feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 1-chapter 5
feat_summary_id: book 1
feat_summary: {"name": "Book 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-1", "summary": "Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons have just been reunited after many years, and the novel's first chapters concern themselves mostly with the family's backstory. We meet Fyodor, a \"muddle-headed\" eccentric who has led a reckless and selfish life. Though many thought him too impulsive to be crafty, he died with 100,000 rubles, proving that he must have been keen in some ways. He has few friends and many enemies, and he is an enigma to all. He married a fiery, romantic woman named Adelaida, who thought his lifestyle was \"bold.\" After bearing him a son whom they named Dmitri, she ran off with a tutor. Fyodor was crushed by her desertion, but he also relished the idea of his humiliation so much that those who heard him talking about his situation thought that he somehow enjoyed his position as a cuckold. Neglected by his father, young Dmitri fell under the care of various servants and relatives through the years. He grew up \"unruly\" and \"impatient.\" When he was old enough, he joined the military. His impassioned character led him to be demoted for dueling, but he was re-promoted for \"gallantry.\" His extravagant lifestyle had put him far into debt by the time he left the military, and he came home to collect his inheritance from his father. After Adelaida left him, Fyodor married a beautiful innocent named Sofia. He was won by the sixteen-year-old's innocence, and he said of her, \"those innocent eyes of hers slit my soul open like a razor.\" She had two sons, Ivan and Alyosha. Because Fyodor felt that she should be \"indebted to him\" for saving her from a bad situation, he felt justified in treating her cruelly, sleeping with other women in the house, sometimes in front of her. His mistreatment of his young wife eventually led to her having a nervous breakdown. With both parents unsuitable for taking care of their children, General Vorohkov's widow--Sofia's former benefactress--took in the children. She left each of the boys 1,000 rubles for his education. Ivan grew up sullen and quiet, embarrassed about living on charity from others and more embarrassed about his father. He was a fiercely intelligent boy, and he made money by tutoring, freelancing, and reviewing books for money. He wrote a relatively famous article about the ecclesiastical courts that was debated in political and religious circles alike. He came to town rather unexpectedly. The youngest boy, Alyosha, was well-loved by Fyodor. He was popular, fearless of others, and, unlike his brothers, unconcerned with money. Instead of finishing school, he became quite taken with an elder named Father Zossima in the nearby monastery. He decided to join the monastery, and Fyodor gave him his blessing. Alyosha was the sort of boy who believed in miracles, but he was curiously very much a realist. Alyosha was a \"member of the younger generation.\" Many believed that studying under an elder in a monastery was a \"terrible apprenticeship\"--by self-annihilation, one might achieve self-realization. Father Zossima was sixty-five years old and a former officer in the army. He was kind to even the worst sinners, and he was locally famous for his saint-like status. When Alyosha meets his brothers for the first time, he quickly takes a liking to Dmitri. He finds Ivan \"absorbed in something within himself, something very important, that he was pursuing some goal, perhaps a very difficult goal, which left no room for Alyosha in his thoughts.\" Dmitri, however, likes Ivan. Because of the dispute between Dmitri and Fyodor over Dmitri's inheritance, the newly reunited family decides to see Father Zossima to help resolve the issue. Alyosha, who is very close with Father Zossima, fears that the family is going to make a ridiculous scene and treat a serious occasion like a farce. But Dmitri assures his brother that he will act respectfully and calmly and that everything will go fine.", "analysis": "In this first book, the reader gets to know the Karamazovs. The eldest Karamazov is a licentious old curmudgeon and a bad father.  Readers begin to wonder how his behavior and treatment of his sons will be reflected in their own personalities and lives. These early chapters serve as introductions, and they do not focus much on the present. Interestingly, Fyodor and his three sons have not been together for some time, so the reader knows that any interactions they have will not be the tried, worn conversations of longtime acquaintances. Instead, it is clear that the conversations the family share will be new and telling of future relationships. There is drama and suspense leading up to the meeting with Father Zossima, for not only will a family dispute be mediated, but all four Karamazovs will be in the same place. This will be the first legitimate gathering at which the reader will see all the Karamazovs. Dmitri seems very much his father's son. His inconsistent nature and his inclination to violence and sex remind the reader very much of Fyodor. Still, he seems to have a noble streak that is absent in Fyodor. Even though he was demoted in the army, he was re-promoted \"for gallantry.\" The disparity between Dmitri's extremes is great. He seems like he will be a loose cannon, and the reader is anxious to see how he will deal with a formal meeting about a hotly-contested issue; he seems capable of both civility and wild rage. Ivan is less obviously observable. He is quieter than his older brother, and he is very much ruled by his intellect, not his viscera. He seems to be very proud, refusing to ask his father for money and working very hard to make it. He and his older brother are also the sons of different mothers, and the significance of this detail is undeniable. It is not entirely clear yet how his personality is different from his brother's because of this fact, though. His mother was an innocent woman, not a passionate woman like Dmitri's mother. Ivan does not seem innocent, for he seems to understand the world enough to find a way to fend for himself. He also seems to understand the concept of reputations, for he is deeply embarrassed by his own father. Dmitri does have a predilection to follow his whims that Ivan does not have. Ivan seems very measured and in control of himself. He is the brother whose story is most concise. Alyosha and Dmitri are described at length, but Ivan has only a small section devoted to him. This is not because he is a lesser character--his role becomes clear later--but because he is more of an enigma. His motivations and actions are not as open and forthright as his brothers'. Dostoevsky thus leads us to want to unlock Ivan's mysterious character. Alyosha seems to be the hero of the novel even at this early stage. In fact, most of the novel will revolve around his experiences, for he is involved in everyone's problems.  When a character is described as having very few flaws, jaded modern readers suspect that one of his flaws might hurt him by the end, and we become interested to see how Alyosha might fall. But Alyosha never fully compromises his character. He retains a grand love for all mankind throughout the novel, and any missteps are minimal. He remains likeable and admirable throughout the novel, and his integrity is constant. The three brothers thus may represent three distinct ideologies. Dostoevsky is prone to making his characters embody certain ideas, and at this point in the novel, we can start to make such identifications. While it is very interesting to see how these different \"character-ideologies\" will cope with the situations presented to them, it is even more interesting to see how characters who might seem two-dimensional and clearly pigeonholed will become more complexly human. The introduction to this novel makes every character's future a fascinating one."}
text: PART I Book I. The History Of A Family Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
  
