the book than happiness or peace. But we should take notice of the quotation from the Bible which
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3258
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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