A rich lady in the town, a friend of the Karamazovs and Katerina. She is a bit selfish and shallow, and worries very much about her daughter, Lise. She unknowingly parodies what Elder Zosima seriously says about people being unable to judge each other, saying cheerfully about Dmitry,
Mrs. Khokhlakov’s pretty but mischievous and daughter. She is in love with Alyosha and becomes engaged to Alyosha, but decides not to marry him. She grows more and more hysterical and wishes to suffer. Though people like Dmitry become spiritually new because of their suffering, Lise’s “suffering” is silly and selfish – like when she tries to slam the door on her fingernail. Ivan says that he “likes Lise,” but is very contemptuous about that “hell kitten.”
A young student that Alyosha thinks of as his friend, but who secretly dislikes Alyosha. Irritable and sarcastic, he does not believe in God and likes to use fashionable philosophical theories, saying that he is a socialist and saying things that Nietzsche said. He is annoyed by Alyosha's real purity and tries to introduce him to Grushenka, hoping that she will shake his religious faith.
A brave, proud, and clever young boy who makes friends with Alyosha after Ilyusha becomes ill.
Inside The Brothers Karamazov, people struggle between religious faith and doubt. When Fyodor Karamazov asks, “Is there a God or not?” Ivan says, “No, there is no God.” Fyodor turns to Alyosha: “Alyosha, does God exist?” Alyosha firmly answers, “God does exist.” Dostoevsky writes in his book that a life of faith is higher, better, purer, and happier than a life of doubt, cold, hurting, and confusing. Zosima and Alyosha love humans and are a symbol of faith, while Dostoevsky shows that he thinks that doubt is bad by Ivan's madness and Smerdyakov's murder. Dostoevsky also shows in the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” that though faith may not be able to be solved by logic, there is something in it deep, moving, and impossible to explain by words – like in Jesus and Alyosha’s kiss, or in Zosima's bowing down to the ground. It also searches about free will: Ivan says that free will is a heavy burden, while Zosima and Alyosha agree that free will is a joy and a gift of God to humans. Another important theme is that of forgiveness: Zosima says everyone must forgive and love, and Alyosha never judges or criticizes people. Zosima says that people should forgive each other freely, because people's sins are so connected with each other that everybody has some responsibility for each other, like when Dmitry, without thinking much about it, grabs Captain Snegriev's beard and pulls him, leading finally to Ilyusha's death. People like Ivan do not like this idea: he continues to that he does not have any responsibility for other people's sins, and when he finally is forced to accept it, he becomes insane.
Dmitry also, though he did not kill his father, at first wants to suffer to find peace and a new life. Both brothers feel guilty as if they were the ones who killed their father. Alyosha's strong sense of responsibility makes Elder Zossima tell him to "go out into the world", for he has work to do there. Dostoevsky thought that people should be "married" to the world around them, for, he argues, everyone is a part of God's creation.
The existence of God has concerned people for a long time: is there a God, or not? Dostoevsky evidently thought there was.
He wrote in his books the two opposite sides of the question: from Ivan, the atheist intellectual's view, and the Elder Zosima's view. The author called the part in which Ivan and Elder Zosima each speak their beliefs as "the culminating point of the novel" ("Letters", 7567, 859). Dostoevsky wrote in his notebook about "The Grand Inquisitor": "Those blockheads have never even conceived (thought of) so powerful a rejection of God as exists (is) in the Inquisitor and the preceding chapter (the chapter before it), to which the whole book will serve as answer... Throughout Europe there has not been and does not exist so powerful an expression from the aesthetic point of view as mine."
In the book, Ivan's argument is that there is no justice in the world. He is very unhappy with the suffering of people on earth, and says: "I must have retribution (justice), or I will destroy myself. And not retribution in some remote (far away) infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself." But there "is" no absolute justice in the world. So, Ivan says that there are only two things that can be true: either God is not real, or if He is real, He must be an unjust and unwise God.
Ivan has also not forgotten Jesus Christ. When Alyosha exclaims, "But...you asked whether there was in the world 'a single creature who could forgive'. Well, there is. And He can forgive everyone for everything, because He Himself gave His innocent blood for everyone's sins and for everyone's sake. You forgot to mention (talk about) Him..." Ivan replies by the story of "The Grand Inquisitor". In "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan shows to Alyosha what he believes is the wrong of Jesus' rule, and a possibly better, "more just" one.
Readers immediately wrote letters to Dostoevsky after Book Five about "The Grand Inquisitor" was published in great worry, and Dostoevsky replied, "...my hero's blasphemy will be triumphantly refuted (replied to) in the next issue, on which I am now working with fear, trembling, and veneration, since I consider my task (job) . . . a deed." However, when Book Six, Dostoevsky's "answer" to "The Grand Inquisitor", was published, he was much more worried: ""I don't know whether I succeeded. I reckon myself that I wasn't able to express one tenth of what I wanted...I tremble for it in this sense: will it be answer enough? . . . I wrote it with a great deal of love." D.H. Lawrence felt that "we cannot doubt that the Inquisitor speaks Dostoevsky's own final opinion about Jesus."
The Elder Zosima's words before he dies is evidently Dostoevsky's "reply" to Ivan. Elder Zosima believes in a kind and just Jesus, who loves people very dearly and cares for them so much that he died for them.
About suffering, the Elder Zosima says that since God is kind and just, all the suffering comes from man. But since everyone's lives are connected, Elder Zosima says, we cannot blame anybody: "[A]ll is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth". Instead of demanding justice, he says everyone should begin changing and forgiving each other. Instead of saying, "nobody is guilty", he says, "everybody is responsible".
The pain of suffering, according to Elder Zosima, is a passing thing - it will not last. He refers to the Book of Job and says,
Though Dostoevsky wrote of Elder Zosima's reply as the reply of Ivan's arguments, he defends Christianity throughout the whole book and through the characters themselves. Elder Zosima is happy and respected, loved and loving, and dies peacefully and joyfully, but Ivan, who is so unhappy for the justice of humans, says, "I could never understand how one could love one's neighbor" and knocks a into the snow to freeze. "'He will freeze,' thought Ivan, and he went on his way". And at the end, his horror at the thought that he was, in a way, his father's murderer, drives him insane. Elder Zosima, however, is very different; he blesses and helps people even when he is dying, and "Alyosha almost always noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time with apprehension (fear) and , but almost always came out with bright and happy faces". Even Ivan respects Father Zosima after meeting him and seriously "receive[s] his blessing, [and] kisse[s] his hand".