  
  Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch
  Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and
  still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which
  happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper
  place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner"--for so we
  used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own
  estate--was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a
  type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of
  those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their
  worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch,
  for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest;
  he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet
  at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard
  cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless,
  fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not
  stupidity--the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and
  intelligent enough--but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of
  it.
  
  He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first
  wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first
  wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble
  family, also landowners in our district, the Miuesovs. How it came to pass
  that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those
  vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes
  also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny
  weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young
  lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an
  enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have
  married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and
  ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid
  river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to
  satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if
  this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less
  picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most
  likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and
  probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or
  three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miuesov's action was similarly, no
  doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation
  caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her
  feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of
  her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for
  a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic
  position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive
  epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more.
  What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement,
  and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's
  position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for
  he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To
  attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring
  prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the
  bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was,
  perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who
  was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on
  the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who
  made no particular appeal to his senses.
  
  Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash
  that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage
  accordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity.
  Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the
  runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most
  disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was
  said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity
  than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up
  to twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those
  thousands were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather
  fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a
  long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He
  would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to
  get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his
  persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida
  Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known
  for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife,
  but rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was
  beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient
  woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the
  house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity
  student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's
  hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the
  house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he
  used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all
  of Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful
  for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to
  gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part
  of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.
  
  "One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem
  so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many even added
  that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and
  that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of
  his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At
  last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor
  woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity
  student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete
  emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making
  preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself
  have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do
  so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another
  bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family
  received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly
  in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had
  it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's
  death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting
  with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant
  depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little
  child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the
  repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true,
  that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who
  released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more
  naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son
  
  
  You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would
  bring up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be
  expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaida
  Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but
  simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying every one with his
  tears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a
  faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya
  into his care. If he hadn't looked after him there would have been no one
  even to change the baby's little shirt.
  
