! And now we go hand in hand. . . . Hurrah for Karamazov! (940).
Alyosha is certainly at the heart of the novel if we accept the argument that the book is above all meant to be a spiritual journey. Alyosha is a Christian, an idealist, an innocent whose innocence and faith are sorely threatened and tested by the corruption he sees everywhere around him. He is tempted to doubt again and again but his faith ultimately prevails, and that is the final affirmative step which the author takes through the character of Alyosha, asking the reader to join: "Well, let us go! And now we go hand in hand" (940).
The reader's compassion is certainly tested by Dostoyevsky's gritty portrayals of these many deeply flawed and corrupt characters in and out of the Karamazov family. They are hardly all likable people, but the reader with any sense of compassion or pity will find perhaps at least some inclination to fondness for every member of this profoundly dysfunctional family. And that is what Dostoyevsky is finally after in this spiritual novel. His spirituality is not a dogmatic or abstract religion, but one in which all humanity, with its countless tragic flaws, is embraced without reservation. The spiritual nature and intention of the book is most clearly and simply expressed in the address of Alyosha to "the boys." The boys, along with the reader, are given the suggestion that spirituality leads us to love those whom we once despised:
And whatever happens to use later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones . . . and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. . . . If we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune---still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are (938).
There are numerous deaths in the ...