Fyodor Dostoevsky's, "The Brothers Karamazov"

Dostoevsky considered this last novel his magnum opus. With this he felt he had expressed himself completely. This sprawling 936-page novel does tackle every issue that ever fascinated man--religion, society, class, sensuality, morality, mortality, honor, love, lust, greed, kinship, sin, retribution--you name it this has got it. After having read modern novels with their crystal focus and edited crispness, The Brothers Karamazov overflowed my mind with outlandish tangents, intense-to-a-fault pondering and blatant pontificating. But no matter how taxing and dated the style or subject matter, the underlying soul, the integrity of the writer's search won me over time and again. Dostoevsky is the kind of noble soul who would feel shame for the natural flaws in him, flaws that we easily rationalize and even feel proud of in ourselves. He also embraces these flaws in others with such insouciance that I want to go hug him and buy him vodka. With his characteristic concern, fascination, understanding, and philosophy about the pull and push of human instincts, Dostoevsky creates a macabre universe of characters that appall and rivet us and ultimately reveal humanity in all its paradoxical splendor.

At the center of the The Brothers Karamazov is the patricide, the events that foreshadow it, the three sons--Dmitry the sensualist, Ivan the amoral intellectual, and Alyosha the searching mystic, the lengthy trial, and resolution. Affecting the lives of these three starkly different brothers are their illegitimate brother the deranged, confused Smerdyakov, the elegant Katerina, and the vixen Grushenka. There also other important characters, like the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, Rakitin the cynical friend and the priest who guides Alyosha.

On a larger level, Dostoevsky uses Dmitry to stand for Russia's inherent national character of being caught between passion and honor, whereas, Alyosha stands for the ideal, spiritual, all healing Russia and Ivan stands for the other extreme of cold, dispassionate intellectual rationale. Dostoevsky also takes surprising jabs at American society and psychology as a discipline during the trial scenes that I hadn't found in his other works. All in all, this is an ambitious, monumental work to say the least. If you already like Dostoevsky, you might appreciate this work. If you haven't read any of his other stuff, you may want to start with , "Crime and Punishment" or "The Idiot" before coming to this heady novel.

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