The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

10/10

I read this book one year ago. I brought it on our Anniversary cruise. Nothing like laying pool side with epic Russian literature. Also, once I make this post I will be completely updated with making posts of books I have read since the blog began. Every post after this will consist of books that I have either just finished or that I read in the pre-blog era.

This book was tremendous. Simply tremendous. It is one of those books that while you are reading it you know and feel that you are reading something special. In true Dostoevsky fashion, the book deals heavily with moral and spiritual struggles.

The book consists of three brothers who are quite drastically different from one another. There is the oldest, Dmitri, who is undisciplined and rambunctious. He often quarrels with his father (who is a pretty crappy father and person in general) over some money that he felt was owed to him as an inheritance. Ivan is the next oldest (he plays probably the least prominent, but still important, role of the brothers). He is very smart (which leads him to a disbelief in God) and also despises his father but is less vocal about it. Alyosha is the youngest and is mentioned as being the hero of the book in the first chapter. He is the character that the reader identifies himself with since he is the one who has all the good qualities that we all desire to have. He is a student in a monastery under the tutelage of holy men. He is very spiritual and relies on his belief in God to overcome many difficulties that his brothers, in contrast, have a much harder time overcoming. He is the one character that all the other characters respect and have a close relationship with. He is kinda like the Michael Bluth of the dysfunctional Arrested Development family, minus the hilarity. Maybe not the perfect comparison, but I gave it a shot anyhow.

(Spoiler Alert!) After the father is murdered, Dmitri is accused of it based on some overwhelming evidence (although the events leading up to the trial indicate that it was not Dmitri but the illegitimate son and servant (who has epilepsy) of the father. He confesses this to Ivan and claims that he murdered the father with Ivan's blessing. Ivan does not handle this news well. He feels extreme guilt and goes quite insane during most of the remainder of the book. The final trial is fantastic and amazing to read (I think the closing argument by the prosecutor was like over 100 pages or something?)

And there are tons of other important and crucial characters that I haven't mentioned and important and crucial happenings that I skipped over as well. It's just one of those books that must be read. Dostoevsky was planning on writing further and this was just going to be the first part in a series. Unfortunately, he died like 4 months after the book was fully published. Bummer for us. I would have loved to see what else he had to say.

Quotes a'plenty:

Dostoevsky writes this in the preface: "The book can be abandoned at the second page of the first tale, never to be opened again. But then, you know, there are those considerate readers who have a compulsion to read to the end, so as not to be mistaken in their impartial judgment;...It is before this type of person that my heart somehow becomes lighter." Don't know why I like this quote other than I guess it kind of explains my compulsion to finish books even when I dislike them so as to give an honest assessment of the work as a whole. However, Fyodor, you had me from the second page and I did not even think twice about not staying on for the whole ride.

"For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."

"God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."

"For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for thitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old."

"It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy."

"Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education."

"They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material sense, they would be glad of it, for, I imagine, that in material agony, their still greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment."

"The sight of an unworthy father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature, especially when he compares him with the excellent fathers of his companions."