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I gave up on this book awhile ago because I disliked every single character and didn't care to find out what happened to them. I'm thinking about going back to it now because I don't like unfinished books. Will someone tell me if any likable characters show up? I'm not very far in and will probably have to start over gah , but I need someone to like in this book.
Brendan Caulfield I think you're coming at it the wrong way. This isn't meant to be light reading; It's heavy-duty philosophy cloaked as a novel.
Each character is a per …more I think you're coming at it the wrong way. Each character is a personification of an argument that duke it out in various ways throughout the book. I found it to be one of the most pure insights into the human condition that I have ever read besides Dostoyevsky's other books You might appreciate it more if you approach it in that light. It also might not be what you're interested in which is fine too. How do you find the character of Pavel Fyodorovich, aka Smerdyakov, in contrast to Ivan?
Who among the two represents the 'intellectual' dimension? The character of Smerdyakov is somewhat portrayed as 'evil,' but what about his mind, or the way he posed his challenge to Ivan? Utkarsh Detha While it is true that Smerdyakov chose wrong means and lacked the virtues one is expected to have courage, honesty etc.
I think the reason behind this were the unjust norms of the society. Unlike Ivan, Smerdyakov the bastard had to live like a servant. He had no filial rights whatsoever. He wanted to pursue his own dreams but for that he had no support from anyone. Even though Fyodor Karamazov was the worst a father could be, his legitimate sons enjoyed certain privileges that Smerdyakov did not.
These privileges came with their name. This was the main reason as far as I could understand why Smerdyakov devoted his intellect to petty issues, like manipulating others etc to achieve what he wanted He dreamed of moving to France.
Ivan on the other hand could afford to spend his intellectual resources on 'lofty' issues like the existence of god, etc. Smerdyakov was nearly as capable as Ivan, if not more. He was just deprived of the luxuries to him, they were luxuries that the name Karamazov gave to Ivan. He was able to manipulate Ivan, implant ideas in the minds of everyone and most remarkably the Prosecutor's mind the Defense lawyer, Fetyukovich was able to see through his deception and considered him to be a very clever man.
This corroborates his superior intellect. See all 68 questions about The Brothers Karamazov…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Brothers Karamazov. If you like your books to move in a linear fashion this book is not for you.
It hops around and attention must be paid or you will find yourself flipping back a few pages to reestablish the thread of the story. I took this on a plane flight, crazy right? Not exactly the normal "light" reading I take on flights. It was a stroke of genius. I absolutely fell under the thrall of Dostoyevky's prose. Thank you to my fellow travelers who didn't feel the need to chat with the guy who obviously is s If you like your books to move in a linear fashion this book is not for you.
Thank you to my fellow travelers who didn't feel the need to chat with the guy who obviously is so frilling bored he has resorted to reading a Russian novel.
I zipped through three hundred pages like it was butter and found myself absolutely captivated by the evolving drama of the Brothers Karamazov, the women that drive them crazy, and the father that brings to mind the words justifiable homicide. I have to give a plug to these Everyman's Library editions.
A page novel that feels like a page novel. Despite the smaller size, the print size is still easily readable. I will certainly be picking up more of these editions especially the Russian novels that are translated by the magical duo of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Translators Volokhonsky and Pevear One of my complaints, when I was in college, and liked to torture myself with the largest most incomprehensible Russian books I could find, was that the nicknames and diminutives of various Russian names increased my frustration level and decreased my ability to comprehend the plots.
I certainly spent too much time scratching my head and reading feverishly to see if I could figure out from the interactions of the characters if Vanky was actually Ivan or Boris or Uncle Vashy. I did not have that issue with this book. Despite a plot that skipped around I did not experience the confusion that has marred my memories of other Russian novels. This is the story of the Karamazov family. The father Fyodor and his four sons.
There are three legitimate sons Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha, but I believe that Smerdyakov is also an illegitimate son, though not confirmed by the author given the tendencies of Fyodor to hop on anything in a skirt I would say chances are pretty good that the boy is a Karamazov. The recklessness at which Fyodor lived his life is really the basis of the plot. The motivations of the other characters all revolve around reactions to the careless and insensitive behavior of the father.
Dostoyevsky wrote a description of Fyodor that still gives me a shiver every time I read it. Besides the long, fleshy bags under his eternally insolent, suspicious, and leering little eyes, besides the multitude of deep wrinkles on his fat little face, a big Adam's apple, fleshy and oblong like a purse, hung below his sharp chin, giving him a sort of repulsively sensual appearance.
