feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_62_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 10.chapter 1
feat_summary_id: book 10, chapter 1
feat_summary: {"name": "Book 10, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-10-chapter-1", "summary": "The novel shifts to the beginning of November, where we are introduced to 14-year-old Kolya Krasotkin. Krasotkin is popular among his peers and respected for being a daredevil. In the previous July, he had lain down on some railroad tracks on a dare as a train passed over him. The story spread, and his reputation was sealed - but his widow mother was utterly distraught, so he had to vow never to pull such a dangerous prank again. Kolya also has an intellectual streak in him, reading books from his father's library and showing off in class, particularly in Dardenalov's history class. This is in part because Dardenalov has the hots for his mom, which Kolya tolerates. Kolya also has a dog, Perezvon, who he picked up a month ago. He keeps the dog in the house, teaching it all kinds of tricks. Oh, and Kolya's the kid that got stabbed by the sick boy Ilyusha in Book 4, Chapter 3.", "analysis": ""}
text: PART IV Book X. The Boys Chapter I. Kolya Krassotkin
  
  
  It was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost, eleven
  degrees Reaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen on the
  frozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting and
  blowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially about the
  market-place. It was a dull morning, but the snow had ceased.
  
  Not far from the market-place, close to Plotnikov's shop, there stood a
  small house, very clean both without and within. It belonged to Madame
  Krassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary, who had been dead
  for fourteen years. His widow, still a nice-looking woman of thirty-two,
  was living in her neat little house on her private means. She lived in
  respectable seclusion; she was of a soft but fairly cheerful disposition.
  She was about eighteen at the time of her husband's death; she had been
  married only a year and had just borne him a son. From the day of his
  death she had devoted herself heart and soul to the bringing up of her
  precious treasure, her boy Kolya. Though she had loved him passionately
  those fourteen years, he had caused her far more suffering than happiness.
  She had been trembling and fainting with terror almost every day, afraid
  he would fall ill, would catch cold, do something naughty, climb on a
  chair and fall off it, and so on and so on. When Kolya began going to
  school, the mother devoted herself to studying all the sciences with him
  so as to help him, and go through his lessons with him. She hastened to
  make the acquaintance of the teachers and their wives, even made up to
  Kolya's schoolfellows, and fawned upon them in the hope of thus saving
  Kolya from being teased, laughed at, or beaten by them. She went so far
  that the boys actually began to mock at him on her account and taunt him
  with being a "mother's darling."
  
  But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy, "tremendously
  strong," as was rumored in his class, and soon proved to be the fact; he
  was agile, strong-willed, and of an audacious and enterprising temper. He
  was good at lessons, and there was a rumor in the school that he could
  beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic and universal history. Though
  he looked down upon every one, he was a good comrade and not supercilious.
  He accepted his schoolfellows' respect as his due, but was friendly with
  them. Above all, he knew where to draw the line. He could restrain himself
  on occasion, and in his relations with the teachers he never overstepped
  that last mystic limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach
  of discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion
  as the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of
  mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something, something
  effective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew how to make even
  his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control of her.
  She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years. The one
  thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love for her. She
  was always fancying that Kolya was "unfeeling" to her, and at times,
  dissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him with his
  coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations of feeling
  were demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to avoid them. Yet
  it was not intentional on his part but instinctive--it was his character.
  His mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He only disliked
  "sheepish sentimentality," as he expressed it in his schoolboy language.
  
  There was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been his
  father's. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them by
  himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at
  seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book instead
  of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some things unsuitable for
  his age.
  
  Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his mischief, he
  had of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother serious alarm. It
  is true there was nothing vicious in what he did, but a wild mad
  recklessness.
  
  It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother and son
  went to another district, forty-five miles away, to spend a week with a
  distant relation, whose husband was an official at the railway station
  (the very station, the nearest one to our town, from which a month later
  Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow). There Kolya began by
  carefully investigating every detail connected with the railways, knowing
  that he could impress his schoolfellows when he got home with his newly
  acquired knowledge. But there happened to be some other boys in the place
  with whom he soon made friends. Some of them were living at the station,
  others in the neighborhood; there were six or seven of them, all between
  twelve and fifteen, and two of them came from our town. The boys played
  together, and on the fourth or fifth day of Kolya's stay at the station, a
  mad bet was made by the foolish boys. Kolya, who was almost the youngest
  of the party and rather looked down upon by the others in consequence, was
  moved by vanity or by reckless bravado to bet them two roubles that he
  would lie down between the rails at night when the eleven o'clock train
  was due, and would lie there without moving while the train rolled over
  him at full speed. It is true they made a preliminary investigation, from
  which it appeared that it was possible to lie so flat between the rails
  that the train could pass over without touching, but to lie there was no
  joke! Kolya maintained stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at
  him, called him a little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on.
  What piqued him most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses
  at him too superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as "a
  small boy," not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable
  insult.
  
  And so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile from the station,
  so that the train might have time to get up full speed after leaving the
  station. The boys assembled. It was a pitch-dark night without a moon. At
  the time fixed, Kolya lay down between the rails. The five others who had
  taken the bet waited among the bushes below the embankment, their hearts
  beating with suspense, which was followed by alarm and remorse. At last
  they heard in the distance the rumble of the train leaving the station.
  Two red lights gleamed out of the darkness; the monster roared as it
  approached.
  