  It happened moreover that the child's relations on his mother's side
  forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow,
  Mitya's grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his
  daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in
  old Grigory's charge and lived with him in the servant's cottage. But if
  his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been altogether
  unaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the cottage, as
  the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a
  cousin of Mitya's mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, happened to return
  from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that
  time quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miuesovs as a man of
  enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals
  and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type
  common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come
  into contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in
  Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in
  his declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the
  Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost
  taken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most
  grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of
  about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate
  lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our
  famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless
  lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights
  of fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don't know
  exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of
  culture to open an attack upon the "clericals." Hearing all about Adelaida
  Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time
  been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in
  spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch.
  He made the latter's acquaintance for the first time, and told him
  directly that he wished to undertake the child's education. He used long
  afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak
  of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not
  understand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was
  surprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may
  have been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an
  unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to
  his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This
  habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some
  of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch
  carried the business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house
  and land, left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this
  cousin's keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after
  securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to
  Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in
  Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris he, too,
  forgot the child, especially when the Revolution of February broke out,
  making an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his
  life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her
  married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I
  won't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor
  Pavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential
  facts about him, without which I could not begin my story.
  
  In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the
  only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that
  he had property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He
  spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the
  gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was
  promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion
  again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin
  to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and
  until then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch,
  for the first time on coming of age, when he visited our neighborhood on
  purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked
  his father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away,
  having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an
  agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and value
  of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get
  a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time
  then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated
  idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this,
  as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man
  was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and
  that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although
  only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take
  advantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles,
  installments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing patience,
  came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his
  father, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was
  difficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of
  his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even
  in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own
  desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect
  anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed,
  suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed,
  this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the
  subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it.
  But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch's
  other two sons, and of their origin.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family
  
  
  Very shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor
  Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years.
  He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from
  another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in
  company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious
  debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his
  business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over-
  scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and
  was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the
  house of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was
  at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I
  have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once
  cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft,
  so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging
  of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an
  insufferable tyrant through idleness.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he
  was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement
  to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any
  account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time.
  But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of
  sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of
  the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child
  exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a
  penny this time, for the general's widow was furious. She gave them
  nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what
  allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her
  innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious
  profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine
  beauty.
  
  "Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say
  afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might,
  of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no
  dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he
  did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged"
  him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to
  trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women
  into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's
  presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that
  Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had
  always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his
  new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a
  manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels
  and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this
  unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that
  kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women
  who are said to be "possessed by devils." At times after terrible fits of
  hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two
  sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the
  second three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth
  year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all
  his life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same
  thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya.
  They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were
  looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were
  found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was
  still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done
  her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya's
  manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she
  declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:
  
  "It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude."
  
  Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow
  suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's
  house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal.
  It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight
  years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him,
  without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps
  on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up
  and down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the
  two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in
  dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and
  announcing that she would carry off both the children she wrapped them
  just as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her
  own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word,
  and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow
  and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans."
  "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him as she
  drove away.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and
  did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition
  in regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given him,
  he drove all over the town telling the story.
  
  It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys
  in her will a thousand roubles each "for their instruction, and so that
  all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so
  portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than
  adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw
  away their money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I heard
  there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The
  principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the
  province, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him
  for his children's education (though the latter never directly refused but
  only procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at
  times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest
  in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who
  lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this
  from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and
  humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for
  their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand
  roubles left to them by the general's widow intact, so that by the time
  they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of
  interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent
  far more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a
  detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few
  of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he
  grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At
  ten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home
  but on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it
  was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy
  (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for
  learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim
  Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and
  boarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of
  Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to
  the "ardor for good works" of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the
  idea that the boy's genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But
  neither Yefim Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man
  finished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch
  had made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy,
  which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to
  formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits
  for the first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep
  himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not
  even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from
  contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him
  that from such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may
  have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in
  getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting
  paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of
  "Eye-Witness." These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and
  piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's
  practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and
  unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the
  newspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than
  everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French.
  Having once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept
  up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he
  published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so
  that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last year
  he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of
  readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was
  rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was
  preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch
  published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which
  attracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been
  supposed to know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The
  article dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the
  time--the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several
  opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most
  striking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion.
  Many of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side.
  And yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their
  applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was
  nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident
  particularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in
  our neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the
  question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it.
  Learning the author's name, they were interested in his being a native of
  the town and the son of "that Fyodor Pavlovitch." And just then it was
  that the author himself made his appearance among us.
  
  Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the
  time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first
  step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself.
  It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud,
  and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house
  and a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never
  thought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him
  money, though he was always afraid that his sons Ivan and Alexey would
  also come to ask him for it. And here the young man was staying in the
  house of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they
  were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of
  wonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, of
  whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife,
  happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had
  come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more
  surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who
  interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not
  without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements.
  
  "He is proud," he used to say, "he will never be in want of pence; he has
  got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can
  see that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give him
  any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can't
  do without him. They get on so well together!"
  
  That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his
  father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even
  seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even
  spitefully perverse.
  
  It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request
  of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for
  the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow
  been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern
  to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully
  in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still
  felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit
  rather mysterious.
  
  I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator
  between his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel
  with his father and even planning to bring an action against him.
  
  The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its
  members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother,
  Alexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the
  three to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to
  speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of
  him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce
  my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been
  for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered
  there for the rest of his life.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha
  
  
  He was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty-fourth year at the
  time, while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I
  must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my
  opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full
  opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and
  that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it
  struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from
  the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason
  this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as
  he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom
  he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I
  do not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so
  indeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though
  he lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his life--her
  face, her caresses, "as though she stood living before me." Such memories
  may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age, even from two
  years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime like spots
  of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture, which
  has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was
  with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the
  slanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all);
  in a corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on
  her knees before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and
  moans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt,
  and praying for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to
  the image as though to put him under the Mother's protection ... and
  suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the
  picture! And Alyosha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He used
  to say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely
  cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he
  was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness
  or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different,
  from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with
  other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to
  forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed
  throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever
  looked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about
  him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)
  that he did not care to be a judge of others--that he would never take it
  upon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He
  seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though
  often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could
  surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to
  his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste
  and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was
  unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation.
  His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was
  sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and
  sullenness. "He does not say much," he used to say, "and thinks the more."
  But soon, within a fortnight indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing
  him terribly often, with drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet
  he evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never
  been capable of feeling for any one before.
  
  Every one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so
  from his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron
  and benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the
  family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he
  entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from
  design nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of making
  himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very
  nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be
  just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and
  even disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and
  rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into
  a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was
  at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one could see at the
  first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary he was
  bright and good-tempered. He never tried to show off among his
  schoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one,
  yet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his
  fearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He
  never resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense
  he would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and
  candid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it
  was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the
  affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this
  completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic
  which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to
  mock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This
  characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not
  bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There
  are "certain" words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in
  schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking
  in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and
  images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than
  that, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to
  quite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no
  moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the
  appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something
  refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha
  Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of "that," they
  used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout
  nastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried
  to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults
  in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with
  being a "regular girl," and what's more they looked upon it with
  compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class but
  was never first.
  
  At the time of Yefim Petrovitch's death Alyosha had two more years to
  complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost
  immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole
  family, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in
  the house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had
  never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know
  himself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at
  whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to
  his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years
  in the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from
  childhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his
  benefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha's character must not, I
  think, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with
  him any one would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths,
  almost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to
  come into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it
  away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue.
  In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course,
  in a literal sense. When he was given pocket-money, which he never asked
  for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a
  moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it.
  
  In later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, a man very sensitive on the
  score of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment,
  after getting to know Alyosha:
  
  "Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone
  without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million
  inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and
  hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he
  would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or
  humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary,
  would probably be looked on as a pleasure."
  