Add to that a long, carnivorous mouth with plump lips, behind which could be seen the little stumps of black, almost decayed teeth. He sprayed saliva whenever he spoke. Given the description above I can only speculate that gallons and gallons of good vodka must be in play to achieve this end.
His oldest son Dmitri is also in love with this young woman and as they both vie for her hand the tension between the Karamazov's ratchets up to dangerous levels. Dmitri while pursuing this dangerous siren throws over Katerina, a girl that he owes 3, rubles.
After Fyodor is murdered It was similar to waiting around for someone to kill J. The murderer is revealed to the reader and as the trial advances the tension increases as we begin to wonder just how the truth will be revealed.
There are subplots with Father Zosima and his life before becoming a monk. Alyosha, the youngest son, was studying to be a monk under Zosima's tutelage, but becomes embroiled in the power struggles of the family and leaves the monastery to seek a life in the real world. Alyosha also becomes involved with the care of a dying child named, Ilyusha who is in the book to illustrate the heavy burden that the seemingly inconsequential actions of people can leave on others.
The book explores that theme extensively. It was fascinating to watch the ripple effects of each character's actions as the chapters advance. Every time I picked this book up I had to read large chunks because it simply would not let me go. The reactions and high drama created by the smallest spark of contention in the characters kept the pages turning and as new information snapped into place I found my pulse quickening as my brain sprang ahead trying to guess where Dostoyevsky was taking me next.
I worked with a young woman years ago that said that I reminded her of one of the Karamazov brothers. Because of the diverse personalities of the brothers, and the fact that I can see a little of myself in each brother I'm still left with the grand mystery as to which brother she was referring too. It serves me right for waiting so long to read this beautiful book. View all comments. Sep 07, Rawley rated it it was amazing. If there was still any doubt, let me confirm that this actually is the greatest book ever written.
But be warned that you need to set aside a solid month to get through it. And it's not light reading--this is a dense work of philosophy disguised as a simple murder mystery. But it's well worth the effort. It tackles the fundamental question of human existence--how best to live one's life--in a truly engaging way. Dostoevsky created 3 brothers Ivan, Alexei, and Dmitri with opposite answers to th If there was still any doubt, let me confirm that this actually is the greatest book ever written.
Dostoevsky created 3 brothers Ivan, Alexei, and Dmitri with opposite answers to this fundamental question, and set them loose in the world to see what would happen. A testament to Dostoevsky's genius is he didn't know how the book would evolve when he started writing.
As a consequence, the book really isn't about the plot at all, but about how these brothers evolve and deal with their struggles based on their differing world views. Dostoevsky articulates, better than anyone, how human beings really are what I would call "walking contradictions".
Perhaps all of our struggles in life boil down to the reality that we desire contradictory things, simultaneously. If you like your novels with good character development, this is the masterwork. Dostoevsky's characters are more real, more human, than any other. At different points along the way, you will identify with them, sympathize with them, curse them, agonize over them, celebrate them.
You will be moved. Reading this book was a deeply personal experience for me, because I saw myself in one of the characters, and I didn't like what I saw. My worldview, in fact my entire direction in life, shifted as a result of this experience.
I can't guarantee the same results for you, but you owe it to yourself to set aside the time, someday, for the Brothers Karamazov. Be sure to read the Pevear Volokhonsky translation. View all 56 comments. Allison Just finished the book after 6 long weeks. Kevser This review is a great perspective on to what Dostoyevsky set out as the philosophical base for the book, the page turning plot is just a consequence This review is a great perspective on to what Dostoyevsky set out as the philosophical base for the book, the page turning plot is just a consequence of the different world views reflecting on actions of the characters beautifully described by Dostoyevsky Oct 09, Michael rated it it was amazing.
I'm writing this review as I read. Frankly, I'm astounded by how good this is and how compelling I'm finding it. Why should that be? This is a classic, after all. True, but it breaks just about every "rule" of fiction. The plot so far is virtually nonexistent: three brothers get together with their wastrel father and all sorts of dysfunction, including an odd love triangle involving the father and the eldest son, are revealed. The brothers aren't particular close to each other, and re I'm writing this review as I read.
