Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov, Part 1



Russian Author Fyodor Dostoevsky

It's May, the end of school is nearing all too fast, and I have assigned my students a journey into the literary and theological labyrinth of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  This is a book for high schoolers.  It is not for them in the sense of being easy, being a "page turner," or identifying with high schoolish fads and foibles.  It is a high schooler's book because it is about the battle in the human heart.  As the character Dmitri says, "Here is the devil struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart."  The devil and all his recruiting agents are all camped outside the heart and mind of us, constantly seeking to lure us into hellish wiles.  Students may not understand all of Dostoevsky, may not be able to follow all the dialog and discussions, may not grasp every issue, may not perceive the theological subtleties of the book, but they understand something of the battle for the human heart.  That is why this book is so important for them.

It is amazing and profoundly moving that Dostoevsky's most wicked and unlikable character in the book, the father of the Karamazovs, is named Fyodor.  It is as though he confesses his own sinful nature in giving his name--Fyodor--to this obnoxious character.  The book consists of many characters who are mirrors of our own sinful proclivities.  Dmitri would be the captain of the football team and the class president in most schools today.  At age 28, he is handsome, strong, and self-centered.  He lives the lifestyle we associate with celebrities.  He is, to use Dostoevsky's term, a sensualist.  He lives to gratify his human desires.  He is his father in a more youthful and handsome form.  Ivan is the cold and brooding intellectual who has rejected a belief in God, but he must borrow from the concept of God to build his rejection of God.  He realizes better than most that if there is no God, then all things are permissible.

The hero of the book is Alyosha.  He is a novice in the faith; meaning, he has begun the process of undertaking the life and disciplines of the monastic life.  The theology of the book is saturated with Orthodoxy; this is not a Protestant systematic theology.  Alyosha is also a novice in the other sense of the word:  He is new to the ways of the world, to the evil practices and ideas of his brothers and father, to the wiles and manipulations of others.  Guiding Alyosha is the saintly and dying Father Zosima.  Father Zosima is one of the greatest creations in literature.  The great theme of his life and the commission that he shows and grants to Alyosha is that of loving others.

There is so much to this book.  I hope to follow up with other thoughts as I go.