The prosecutor theorized that Dmitry then hid half the stolen money somewhere in the inn, which he knew well. Just hours from his doom, his whole world opened up, and like a condemned criminal on his way to execution, that final hour seemed light-years away, giving him time to devise an alternate plan. A surprise and a change of heart—Of course, on arriving in Mokroye, Dmitry discovered that Grushenka’s attitude towards her “true” love was not what he expected.
Chapter 19: Meeting the Mysterious Smerdyakov
Yet people often complained of being disturbed all night when in fact they had slept most of the time. The defense even broached the issue of the torn envelope and the possibility of the money being hidden in a different place. In Fetyukovich’s opinion, seeing so much money and knowing its purpose could not have sat well with Smerdyakov and must have only added fuel to the fire of his sick mind and selfish aims.
Chapter 32: Love Letters and Life Navigation
Desperate, he tried to shoot himself, but was foiled by Agafya, who caught him just in time. But this year, Tritimov had failed to return the money and denied ever receiving it, thus leaving the lieutenant colonel hanging. At around the same time, the lieutenant colonel had gotten into a financial and career scrape in which his superiors had forced him to resign after a large sum went missing from the battalion’s coffers. Katerina Ivanovna, the lieutenant colonel’s younger daughter—This didn’t help matters when the lieutenant colonel’s second daughter, the proud and beautiful Katerina Ivanovna, arrived in town for a visit. Good-looking enough, if not beautiful, she lived with her father and aunt.
The Brothers Karamazov Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary
When he had walked into the room earlier that night, she realized that he was her real love. She was seated on a chest, crying, and she held Dmitry’s hand as she told her sad story of disappointed love. Grushenka’s private confession—Then the thought of Grushenka’s love lifted his spirits again.
Chapter 34: Brothers Finally Talk
On earth, human life was a mystery because its real seeds lay in other worlds. Also, when confronted by sin, one should always choose humility and love over force; for humility and love were the ultimate power. Here the starets pointed to Father Anfim as a great lover of children.
Still, that didn’t stop him from lapsing into full verse, quoting from different poets, including another Schiller poem. Dmitry explained to him that he wanted to confess in verse, preferably Schiller’s Ode to Joy, except that he didn’t speak German. He wanted to make a confession and had hoped to see Alyosha, his earth angel; so he was ecstatic when Alyosha showed up by chance, especially since he also wanted to deliver a message to both his father and Katerina Ivanovna. As for his being in love, his object of devotion was a “slut” who had so captured his attention that he felt like he was falling.
But what began as a simple description of geographical fact, over time became more complex in its connotations, and in different periods it came to mean The starets questions Lise’s embarrassment of Alyosha—The starets then excused himself to move on to the other pilgrims, but before he left, the tearful lady asked him to bless her daughter. He counseled her to watch for any dishonest moments and not to be afraid of her sinfulness or of the trials that came with active love. His love of mankind as a whole was great, but he could not abide individuals for more than a day or two. Contemplative versus active love—The starets replied that he had known a wise, old doctor who had said the same thing.
Chapter 22: Violence Erupts in the Karamazov House
Then, after her turn of fortune, Dmitry received the full sum he had loaned her, followed by an intense love note amounting to a marriage proposal. There Katerina’s life changed dramatically when another relative, the widow of a general, suddenly lost both her heirs to illness. The move to Moscow; a sudden gift; Katerina’s proposal—Following their father’s proper military burial, Katerina and Agafya moved to Moscow. This soon metamorphosed into intense hatred bordering on love; and while that brought him a kind of ecstasy that challenged his self-control, in the end he resisted his instincts, though it took all he had. Dmitry, already aware of the money issue, had offered to produce the funds if Agafya would send Katerina Ivanovna to him.
Even so, he wasted no time informing Smerdyakov that his argument was pure drivel, and he kept comparing him to the Jesuits, considered controversial renegades by many. A few short interruptions—It was during this conversation that Alyosha walked in and took a seat at the table on his father’s invitation. When Fyodor Pavlovich asked why, Smerdyakov loudly declared that the soldier would have committed no sin, in his opinion, if he had renounced his faith to preserve his life. It could happen anywhere, and exactly what was going on, if anything, wasn’t clear. Predictably, Smerdyakov showed as little interest in Moscow as anywhere else and spent most of his free time alone. After doing this for a while, he would finally put it in his mouth.
- The midnight visit—The night before his birthday (unbeknownst to Zinovy), the day he had chosen to make his public confession, he came back to see Zinovy a second time at midnight.
- Oblivious to Smerdyakov’s mood, Ivan left, sure that they would see each other the next day.
- That was why he wanted Alyosha to ask their father for the money, even though they both knew Fyodor Pavlovich wouldn’t give it to him.
- The prosecutor reminded him that he’d told everyone that he had spent 3000 rubles, but Dmitry insisted that he had lied and that people had just believed him.
- Some of his decision stemmed from having just committed the murder and realizing that his life was over, while her “true” love could offer her a life of possibility.
He’d chicken road had his share of young ladies, but he actually preferred filth and drunkenness, the so-called “back alleys” of life, where he’d even found some jewels. He also confessed to being extremely fickle, changing lovers from day to day—and their backgrounds were irrelevant. But now it was time to stop preaching and get on with his confession. The terror of beauty, the place where lust and innocence converge—The final excerpt Dmitry recited ended by relating the “insect’s lust” to the joy of life bestowed by God.
Is The Brothers Karamazov hard to read?