The brothers aren't particular close to each other, and really not much happens except that they meet at a monastery, where the youngest son lives, for an audience with a holy man who's dying, and then they go their separate ways, except that they have kind of random meetings with each other and with the woman involved in the love triangle, and there's a vague sense of foreboding that something will happen to the father. And the characters? Not really the kinds of characters we're used to in contemporary fiction.
These are characters who struggle with all kinds of philosophical issues and enjoy nothing more than debating them at length with each other. Sounds boring?
Well, it's not. Not at all. By the way, I'm reading the Ignet Avsey translation based on Kris's recommendation, and it's wonderful so far! This is a true testament to Dostoyevsky's range, to how effortlessly he "contains multitudes" in this masterful work. Because of course if he'd been a true holy man, they figured, his corpse wouldn't have smelled at all, so the fact that it started smelling makes them all begin to question whether he'd really been what they'd imagined.
Soon several of them begin to remember times when he'd been shockingly and suspiciously less-than-holy, and then the pile-on really begins, as the monks begin competing to disavow him the most, with only a couple of his friends holding onto his good memory, but even they are cowed into silence by the general gleeful animosity.
Oh, this Dostoyevsky really knows how to plumb all that's dark and pathetic about human nature. We have murder, a mad dash to a woman, heavy drinking, protestations of love, and the police moving in. After the languid plotting of the opening sections, I'm almost breathless!
We have a nameless figure who lives in the place where the events take place recounting the story almost as if recounting a legend. At the same time, we get the characters' most intimate thoughts and long speeches that the narrator could not possibly have known first-hand.
It all adds to the notion that this may be more the narrator's own tall tale than any faithful recitation of history--which of course is true, because it's a novel, but the way the artificial nature of the story gets highlighted makes me think it's another example of Dostroyevsky's cynicism at work. He's having a hard time of it, though. The prosecutor and magistrate conduct a long interview of him, and the evidence is damning. Interestingly, after Dmitry is taken away, the scene shifts radically, revisiting the young boys we'd briefly met earlier.
What is Dostroyevsky doing here? In the figure of Kolya, a 13 year-old prankster wunderkind, he seems to be pointing out the limits of rationalism, the way it can be abused to wow those with slightly less knowledge and how it can ultimately come off as a big joke. Who's really guilty of this crime? We know who "did it" because he tells Ivan, but then he blames Ivan himself for his athiesm--for influencing him by the notion that nothing we do matters anyway.
We're given to long speeches about the character that are fascinating psychological studies the lawyers themselves debate about this newfangled science of psychology--how plastic it is, how it can be used to justify and explain anything.
You can see Dostoyevsky working on multiple levels here, showing multiple sides of his character that don't quite cohere, and that's exactly the point, that people are complex and inconsistent and constantly at war with themselves, so what does "character" mean? What does "a" character mean in a novel? And just when it looks like the defense will carry the day And so Dostoyevsky brings to a close his massive masterpiece, and so I end these little scribbles.
View all 79 comments. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. View all 15 comments. The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel… The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest grotesque novel. What is God? What is man? And what are their relationships? And then they say that it all came originally from fear of the awesome phenomena of nature, and that there is nothing to it at all.
What, what will give me back my faith? Ivan does not have God. He has his idea. Not on my scale. Only once did he say something. Be it one way or the other, in any event a boundless vanity began to appear and betray itself, an injured vanity besides. Smerdyakov is a rat — he hides in darkness but he hates the entire world and he is capable of any meanness.
View all 24 comments. I am more than willing to chime in, to cheer for the brothers Karamazov who finally, finally made me give in to the genius of Dostoevsky fully, without anger, without resentment and fight, after a year of grappling with his earlier novels.
This is doubtless his magnum opus, the shining lead star in a brilliant cosmos. There are many similarities to his earlier novels, and his characters fight with the same inner demons as the predecessors. And yet, there is something milder, more soothing in the Brothers Karamazov, there is mature perfection in this novel. Yes, Smerdyakov is an underprivileged, hateful sufferer, but he is not lost to compassion and care in the same way as the nihilistic man writing his Notes from Underground.
And Dimitri is rash and bold and full of contradictions, but he is not as confused as Raskolnikov, he does not impose the dogma of suffering in the sense of Crime and Punishment on his family and community. He has a plan for living, not for suffering. Ivan is a brooding intellectual, but he is not stone-cold like Stavrogin in Devils. His conflicted heart and intellect are connected to the world.