  "Run, run away from the rails," the boys cried to Kolya from the bushes,
  breathless with terror. But it was too late: the train darted up and flew
  past. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without moving. They began pulling
  at him, lifting him up. He suddenly got up and walked away without a word.
  Then he explained that he had lain there as though he were insensible to
  frighten them, but the fact was that he really had lost consciousness, as
  he confessed long after to his mother. In this way his reputation as "a
  desperate character," was established for ever. He returned home to the
  station as white as a sheet. Next day he had a slight attack of nervous
  fever, but he was in high spirits and well pleased with himself. The
  incident did not become known at once, but when they came back to the town
  it penetrated to the school and even reached the ears of the masters. But
  then Kolya's mother hastened to entreat the masters on her boy's behalf,
  and in the end Dardanelov, a respected and influential teacher, exerted
  himself in his favor, and the affair was ignored.
  
  Dardanelov was a middle-aged bachelor, who had been passionately in love
  with Madame Krassotkin for many years past, and had once already, about a
  year previously, ventured, trembling with fear and the delicacy of his
  sentiments, to offer her most respectfully his hand in marriage. But she
  refused him resolutely, feeling that to accept him would be an act of
  treachery to her son, though Dardanelov had, to judge from certain
  mysterious symptoms, reason for believing that he was not an object of
  aversion to the charming but too chaste and tender-hearted widow. Kolya's
  mad prank seemed to have broken the ice, and Dardanelov was rewarded for
  his intercession by a suggestion of hope. The suggestion, it is true, was
  a faint one, but then Dardanelov was such a paragon of purity and delicacy
  that it was enough for the time being to make him perfectly happy. He was
  fond of the boy, though he would have felt it beneath him to try and win
  him over, and was severe and strict with him in class. Kolya, too, kept
  him at a respectful distance. He learned his lessons perfectly; he was
  second in his class, was reserved with Dardanelov, and the whole class
  firmly believed that Kolya was so good at universal history that he could
  "beat" even Dardanelov. Kolya did indeed ask him the question, "Who
  founded Troy?" to which Dardanelov had made a very vague reply, referring
  to the movements and migrations of races, to the remoteness of the period,
  to the mythical legends. But the question, "Who had founded Troy?" that
  is, what individuals, he could not answer, and even for some reason
  regarded the question as idle and frivolous. But the boys remained
  convinced that Dardanelov did not know who founded Troy. Kolya had read of
  the founders of Troy in Smaragdov, whose history was among the books in
  his father's bookcase. In the end all the boys became interested in the
  question, who it was that had founded Troy, but Krassotkin would not tell
  his secret, and his reputation for knowledge remained unshaken.
  
  After the incident on the railway a certain change came over Kolya's
  attitude to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (Madame Krassotkin) heard of
  her son's exploit, she almost went out of her mind with horror. She had
  such terrible attacks of hysterics, lasting with intervals for several
  days, that Kolya, seriously alarmed at last, promised on his honor that
  such pranks should never be repeated. He swore on his knees before the
  holy image, and swore by the memory of his father, at Madame Krassotkin's
  instance, and the "manly" Kolya burst into tears like a boy of six. And
  all that day the mother and son were constantly rushing into each other's
  arms sobbing. Next day Kolya woke up as "unfeeling" as before, but he had
  become more silent, more modest, sterner, and more thoughtful.
  
  Six weeks later, it is true, he got into another scrape, which even
  brought his name to the ears of our Justice of the Peace, but it was a
  scrape of quite another kind, amusing, foolish, and he did not, as it
  turned out, take the leading part in it, but was only implicated in it.
  But of this later. His mother still fretted and trembled, but the more
  uneasy she became, the greater were the hopes of Dardanelov. It must be
  noted that Kolya understood and divined what was in Dardanelov's heart
  and, of course, despised him profoundly for his "feelings"; he had in the
  past been so tactless as to show this contempt before his mother, hinting
  vaguely that he knew what Dardanelov was after. But from the time of the
  railway incident his behavior in this respect also was changed; he did not
  allow himself the remotest allusion to the subject and began to speak more
  respectfully of Dardanelov before his mother, which the sensitive woman at
  once appreciated with boundless gratitude. But at the slightest mention of
  Dardanelov by a visitor in Kolya's presence, she would flush as pink as a
  rose. At such moments Kolya would either stare out of the window scowling,
  or would investigate the state of his boots, or would shout angrily for
  "Perezvon," the big, shaggy, mangy dog, which he had picked up a month
  before, brought home, and kept for some reason secretly indoors, not
  showing him to any of his schoolfellows. He bullied him frightfully,
  teaching him all sorts of tricks, so that the poor dog howled for him
  whenever he was absent at school, and when he came in, whined with
  delight, rushed about as if he were crazy, begged, lay down on the ground
  pretending to be dead, and so on; in fact, showed all the tricks he had
  taught him, not at the word of command, but simply from the zeal of his
  excited and grateful heart.
  
  I have forgotten, by the way, to mention that Kolya Krassotkin was the boy
  stabbed with a penknife by the boy already known to the reader as the son
  of Captain Snegiryov. Ilusha had been defending his father when the
  schoolboys jeered at him, shouting the nickname "wisp of tow."
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Book 10, Chapter 1
target: The novel shifts to the beginning of November, where we are introduced to 14-year-old Kolya Krasotkin. Krasotkin is popular among his peers and respected for being a daredevil. In the previous July, he had lain down on some railroad tracks on a dare as a train passed over him. The story spread, and his reputation was sealed - but his widow mother was utterly distraught, so he had to vow never to pull such a dangerous prank again. Kolya also has an intellectual streak in him, reading books from his father's library and showing off in class, particularly in Dardenalov's history class. This is in part because Dardenalov has the hots for his mom, which Kolya tolerates. Kolya also has a dog, Perezvon, who he picked up a month ago. He keeps the dog in the house, teaching it all kinds of tricks. Oh, and Kolya's the kid that got stabbed by the sick boy Ilyusha in Book 4, Chapter 3.