Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment

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Recommended: Russia in the early 20th century

God Answers the Questions Presented by Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment

In Dostoevsky's novels pain and some heavy burden of the inevitability of human suffering and helplessness form Russia. And he depicts it not with white gloves on, nor through the blisters of the peasant, but through people who are close to him and his realities: city people who either have faith, or secular humanists who are so remote from reality that even when they love humanity they despise humans because of their own inability to achieve or to create paradise on earth. His novels The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment are best examples of the poisonous effect of such ideals on the common man. The rebellion of these humanists against the system and the reality of human life becomes more important, thus love becomes the filter and the servant of pride and ideals. The cause of XIX century liberals becomes more important to them than the actual human being that might not fit the picture of their perfect and humane society. Through these problems and opposites that cross and overlap each other, Dostoevsky depicts social issues, especially the problem of murder, through an image of people who go through pain. He presents a graphical experience of ones who do not know how to deal with humanity and its problems. Dostoevsky himself does not give a clear solution nor does he leave one with the certainty of faith for an example. He says himself:

Finding myself lost in the solution of these questions, I decide to bypass them with no solution at all. (From the Author. The Brothers Karamazov)

Through the presentation of crime and the issue of money which is often connected to it, Dostoevsky retells a Bible ...

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Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years 1865-1871. Princeton University Press. NJ, 1983.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Stories. Tr. Andrei Goncharov. Progress Publisher Moscow. USSR, 1971.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. A Writer's Diary. Tr. Kenneth Lantz. Northwestern University Press. IL, 1993.

Kabat, Geoffrey. Ideology and Imagination. Columbia University Press. NY, 1978.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Tr. Constance Garnett. W-W-Norton & Company. New York-London, 1976.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Devils. Tr. David Magarsshack. Penguin Books. London, 1953.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Tr. The Coulson. W-W-Norton & Company. New York-London, 1989.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. White Nights. The Dream of a Ridiculous Dream and selections from The House of the Dead. Tr. Andrew R. MacAndrew. A Signet Classic. NY, 1961.

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