Alyosha, thank goodness, is a sweet and innocent character, but nothing like the awful Christlike idiot Myshkin from The Idiot. He knows how to live and interact, and he is willing to step away from rigid prejudices and principles to comfort the ones he loves. What about the women? Grushenka is not destroyed by the love of several men like Nastasya, and even Katerina Ivanovna is given a complex, divided soul, not just a shallow platform for men to use at their convenience and throw away when they have made their point.
She has her own points to make. Why do the Brothers Karamazov work so well? I believe Dostoyevsky made the decision to paint a family just like it is, with all the contradictory emotions and actions, and all the mood swings and difficult situations.
He had already established his religious and political ideas in earlier works, and he could afford to let the characters be what they naturally were, without judging them from the standpoint of history and society. Thus he could be the storyteller he naturally was, without any agenda but love for the story he told. The plot is both simple and complex: Be careful what you wish for, it might come true!
As the three or four brothers and the women they love in different ways and fashions face the murder of the old patriarchal buffoon, all of them have to come to terms with the painful reality of loving and hating at the same time.
A bad parent is still a parent, and a dead parent still has power over the lives of his offspring. They have set up gods and challenged one another: Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods.
They really do, in a crooked, angry way, in a distorted, strange way. But they do. In the end, they help each other make the best of a muddle and that is the best any family can do: help each other deal with the blows that families tend to inflict on themselves! And the final pages leave me bowing to the beauty of the insight that man and woman can love each other in so many different ways, and that love is not exclusive, but inclusive.
You wrote the perfect novel. View all 65 comments. Contrary to widespread rumor, this is a far from bleak book. While every character has his or her own misery, and it all takes place in a place called something like "cattle-roundup-ville", the moments of religious ecstasy and moral clarity are heartbreaking in their frequency - it's hard not to wish that one had such bizarre events going on around one in order to prompt such lofty oratory. The story involves Ivan, Dmitri, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, four brothers with a rich but notoriously lechero Contrary to widespread rumor, this is a far from bleak book.
The story involves Ivan, Dmitri, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, four brothers with a rich but notoriously lecherous father, Fyodor. All four brothers were raised by others, Fyodor having essentially ignored them until others removed them from his care. In the beginning of the book, Alyosha is in the monastery, studying under a famous elder name Father Zosima; Dmitri has just left the army and stolen a large sum of money from a government official's daughter, who he has also apparently seduced, all while pursuing a lawsuit against Fyodor for his inheritance and canoodling with his own father's intended, the local seductress Grushenka; Ivan, the intellectual in the family, has just returned from I think Petersburg.
Dmitri is violent and impulsive, referring to himself as an "insect," and gets into fistfights with Fyodor several times. Smerdyakov works for Fyodor as a lackey, having gone to France to learn to cook at some point in the past. It's unimaginably more complicated and digressive than all this, and just trying to follow this crucial sum of three thousand rubles through the story is almost impossible.
But anyway, Fyodor is killed and much of the book hinges on which brother killed him and why. When I first read this book in high school, my teacher who was a devout Catholic, a red-faced drunk who wore sunglasses to class, and the most enthusiastic reader of Russian literature imaginable asked everyone who their favorite brother was.
Was it Ivan, the tortured skeptic? Dmitri, the "scoundrel" who tortures himself for every wrong he commits but can't help committing more? Or Alyosha, the saintly one who always knows the right thing to say? Certainly Smerdyakov is no one's favorite. At the time I went with Ivan - I was in high school, after all, and his atheism and pessimism were revolutionary to me. But now Ivan seems rather selfish and callow, and I can't help siding with Dmitri, the one Dostoevsky uses almost as a case history of conscience.
Like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky gives his characters all the space to talk like gods, clearing pages upon pages for their reasoning and dialog. Dmitri fumbles with Voltaire and is clearly not overly literate, but in some ways that's apropos, because his main problem is the constant internal conflict between his desires and his ethics which is only partly resolved when he chooses to become responsible for not only what he does, but also what he wants.
The most famous passage in the book, Ivan's tale of the Grand Inquisitor, is, to me, far less interesting than Zosima's meditations on the conflict between justice and the collective good. The elder Zosima is a kind of Christian socialist who grapples with the typical midth century Russian issues of how to build a equitable society without the extremes of coercion that the Tsar used to turn to, while also ensuring public morality and avoiding the kind of massacres that characterized the French Revolution an event that seems to have been even more traumatizing for Russians than it was to the French due to the enormous cultural influence France had there at the time.
