The Brothers Karamazov — Barnaby Napier

The famous chronicle of three Russian brothers and their involvement in a murder.

Characters

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

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

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

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”

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)

“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”

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

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

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

“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”