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The Brothers Karamazov T HE G LENCOE L ITERATURE L IBRARY Study Guide for The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky i Meet Fyodor Dostoevsky Dostoevsky continued his military training and held government posts until he resigned to become a writer. When he was twenty-five, he published his first novel, Poor Folk, which an influential critic of the time called the “first attempt at a social novel” by a Russian writer. The novel’s success brought Dostoevsky into con- tact with many of the leading intellectuals in St. Petersburg, Russia’s capital city at the time. Dostoevsky took part in the weekly meetings of a group of intellectuals who discussed politics and read books banned by the government of Tsar Nicholas. In 1849 the members of the group were arrested for political subversion. They were cruelly punished with a staged mock execution before being sentenced to a Siberian prison for four years Without suffering, happiness cannot be understood. and an unspecified time in military service. Dostoevsky was a changed man when he —from a letter written by Fyodor Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1859. After peti- tioning the royal courts, he was allowed to resume his interrupted literary career, but under yodor Dostoevsky (FEE-uh-door Dos-toy- surveillance. He and his brother established a F EVV-skee) was born in the outskirts of weekly magazine of political and literary writ- Moscow in 1821, the second child of the medical ings. In 1860 he published Memoirs from the director of a hospital for the poor. The family House of the Dead, a realistic description of his lived on the hospital grounds, and Dostoevsky experiences in prison. With his financial success, grew up surrounded by the patients. His father he and his wife, whom he had met and married had moved up the military ranks to bring his in Siberia, could live well and travel. However, family from their inherited status as lowly clerics their good fortune was marred by her suffering to the ranks of noblemen, an important distinc- from tuberculosis, his frequent epileptic seizures, tion in Russia’s class-based society. As a noble he and his gambling addiction. could purchase land and serfs, which made it pos- Dostoevsky’s novels, often initially published sible for the Dostoevsky children to spend their as serials in magazines, were widely read. He summers on the family’s country holdings. became something of a celebrity and was invited Dostoevsky’s father and mother were inter- to important social and literary affairs. Because of ested in the literature of the day, and reading his popularity among the people, he was chosen aloud was a family tradition. They also raised to deliver the dedication speech for a monument their children in the Russian Orthodox religion. to Russia’s most admired poet, Pushkin. When Both knew that Fyodor and his older brother Dostoevsky died in January 1881, people created Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. wanted to attend a university and become writ- the largest funeral procession ever seen in Russia. ers, but as practical parents they also knew the Students and friends carried the coffin more than boys’ futures would be more secure if they were two miles from his home to the church. trained for military positions. Fyodor was sent to a military school in St. Petersburg when he was fourteen years old. The Brothers Karamazov Study Guide 9 Introducing the Novel The Brothers Karamazov has been referred to as “a Scholars generally agree that Dostoevsky uses summing-up of Dostoevsky’s entire career, a work the emotional and mental make-up of the brothers in which themes and motifs from even his earliest to examine aspects of humanity that are present in works and echoes from his whole past life are once all people. One son is an intellectual who ques- more brought into focus.” Dostoevsky expected tions everything but comes to no definitive conclu- to write sequels that would follow the brothers sions on matters of right and wrong. Another son into their futures, but he died soon after complet- is sensual and passionate and acts without thinking ing The Brothers Karamazov. Therefore, the book but nevertheless has a moral core that sustains his became his final word on themes and subjects of faith. The third son strives to love everyone. His interest to him. faith is shaken but endures. One of these themes is the humanity and fate The author’s insight into the workings of of the poor and downtrodden in Russian society, a the human mind and his willingness to explore theme he initially explored in his first novel, Poor his characters’ complex motivations have Folk. In this novel, Dostoevsky writes about an intrigued psychologists, philosophers, theologians, underpaid, middle-age clerk and an orphan girl, and literary critics since The Brothers Karamazov breaking with a Russian tradition of novels about was published. Other leading writers of upper-class people