Zosima's answer is unworkable and in some ways naiive, but the discussion is well worth it, moreso than Ivan's somewhat simplistic dualism of Christ vs. Dostoevsky was a cultural conservative in the sense that he was constantly renewing his commitment to the obligations imposed on Russians by the Orthodox Church. At the same time, he was committed to the pursuit of joy through kindness and community and a kind of interpersonal fair dealing in a way that transcends his political concerns and is inspiring to see articulated in the lives of people who are as confused as the rest of us.
It's a huge, messy book, but so worth the effort. It took me about three months to read carefully, though my reading has been flagging lately, as well. I read this while listening to Hubert Dreyfus's accompanying lectures at Stanford on existentialism and this book which are available on iTunes U, and even when I felt his readings overreached, it was a good way to reread a tough and subtle work like this.
View all 25 comments. Jun 23, Florencia rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , dostoyevskyesqueasdfdsfd-ism , books-plus-one-read-in-groups-etc , if-only-i-were-a-cat , russian. Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself.
And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. You cannot pick. You are either happy to be around them or you are stuck with them. You can choose your friends, a pet, you can choos Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself.
You can choose your friends, a pet, you can choose between a blueberry muffin and a chocolate chip one, but you cannot choose your family. The combination of genetics and the social environment is simply fascinating. For example, take this ordinary Russian family. An ambitious, lascivious, ridiculous father who enjoyed alcohol in any form; a son who, at first, seemed to be the image of his father; a second son, vain and intellectual with even more questionable moral reactions; the youngest son with the kindness of a saint and the troubled soul of a common man and another weak, disturbing young man who never counted as a son.
This book contains the story of every family in the world. Their struggles, their fears, their doubts, the decisions that reflect the highest and most degrading aspects of human nature. It is a major treatise on philosophy and religion. And yes, there is a lot of religion here, but even me, a person who is struggling with a lack of faith and a deep ocean of doubts and fear, can still be interested and dazzled by all this.
Unless we are talking about the "monk book". There were a couple of good things but, in general, it was the only part of the book that made me want to take a really long nap. I must admit it, in the spirit of full disclosure. Yes, forget it, I know I am haunted by uncertainty and, therefore, obsessed with knowledge, no matter how limited I can be.
There is no virtue if there is no immortality. But still, I wasn't quite joking either This idea is not yet resolved in your heart and torments it. But a martyr, too, sometimes likes to toy with his despair, also from despair, as it were. For the time being you, too, are toying, out of despair, with your magazine articles and drawing-room discussions, without believing in your own dialectics and smirking at them with your heart aching inside you The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution You should become accustomed to that.
Once you reach Book V, you will found yourself overwhelmed by the author's mesmerizing erudition. If you're expecting an explosive plot with lots of things going on at the same time, weird twists and vampires, fights and dragons, magic and flying dogs, then this book is not for you.
There is a plot, of course, but the excellence of this book lies on the writing. Dostoyevsky's trademark is his gifted ability to describe human nature using the most poignantly elegant prose known to man.
His insightful points of view on almost every subject that affects all humanity are written with admirable lyricism and precision. Reading this particular writer can be rather demanding.
You have to be prepared. You have to become habituated to the idea that your soul might absorb the despairing and sometimes playful beauty of his writing. And once that happens, you won't be able to forget him. Dostoyevsky has the power to defeat oblivion. He personifies an unwelcome light that illuminates every dark nook of our minds.
He makes us think about what we like to see in ourselves and what we choose to hide. A truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible to imagine all the shame and moral degradation a jealous man can tolerate without the least remorse. And it is not that they are all trite and dirty souls. On the contrary, it is possible to have a lofty heart, to love purely, to be full of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to hide under tables, to bribe the meanest people, and live with the nastiest filth of spying and eavesdropping And one may ask what is the good of a love that must constantly be spied on, and what is the worth of a love that needs to be guarded so intensely?
They all annoyed me or disgusted me in the same contradictory way. But I do understand them, most of the times. I loved the dialogues—the amazing reflections while they are deciding to act against everything that is good; they know what they are about to do is wrong but they can't help it; it's in their blood—the profound remarks of our narrator and the fact that Dostoyevsky, one more time, allowed me to enter inside his characters' minds. He shares the complexity of all of them.