  He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of
  the course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see
  his father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and
  unwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the
  ladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his
  benefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even
  fitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the money
  they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival
  in the town he made no answer to his father's first inquiry why he had
  come before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually
  thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother's
  tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only
  object of his visit. But it can hardly have been the whole reason of it.
  It is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not
  explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him irresistibly
  into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show
  him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave
  since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had
  entirely forgotten where she was buried.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been
  living in our town. Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone
  to the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent
  several years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, "of a
  lot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins," and ended by being received by
  "Jews high and low alike." It may be presumed that at this period he
  developed a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally
  returned to our town only three years before Alyosha's arrival. His former
  acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means
  an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more
  effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making
  buffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used
  to be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number
  of new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a
  hundred thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the
  town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good
  security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more
  irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to
  begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were letting himself
  go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if it had not
  been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably
  too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor
  Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed
  to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this
  prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.
  
  "Do you know," he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, "that you are
  like her, 'the crazy woman' "--that was what he used to call his dead wife,
  Alyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the "crazy woman's" grave
  to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote
  corner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were
  inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and
  below a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned
  middle-class tombs. To Alyosha's amazement this tomb turned out to be
  Grigory's doing. He had put it up on the poor "crazy woman's" grave at his
  own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the
  grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories.
  Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother's grave.
  He only listened to Grigory's minute and solemn account of the erection of
  the tomb; he stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a
  word. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this
  little episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch--and a
  very original one. He suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to
  pay for requiems for the soul of his wife; but not for the second,
  Alyosha's mother, the "crazy woman," but for the first, Adelaida Ivanovna,
  who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and
  abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he
  had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange
  impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.
  
  I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this
  time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he
  had led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,
  suspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in
  his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a
  great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual
  appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between
  which could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered
  every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own
  face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used
  particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very
  delicate and conspicuously aquiline. "A regular Roman nose," he used to
  say, "with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman
  patrician of the decadent period." He seemed proud of it.
  
  Not long after visiting his mother's grave Alyosha suddenly announced that
  he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to
  receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and
  that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew
  that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had
  made a special impression upon his "gentle boy."
  
  "That is the most honest monk among them, of course," he observed, after
  listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised
  at his request. "H'm!... So that's where you want to be, my gentle boy?"
  
  He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin,
  which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had
  a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you
  believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have
  your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never desert you,
  my angel. And I'll pay what's wanted for you there, if they ask for it.
  But, of course, if they don't ask, why should we worry them? What do you
  say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. H'm!...
  Do you know that near one monastery there's a place outside the town where
  every baby knows there are none but 'the monks' wives' living, as they are
  called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's
  interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is
  it's awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they
  could get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear
  of it they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here, no
  'monks' wives,' and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the
  fasts. I admit it.... H'm.... So you want to be a monk? And do you know
  I'm sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I've really grown
  fond of you? Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray for us sinners; we
  have sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for
  me, and whether there's any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm
  awfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see,
  however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time
  to time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the
  devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then
  I wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do
  they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the
  monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance.
  Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more
  refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what
  does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know,
  there's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there
  can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is
  unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and
  if they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? _Il
  faudrait les inventer_, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you
  only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am."
  
  "But there are no hooks there," said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously
  at his father.
  
  "Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That's how a
  Frenchman described hell: '_J'ai bu l'ombre d'un cocher qui avec l'ombre
  d'une brosse frottait l'ombre d'une carrosse._' How do you know there are
  no hooks, darling? When you've lived with the monks you'll sing a
  different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell
  me. Anyway it's easier going to the other world if one knows what there is
  there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here
  with me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you're like
  an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you
  there. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got all
  your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be
  healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you're
  the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I
  feel it, you know. I can't help feeling it."
  
  And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and
  sentimental.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter V. Elders
  
  
  Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic,
  poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary,
  Alyosha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of
  nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful,
  moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long,
  oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes; he was very
  thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red
  cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy
  that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the
  monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are
  never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose
  realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will
  always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if
  he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather
  disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he
  admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does
  not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.
  If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to
  admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not
  believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, "My Lord and my God!"
  Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed
  solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his
  secret heart even when he said, "I do not believe till I see."
  
