The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor DostoevskyMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
‘Does God exist or not?’ Ivan shouted with ferocious insistence.
‘Ah, so you are serious? My dear little dove, I swear to God I do not know. Now doesn’t that make you think?’
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that The Brother’s Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, changed my life. Accompanying me while I enrolled in university, it was the first work of Literature I endeavored to read on my own (i.e., outside of class), as well as the first work of L. that I subsequently became obsessed with. I would think and talk about it incessantly, tormenting my friends. I would scrawl “Ivan Fyodorvich Karamazov” in public places. It was hugely influential in my early college days, where I would skip classes (almost getting myself expelled) to go to a nearby coffee shop and read in the fog and rain. It’s largely responsible for my taking up Literature as a major, and giving my education (if not my entire life) a direction. For a while I considered it my favorite book, and only bumped it down to #3 after I met Homer and Nabokov. And #3 is where it’s stayed for the past 15 years. Until this past month, where I reread it for a book club, and was thunderstruck by how much I hated it the second time around.
It’s important to understand what you’re getting into here. It’s not just being a thousand-page brick that should dissuade you (though who but a wayward college student has the time?). Nor should its flimsy, who-done-it mystery plot, which only rewards a first reading. The salient warnings about Karamazov are 1.) the three main characters represent the mind, the body, and the soul, respectively, and 2.) the book is stylistically exhausting, which is a feature, not a bug. A paragraph on each:
The father of three Russian brothers is murdered, though this doesn’t actually happen until half-way through the novel. Up until this point we are presented with the cast of characters and main drama: the eldest son, Dimitri (the sensualist), is in a spat with his father over his mother’s inheritance, as well as over the affection of a woman in town, named Grushenka. The father, Fyodor, is an evil buffoon, and it’s in how his sons respond to his actions that we see their characters and ideologies. Dimitri is violent but noble-hearted. Ivan, the intellectual middle son, is cold yet dignified. Alyosha, the spiritual youngest, is kind and compassionate, but also overwhelmed by the conflict. There is a fourth, bastard son named Smerdyakov, who is twisted and cruel, but also more calculating. He is meant to both reflect and differ from Fyodor, and has a perverse relationship with Ivan. Thus the stage is set for the mid-point murder, where we parse the guilt of each of his sons, with the principle blame (and possible red herring) pointing to Dimitri. While there is a surprise reveal towards the end, the plot is merely the scaffold the novel uses to explore meaty philosophical themes. This is why I framed this as a warning: if you are not interested in philosophy-via-literature, or more specifically, if you don’t agree with Dostoyevsky’s tedious Orthodox Russian Nationalist views, you’re going to have a bad time.
The other hazard sign is Dostoyevsky’s style, which amps the melodrama and hysteria up to 11. While some have criticized this as a contrived tactic for infusing his fiction with faux-emotion, which he allegedly cannot generate otherwise, when looking at both his personal letter-writing as well as his other novels, it’s clear this is just Dostoyevsky’s modis operendi. And moreover when taken in over a thousand pages, the style goes from curious, to annoying, to obnoxious, to eventually soaking you down to your bones, where you start to feel the anxiety, the stress, and even the madness that comes not from the plot or profound debates, but just from the writing. Every action and conversation, no matter how mundane or routine, is cloaked in such needless yet fascinating theatrics that you feel dragged onto the stage. Wringing your hands, sweating, screaming, pulling your hair and threatening to die, nothing is too over-the-top when you’re going to the store to buy milk, and the reader must be aware that this novel, as with Crime and Punishment, keeps you tottering on the abyss. Ultimately I have to commend the author for control of this effect. It’s not that the story necessarily requires it, it’s just that these characters are drowning in torment.
Here we reach the ostensible draws of the novel: the characters and the ideas. This is where my stunning disappointment lies. I loved, and still love, Ivan. But Dimitri and Alyosha are such let downs. The former’s mercurial nature prevents both deep-rooted change, as well as sympathy from the reader. While we are saddened by his unjust verdict, his spiritual rebirth is undermined by instantly forsaking punishment to run off with Grushenka, and not demonstrating via actions (rather than words) that he’s learned a lesson from this ordeal. Not to mention his prior barbarisms scare the reader more than his poetry or drunken professions of love invite them. Alyosha, meanwhile, is touted as the hero of the novel in the preface, and indeed he seems to have no real flaws. Granted he’s more lovable than Dimitri (at my book club a few ladies swooned over the little monk), and both his beliefs and actions are wise as they are admirable. But he’s almost a form of Deus ex machina: a Christ figure that propels others to salvation with no real growth of his own. (The minor exception being his momentary doubts after his master and idol, Zosima, dies. But even then the “epiphany” is reached without any real work.) Apparently Dostoyevsky intended The Brother’s Karamazov to be the first novel of a series, where the characters go through more arcs and conflicts in future installments. But as he died shortly after publishing this first work, it’s all we have to go by.