in appealing settings. Dostoevsky’s time, such as Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s characters in The Brothers Karamazov Ivan Turgenev, were at first critical of the include servants and the poor, who are portrayed as popular author who wrote about the inner real people with emotions, strengths, and flaws. world of characters from all classes of society. From his summers with the serfs of his family’s farm At the end of Tolstoy’s life, however, he kept and from his observations of the cruelty inflicted The Brothers Karamazov at his bedside and read on servants in autocratic society, Dostoevsky saw it again and again. dangers ahead for a society that treated a class of fellow citizens as less than human. THE TIME AND PLACE The psychology of the human mind, especially The novel takes place over several months in the the mind of the criminal, was another subject late 1860s in and near a small provincial town Copyright ©byTheMcGraw-HillCompanies,Inc. of interest to Dostoevsky. In The Brothers called Skotoprigonievsk. Dostoevsky patterned Karamazov, as in the author’s earlier novel Crime Skotoprigonievsk (which means “cattle run” in and Punishment, one of the characters kills another. Russian) after Staraya Russa, a town about 150 Dostoevesky not only looks into the mind and miles southeast of St. Petersburg, to which motivations of the killer, but he also examines the Dostoevsky moved in 1877. The Karamazovs’ minds of others who wanted to see the victim dead. house in Skotoprigonievsk closely resembles The concept of religious faith in the face of Dostoevsky’s house in Staraya Russa. injustice and suffering in the world has been one of In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the author’s most controversial themes. Some Russia lagged behind the leading nations of scholars see him as a great religious writer and a Europe in making economic, political, and social spokesman for Christianity. Others wonder whether reforms. However, at the time of The Brothers he is speaking for or against religion in the lengthy, Karamazov, the country was beginning to change. opposing viewpoints eloquently expressed by the Russia’s humiliating defeat by the armies of characters. Before he started the novel, Dostoevsky France, Britain, and Turkey in the Crimean War noted that he had struggled with the question of (1853–1856) emphasized the need for reform. The the existence of God “consciously and uncon- new tsar, or emperor, Alexander II, abolished the sciously all my life.” Similarly, the three Karamazov ancient system of serfdom in 1861 as an attempt brothers struggle with questions of faith. to modernize Russia. 10 The Brothers Karamazov Study Guide The system of serfdom had dominated Europe of change enraged more progressive people. during medieval times. Serfs—peasants required to Liberals and socialists, both represented in the work the land for their masters—could not leave novel, proposed different solutions to Russia’s prob- the land, marry, or sell their belongings without the lems. Many socialist groups, who were considered lords’ permission, and they were sold along with the to be radical, were devoted to the ideas of German land. By the late eighteenth century, this system had economist and political scientist Karl Marx. After become obsolete in most of Western and Eastern several terrorist actions, an underground group Europe. Russia was one of the last countries to known as People’s Will assassinated Alexander II declare peasants free from their landlords. in 1881. An extreme conservative reaction set in Other reforms followed the emancipation of after the assassination, and the government the serfs. A new legal system was created based on became even more repressive. Western European models. Cities were permitted Many conservative Russians, Dostoevsky to govern themselves, and the military was included, were frightened of losing the monarchy reformed. But Russia remained an absolute monar- and the class system it supported. In 1917, less chy without a democratically elected government. than forty years after Dostoevsky’s death, the The tsar ruled by divine right, just as medieval Russian Revolution took place. This mass upris- kings had a thousand years before. This slow pace ing violently overthrew the monarchy. Did You Know? The Russian Orthodox Church plays a major the fifth century. The Roman Empire in the role in The Brothers Karamazov. Alexey, the East survived for another thousand years as youngest brother, considers becoming a monk the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople became in the Russian Orthodox tradition. The Russian the seat of Eastern Christianity and was called Orthodox Church is a division of the Eastern the “New Rome.” Orthodox Church, which, in addition to Roman Russia became an Orthodox Christian Catholicism and Protestantism, is one of the country in the late 900s. Today, Orthodox three main branches of Christianity.
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