  I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not
  finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is
  true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice.
  I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only
  because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented
  itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from
  darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our
  last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it
  and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength
  of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice
  everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to
  understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of
  all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of
  their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply
  tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set
  before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength
  of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite
  direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As
  soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God
  and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to
  live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way,
  if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once
  have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the
  labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the
  question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of
  Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up
  heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go
  on living as before. It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor
  and follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect."
  
  Alyosha said to himself: "I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and
  only go to mass instead of 'following Him.' " Perhaps his memories of
  childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken
  him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his
  poor "crazy" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination.
  Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see
  whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the
  monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is
  in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent
  to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a
  few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of
  "elders" is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our
  monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos,
  it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in
  ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook
  Russia--the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East
  after the destruction of Constantinople--this institution fell into
  oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one
  of the great "ascetics," as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his
  disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has
  sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished
  especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was
  introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three
  such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of
  weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question
  for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished
  by anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints,
  nor wonder-working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical
  exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its
  elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles
  from all parts.
  
  What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will,
  into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your
  own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-
  abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is
  undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in
  order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from
  self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without
  finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not
  founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a
  thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary
  "obedience" which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The
  obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted
  themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.
  
  The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity
  one such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his
  elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great
  exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's
  death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was
  burying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, "Depart all ye
  unbaptized," the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place and
  was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only
  at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and
  left his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder's
  absolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral
  take place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent
  instance.
  
  A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved
  as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to
  do homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia:
  "There is the place for thee and not here." The monk, overwhelmed with
  sorrow, went to the OEcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought
  him to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not
  only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on
  earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself
  laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain
  cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of
  our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to
  persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed
  among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of
  distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to
  confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for
  counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared
  that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously
  degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the
  monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the
  end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming
  established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this
  instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral
  regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility
  may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and
  complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage
  and not to freedom.
  
  The elder Zossima was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had
  been in the army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer.
  He had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his soul.
  Alyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let
  him wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was bound by no
  obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days.
  Though he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily, not to be different
  from others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination
  was deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so
  many people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father
  Zossima and to entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had
  acquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a
  new-comer wanted, and what was the suffering on his conscience. He
  sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of
  their secrets before they had spoken a word.
  
  Alyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first
  time with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy
  faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was
  not at all stern. On the contrary, he was always almost gay. The monks
  used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the
  greater the sinner the more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the
  end of his life, among the monks some who hated and envied him, but they
  were few in number and they were silent, though among them were some of
  great dignity in the monastery, one, for instance, of the older monks
  distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the
  majority were on Father Zossima's side and very many of them loved him
  with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically
  devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a saint,
  that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end was near,
  they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the
  immediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the
  miraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the
  story of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with
  sick children or relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and
  to pray over them, return shortly after--some the next day--and, falling in
  tears at the elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick.
  
  Whether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural
  course of the disease was a question which did not exist for Alyosha, for
  he fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in
  his fame, in his glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart
  throbbed, and he beamed, as it were, all over when the elder came out to
  the gates of the hermitage into the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the
  humbler class who had flocked from all parts of Russia on purpose to see
  the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him, wept, kissed
  his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while the women
  held up their children to him and brought him the sick "possessed with
  devils." The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer over them, blessed
  them, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak through attacks of
  illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and the pilgrims
  waited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not wonder why
  they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with emotion
  merely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of
  the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the
  everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was
  the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall
  down before and worship.
  
  "Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on
  earth there is some one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the
  truth; so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us,
  too, and rule over all the earth according to the promise."
  
  Alyosha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He
  understood it, but that the elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of
  God's truth--of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants and the
  sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that
  after his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery
  was even stronger in Alyosha than in any one there, and, of late, a kind
  of deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart.
  He was not at all troubled at this elder's standing as a solitary example
  before him.
  
