Brothers Karamazov
2 min read
Alyosha’s Speech
Ivan finds it easy to love mankind in the abstract but struggles the moment that idea takes on flesh and bone. Alyosha shows what it is to love, not within the bounds of logic, but as an act.
Tag
Brothers Karamazov
9 essays on this topic.
Brothers Karamazov
4 min read
Ivan’s Devil
Ivan has said everything is permitted, and yet he cannot live it. He has a conscience he cannot account for. That is the abyss the devil represents.
Brothers Karamazov
3 min read
Chesterton’s Fence, Borrowed
Kolya recites his ideas, he does not explain them. Dostoevsky uses a thirteen-year-old to mock a generation of intellectuals tearing down fences they cannot see.
Brothers Karamazov
2 min read
Mitya, Without Malice
Mitya is the embodiment of what the novel calls Karamazovian passion. The most notable thing about him is that I cannot find any malice in him.
Brothers Karamazov
3 min read
The Onion
You can do a thousand good deeds and still remain a murderer. The fable inverts this proposition. Live a wicked life, but do one good deed. How much weight does that single act carry?
Brothers Karamazov
4 min read
Taking Ivan Seriously
On the Grand Inquisitor. Ivan does not deny God outright. He says that even if God exists, he will spit on Him.
Brothers Karamazov
2 min read
Two Women, Two Worlds
The drawing-room confrontation between Grushenka and Katerina is a seduction battle, and beneath that, a class collision. One of them understands both rooms.
Brothers Karamazov
2 min read
The Proto-Ragebaiter
Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is Ivan’s belief system, lived. If there is no virtue and everything is permitted, you do not get a free man. You get this.
Brothers Karamazov
2 min read
Ivan the Terrible
On Ivan Karamazov, the first of a sequence on Dostoevsky’s last novel. A man who has mastered method but remains aimless in the soul.