A significant detail remembered—Although Alyosha’s testimony was honest, it was also clear that he loved Dmitry deeply and believed in his innocence regardless of any self-incriminating statements his brother had made. Aside from Dmitry’s inexplicable staring, emotional excitement, and strange talk, the doctor noticed that he would become especially frantic whenever talking about the 3000 rubles. Herzenstube figured that, being a ladies’ man, Dmitry would have normally looked left at the ladies.
The gist of the letter was that if he could not get the funds to repay Katerina Ivanovna, then he would kill his father and steal the money. In fact, he didn’t think Ivan was capable of carrying out his father’s murder, but he did believe that he had wanted him dead. The strange impertinence of this comment didn’t hit Ivan until after he left room, but he brushed the thought off as quickly as it came to him. But Ivan didn’t see them until four days after arriving in the city, so by the time he returned to his hometown the next day, Fyodor Pavlovich’s funeral and burial had already taken place.
- Then, when Father Païsy started reading about Christ changing the water into wine, Alyosha remembered the starets’s teaching that to love the people was to love their joy, too.
- But other than his cracked skull, the only thing out of order in Fyodor Pavlovich’s room was the torn envelope that had contained the 3000 rubles.
- Finally, he married a younger woman and became a dedicated husband and father of three in an effort to eliminate whatever haunting thoughts remained.
- She had been interested in him for a long time, but his effect on her was like a conscience, sometimes bringing on terrible feelings of shame.
- Pyotr Fomich—Pyotr Fomich Kalganov, a friend of Alyosha’s and roughly the same age, was a brooding, absentminded type who in private conversation would sometimes lapse into the opposite mood.
- Between her fury over Dmitry leaving with Grushenka and her behavior towards Ivan, Ivan naturally concluded that she still loved Dmitry.
He had little sympathy for either Dmitry or their father—they could kill each other as far as he was concerned. Meanwhile, Ivan had already moved to take care of his father, ordering Smerdyakov to fetch water in order to clean up the blood on Fyodor Pavlovich’s face. On that note, Dmitry rushed out again, determined to find her, but not without first expressing his intense hatred for his father. To do this, he had to plow his way through the sitting room and the rear rooms, but in the meantime Grigory had bolted the door and stood in his way. Yet before anything else could happen, Dmitry burst into the room, and Fyodor Pavlovich now cowered behind Ivan in fear for his life. Fyodor Pavlovich had completely forgotten that the “klikusha” was also his mother, and Ivan’s anger was so intense that it frightened his father for a moment.
Then the starets began his final speech, an often incoherent outpouring of all he hadn’t yet managed to convey, even though he had preached and taught much in his lifetime. It was a love letter, something Lise had harbored in her heart for a long time. Troubled thoughts—The scene he had just witnessed at his father’s house left Alyosha confused and despondent in a way that was new for him. When he asked Alyosha if he was angry with him, Alyosha replied that he wasn’t—he knew his father had goodness in his heart, even if his ramblings indicated otherwise. And if not—if he weren’t blessed with the seal of heaven—why should he renounce his life for something he didn’t have to begin with? When Fyodor Pavlovich once dropped three hundred rubles in the courtyard, Smerdyakov placed the money on the table, where Fyodor Pavlovich found it the next day.
Dmitri’s jealous obsession drives him to break into his father’s garden, convinced Grushenka must be there. With Grushenka’s feelings uncertain and his father as a rival, he’s consumed by the need to secure three thousan… Alyosha visits Grushenka in her modest lodgings, where she’s anxiously waiting for news from a former lover who abandoned her five years ago. Alyosha faces his darkest hour as his beloved elder Zossima’s body begins to decompose instead of performing miracles. Father Zossima delivers his final teachings about the nature of freedom, responsibility, and love. He begins by confessing he cannot love his neighbors …
Having made his final statement, he turned and left, racked with emotion. He knew full well what he was giving up by renouncing the money, and it pained him to do so. Whispering to him, the captain asked Alyosha if he wanted to see a trick, but Alyosha didn’t know what he meant. Too astounded to reply at first, he then poured forth a list of things he could with that money to help his desperate family. An ecstatic moment of hope—The offer of money had a dramatic effect on the captain. He explained that the money was strictly a gift from Katerina Ivanovna, Dmitry’s fiancée, who had also been insulted by him.
After putting her down, he kissed her passionately, but Grushenka still wasn’t ready, and she didn’t want it to happen there. More confessions; dreams of love and a new life—On Grushenka’s bidding, Dmitry ran over to rescue her, picking her up in his arms and carrying her into the bedroom. She begged his forgiveness for tormenting him all that time, and she asked whether he loved her, too. Yet how could he enjoy this newfound promise of love when he had left a man bleeding on the ground, maybe even dead? She reassured him, hinting that she loved him, though she didn’t directly say it. Dmitry protested that he was not her lover and that the short Pole had been all too willing at first to take the money.
That left him feeling frustrated, along with the common misunderstanding about his real nature, which he claimed to be benevolent and friendly. After trying different things, the Devil-gentleman finally found an unexpected cure in something mundane—malt extract. These were things he either had experienced or wished to experience in material form—like dreaming and being superstitious, experiencing life as a wealthy fat woman, or getting vaccinated. Now he only wanted to enjoy respectability, claiming to love people and being woefully misjudged by history, even rambling on about his own surprisingly mundane enjoyments and fantasies. —Ivan’s willingness, albeit reluctant, to interact with his guest did not mean that he wasn’t desperately afraid of landing in an insane asylum. But the cold, wet towel didn’t work, so not knowing what else to do, he encouraged the gentleman to entertain him with gossip—as long as he didn’t start philosophizing again.