  "No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for
  all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all
  men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor
  poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and
  the true Kingdom of Christ will come." That was the dream in Alyosha's
  heart.
  
  The arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed
  to make a great impression on Alyosha. He more quickly made friends with
  his half-brother Dmitri (though he arrived later) than with his own
  brother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when
  the latter had been two months in the town, though they had met fairly
  often, they were still not intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent, and he
  seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his
  brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and
  curiously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Alyosha
  noticed it with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference
  at first to the disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered
  whether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some
  other cause entirely unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was
  absorbed in something--something inward and important--that he was striving
  towards some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he
  had no thought for him. Alyosha wondered, too, whether there was not some
  contempt on the part of the learned atheist for him--a foolish novice. He
  knew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He could not take
  offense at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with an uneasy embarrassment
  which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come
  nearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and
  with a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of
  the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable
  bond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to
  Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared
  with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in
  personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more
  unlike.
  
  It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members
  of this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had
  such an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering
  was a false one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and
  his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become
  insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to
  suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima's
  cell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might
  more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of
  the elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally
  supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly
  blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several
  recent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was
  not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end
  of the town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, who was staying
  in the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the
  forties and fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by
  boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with
  the desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the
  monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the
  Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming with
  such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and
  consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from
  within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had
  scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his
  ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was
  fixed.
  
  "Who has made me a judge over them?" was all he said, smilingly, to
  Alyosha.
  
  Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the
  wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the
  interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives,
  perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and
  Miuesov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his
  father might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said
  nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was
  far from being so simple as every one thought him. He awaited the day with
  a heavy heart. No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family
  discord could be ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He
  trembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him,
  especially the refined, courteous irony of Miuesov and the supercilious
  half-utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He even wanted to venture on
  warning the elder, telling him something about them, but, on second
  thoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a
  friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep
  his promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had
  promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let
  himself be provoked "by vileness," but that, although he had a deep
  respect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the
  meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce.
  
