Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov" - a novel about Russia

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In all world literature there are not so many books comparable in depth to the famous Russian classic novel. This is one of the undeniable peaks of not only Russian, but also world literature. One can hardly consider a person fully educated if Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" is missing from the list of books he has read. But this book is complex, multidimensional, and in order to understand it, you need to do a lot of mental and intellectual work.

Dostoevsky. "The Brothers Karamazov"

This is the final book and a kind of culmination of the entire creative path of the writer. In it, he reflected everything that he thinks about a person and the world in which a person lives. At the center of the story are three brothers who have very different relationships with the world and with the Supreme Creator. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky tied too many contradictions into the plot of his novel. The Karamazov brothers are at the very center of a multidimensional knot of contradictions boiling in the quiet provincial town of Skotoprigonyevsk. The town, as it turns out, lives by the principle: there are devils in still waters. But the devils are found in the soulspeople.

And one of the key phrases of the novel is Karamazov Sr.'s maxim: "If there is no God, then everything is allowed." And father-Karamazov is guided in his life precisely by this principle, in accordance with it, he accepts death at the hands of one of his sons. The plot of the novel is based on the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and Dostoevsky unhurriedly spins this detective intrigue before the reader. The Karamazov brothers are among the suspects in this crime that has stirred up a quiet town.

Of course, the detective intrigue here is nothing more than a structural framework on which the brilliant image of Russia is based. It is clearly read in the novel, it clearly depicts something more than a flash of passion against the backdrop of the murder of an old drunkard in a remote village. But the denouement to which Dostoevsky leads the action is especially impressive. "The Brothers Karamazov" is not limited to the three main characters of the story, and none of the sons of the deceased committed the murder. But Fyodor Mikhailovich was killed by the brother of the Karamazov Jr. This character runs through the whole novel as Smerdyakov's lackey. The fact that he is the fourth son of the deceased is unknown to anyone, and he calculated his crime very competently. All the evidence converges against Dmitri Karamazov and the few who know the truth cannot prove it.

Posthumous glory

The author himself was not destined to trace the fate of his main book, he died soon afterafter its publication in the pages of a literary magazine. But the fate of the novel is enviable, it has been read and re-read for a century and a half. A thick volume with an inscription on the spine "F. Dostoevsky. "The Brothers Karamazov" is in any self-respecting library, many read it several times during their lives, comparing the impression that this book left in their youth with the perception of it in their mature years. And you can only guess about the future fate of Dostoevsky's heroes. The brightest character of the novel, Alyosha Karamazov, was supposed to go to throw a bomb at the liberator tsar. But the revolution did without him.