And I'm enchanted by this man's ability to make everything beautiful, even while describing the darkest aspects of humanity, which leads me to another point.
I love reading other people's thoughts on the books I like. Crime writers don't usually murder every human they find. Mystery writers don't always think that somebody's butler is up to something. In that sense, an author who writes about how a woman is mistreated by a certain part of society doesn't necessarily mean he's a vicious misogynist. He was being honest, he was displaying truth. Poor women and men were often treated like less than a human - that hasn't changed that much.
Dostoyevsky described it too vividly. A deluge of misery and wisdom waiting for the reader. The way of representing the Russian soul is the way all souls should be represented; it transcends any geographical boundary, any limitation of time. We all have many sides of the Karamazovs' nature in us.
We all have demons tormenting our good judgment. We all know what we should do and, sometimes, we simply can't do it. I can't justify everything but we are humans. I want to understand, I need to. We are susceptible to failure.
To negligence. To vileness, dishonesty and many other abhorrent things. Once mistakes are made, only the most fortunate ones are able to find a path toward redemption. In this book, in this Russia which portrays the world of all times, some did. And some had to endure the bitter punishments that the choices in their lives have brought upon them. We all hear the sounds of a ravenous solitude echoing in the dark depths of our beings; they often make us act by instinct, forgetting that we have been blessed—or doomed—with reason.
Moreover, they make us forget to feel love. And that, indeed, is a faithful depiction of what hell must feel like. A hell to which we will soon arrive by repeating to ourselves: everything is permitted.
View all 68 comments. Feb 18, Violet wells rated it it was amazing Shelves: faves , classics. It's not hard to understand Nabokov's objections to Dostoevsky. It's his scruffiness as a novelist Nabokov with his literary sartorial elegance would have objected to. For example, his gun-ho attitude towards unnecessary repetition. And also his occasional lapses at organising his material for maximum dramatic effect, most evident in the construction of the trial. Nabokov was much more of a literary dandy than Dostoevsky, much more self-conscious, much more vigilant in his attention to detail, m It's not hard to understand Nabokov's objections to Dostoevsky.
Nabokov was much more of a literary dandy than Dostoevsky, much more self-conscious, much more vigilant in his attention to detail, more subtle and ingenious in his artistry. But Dostoevsky was more courageous and pioneering psychologically. More intimate with the dark and unearthed side of the human condition.
Nabokov was always looking for the laugh; Dostoevsky was more drawn to the accelerated heartbeat, the rush of blood to the head. Dostoevsky's closest ally as a novelist is probably Emily Bronte.
I thought while reading this that it's literature's greatest tragedy that Emily never got to write another novel. It's almost a complete mystery what she might have come up with.
Like Emily, he dramatizes in the outer world the illicit promptings of the shadow self. Like Emily, he knows only a thin layer of cerebral paint shields us all from violence and horror.
Like Emily, he's not the least interested in life's civilised arrangements, the house and garden existence. And they both mirror Shakespeare in this regard. Characters nakedly put the entirety of their being into every dramatic moment.
Character is always fate. Each of the brothers allow D to enter a different milieu of society. Aloysha surrounds himself with children and monks; Mitya with loose women and dissolute men; Ivan with progressive thinkers. You might say the three brothers combined are presented as an everyman. As always with D, his women, though relegated to background roles historically accurate you'd have to say for the most part , are fascinating creations.
This was especially evident to me as I was reading Michael Chabon at the same time whose women as a rule tend to be kind of perfunctory and less than vivid or nuanced or compelling as dramatic presences, often having no independent life outside their relationships with their men.
D's women on the other hand blaze with frustrated independent aspiration. I marvelled at the idiosyncrasies of my memory while reading this. Though I've read it twice my memory withheld all the central plot coordinates, yet I could recall various scenes as vividly as if they were a part of my own life.
Made me think of Proust whose narrator seems to remember what we consider incidental details of his life rather than the big picture landmarks. There's clearly a lot of truth in this perspective.
I read a professional review of this which put forward the idea that Aloysha didn't interest Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was first published in Read our full plot summary and analysis of The Brothers Karamazov , scene by scene break-downs, and more.
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Fathers and Sons. Ivan Turgenev. Anna Karenina. Fifty-Two Stories. Notes from Underground. The Annotated Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov. The Portable Faulkner.
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