  "Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect
  to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly," he wrote in conclusion.
  Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Book 1
target: Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons have just been reunited after many years, and the novel's first chapters concern themselves mostly with the family's backstory. We meet Fyodor, a "muddle-headed" eccentric who has led a reckless and selfish life. Though many thought him too impulsive to be crafty, he died with 100,000 rubles, proving that he must have been keen in some ways. He has few friends and many enemies, and he is an enigma to all. He married a fiery, romantic woman named Adelaida, who thought his lifestyle was "bold." After bearing him a son whom they named Dmitri, she ran off with a tutor. Fyodor was crushed by her desertion, but he also relished the idea of his humiliation so much that those who heard him talking about his situation thought that he somehow enjoyed his position as a cuckold. Neglected by his father, young Dmitri fell under the care of various servants and relatives through the years. He grew up "unruly" and "impatient." When he was old enough, he joined the military. His impassioned character led him to be demoted for dueling, but he was re-promoted for "gallantry." His extravagant lifestyle had put him far into debt by the time he left the military, and he came home to collect his inheritance from his father. After Adelaida left him, Fyodor married a beautiful innocent named Sofia. He was won by the sixteen-year-old's innocence, and he said of her, "those innocent eyes of hers slit my soul open like a razor." She had two sons, Ivan and Alyosha. Because Fyodor felt that she should be "indebted to him" for saving her from a bad situation, he felt justified in treating her cruelly, sleeping with other women in the house, sometimes in front of her. His mistreatment of his young wife eventually led to her having a nervous breakdown. With both parents unsuitable for taking care of their children, General Vorohkov's widow--Sofia's former benefactress--took in the children. She left each of the boys 1,000 rubles for his education. Ivan grew up sullen and quiet, embarrassed about living on charity from others and more embarrassed about his father. He was a fiercely intelligent boy, and he made money by tutoring, freelancing, and reviewing books for money. He wrote a relatively famous article about the ecclesiastical courts that was debated in political and religious circles alike. He came to town rather unexpectedly. The youngest boy, Alyosha, was well-loved by Fyodor. He was popular, fearless of others, and, unlike his brothers, unconcerned with money. Instead of finishing school, he became quite taken with an elder named Father Zossima in the nearby monastery. He decided to join the monastery, and Fyodor gave him his blessing. Alyosha was the sort of boy who believed in miracles, but he was curiously very much a realist. Alyosha was a "member of the younger generation." Many believed that studying under an elder in a monastery was a "terrible apprenticeship"--by self-annihilation, one might achieve self-realization. Father Zossima was sixty-five years old and a former officer in the army. He was kind to even the worst sinners, and he was locally famous for his saint-like status. When Alyosha meets his brothers for the first time, he quickly takes a liking to Dmitri. He finds Ivan "absorbed in something within himself, something very important, that he was pursuing some goal, perhaps a very difficult goal, which left no room for Alyosha in his thoughts." Dmitri, however, likes Ivan. Because of the dispute between Dmitri and Fyodor over Dmitri's inheritance, the newly reunited family decides to see Father Zossima to help resolve the issue. Alyosha, who is very close with Father Zossima, fears that the family is going to make a ridiculous scene and treat a serious occasion like a farce. But Dmitri assures his brother that he will act respectfully and calmly and that everything will go fine.
feat_summary_analysis: In this first book, the reader gets to know the Karamazovs. The eldest Karamazov is a licentious old curmudgeon and a bad father.  Readers begin to wonder how his behavior and treatment of his sons will be reflected in their own personalities and lives. These early chapters serve as introductions, and they do not focus much on the present. Interestingly, Fyodor and his three sons have not been together for some time, so the reader knows that any interactions they have will not be the tried, worn conversations of longtime acquaintances. Instead, it is clear that the conversations the family share will be new and telling of future relationships. There is drama and suspense leading up to the meeting with Father Zossima, for not only will a family dispute be mediated, but all four Karamazovs will be in the same place. This will be the first legitimate gathering at which the reader will see all the Karamazovs. Dmitri seems very much his father's son. His inconsistent nature and his inclination to violence and sex remind the reader very much of Fyodor. Still, he seems to have a noble streak that is absent in Fyodor. Even though he was demoted in the army, he was re-promoted "for gallantry." The disparity between Dmitri's extremes is great. He seems like he will be a loose cannon, and the reader is anxious to see how he will deal with a formal meeting about a hotly-contested issue; he seems capable of both civility and wild rage. Ivan is less obviously observable. He is quieter than his older brother, and he is very much ruled by his intellect, not his viscera. He seems to be very proud, refusing to ask his father for money and working very hard to make it. He and his older brother are also the sons of different mothers, and the significance of this detail is undeniable. It is not entirely clear yet how his personality is different from his brother's because of this fact, though. His mother was an innocent woman, not a passionate woman like Dmitri's mother. Ivan does not seem innocent, for he seems to understand the world enough to find a way to fend for himself. He also seems to understand the concept of reputations, for he is deeply embarrassed by his own father. Dmitri does have a predilection to follow his whims that Ivan does not have. Ivan seems very measured and in control of himself. He is the brother whose story is most concise. Alyosha and Dmitri are described at length, but Ivan has only a small section devoted to him. This is not because he is a lesser character--his role becomes clear later--but because he is more of an enigma. His motivations and actions are not as open and forthright as his brothers'. Dostoevsky thus leads us to want to unlock Ivan's mysterious character. Alyosha seems to be the hero of the novel even at this early stage. In fact, most of the novel will revolve around his experiences, for he is involved in everyone's problems.  When a character is described as having very few flaws, jaded modern readers suspect that one of his flaws might hurt him by the end, and we become interested to see how Alyosha might fall. But Alyosha never fully compromises his character. He retains a grand love for all mankind throughout the novel, and any missteps are minimal. He remains likeable and admirable throughout the novel, and his integrity is constant. The three brothers thus may represent three distinct ideologies. Dostoevsky is prone to making his characters embody certain ideas, and at this point in the novel, we can start to make such identifications. While it is very interesting to see how these different "character-ideologies" will cope with the situations presented to them, it is even more interesting to see how characters who might seem two-dimensional and clearly pigeonholed will become more complexly human. The introduction to this novel makes every character's future a fascinating one.