The one beautiful exception to the above is the middle brother, Ivan. Granted, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the intellectual symbol is the one readers (a typically brainy bunch) vibrate with the most. But it’s just that he’s the only person that has a genuine inner conflict, which is both profound and philosophically anguishing. I’m going to dive further into the main ideological arguments of this novel further down—as that’s really what the book’s about—but it’s only with Ivan that the idea and the literary character mesh together perfectly. He cannot reconcile the existence of God with suffering on Earth. An old chestnut, but improved by Ivan when he points out how the conventional theological responses fail to account for the suffering of children. Thus either God is evil, or his “plan” is beyond human comprehension (negating Ivan’s rationality, which is the core of his identity), or God does not exist. And if God does not exist, then nothing prevents moral relativism from being true, and thus the entire ethical fabric of the universe disintegrates. The glory of this syllogism is not in its philosophical rigor (though it was a meteor-strike against my personal religious beliefs as a teenager). The real magic is how this reasoning splinters an otherwise serious and promising mind. Ivan’s fate in the novel, which I won’t dare spoil here, remains my favorite in all of fiction, with a tragic irony that makes him the real hero of the story. (Recall that while Alyosha was playing around with children, Ivan was hunting down the real murderer and planning his brother’s (expensive) escape.)
But even more than the character is what Ivan represents for the author, which is mirrored on the Book of Job’s inclusion in the Bible: an argument questioning the propaganda of the rest of the work it’s contained in. Dostoyevsky is making crystal clear claims here, and is not above straw-manning the opposition or trying to scare us away from their views. But with Ivan, he makes a good-faith case against God, religion, and all of humanity, which not only calls the logic of the rest of the book into question, but clearly reflects doubts that Dostoyevsky (and the reader) harbors inside. (And while I don’t think Alyosha was able to satisfactorily rebut Ivan, he sure as hell did a better job than God in Job.) The famous chapter where this debate takes place, 'Pro and Contra', is an exemplar of intellectual courage, even if the author ultimately rejects the views being espoused.
Finally let’s look at the novel’s two chief arguments, masquerading as themes. The first, indicated above, is that moral relativism is wrong and therefore God exists. At its worst this is an elementary fallacy in first assuming the conclusion. But at its best it tries to demonstrate the dead-end that cynicism, pessimism, and doubt leads to, in both spiritual and practical terms. Faith, hope, and lived experience (rather than abstract logic) both aids the world and gives meaning to those who wield them. Related to this, the second argument is that everyone is responsible for everyone else. This antidote to the tragedy of the commons is inspirational and, to Dostoyevsky’s credit, comes off naturally in the novel. And while I’m not convinced that The Brother’s Karamazov was the best execution of these arguments (it almost feels like he failed as a philosopher, so backdoored these views through fiction instead), the novel’s conceit is innovative and at least struck gold with one of the characters.
Well then, what rating do I give a novel where I think 1/3 is genius and 2/3 is, forgive my venom, a waste of time? While that formula is all-to-common for many works that are considered literary classics (explaining why so many are unread today), it’s especially acute here. I will always fondly remember the Karamazov brothers for propelling my intellectual and spiritual growth in my early 20s. But I’ve continued to grow since then, and when reading them the second time around I now realize the climax of the novel is not in the verdict of Dimitri’s guilt or innocence, and certainly not in Alyosha hugging some children, but in Ivan discovering who the killer is and what that means—for himself, and for all mankind. That said, this is my longest book review yet, and there’s still so much I haven’t touched upon: Zosima, Dostoyevsky’s (over-emphasized) humor, the speeches of the attorneys…hell, the 'Grand Inquisitor' requires a review all on its own. But in true Dostoyevskian fashion, I’m reached the end of this review in exhaustion, and think I’ll stop just short of the abyss for now.
